~Upstream and Down~

I recently sat in an overheated courtroom with seventy-five prospective jurors waiting to be called to fill twelve seats, but most hoping to go home. As the judge read the charges there were audible gasps from many of the jurors, angry shakes of the head, disgusted faces. I too recoiled inwardly—it was an ugly crime: "rape of a child with force," and  "assault on a retarded person." When introduced, the defendant stood and turned to face us, expressionless as coached, lest we judge the curve of his mouth or the level of an eyebrow. We are primed, each of us, to read subtle facial and body language cues. We often form a first impression in seconds. While we may come to change that impression in time, it's not easy. First impressions are potent. There is a definite prejudice against those accused of crime, studies show. There's an initial presumption of guilt. After all, people think, this person has been arrested, he's been charged, and he's sitting...

I'm a calendar girl four times over! Ms. January, M s . July, Ms. September, and Ms. November.  Ooh la la! Not exactly me (of course!), but my photos. *F our were chosen in a photo contest by the Taunton River Watershed Association for their first ever calendar. I'm happy to be part of an organization that works hard to protect the local watershed. *My photos  are #3, #5, #6, and #10. .

It's strange how the mind works. There's a stream of subconscious memories flowing continuously beneath our radar that influences us think or do things for reasons we're often unaware of. When I downloaded this picture to my computer, my mind jumped back forty decades to when I was in college and worked as a cashier in J.M. Fields--a department store that has long since gone out of business. I had a reputation among the various department managers as someone who could restore order from chaos, as in: refolding and organizing a customer-mussed pile of baby clothes, rearranging cups, plates, and wine glasses on the shelves in the housewares department, and folding bras—some with cups big enough to fit my head—and organizing them by size. Not rocket science, but an inherently pleasurable task making things neat is. The long-ago praise from managers, so rare in jobs like that, still comes to mind when I'm organizing something--a kitchen cabinet, a sock drawer, a piece o...