Update about blog

Dawn 7:01 Mountain Time Aug 15, 2026. Marking the sun coming over the mountains behind my apartment on the smoke stack of the Powerhouse.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Good news, and not so good news

 This is me and Teresa behind me, about to start sit-r-cise on Wednesday. I did pretty well, considering how little action I'd really been doing lately. However, the story continues, as you may have heard, with an Xray of my chest the next morning, after a bad night of fevers, and again no Covid, no flu...but now pneumonia! 


Americans of Conscience offers this good news:

All good news

  • The Yurok Tribe lays 11,500 pounds of native plant seeds along the Klamath River.
  • A federal court rules that the president overstepped his constitutional authority in freezing most spending on U.S. humanitarian work abroad that Congress appropriated for this purpose.
  • Transgender service members stay on active duty as a federal court blocks implementation of the president's ban on trans service members while litigation proceeds.
  • The House reintroduces the bipartisan CROWN Act, which would ban discrimination
  • against individuals based on their hairstyle or hair texture due to their race.
  • Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), new senator and ex-CIA, critiques the anti-democratic actions of the current president.
  • AZ: A circuit court strikes down two state laws intended to suppress voters.
  • CT: The governor's bipartisan working group for Ranked Choice Voting is working collaboratively across party lines.
  • NJ expands early voting opportunities for primary elections.
  • NY: Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D) holds Know Your Rights forums to provide accurate immigration-related information to New Yorkers of diverse national origin.
  • San Francisco celebrates Women's History Month in diverse and creative ways.
  • Montgomery and Selma, AL host a weekend of events commemorating the 60th Bridge Crossing Jubilee and Bloody Sunday.
  • Rural organizers and grassroots leaders in the U.S. form the Rural Defenders Union to support under-resourced anti-authoritarian actions.
  • Across the U.S. and the world, scientists, researchers, and those who support science protest the current administration’s research-funding cuts, federal layoffs, and obfuscation of facts.
  • Principled artists–including Rhiannon Giddens, Renée Fleming, Ben Folds, and Shonda Rhimes–resign from the Kennedy Center and cancel appearances in protest of the president’s takeover of the board.
  • Pope Francis rebukes the U.S. president’s harsh immigration policies and refutes a close-minded interpretation of Catholic theology by the vice president.
  • In honor of Reading Month, 60 volunteers show up to a Michigan elementary school to read with third-graders.


-----------------


So here I was, at the hospital from Thursday afternoon till Saturday afternoon...very well cared for by great staff from all departments. I had quite an adventure, got many tests and good news from most.
Here I'm holding a device which delivers cardio and pulse-ox info to the nurses station by radio waves, rather than having the readout in each room as well as the bells...and maybe another readout at the station. I hated it before I got it off finally, it was like carrying a kitten that was hanging by those leads stuck to my chest and I couldn't stand up without holding it (I guess some gowns come with a pocket for them)...and sleep meant moving it as I turned over all night.

Shows the places for the stuck on leads all over my torso!

 Came home on a sunny warmish day and couldn't get to sleep because of being tired and yet amped up on steroids. I'm sooo glad to be home again.

Stories of hospital life will wait for another post.

Back to my original format...

----------
Today's quote:

Extend the circle of “us” to include as much of the world as you possibly can.

--------
Today's art:

by Aram Hunanyan

and how it also reflects off an earlier potter woman in England,...


by Clarice Cliff, 1899

-------------
Family album:



Son Marty and granddaughter Cayenne, several years ago! She has graduated college and is living on her own and working a great job.

One thing that happens when I go to the hospital is getting to talk to my sons on the phone. I got caught up on some of the family doings. Need to work on more frequent calls. They are busy people!


Monday, March 24, 2025

Monday Murals

 

Diego Rivera, Day of the Dead, Mexico


1933 fresco mural by Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Art

Unknown place, by Diego Rivera


"at San Francisco City College. Diego Rivera, detail of mural"

Thanks to Facebook friends who posted these over the years. I know I'm used to posting art over on my art blog, but with time out for hospital stay, everything is happening here this week.

---------------

Today's Quote:

Bruce Springsteen said: "If I have a good trait, it's probably relentlessness. I'm a hound dog on the prowl. I can't be shook!"

---------------

Sharing with Monday Murals

------------
Family Album:
EDWARD HENRY DeLOZIER II 1774-1858  My daughter-in-law, Kendra's 5x great grandfather



Grave marker of Edward and Frances "Fanny" Sarah Dyer DeLozier (1787-1860) Gerster St Clair, Missouri. Located in a field where other family members are probably buried, but their headstones have been plowed under.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Lakeview Center today

 

This is what remains of the downstairs of the Lakeview Center...flooded from Hurricane Helen, but needing much more repair than just the flood damage due to inadequate repairs after a fire years ago. The reflections as I looked through the door were pretty strong, sorry.

There were still two mallards in the swimming pool.


