House Done Furnished Lived In October 2009

Due to some recent conversations about the ceilings, the hanging canoe, the furnishing and such, I realized that I had photographed the building process and then the close-ups of the furnishings but never really posted a good shot of each entire room or area. This is one attempt to document that on a cloudy day on my way out.
We start by looking from the living room over the dining area back at the entry where the borrowed painting is propped, waiting to return to the gallery. The console table just inside the entry holds keys and such. Be sure to sign the guest book when you visit.
The dining table, handcrafted by Randy, is being used to sort laundry!
The living room features the sleeper sofa whose color sets the golden yellow tone for the rest of the interior accents and a low coffee table works well for games such as Thomas's Scrabble.
Recliners by the gas fireplace make the living room comfy. The wool rug matches that in the dining room.
The kitchen has its own smaller dining area with a matching smaller table made by Randy and visually unobtrusive metal framework chairs.
I love my stone sink with its botanical carving, maple cabinets, black granite countertops, and all the windows.
The area under the stairs serves as a relaxing napping or reading area. This center bay from entry to back has slate tile floor while the side bays have bamboo flooring.
The deck faces the lake, with glass panels in the railing to keep the view open and direct access to the stairs that lead down the steep hillside to the lake and the dock.
The back wall features two stories of windows. The second floor stops six feet short of the back wall to form a balcony so people can converse from floor to floor. The arch of the top window echoes the arch of the truss with its acorn pendant, the artistic flair of Paul Swan of Swan Timber Frame.
Wood ceilings and exposed timber frame make for great expanses of wood.
Back by the entry at the base of the stairs is the first bath, with maple and black granite vanity that matches the kitchen and a small shower. The laundry room is in there along with crawl space access.
From the top of the stairs, you can see the railings that match the balcony railings. Swan provided the wood for the stairs and posts and railings and Randy and Thomas crafted them into functionality.
Looking down to the living room. Randy cut slate floor tiles to use behind the fireplace.
Looking down to the kitchen, you can see details of the framing and how the black railing spindles, black cabinet hardware, and black granite play off each other.
Looking from the 'bridge' to the outdoor balcony that faces the lake. This is a great little balcony for a morning cup of coffee or to read a book on a hot afternoon.
Looking from the bridge toward the small bedroom that is above the kitchen. This opening from first to second floor really makes the spaces flow into each other and keeps things light and airy.
The small bedroom has beds made by Randy and Thomas using some leftover railing material and new posts.
The map shows an aerial view of the lake.
The 'master bedroom' and the 'guest room' share one big space, there by sharing views of the treetops of the woods on the hillside and the night sky.
The canoe hanging against the rafters has a pulley system so that it can easily be lowered to be carried to the lake. The antique quilt is from Randy's mom's family.
Randy and Thomas made the matching beds from railing leftovers and they have wheels so that they can be moved into position for the best views of the night sky or the best morning light.
Toward the front, above the entry, is the 'reading nook' with comfy wingback chairs and a small chess table.
Note those awesome trusses with acorn pendants that Paul designed and carved. Right of the 'nook' is the second bath with a huge bathtub and shower.
The top portion of the bathroom wall is glass to keep the wood ceiling exposed and allow light to fill the spaces.
Both baths have two vessel sinks and showers and ample hooks for towels and such.

A Small Kindness

When I am travelling and I pull off at an exit or stop in some small town to fill up the gas tank, if there is a Cenex station, I will choose it over all the other 'big name' stations and here is why:

