Last week I met a friend's trial new dog, Champ. I haven't seen him this week, so he may not have worked out for her.
He was a rather slow moving older beagle. The interesting part of his story was that his owner had recently died. And she had died the same day that my friend had lost her own dog suddenly. She was trying out living with Champ for a few weeks, I believe.
Another blogger recently posted some art by an artist who was also recently deceased, Leoma Lovejoy. Blogger is Southwest Daily Photos.
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From a Gallery Show by the Red House artists, in 2021 a selection.
My contribution was a ceramic open sculpture of trees (which sold!!)
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Today's quotes:
Every student needs someone who says, simply, "You mean something. You count."
-Tony Kushner, playwright (b. 16 Jul 1956)
Be part of the discussion on climate change as we move our society to a critical mass of people who can change the way we live, govern, support, communicate, and save the earth.
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Today's goddess:
Amazing goddess figurine from Balzi Rossi (red rocks), who is apparently depicted giving birth. Dated ca 26,000-20,000 BC Gravettian period, it was found in Balzi Rossi caves (archaeological site), Grimaldi di Ventimiglia, Italy on the border with France.
Musée des Antiquites Nationales of Saint Germain-en-Laye, France
What is this? I just found it saved in my iCloud photos...and I didn't take it! How could someone else's photo get saved there? Well, that's my Monday morning dilemma, while drinking my coffee and reading a few blogs and emails. I'm getting ready to go to the dermatologist this morning for my yearly exam. Whoopee!
The neighborhood slowly awakens to dawn. 41 degrees F. Due to be sunny today.
Yesterday my maples treated me to swinging in the breeze...as I awoke these long limbs just swayed every which way with the gusts of wind. It was estimated by Weather Channel at 17 mph...but these were surprising gusts coming through. What a symphony of movement.
And from the internet...
Adding another list just to include peruse, which AC mentioned in his comment:
We were struck by many fallen trees, and the lack of leaves on some still standing...showing results of last years Hurricane Helene disaster which kept the parkway closed until this month for much of this stretch,.
Our goal was to drive to Little Switzerland and then Spruce-Pine (off the parkway.)
I'll post a few of our early sightings of perhaps a bit of color. You know how the first flash is always worth the picture...even though it will look so blah when you see something better. But 99 photos for the day, and I've definitely taken out half of the early ones!
Katharine Hayhoe free newsletter on environment (which has migrated over to Substack now I see)
The Contrarian (I chose paid subscription for all their video postings, not sure it was worth it, but I do support their efforts to give all the views on the news. It also is coming in under Substack as I write this...and I didn't choose that. Speaking of algorithms!)
The Examined Lifea space for curious minds and emotional souls, an imagined community created, written, edited, and nurtured by Ellen Vrana, London UK
Keith Kron's What Really Matters, free newsletter with positive bent of his personal life and ideas, each Sunday a prayer for all things detailed in the world events (some of which I didn't know before.)
The Big Picture - free Substack, I read a joint publication with Jay Kuo
Emergence Magazine - free weekly environmental newsletter with link to an author, video or article from the magazine, which I also purchase whenever they come out with a new bound volume...a rather costly vanity of mine that I began during pandemic with their first issue (now on number 5).
The New Lede - an initiative of the Environmental Working Group. I don't know who or what the EWG is...but the New Lede gives links to news stories about the environment.
And I have more personal links like The Marginalian which is a favorite free (though I often donate) because it's just so rich a source of literary gems.
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Today's quote:
Only after a hundred or two hundred years does the good stuff emerge. All of the jokers disappear. Great art is timeless.
- Gabriel Gély
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Today's art (which has to be at least a hundred years old!)
Shadows, by Daniel Garber 1922
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My family album:
Grandson, Michael, and youngest son, Tai, left to right. 2019 in Florida! Michael is 6 years younger than his uncle Tai.
Christmas Past, the title of a 2012 blog. I'm reposting it because it really shows my childhood Christmas in St. Louis MO in 1953
... to share some thoughts and pictures from my earlier life. Can't post a picture of Christmas in the future anyway. So lets enjoy the past.
In 1953 our tree was real (it may have been about the time artificial trees came out, but not for us) I loved the colored lights (all different colors, big bulbs) and the tinsel which was strung carefully, one by one. My gifts are on the right...and I don't know what the boxes contain, but there's definitely an orange in my stocking (lying next to my Betsy McCall doll). I remember Betsy McCall paper dolls which I'd cut out of McCall's magazine. The real doll was a disappointment, but I don't remember why, the capricious nature of a young girl of 11. I did learn how to play a simple form of dominoes (right there in front).