Various Black Mountain town employees have made the lunch site upstairs into open offices since their own offices haven't been repaired from flooding yet. All this falls into the city's budget, while the fire house also needs to be updated.


But many seniors come to pick up a lunch still just inside the door.

Malinda (who didn't want her photo taken) hands out the lunches most of the time.

Many of us from the western North Carolina mountains are wearing shirts and jackets to encourage each other as the long haul of rebuilding after the hurricane continues.

-------------
Personal update:
If you missed my replies to comments, or visits to blogs, it's because I was dealing with pneumonia, which came on suddenly Wednesday night, then to hospital for 2 nights. I came home Saturday afternoon, a bit weaker, but still getting more meds and lots of rest, then rebuilding energy! It's a job sometimes
-----------.

Today's quote:

To have and not to give is often worse than to steal. -Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)



Today's Art:
Frida Kahlo, with Diego Rivera painting the mural Nightmare of war, Dream of peace, Mexico, 1952



Family Album:



Zulieka Granger Swasey, "Dear Nan," Gummy's mother 1858-1935. My great grandmother.

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Barkly and the geese




Tiny Barkly greeted me while I was taking photos of the local flowers...dandy they were too!  There were no geese around.




Later (you've already heard the story of the 3 ducks) I also had some other friends who were quite well behaved...Canada Geese. Of course they're well behaved. And they didn't say a thing about whether they'd eat American grass or not.




There are two free libraries, one for adults, one for children's books.




I guess someone is reading all the adult books. Mmm, have to see if I have any to donate!


The good news is that the lake is again full of water. The bad news is that there was a dead duck by the side of it the other day. I guess it's gone to be tested to see if it had bird-flu.

----------

Sharing with Saturday's Critters.



----------------

Today's quote:

An essential part of being receptive is to soften our barriers enough to let new possibilities in when they show up.

------------------
Today's art:

Maurice Sendak

----------------

 My family album:

Granddaughter Caroline

A prom dress. Mmmm. Grandmother wasn't in on the choice!



Caroline and her mom, Michelle


Friday, March 21, 2025

Remembering days of yore!

When the Native Americans were received by the US Presidents...


1924 President Coolidge visited by indigenous people after Citizenship granted, but states determined voting rights!


President Lincoln 1863 met with delegation of Plains Indians. I'm not sure who the bonneted women were but just having women included in the photo is pretty amazing.


Nice to remember a congress that actually accomplished something we still benefit from! Though the states didn't ratify it until 1920, when women could finally vote!


View of the Alamo, San Antonio, TX c. 1950. I visited it for my first time around 1955.


Paul Newman, Robert Redford & Katharine Ross in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1968)

--------

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week:



-----------

Today's quote:

Let us be quicker to praise than to find fault. Let us be quicker to thank others than to complain.

DESMOND TUTU

---------

Today's art:


Charles Frizzell The Coming of White Buffalo Calf Woman


 ------

Family album:



Granddaughter Audrey in Positano Italy




Thursday, March 20, 2025

Happy Ostara, or Spring Equinox!


More flowers from hard searching!

Yes tiny violets within the grass by our apartments!


The forsythia behind the Lakeview Center, hasn't quite popped yet (photographed Friday 3.14.25)


But my drive up Sunset Rd. gave me a couple or four groupings (3.16.25)





This was a new road for me to explore, right behind Wendy's on Saturday (when I didn't eat there)

The first attraction was this row of pear trees located behind the Comfort Inn.


There are some newer houses, some sill being built (or repaired after the storm). It is a typical winding road, and of course I turned off when some huge black truck came roaring up behind me...so I went as far as the pavement lasted, then turned around, and fortunately remembered which way to turn going back to civilization. (Well, downhill was a clue.)


These flowers caught my eye on the way uphill, but as I came down, there was this amazing archway. There's another one welcoming people to Montreat (nearby small town in the opposite direction across the valley). But I'll bet this was built by the same mason! But you can see the house behind isn't a big mansion. It does however have stone pillars between the windows, giving a good structure to the house (which show more in the second photo below)

The double arch gateway to Montreat NC (photo taken as I was leaving)


As I captured the star magnolias (I think) there was a young man walking under the arch, outside this photo. I just waved to him, and he waved back...after all, I can look like a tourist just interested in his flowers! But if I'd been a bit more courageous I'd have asked about the archway. Sorry folks.


Just a few hazy pink things, maybe quince and weeping cherry blossoms. But it could also be an early azalea, though I haven't seen any others with buds yet. Quince comes in first!





Today's quote:

Do not be afraid to start over.

PAM MUÑOZ RYAN


Today's art:


conceptual-watercolor-artwork-for-meditation-and-a-mindful-lifestyle-that-promotes-spiritual-awareness-mental-and-emotional-well-being-self-care-and-good-habits-ai-generated-photo


Family album:


Kendra and Tai. Probably 2018.