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This is part of a set that I took yesterday indoors in afternoon light, called "variations on a rose".
The rose itself came from a bush at the end of our little row of townhomes, the former home of a friend. Her son used to play with Miss Dancer when they were in elementary school. They were best, best friends, the kind where it didn't matter that he was a boy and she was a girl, they just got along and couldn't wait till they could both play whatever the game of the day was.
Their home has been foreclosed on now. It sits vacant and alone. The rosebush in the front was hers, planted by her husband in honor of their marriage and first home together. Unfortunately, they couldn't hang onto their home, and finances created such stress that the marriage broke, too.
I couldn't bear to see these wonderful roses wither and die on the bush, so I cut them, took them home, and spent the better part of yesterday afternoon photographing them as a way of capturing at least a bit of color and art from a sad and all-too-frequently-occurring situation.
It's so hard to watch people I care about, people who are solid, middle class, taxpaying citizens, lose everything because they can't find another job, or health problems have bankrupted them, or they just plain lose hope. Last night I railed on Twitter about it, and today I took one step toward doing what little bit I could do to help. More about that here.
I hope that if you enjoy my rose, you'll use it as inspiration to consider doing what you can, whatever small thing it might be, to help someone who is suffering because of this economy or personal problems, or whatever it might be. Were it not for the kindness of those of you who read my blog, I might have felt hopeless about things in December.
We are all reflections of one another, humans trying to get through every day the best way that we can, dealing with what is thrown at us. Imagine a world where we did some small thing to make that reflection brighter, more saturated with color.
(crossposted on odd time signatures, where the roses are bigger and even more colorful.)
