Serendipity Rocks

Some days I end up feeling like the Fairy of Good Fortune has been sitting on my shoulder, making things work out. You can call it serendipity or good luck, I call it the Fairy of Good Fortune. And Thursday, she was riding with me all day long.

I was looking for something to do in Somerset County that was indoors since it was raining (yet again in PA). Google Maps showed the Guild of American Papercutters National Museum was about 9 miles from where I was staying. That sounded promising; I’m not a papercutter but I admire the form and I was in need of some artistic inspiration. Off I went.

The museum is in an old house downtown, with the upstairs showing works from around the world and they were breathtaking. Such intricate designs, such colors and shapes, it was walking through beauty.

One room downstairs had sculptures, mostly small and of natural materials. I loved this one, as it reminded me of a similarly shaped piece by an Indigenous artist that I saw at a Tacoma show years ago.

As I was wandering through the rooms of the Museum, I came across this drum kit. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but this week, the 52 Frames challenge is MUSIC. What are the odds I’d run across a drum kit the very week I needed something musical to photograph?! I tell ya, the Fairy of Good Fortune was working her magic. But she wasn’t done yet…

As I was buying a few cards to send to people, I glanced across the room and spotted a small hand-written sign that said “Black and white copies, 5 cents.” I can’t tell you how long I’d been looking for a place to make a copy of my driver’s license (front and back) to include with the form that requests a replacement passport (The Post Office has now lost my new passport twice trying to get it to Gainesville, it’s a long and sad story). Sure enough, the nice woman at the counter made me a copy and I could finally mail form DS-86 asking for a new passport.

So there you have it, folks. The Fairy of Good Fortune making not one but two serendipitous things happen. I started with an artist’s date for inspiration and found a drum kit for my challenge and a copier for that elusive paper I needed, all in the confines of one small, old house in a little town in Pennsylvania.

By the time I walked out of the museum, the rain had stopped and the sun was starting to peep through the clouds and dry out the land. All was right with the world, at least for one afternoon! (And yes, this was the first museum I’ve visited in more than a year, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Here’s hoping more stuff opens up and everyone gets vaccinated so we all protect each other from COVID-19.)

It made you wonder: How much of our lives was just luck or good timing, and how much was actually choice? How could it be that tiny serendipitous events could change everything? And if lucky events could change everything, could minor mishaps have the same power?”

Aditi Khorana (Mirror in the Sky)