I was on my way to a meeting once and I realized too many miles out of town to go back and still make my meeting on time that I had no wallet with me. No ID, no credit cards. I drove on but watched my gas gauge and about the time that I decided I had just enough to make it back home, thereby missing the meeting for which a half-dozen people were already assembling, I pulled over at what happened to be a Cenex station. Before I pumped the gas, I rooted around the van for cash, checking in all the usual stash places, but there was none. Too many last minute school lunches and stops for ice cream and a recent thorough vacuuming of the van had depleted it of any cash. I did find one checkbook in the little storage chamber in the door, but it was more than a little warped and distorted from having been dampened when the door was open during a few too many rains. I took that pathetic check book in and gave the people in the Cenex my sad story and the woman behind the counter contemplated how much trouble she would be in for taking a check with no ID and the men having coffee suggested that she'd be in better shape management wise if I could find SOME other document that at least had my name on it like the car registration or an insurance card, both which were in the glove box. So I went out for those, pumped my gas, and then remembered I actually knew my credit card number if I didn't think about it too hard. So I went back in and said "Write this down." and rattled off the number, then explained that was my credit card number and she could use it instead of taking the check if that was better for them. She punched it in by hand, after she looked up the directions for doing that, and an approval number popped up and we were all happy. But they were willing to take the chance and help me out, and so I made it to my meeting only a few minutes late. For that small consideration, I am forever a loyal Cenex fan!

Glam

Aunt Alice was my maternal grandmother's exotic glamorous sister. She was tall and thin and had long wavy hair. She wore pants. In the 60's. She had modern eyeglasses and separate prescription sunglasses. Her smallish efficient house in town was furnished in snappy new modern curving sweeping chrome and glass assemblages. It was not a particularly warm place, nor was she personally, at least not compared to my grandmother and her big house with wooden and upholstered furniture and wood floors and wide arching doorways and cooking smells that constantly radiated from Grandpa's kitchen. Aunt Alice and Uncle Melvin took exotic vacations, probably on airplanes. They talked of their children who lived far away because of exotic jobs. Uncle Melvin had slicked back hair and I remember his clothes as being rather glossy somehow. He had some of those cool shirts that you didn't have to tuck in from some exotic foreign country. Ah, yes, they were the most glamorous couple I knew. And Aunt Alice herself was the keystone of that glamor, I was certain. And one of the most glamorous things about my glamorous great aunt was that she smoked. She had crystal and chrome ash trays everywhere. Enormous wonders that were more a shrine to the glamor of smoking than functional, for she would never ever let any but the tiniest bit of ash accumulate in their massive bowls. Some had lighters build into them. Best of all, next to her sleek accent chairs, even in her kitchen next to the dining table, she had smoking stands. A little shelf or perhaps a small drawer held cigarettes and the top was solely dedicated to the holding of the resting cigarette and the collection of the ashes. I remember a chrome and black smoking stand and another that had a chrome base and chrome bowl separate by a sculptural exotic wood stand. I remember the crystal and silver bowl of another. I remember her gesturing, sometimes broadly, sometimes in little quick movements, with a cigarette in her hand, smoke curling and twisting and rising. I remember her telling some story and the measure of how upset or excited she was about the goings-on could be had by how much her hand shook when she went to flick the ashes into the ash tray. I have vague memories of my sister and I sitting cross legged on the floor, our elbows on our knees and our chins in our hands, doing nothing but watching this exotic creature do her glamorous exotic things with rapt attention, but I am sure we were never quite that blatant in our astonishment and admiration. Ah, it is a wonder I am not a smoker just to emulate Aunt Alice. What accumulation of effects in my childhood made the desire to be good and healthy, to refrain from smoking, overcome the lure of the glamor of Aunt Alice?

Golden Views from the House

The golden mustard color scheme of the decor and the warm golden hues of the woods and bamboo were completed by the third part of the gold triptych, the fall leaves. It was the house's finest moment when out every window there was warm gold.

Sometimes A Crow

Sometimes a crow

Is joy on the wing

Flying high

Dipping low tumbling

On the currents of the wind.

Sometimes a crow

Is death dropped down

Dark and glistening, sharp beak

Picking a bloody carcass

At the side of the road.

Sometimes a crow

Is part of a pair

Or a family of more

And tells the sweet story of

Us sharing our lives.

Sometimes a crow

Is warning and fear

Cawing out to tell

Of the terrible dark consequences

Of what we do today.

Sometimes a crow

Is promise and hope

Rising in the sun

Soaring high over the hill

Of rushing drafts in the swift wind.

