That’s my wife.

The other day we had an amazing sunset. We drove down to the end of our neighborhood to watch it set over a recently harvested wheatfield. We get lots of beautiful sunsets in Indiana, but this one was beyond description. We were so calmed by the immensity of it.The night before last, I talked with my sister for a while and am amazed by her wisdom. She’s 20, and was offering me some very wise counsel. The conversation was about a forthcoming vacation that my side of the family has thrown together in the past couple of months. I’ve had reservations about it in a seriously negative manner, and have been trying to balance that out with the need to do constructive things with my parents and siblings. It’s been easy for me to be stubborn about the whole thing, thinking I know better in many instances, and I’m trying hard to just set that aside. As I told Jenny, once I get down there, I’ll be fine, but it’s every little news bulletin leading up to the trip that makes me want to run for the hills. She was urging me to do some serious introspection about the deeper issues that cause me to NOT want to participate. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know that there ARE deeper issues. I simply don’t like the choices my family makes on the whole. They are not the choices I would make. And that’s perfectly fine. Neither I nor they need to change. But she is right about our methods of communicating to each other and that we do have a responsibility to improve in those areas. Nonetheless, I plan on going and having a great time even if all I do is get a bunch of reading and writing accomplished. That’s the worst case scenario for me.In other news, I’ve been offered a local teaching job for the coming school year. It seems simultaneously a big commitment and a huge blessing. The pay isn’t the blessing, but the further development of local opportunities is. It will be the third different teaching position I’ve filled in the past few months. Crazy how that has just taken off. And I think it’ll only be on the increase. Hey, I think I could stand doing more teaching and have summers off. We’ll see what becomes of that.I’ve been doing some bathroom reading about David Selznick, the famed Producer behind such cinematic classics as “Gone With The Wind” and a whole pile of Hitchcock films. It’s funny to read about how the movie industry was quite the manufacturing boon back in the early 1900’s. I’m sure it’s not much different in biz model’s from today’s studios, but it feels like “film as art” wasn’t even a topic. Not that Selznick wasn’t well read–he was. He was also quite the artist, poet, writer. But I don’t think I’m going to read any further. I’d like to pick up my copy of “Hitchcock’s Notebooks” and read about Selznick and Hitch’s tumultuous relationship from the famed director’s perspective. I’ve not yet become a Hitch fan, as I’ve only seen a relative few amount of his flix. Nonetheless, I’d love to do a more intentional approach to them and watch his library.Well, I’m feeling somewhat warmed up. I’ll either jump into writing now, or pick up a screenplay to ready. I should do the latter. I need to have some reference in my head refreshed.