IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES...

Imagination is such a wonderful thing...We would be so bored without it.
"Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative."
unknown

HAPPY PIONEER DAY EVERYBODY!!!

Thank you, thank you to my dozen or more ancestors who gave their all to brave a desert wasteland and make this State the beautiful paradise it is today. So I can have the day off and stuff myself with picnic fare.
My special thanks to, three of my Great great, great Grandmothers who drove ox drawn wagons or walked 1500 miles by themselves. Because of you I know I have courage inside me somewhere.

REAL PIONEERS DON'T WHINE...

It is 102 degrees here, and so I sit in my air conditioned house and whine, and run for my car where I can adjust the temp to within a degree of my own personal delight

grumbling as I go.

Hard to believe I am a descendant of more then a dozen men and women who after traveling (mostly on foot) 1500 hot, cold, dusty miles, actually arrived in what was then an empty desert valley (one twisted cedar tree in the whole valley) on this very week in 1847. I wonder how they spent their days in that heat as they established shelter for themselves. (I know they started plowing as soon as they arrived) And then I think of how it would be to spend a 102 degree day inside a log cabin. And I am grateful and in awe of their strength and commitment, because I know if it had been me back then...my descendants would still be in Ireland.

So today as I sit in my air conditioned house I will smile and think to myself it's too #$%@ HOT!!

LOOKING BACK...

This month I have been finishing up a project that I started along time ago. Actually it isn't really finished as I think it will last me until I go to join my loved ones in the great beyond. However this week I published 52 histories of my Father's ancestors beginning with him and going back to family members who lived in the early 1600's. This book along side the one I already completed for my Mother's family, represents a labor of love, the love and appreciation I have for those brave men and women who came before me and who have left me such a wonderful legacy through their hard work and sacrifice. It has taken over 25 years for me to interview, research, edit and write these histories and I have enjoyed each new story and marveled at the sometimes miraculous events that have put them in my hands. I am also very grateful to those before me who have recorded histories and done research as my work relied heavily on many other authors and records.

This painting is called "Looking Back" I haven't been able to name the artist, it is the cover picture I chose for my books (this isn't a commercial publication it's just for my family and the church archives)

I feel a great sense of satisfaction knowing the main part is finished and everything else is frosting on the cake.

Now on to my husbands family!

FOR THOSE IN NEED OF COMFORT...

This is to mother you,

to comfort you and get you through

through when your nights are lonely

through when your dreams are only blue

This is to mother you.

~

This is to be with you,

to hug you and to kiss you too.

For when you need me I will do

what your own mother couldn't do

which is to mother you.
Sinead O'Connner

FREEDOM WAS BORN ON THE 4th OF JULY...

Ring out bells of freedom.

Ring out loud and strong.

Ring your voice to heaven.

Please!

Keep this nation strong.

THANK YOU CLYTIE...

Thank you , thank you Clytie for this cute Neno Award and your very kind words. I am honored because this award is given I am told to those who love blogging and love to encourage friendship through blogging.....that would be me alright. But where would I be with out all of you....You my blogging friends are the very best and I share this award with all of you (because we are all in this together...and no one is getting out alive) LOL, I love ya!!!

THE SALT LAKE CITY ARTS FESTIVAL...

Richard Curtner http://www.curtnerart.com/
Malen Pierson http://www.recycledvisions.com/

Marilyn Sunderland http://www.marilynsunderlandstudio.com/

~

This weekend thanks to my son Kalen, my Sister and I got to go as V.I.P. guests to the Salt Lake City Arts Festival. It was marvelous, so many talented and amazing artist, photographers, musicians and performers. The V.I.P. part just meant we got in and a free catered dinner which was lovely too. I wish I could have taken all of you with me.

I didn't take my camera along because I know how much artists love people snapping pictures of their work but I found these on their websites because I wanted to share. And if you have the time check out these other totally gifted people. www.davidjwest.com www.kingwu.com www.desertsteel.net www.lizcollinsart.com David West and King Wu are fantastic photographers I think you'll like them.

STAR TREK...

When I was a kid I used to love to sleep outside at night. I would grab my dad's old 2 ton army green canvas sleeping bag and a silly girl friend or even my little brother for company. We would climb in the bed of our good ole International pick up truck and sleep out under the stars.
And boy were there stars, billions of them we could see the Big Dipper and the North Star and the Milky Way and shooting stars. I haven't been able to see that many stars for a long time. Now when you look up you can only see a few twinkling in the night. They say it's because of light pollution, we can't see the stars out there because of so many lights on down here.
The stars used to be very important, people looked to the heavens for direction and guidance because they gave a perspective we can't get here on earth. Maybe we need to get away from our own lights once in awhile and gaze at the stars for a little insight.

CLOUD RAGE...

The furious storm cloud raged across the valley raising his angry fist and shaking it at the heavens.