-

-

Sometimes
A crow

Is

Just a crow

Like me.

2-27-09

Three Pages From A Journal

"Bittersweet Lake
Smith Lake
West Hemlock Lake
Lake Alva
Birch Lake
Partridge Lake
Lake Ballad
Frog Lake
Plum Lake
Little Star Lake
Star Lake
Nixon Lake
Grassy Lake
Walter Lake
Aurora Lake
Murry's Landing
Turtle Lake
Palette Lake
Nebish Lake
Cottonwood Lake
Sandy Beach Lake
Mud Lake
No Bass Lake
Lake Evelyn
Moose Lake
Otter Lake
Little Turtle Lake
Cedar Lake"

Fighting

Sometimes we fight just to exercise our right to fight I think. We cover the same ground, over and over and over using the same arguments as last time and really, no one is going to budge on them. Sometimes the fight really IS about who should clean the damn bathroom or whether the person cleaned it thoroughly enough, but often is is about something else entirely. Sometimes it is about exerting a tiny bit of independence from each other and declaring that we each DO have parts of our lives that do not involve the other. Sometimes, oftentimes, I think, it is just about proving we are important to each other. If we care enough to fight about things, we must care about each other and we must care about continuing a relationship with each other. This is the same whether fighting with a spouse, a co-worker, a family member, a best friend. And at some point, when the fighting is going nowhere, it might be just best to stop. Agree to stop and let it be. But in order to do that, both parties need to be able to let go. One cannot dredge up words said and sulk and pine about them. Both parties must realize that much of what got said was in anger and hurt, not really meant and sometimes just made up out of anger to hurt. Those things need to be let go. If there were genuine problems or issues that came up, one or both parties can agree to work on them in the future. But continued carrying on about the past is just dirty water under the bridge that cannot be cleaned up or fixed. It should be let go, and focus made on the future and what can be done to make the future better. But sometimes, we are attracted to each other because we are different, so we are always going to find things to fight about. I worked with a woman once who exactly complemented me in the project skills we had and we loved to work together for precisely that reason. She did not have to struggle with space design details because I was the great puzzle solver and I did not have to labor over the 38 shades of off-white to find the right one to go with the green we had chosen because she had amazing color sense. But we got into ridiculous arguments over silly things at lunch because . . . we saw things differently. We could have let those disagreements color our working relationship, but we stopped after a few rounds and laughed and moved on. Sometimes what makes a relationship amazing IS our differences, yet those differences lead to fights now and then. Rather than dwell there in fighting and sulking by replaying that fight and things that got said, we should drop it and smile and think about the rich gifts our partner in the relationship brings to our life and move on with an attitude of appreciation and anticipation of the things we are great at together.

On Keeping Journals

You've probably been there: Sitting in front of your computer with a Word document open and nothing to say. You've tinkered with the margins, messed with the fonts, even titled the thing so so you have a topic, but nothing is coming. Or you've dug out the paints and a canvas and made a great show of clearing out a space and setting things up and now that blank white canvas stares at you. I had a similar moment of panic when I was planning to demonstrate linoleum block printing to masses of customers for three days. I cleaned, I organized, I set up, and it was looking good the night before when I realized I had not one idea what I was going to carve on that clean grey block at opening time at 10:00 a.m. the next morning.

