Continuous gratitude

 

3 long tables with boxes of food available from Bounty and Soul. The manager of the apartments is standing facing us right under the wreath. Several people also volunteer to help distribute the food. Lots of produce, eggs, and bread. I was number 16 in the line last week. We are certainly blessed!

So grateful for Bounty and Soul, our local food bank distributors…who come right to my senior apartment complex weekly. I don’t go there often, but I have so much food from this week, it will take lots of home cooking for me to use it all up. They also distribute in a few other locations, all of which are open to anyone to pick up their choices of food. Of course there are limitations, usually just 2 tomatoes, but this week we got 3.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday.

These people have always decorated to the hilt, though their trees were taken out by a tornado several years before the hurricane, and they were already repairing their house when that happened. So glad to see they're again putting out cheerful lights to share.

Not my photo, but it says beauty to me.

Think of all the good reading material these women promoted!

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Today's goddess:

Nayarit Figure 100CB-250AD, Mexico

Thanks Jenny Mendes Ceramics on FaceBook

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10 days until Winter Solstice, the longest night of the  year.

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Inspiration for the day:

A wonderful article by Maria Popova in Marginalian Newsletter/E-zine...

The Indissoluble Filament Connecting Us All: Patti Smith on What It Means to Be an Artist

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Entertainment:

"The Lost King," 2022. Available streaming on PBS Masterpiece, and Acorn TV. About Phillipa Langley, the woman behind finding the remains of King Richard III in a car park.

Wikipedia says: "Sally Hawkins as Philippa Langley; who suffers from a disabling chronic fatigue syndrome and whose marriage is broken, becomes obsessed with Richard III, joins the local Richard III Society, and embarks on a quest to find and exhume his body."

This movie also brings attention to disabilities, and especially to how misinformation is passed on through generations. Richard's scoliosis was defined as a hunchback, and associated with evil doers. The Two Young Princes in the Tower were never historically murdered by King Richard III, but his detractors changed history by many innuendoes to discredit Richard. Thomas Moore was one who wrote of his life in the promotion of Tudor Myths, also inferring that Richard was a usurper to the throne. All of this is repeated in Shakespeare's plays several hundred years later, and is still being taught today in many history classes.

So pay attention to finding out facts! It was the message underlying the main story in this film of the archaeological efforts that were promoted by a woman without any archaeological background. It has a strong message against misogynists also, to the extent that in real life, the one portrayed in the film took the producers to court...and is given an introductory message  in the film saying he's fictionized! 

In my opinion!

Back home looking around

 How about wordless Wednesday?

Heavy frost at dawn, but the moisture from the river is rising into the air.

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The Black Mountain Christmas Parade was December 6, 2025. here's the Black Mountain News coverage of it.

Yes we have a great Ukulele Band!

Sharing with My Corner of the World

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Today's goddess:

The Venus of Hohle Fels is probably one of the most famous goddess figurines. carved of mammoth ivory about 35,000-40,000 years ago. She was found during excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, and is just 5.9 cm high. There's a loop for hanging her as perhaps a pendant rather than her head.

Remember craftsmen and women only had bones and rocks like flint to make carvings with at that time.

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11 days till Winter Solstice

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Today's quote (do you want these again anyway?)

We often don’t ask people what matters to them. We ask how they are doing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It may be perfect for getting a conversation going.

Maybe the better question is what engages you? And what do you know enough about that you know you need to learn more?

I don’t love putting people in boxes. I’d rather be there when they opened up.

Keith Kron "What Really Matters" newsletter

Frank Gehry's work

 Architecture today - in honor of  Frank Gehry who recently died 

It felt, for quite some time there, like the age of Frank Gehry would never end. But now that the latest defining figure of American architecture — or technically, Canadian-American architecture — has died at the age of 96, the time has come to ask when, exactly, his age began. Or rather, with which building: Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles? The Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris? The radical renovation of his own humble Santa Monica home often cited at the origin point of the metallic, deliberately incongruous, often nearly alien aesthetic now recognized around the world? According to the B1M video above, it is to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao we must look to if we wish to understand the architecture of Frank Gehry — and much else besides.

And, like most architects, Gehry is survived by not just his built legacy, but also a series of projects not yet complete — including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open its doors next year.

Thanks Open Culture newsletter 

Sharing with Tom's Tuesday Treasures 

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Incidentally, I recently read Dan Brown's book "Origin" as an audio book (read by Tom Hanks.) It took place at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao as well as other Spanish places. As fiction it was another Brown page turner, but not what I'd give 5 stars...maybe 3-1/2.

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Today's Goddess:

Venus of Parabita is a goddess figurine dated ca 17,000 BP. It is 9cm high and made ​​from a splinter of bone from an aurochs or horse. Found in the Grotta delle Veneri (cave of Venus) in Puglia, Italy.

Thanks The Mother Goddess on FaceBook

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12 days till Winter Solstice - the returning light following the longest night.

Brú na Bóinne - Newgrange and Knowth - year unknown

More photos of Newgrange can be found on my blog.