This was taken a month before Christmas, our apartment is on the second floor, reached by the porch to the right. I remember how snow was beautiful for about an hour in St. Louis in 1953, then the coal dust settled on it, making it all grey. We had to be quick to enjoy playing in it. Of course it was nice to have a coal furnace to keep us warm. Our Texas blood (and probably clothes) made us cold easily.
The best place to sled was Art Museum Hill, though there was a lake at the bottom, and we always were scared we'd tumble into it at the end of the long hill (though it might have been iced over.) My Dad was the pusher to get us going, I don't think he tried to ride down with us. But he may have come and rescued us and pulled the sleigh back up the hill (probably).
And in 2016 I had another Christmas blog post HERE.
My friend, Teresa's decorations in 2016! The ceramic tree sitting on the table on the left was one I made. I wonder what happened to it...well, we can all guess!
Goddesses of the Dark given by women at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Swannanoa Valley in 2016, choir and a play!
"Train Station at Christmas” by Norman Rockwell (1944)
I remembered train stations, but not the porters! Where did they all go?
Today's quote:
When we begin to hold our markers for success in concepts like interconnectedness and kindness, when we place our highest value on each other, our children and our relationships, then our human spirits soar.
JAMES ARANA
Reading;
"The Last Bookshop in London," by Madeline Martin.
I listened to the audio version, and it was an experience which worked for me, putting it aside when I was busy, then picking it up later...easy enough to catch what was happening.
Why did I enjoy reading about the Blitz before and after when London was bombed and so many people and structures were lost? It hit a chord for all that has happened where I live, western North Carolina as a result of the catastrophic storms ending with Hurricane Helene.
For me, every day on Facebook are shots of people who have been un-homed receiving a tiny home, or a camper. There is so much gratitude being expressed, but these people have endured such destruction and trauma. They have gone through something that was an immediate catastrophe, while those 1940 Londoners had long months of being bombed by the Germans. But the survivors had a similar human experience...that of helping each other even by those who weren't expected to, that of looking out for others by everyone, that of going beyond what any human could be expected to do, and that of having a spirit of hope when faced with such doom.
Wonderful old Christmas Carols on a repeating cycle
Thinking of the May Pole, a tall straight pole around which people/children dance and decorate with ribbons. Those days are barely remembered by few people.
Here's an intriguing film The Forest Beyond. It came on Emergence Magazine's site. I hope the link will bring it up.
"The Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon have lived in relationship with the rainforest for millennia. In recent years, loggers, colonizing settlers, and palm plantations have increasingly devoured these Indigenous lands, pushing the forest farther from villages and homes. In this film, Senen Kaisi, a young Shipibo woman from Santa Isabel de Bahuanisho, makes her first journey to the retreating edge of this ancestral forest, which once stretched all the way to her village."
The Forest Beyond is by Jeremy Seifert and Fred Bahnson.
It is one of those inspiring things that is sweet and not brash. I found it worth watching. Oh, and it's only 15 minutes long!
Today's quote:
…I would like not to underestimate the value of the world view which is the result of scientific effort. We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imaginings of poets and dreamers of the past.
Blue Footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is such a dear little bird! I can't help but smile when I see him.
Junior nobody in his "pram" with mom...bundled up for mildly cool weather, and Junior is happily munching on something I believe. In the background is perhaps a garage, and rooftops with chimneys. Let's see what others have posted on Sepia Saturday this week!
A continuation of last week's post about workers. Here are those who helped build the Biltmore House in Asheville NC, 1898.
The Biltmore Estate - present day. I don't know when it became a tourist attraction, but thousands roam through the halls daily now, and around the beautiful gardens.
House in Houston's 5th Ward, 1973 photo by Danny Lyon
Clover Gap Mine community, Harlan County KY
You may note that the poorer people among us build with wood, while those who can afford to will choose some kind of masonry.
As I recently showed on my blog, housing these days means clearing lots completely of ancient trees, then perhaps planting some fast growing ones after the house is built. But the logs above were from much bigger trees than I've ever seen in North Carolina...and unfortunately they were probably not meant to become lumber for housing. This was wartime.
This phenomena occurred about 60 million years ago when the Colorado Plateau shifted and felled many trees, which became petrified over that long time.
Another frame house, to which a farmer and his sons are retreating from a dust storm. Cimarron County, OK, April 1936.
Niagara Falls without water, 1969 (Are you getting thirsty yet?)
Woman on frozen Mississippi River, St. Louis, MO 1905
1910s photo of mother doing laundry while baby walks in a wicker frame.
I've now come full circle back to a mother and child, and shared most of the sepia photos that have come across my desk in the last week.
I hope you have a great weekend!
Today's quote:
To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great. -Zane Grey, author (31 Jan 1872-1939)
Tomorrow's post will be about thinking outside the box and into a circle!
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