But these moments don't last long for me because I have a vast disorganized collection of things that can only loosely be called journals or sketchbooks. I always have at least one in the car, usually sliding around dangerously on the dashboard, I always have a couple in in my computer bag, in the bag with whatever reading or knitting I am doing. I take one in a pocket on hikes and one of those nifty waterproof numbers when I backpack. When I get an idea for an artwork, I make a little sketch. Sometimes, I know it is an idea for a linoleum print or a felt, but sometimes it is just an image that could be done in most any medium, and in that case, I will try to find or create a photograph of it first, then the photos will serve as reference when I convert it to other media. I write down ideas for articles, ideas I want to bounce off friends for discussion, things I want to look up online and learn more about, even ideas for talks or classes that might be fun to teach. If I am working on a project of some sort, it is a way to capture ideas for it that occur at other odd times. I have kept one outside the shower if I am working really hard on a project and having a storm of ideas. My fiction always starts with an image or a few words that create an image. Working it into a story only comes later. Sometimes, when I am in a mood of prolific "thinking things up" they are in roughly chronological order with a blog topic next to an interesting image for felting next to a jewelry design next to a question about a prairie plant. Sometimes, I make an effort to put like ideas together in various parts of the book by making sort of a topic key at the front with blackened marks at page edges. The ideas scattered about the book have black marked edges to link them with the topic list.

So when I was ready to carve but lacking an idea, I got out a few of my journals and paged through them and soon had more than enough image ideas for the weekend of block print carving and printing.

You don't have to be an artist or a writer to benefit from a journal. Don't we all have moments out there were we wonder at the meaning or origin of something and then lose the thought once back home? Don't we all get ideas about things in our lives, even just questions we want to ask someone or stories we want to remember to tell someone, and then lose them once we move on in the day? Keep a little blank book in your pocket or bag or purse or desk drawer and jot those things down or make a little sketch or diagram. Give it a try. Than maybe I can call YOU someday and say "Hey, got any great ideas for a block print?"

Waiting

They tell you hopeful things, but they don't really know. They don't really know for sure what the problem is and they are waiting too. They want the news to be good. They want good stories to take home to their families and spouses and roommates at the end of the day. But they don't really know. The nurses are waiting for the doctors to tell them and the doctors are waiting for the test results to come back and even then, it is all a guessing game. But they find the good signs and they tell you about them and sometimes that is a good thing because it helps you not worry so much and makes the waiting easier. But sometimes, they tell you a good thing and it is a false sign or a transient moment and then when things go bad, the crash is worse. But they don't know that when they try to paint the picture in the best colors they can find and they mean well and when things crash, they crash for them too and when there is reason for joy, it touches them too. They don't really know, but what they lack for knowing, they make up for in wanting and caring too.
Photo: Mary McCarthy

I Argued With A Nun Once

I argued with a nun once. She posted and article in the local paper about a workshop she was going to teach about getting over grief. I sent her a letter and told her that was an unreasonable concept. I said you might 'get over' the grief of losing a favorite sweater or a pet or a car or a loved grade school teacher or the guy at work that you saw at meetings now and then. I said that some grief is too big to get over and you should not be asked to get over it and that the most you could be asked to do is manage it so that it doesn't mess up your life or your remaining relationships. That the class should teach how to know if a grief is little enough to get over or big enough that it can only be managed. And then it should teach you how to manage it.
I was thinking of the death of my dad when I wrote this. I was remembering how my young sons sat on his hospital bed in the minutes before we transferred him to the hospital where he ultimately died and how in his pain and weakness, he ran his hand over my youngest long tail of blonde hair and how he patted my oldest on the back and joked with him. they should have had him there for their growing up years and he should have been there to mark their milestones. that should not have been the last they saw of their grandfather. and no one can ever tell me or them that we have to 'get over it'. Each passing year in January I do the math of the year it is then against the year he died and the number grows, 1, 5, 7, 9, 13. And each January I tally the times I missed him so much I thought my heart was breaking, I do a measure of the tears shed that year, and even as the number of years get bigger, the missing does not get smaller.
And so I cry in the privacy of my own car or my own shower and don;t bust up over it in public or when I am supposed to be helping someone else deal with their crisis or trouble. And so I use it to help me treasure my relationships with other people instead of allowing it to make me fear getting close to someone to avoid the risk of another loss. I use it to remind me to mention some good trait or memory or story to my boys or to express more in my personality some admired trait he had. That is the managing of this grief that won't even go away. That is the managing it toward good thing rather than letting it destroy. That is what I told the nun about and she wrote back to me that she was reorganizing her class to reflect just that.