Speaking of architecture! 

Newgrange Ireland,  5,200-year-old passage tomb

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A short hop and skip in Georgetown

 As you may have heard (since I might have remembered to say so) I take a break from driving every hour. To mainly walk around and make sure my legs are feeling good...but also to slow down and enjoy the areas I drive through.

So my last day of my recent trip to visit Ohio relatives, I was driving along with that sign of doom "check engine" light on the dashboard. I could cover it up with my hand on the steering wheel much of the time, and keep it out of my mind.

Not many people on the sidewalks in mid-afternoon on a cold Sunday. The restaurant shown above probably was attracting most of them.

It had appeared the day before, when I stopped over night in Lexington, KY. I was still 300 miles from home in North Carolina. So I texted or called 2 of my sons, who agreed that I should just keep driving till I could get to my trusty mechanic at home. If it started flashing, or other things happened, they advised me to stay on the interstate highways, where hopefully help could be obtained (I've got road side insurance) if needed. 

I was willing to go through a long slow construction area on I-40 at the Tennessee-North Carolina border. I prepared by stopping before I got to it and taking care of necessities, so I wouldn't have that need plaguing me if it was an hour to go through that area. (Note, Hurricane Helene was the cause of washed out roads, and this area continues to have floods, though construction is actively rebuilding the highway.)

But the evening before, I stopped my ride to Lexington with a short visit to Georgetown KY.

Sadly this shop where I parked was closed on Sundays. You know I'd have loved a treat from there!

It felt like a typical tourist "old towne" with so many cute shops.

Being in Blue Grass country of Kentucky, there was a great mural in an alley of some horses.

I knew my friends who like to go visit places would have loved this shop (though being more than 300 miles from home might make it a bit difficult to schedule!) Miss Behaven, Gifts for the Southern Heart.

Sharing with Monday Murals. 

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Today's goddesss:

Gold signate rings...depicting women in the Minoan attire of flounced skirts... from the Griffin Warrior tomb in Pylos, Greece. The tomb was that of a Mycenaean warrior, who died in his mid-30s around 1500 BCE. 

The Minoan culture flourished from 3100 to 1100 BCE. The more warlike Mycenean culture was active from 1750 to 1050 BCE. So there was overlap whereby a soldier could have worn images of Minoan women, in one view perhaps as a servant. But the important find (for me) is the bull jumper on the bottom ring image. Both men and women practiced this sport as early as Minoan times, as seen in various murals and pottery decorations on Crete.

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13 days till Winter Solstice

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And for phone readers, here's the new header photo!

 I was surrounded by my beautiful granddaughters at Thanksgiving 2025!

Maybe the angry women

Women's Rights - when in 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade

“I know.

You’re angry. You should be.

You’re scared. You should be.

This is awful.

It’s horrifying.

It’s deeply depressing.

Rage.

Scream.

Mourn the tragedy we know is coming.

But remember this: what we are about to experience is the world our grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived in.

This is what they fought against.

Remember that they won.

Even if the victory was temporary, they still won.

We can win too.

Prepare yourself.

Finish your mourning and get back to the fight.

Yes, it’s awful that we have to have this same fight.

It’s frustrating.

It’s heartbreaking.

But now is not the time to surrender to despair.

Now the work begins.”

~ roaaoife

Can we finally get some level headed representation in our government, instead of the sad fiasco we're living with again and again.

Standing on the side of love...

"A woman is not a basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood hen you can slip duck eggs under.

Not the purse holding the coins of your

descendants till you spend them in wars.

Not a bank where your genes gather interest

and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell.

You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to butcher for chops.

You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years.

Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.

You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,

fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce.

You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o'clock a partera

is performing a table top abortion on an

unwed mother in Texas who can’t get

Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die

of tetanus and her little daughter will cry

and be taken away.

Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose

of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood

and every baby born has a right to love

like a seedling to sun.

Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain.

A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes of my flesh.

Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking.

You may not use me as your factory.

Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind.

This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back.

My life is a non-negotiable demand."

~ Marge Piercy, 'Right to Life'

Jennifer Waterstar Hensiek

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I do not accept the illusion

The dogma or drama

That a man-made rule holds power over this body

I am governed by the earth and the stars

This body is sacred

The truth of my being is untouched

Unwavering

I am a sovereign being of God/Goddess/Creation

With a wave of my hand, your false program crumbles

Truth is ignited by my attention and focus

I shall focus on tasks that are worthy of my being

Photo by Carole Daly

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Women have a right to make their own decisions about their bodies. Not legislators. Not a religious group!

Dec. 6 was the birth anniversary of Congresswoman Patsy Mink, who authored the Title IX Amendment which opened many opportunities in education to young women athletes. See my blog Open Yesterday's Pages for more information.

NOTE: A couple of days ago I posted a lovely goddess on a throne, at Catal Huyeck (Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia). Here's another informative article about that dig from "Archaeology Magazine"...how it's considered a culture with a matriarchal society. A Feminine Touch

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15 days till Winter Solstice