Then lifting his mighty foot in a final act of vengeance, he stomped the mountain flat.

TAKING UP THY GAUNTLET...

I have taken up thy gauntlet RANDOM & UNEXPECTED, and the end is in sight, so I lay before you the sorry results of my quest. For indeed both my camera and myself have been slackers and ne'er do wells in this great challenge. But forsooth I have not at least arrived at the end empty handed. The cloud picture being entitled "The Thinker" and the mountain called "The Dowager Duchess" I had hoped to get out and about more but alas it did not happen. Aah but next time thou art toast!

HAPPY FATHERS DAY...

THANKS DAD.

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS...

Art by Daniel Merriam

"Anyone who lives within their means suffer from a lack of imagination."

Oscar Wilde


When I saw this quote I had to laugh...I and the people I know who live within their means have a surfeit of imagination that enables them to live with aplomb along side friends and neighbors with maxed out bankcards. ie....I have done so much, with so little, for so long, that I am now able to make anything, out of nothing.

This is a painting by one of my favorite artists, Bev Doolittle.

It is titled "The Forest Has Eyes"

Bev's trademark is hiding pictures within pictures.

Can you fine the 13 faces hidden here?

Good Luck!

A circus parade of grey bottom pachyderm clouds lumbered nose to tail across the Alice blue sky, fluffy white puppy clouds gamboled in between, while the sun, headed another direction entirely played hide and seek between their legs. Reaching the mountains one after another, after another trudged up the ridges stepped over the top and disappeared.................

...............Mercy we must all be waxing poetic, I was looking out the window at the cloudy sky yesterday when my mind started visual descriptions that I especially liked so I wrote them down. Don't you just love similes and metaphors, I do.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE...

I believe that our lives are our own, to make of them what we will, and every decision we make leads us in the direction we have chosen to take ourselves. However several times in my life, I have felt the hand of fate move me in a different direction, wheels have turned, gears have shifted, cogs have fallen into place, to set my feet on a different path.
I know why my earth was moved before, once so I would meet the man I would marry, and once for my redemption. What I don't know is why God has set us here beside a river in a house we should never have been able to afford, in an area we never wanted to live, and never ever would have looked to buy a house in. Several minor miracles and much divine timing had to occur so that we would be at this place at this time. I have been thinking about this a lot lately and my scary question is why??? (I know it's not just so I can brighten my blog with pretty photos)

Someday I am going to write it all down, the story of how we came to live on the "Edge of Heaven".

GOD BLESS OLD GLORY....

Happy Flag Day to the beautiful icon of our freedom. What joy fills my heart when ever I see this proud and unique emblem of our country waving in the wind. I thank God everyday for the privilege of calling this, my symbol of home.

" When we look at a statue of someone great,
we think they've got something we don't,
We are trained to think that only a tiny
percentage of us have the stuff it takes to be a hero.
Not many of us will cure any diseases or slay any dragons,
but every single one of us,
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US,
is called to be a king, a queen, a hero in our ordinary lives.
We don't build statues to worship the exceptional life,
we build them to remind ourselves what is possible in our own."

from a Timberline Ad

In the chilly hours and minutes,

Of uncertainty, I want to be,

In the warm hold of your loving mind.

To feel you all around me,

And to take your hand, along the sand,

Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.

Donovan

It is cold and 40 shades of grey here today the skies are dark, low, fingers of rain reach down from the clouds across the valley. I am alone and the grim weather only serves to exaggerate the solitude. Wandering room to gloomy room like a bebe in a boxcar, even the lights seems to be consumed by the oppressive greyness.

I decided to read but my restless mind still wandered. I closed my eyes and burrowed back through my memory looking for something warm and fuzzy to wrap myself in. A cozy dark memory, yes, lying in the upper berth of a sleeper car on a train bound for Denver, rocked by the subtle swaying motion of the rail car and seduced into sleep by the rhythmic click, click, click of the wheels rolling along the track. It was a trip made with my Grandma, kindred spirits us, I adored being with her. Together we looked out the ceiling windows of the Dome liner car at the towering Rocky Mountains as the train snaked it's way through narrow mountain passes, and gasped at the abrupt night and day of tunnels and the sight of the rail bed off the side plunging visual miles over jagged rocks to the river below. I felt like a potentate munching cinnamon toast in the fancy dining car. Moving from car to car was a rush, loud and fast scenery whipping past while rail ties flash by beneath your feet.

This is when I fell in love with travel by train. A lovely warm haunting memory of power in motion, tandem wheels, steam whistles and smiling black porters long gone the way of my Grandma. It infused my life with desire for a ride on the Orient Express but alas she is a ghost too. So the engine rolls on in the endless cinema of my memory calling back the feelings, the sounds, and the love, an excursion for a rainy day. Thank you Grandma.