An Olive, A Pickle Spear, and a Half Slice of Lemon

Odd things on my photo storage drive:

Vices and Virtues: Charity

For all my years as a child, I was hearing my mother sing the praises of a certain neighborhood woman as a woman of charity who gave of her time and talents to organizations and individuals. I vowed to be just like her and become a do-gooder too. But my little heart, I must admit, was mainly wanting to do that so that people would talk fondly of me like they did of this person. My desire to do great works of charity was solely based on the fame that it would accrue me. Later, I figured out that there were better reasons to be involved in causes and give of ones time and I also found out that my mother secretly despised the person as a person. So much for heroes and heroics.

I was called to serve in many capacities, planning events at my software design job that would teach people to overcome race and gender bias, planning Arbor Day celebrations and recommending landscape enhancements as part of a city commission, volunteering on prairie restorations and seed gathering work days, and later, giving talks on natural landscaping, giving prairie tours, teaching art classes, working at the co-op art gallery, spending time on various Kiwanis activities and fundraiser and as an officer and board member, working on a local political campaign, even teaching Sunday school once.

All of these were acts of charity but my motivations were varied and not always good. Sometimes, I was motivated by a desire to be recognized, sometimes by a desire for professional advancement, sometimes even, I was motivated by revenge and used my volunteer positions to get something done to get back at others for some perceived offense to me. Even at my most pure of motivations, to make the world a better place, it was to make MY world a better place, and to make the world that my children would be left with a little bit of a better place.

Exclusively, my volunteer efforts were a result of ME seeing a need and offering myself to it because I valued a thing. Never did I approach a random person or situation and say "What do YOU want or need today?" Nobody does that. That might put the conservative Christian giving the welfare mother a ride to the abortion clinic or reading comforting words from the Quran to the mourning Muslim neighbor. We don't work our charity based solely on needs of others but on the needs WE think are important and WANT to contribute to.

One of the first and greatest 'charities' people give to are churches. But church charities are by and large to promote the goals of their church, to swell membership, you don't much see the Lutherans volunteering at the Catholic food pantry or the Catholics volunteering at the Lutheran gift drive for the youth home. Each church builds their reputation with their own interests and then lists those 'charitable' activities on their 'resume' to promote themselves to prospective members.

Charity of money or time to the church itself is more like dues to ones health club than true charity, for it gets services for ones self in exchange for doing services for others of same faith and interest. Lead the bible study and get Sunday school for your kids. Serve as an usher because you enjoy church service. Donations that pay the utility bills and the cleaning service and upkeep on the gutters are much more like dues to the golf club than any sort of real charity.

And what of the do-gooder who does good at the expense of family and friends and other responsibilities? The doctor who spends so much time in the children's cancer ward he does not know his own kids. The wildlife researcher who sends her kids to boarding school so she can save the habitat of the Amazon floodplains? If time spent on the charitable activity is used to avoid other things we should be doing in our lives, it isn't all that noble of a virtue.

Charity therefore must be examined for the motives of the charitable which is not to say that self-serving charity does not also do others good, but if one really desires to do good, one should at least be aware of who is benefiting and how the needs served by this charitable activity stand against the needs served by other. Volunteering at a church fashion show might not EVER count as true charity in light of other needs in the community, for example. And charity needs to be evaluated for its true costs. Charity costs to the giver, but also to the giver's family and friends who maybe ought to have right of first refusal on more of the giver's time and resources. If others are harmed by your 'charity', it ceases to become a virtue and crosses the line to vice. Or is there really any true line between vice and virtue after all?

Words and Photographs in Books - Fiction

We drove north out of town, following the directions they gave us, and stopped at the side of the road where they said it happened. But we could find no signs. Nothing at all. There were no scraps of paper, no tire marks, no beaten down grass, no broken glass, no burn marks or ashes, no signs of any disturbance or anything unusual at all really. We picked up a few beer cans and some fast food litter to try to redeem the trip from total pointlessness. We debated a while if we should go back and ask for directions again or if perhaps we'd gotten the crossroads wrong, turned too soon or gone too far. In the end, we decided we didn't have time to try again so we drove away, leaving the tall cottonwoods rustling their leaves along on the far side of the ditch. We wondered aloud and privately if it really ever happened and then forced ourselves to change the subject and stop talking about it as we drove on the our next appointment.

