The End

I’ve spent most of my life looking closely at, and enjoying, commonplace things. Now I’ve spent a year writing about them, and circumstances have decreed that that’s enough. Other activities are making a heavy claim on my time, and I must, regretfully, break away from blogging.

You may be interested to hear that when I first discussed the idea of mundanedaily with friends and family, nobody was positive about it. “Like you need another thing to do,” is what I heard. And, “The website costs what?” And “You’ve never even had a writing course.” And perhaps most trenchant, “Mundanedaily is a tautology!” I agreed with it all, except that last one, which missed the very reason for mundanedaily’s existence. “The mundane is merely available daily,” I explained. “It is also almost universally ignored.”

So with camera and keyboard I set about putting a magnifying glass on small things, hoping to expose all that common, unseen, beauty. Things did not turn out exactly as I had planned. It soon became very apparent that mundanedaily readers already knew all about common beauty. They already appreciated the little things; already found delight and charm in whatever happened to pass by their window. (Also, not incidentally, in understanding mundanedaily’s underpinnings, they were happy now and then to click in for a visit.) Others, well, they couldn’t care less, and why should they, in a world chock full of great stories about shark bites and spacemen and movie stars?

So mundanedaily became less an instructor, and more a quiet conversation with friends. How wonderful that has been! (How difficult to let go such a splendid companion to my interests!)

And now, last but hopefully not least…

Pictured above is a section of woven wire fence, at least 50 years old, that marked the edge of a once defunct, but now rebuilt, pasture on our hillside. The fence appealed to me because of the simple but effective method used to connect the wires, and because it is old.

Not only is the fence itself interesting, but the fence line as well, because it holds many reference points—evidences—of farmers’ work done long ago. It marks, for example, where the big trees begin, since those were left to stand outside the pasture. It is where the most stones are found, for farmers clearing ground for pasture carried stones no farther than necessary. And it delineates the angle of the land, for the hillside on the other side of the fence is too steep to make effective pasture. Lovely and edifying signs and signals, like all things mundane.

Farewell for now.

Dave