ON THE CUSP OF 60! PURPOSE
marita casartelli downes
I want to be a happy Sisyphus.
I’m turning 60 on December 1, 2007 and would like to spend the time leading up to it 
pleasantly reflecting on my life: my beliefs, challenges, and interests and share those
reflections with others. I will divide the focus into four aspects: poetry, family, breast cancer, and
China.
I also want to demonstrate my technical skills and have created web pages in different formats. Expect surprises. Remember, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.".
In this section, I share with you five new poems that I have written this semester for this site. They were inspired by news events and personal encounters. Look for a surprise in Wagamama. I also explore the use of frames. I chose to use frames because sometimes I just hate it when I have too many windows open on my desktop. I wanted to give you the experience of reading my poetry without opening new windows.
My family consists of my grown children and me, various friends and extended family. I have begun an introduction to them. I use a basic table structure which I also use in my breast cancer and China pages. I have added some pictures and some short poems about my daughters.
My breast cancer section is written in blog form and consists of my musings, mostly about my hair. It also contains a list of books that were quite helpful to me when I was ill.
In my China section, I am beginning to explore my time in China. It's the tip of the iceberg and I'm sure I will have much more to say in the future as I add pictures and remember stories. It is the site where I experimented the most with color. Please note the two lions on either side of the page. These are pictures of the lions outside the forbidden city, but they "guard" the entrance to almost every important building in China. The lion on the right is the male and has a ball under his right paw, often thought to be the earth. The female on the left has a cub under her left paw. The meaning is more confused here -- she could be suckling the cub or crushing it. It's interesting to note the different interpretations of sculptors by the position of the cub.
So, welcome to my site and feel free to email me with comments or questions