Years later, I was driving that road on the way to visit a friend, when the fenceline cottonwoods rose into my view ahead. The early morning light sent shadows of them crossing the roadway and without meaning to, I slowed down as I neared the spot. And there in the tall ditch grasses, exactly where they'd said it would be, was everything we'd expected to find. The books were there, tumbled in the ditch, some lying open, their pages fluttering in the breeze. Black skid marks on the asphalt lead to tire tracks that flattened the grasses. Broken glass, the smell of gasoline and oil, a burned patch in the grass along the shoulder. Envelopes of guitar strings, business cards, matchbooks, a makeup case, CDs, your sunglasses, and folded roadmaps.

I looked up and down the road, but there were no cars, no other people. I started to gather up the books into a pile when a crow landed on the hood of my truck and two more landed on the center line of the pavement. They cawed and flicked and shook their wings and cocked their heads to stare at me. I looked down and the book in my hand was open to the photo of you, victorious and smiling, a strand of hair blown across your face, standing on the steps of the courthouse. I dropped to my knees and cried as I held the book to my heart. The crows cawed, flapped wings, rose and settled again together in a broken branch of the cottonwood trees.

In the end, I left everything there. I knew if I took more time to gather things up, if I picked up the books and straightened their pages and closed them and stacked them in my truck, that I would be late to see my friend. And what would I do with them, how would I explain them being there? What good could those things do me anyway; what use were they to me now? I drove away, leaving it all there, fluttering in the wind, catching and reflecting the sunlight.

I drove away and as I did, the crows dropped out of the tree and flew along and behind me for a ways before veering off into a valley to dive and tumble with each other until I had to leave sight of them to turn my eyes back to the road.

My friend was waiting on the porch, smiling, with a pitcher of lemonade for us to share and a vase of sparkling yellow roses, fresh with dew and glistening in light reflecting from the white of house walls. We talked a while, laughed, shared stories, joked. We talked about our plans, our hopes. Then I saw it there on the chair between us, your book, open, face down. She saw me looking at it and picked it up, closed it, and slid it onto her lap. She broke the silence that had settled upon us by offering me more lemonade, and we talked a while more, remembered, planned, laughed. Once, we sat silent for a while to watch a coal black cat walk the distance of her driveway, then double back and stalk a grasshopper that was sitting in the gravel. The grasshopper popped high over the cat's head at the last minute and the cat walked on as though nothing had happened. When I got up to leave, she stood to hug me goodbye and I saw that her lap was empty, the book not there. She smiled and walked me to the truck and hugged me once more before I drove away.


I miss you but I am not sure you are really gone.

My Uncle's Garden

My Uncle has an amazing garden. He has recently added a fancy kitchen and family room to the back of the house. The addition has a massive window facing the garden. There is a large beautiful antique multi-pane window on the back of his woodshop that also faces the garden. They frame wonderful views to the garden. He has gardened for very many years, and the garden is backed now with mature semi-dwarf apple trees, so that when I was there in mid-September, the branches were drooping heavy with pretty red fruit. The foreground of the garden is roses along the edge of the deck and the midground is raised beds of individual species of flowers, Asiatic lilies, purple coneflowers. He built the arbor, in the woodshop, of cedar with no nails; it is held together with pegged joinery. From the house, the view is breathtaking. It is restful to sit and visit with the garden out there and it is a nice little outing to go stroll along the paths between the beds and visit the individual areas. It is not quite accurate to call it my Uncle's garden, for although he started it so many years ago and is the driving force behind it, he does not really work on it anymore for health and mobility reasons. His wife, my Aunt, does nearly all the work now, but she still gives him credit, ownership, I guess out of habit. I guess that is what people do for each other when they have been married for over 40 years. They apologized that the flowers were done or past their peak and though I got some nice close-ups, I chose to photograph the garden as a whole by the reflection on the woodshop window, for it captures the allusion and romance and subtle beauty that is there. I love my Uncle's garden, because it is beautiful, but also because of the people who make it.

