More Harrell Fletcher

It's been a while since my post about Harrell Fletcher coming to give a talk at my school.

When he was here, he handed out copies of this wonderful little newspaper he produced.



It was about all the people that happened to be at a lake one day; what they were up to and so on. One of my favorite things about the newspaper was that it wasn't a book or anything like that. It had a light, passing feeling to it that usually gets summed up with "ephemeral." OED tells me that word comes from an Ancient Greek word describing insects that only live for a single day.

Can you imagine only living for a single day? You would have no concept of night, or maybe even of sleeping. There would be absolutely no routine. Everything would be wildly fresh and mysterious. So many questions would go unanswered.

Anyways, I kept the newspaper in my living room for a few months and was forced to re-examine it when I moved. The paper had yellowed! The ink was fading, perhaps! It was on its way out! How beautiful!

In keeping with the spirit, I recycled it. Who knows what that newsprint will one day become!



And here's a picture of a Mayfly on a leaf. In case you were wondering, they don't actually get born and die on the same day; they have an immature stage of their life that lasts for about a year. Then they get up and go exploring for one day, finding another Mayfly to mate with and producing another generation of bugs who will one day too get their day in the sun.



Sort of creepy things, really. No offense.