Vices and Virtues: Gratitude

Gratitude is the most poorly expressed of the virtues. Thanksgiving is the worst of holidays.
We set up a holiday that is to make us think about what we are grateful for and then what? We go to church and thank a deity for those things and then we go home and eat until we are sick. Does that make ANY sense?
What is the point of gratitude? The point of gratitude is not to just FEEL thankful but to express it. But where do the things you are thankful come from? By and large they come from people. The home, the clothes, the food, the stuff, it all comes from people. There are stores full of sales people and cashiers and baggers. The stuff got bought with money. Provided by your employer and with the help of your employer's accomplices, your co-workers. If you run a business, you have clients or customers who provide the money. There are countless other people who provide services that make your life comfortable and enjoyable. The house got built and repaired and maintained by people, often members of your family or your friends. Your kids have teachers, you have doctors and nurses and dentists and hairdressers and other people everywhere everyday that enrich your life. Even nature is there because someone preserved or cultivated it and you probably enjoy nature because someone accompanies you on excursions into it. Natural areas have caretakers and people who keep them clean and safe. Farmers cultivate the beautiful fields and your neighbor cultivates his beautiful garden. If you are thanking a god and eating too much due to your annual gratitude, you are bastardizing what gratitude is supposed to be. If your god has all the qualities you claim he does, he does not need to be thanked, but the people out there do! It would make their task a little lighter to know someone appreciates it!
Figure out who, which people, are responsible for each of the things you are grateful for and express that gratitude to those people. With a note in a card, with an email, with a phone call, with flowers or a gift. And don't do it just once a year, but do it on a regular basis, year around, often and always. When you receive the 'gift' from them is best but any time later that you think of it is really nice too. Live a life of gratitude by sharing it with everyone everyday all the time. An eat a nice light salad on Thanksgiving Day.

No Parking

I love old signs. It is fun to wonder how the place was being used when the sign went up; what situation caused someone to letter and paint a sign. Often, the use of the area has changed and the sign's wording has not been applicable for many years, but the sign stays, rusting and fading a bit each year.

Flower Sex Parts

Remember you can click on the photo to make it really really big!

Water for the Brain

The courtyard at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester has a fountain with this lovely stone and brick floor. While I was gone on my mission there, I missed my lake and paddling and more than all that, I missed the family I paddle with. The fountain drowned out the sounds of building air conditioners and ventilation fans and most of the sound of the helicopter ambulance that seemed to arrive many times every day. It reflected diamonds of sunlight from the spray of its nozzles and its surface shimmered watery crystals of light. When I took shortcuts through the courtyard, I would often stop and kick off my shoe and dip a toe in the water. If I had time, I would stop to sit on a nearby bench for a few minutes to just breath and be quiet and calm. The fountain grew to have a grounding effect for me, so that one day when I arrived earlier then usual to find the fountain still turned off for the night, it left me unsettled. I had to make a deliberate point to go back a little later, after the sun was up and the fountains turned on to refresh and calm myself before I felt fully well to face the day's adventures and uncertainties.

Secret Club

Every day that I was there, these strange flat small yellow people guarded this door. It must be some kind of secret club's meeting room or clubhouse or maybe they just keep their secret club regalia there or maybe it is something darker, but it is difficult to think of small yellow people as capable of dark thoughts and acts. I imagine happy things behind that door, thought I know not why they would hesitate to share them with the rest of us. I asked them questions and they refused to answer. If I talked to them too long, the human people in the area gave me looks that indicated to me that they are protective of their flat yellow friends and that they wanted me to respect their privacy. I asked it they minded if I took their picture, and they did not say no, so I took the liberty. But they never did talk to me, so their mission and the nature of what is behind the door they guard remains a mystery.