Flight

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? - it is the same the angels breathe.
~ Mark Twain

Sleep-over

A friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself.
~ Jim Morrison

Blue Skies

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.
~ Eleanora Duse

Collage

I've decided to try something new with my photos.

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
~ Frank Herbert

Self

I decided I needed a new profile photo so this is it...

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.
~ Joan Didion

Oak Park Cemetery

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
~ Gilda Radner

Oak Park Cemetery

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
~ Gilda Radner

Sam Maloof

I went to see the compound of a local artist today. He makes the most beautiful wood furniture. He's 91 and there is a 5 year waiting list for his chairs. Check out his website here. You can also see more of his compound on my leftovers page.

There’s a lot of work being done today that doesn’t have any soul in it. The technique may be the utmost perfection, yet it is lifeless. It doesn’t have a soul. I hope my furniture has a soul to it.
~ Sam Maloof

African Children's Choir

I had the privilege of seeing the African Children's Choir tonight. They were amazing and so full of joy. I don't think I stopped smiling the whole night.



Music is an outburst of the soul.
~ Frederick Delius

Traffic

If they'd lower the taxes and get rid of the smog and clean up the traffic mess, I really believe I'd settle here until the next earthquake.
~ Groucho Marx

Radiance

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
~ Pierre Auguste Renoir

To Create

Keep in touch with your soul by developing your technique. There are no mistakes, so… just work. The more you work the more you’ll figure out if that’s your bliss.
~ Fernando Araujo

Serenity

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.
~ Henri Matisse

Luminance

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Desert Sunrise

I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
~ Pearl S. Buck

Tree of Life

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
~ Anais Nin

Spending Money

A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
~ William Feather

Route 66

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
~ Marcel Proust

Is it simple?

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Poppies

I just love poppies and happened upon these in an empty lot on my way to the nursery at Lowes. Wildflowers are much better than flowers at the store.

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Becoming Real

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you."
~ Marjery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

March in California

Summer has arrived and it isn't even spring yet. It was in the 90's at our house so I made a trip to the beach. Definitely the place to be on a hot day.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another Abstract

I may seem to be passionately concerned with the 'hows' of representation, how you actually represent rather than 'what' or 'why'. But to me this is inevitable. The 'how' has a great effect on what we see. To say that 'what we see' is more important than 'how we see it' is to think that 'how' has been settled and fixed. When you realize this is not the case, you realize that 'how' often affects 'what' we see.
~ David Hockney

Hazy Day in L.A.

I guess technically it's not L.A. but it was hazy today and it rhymes, so sue me. I came across these irrigation markers next to the freeway and had to get a photo. I got several strange looks as I climbed in the dirt on the freeway onramp. Of course, they looked much better in real life!

Haze doesn't just block the solar radiation. It is also infamous for acid rain and respiratory diseases.
~ Yun Qian

Welcoming Spring

The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
~ Therese of Lisieux

Orthodontia

Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
~ Ogden Nash

Feast

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
~ Luciano Pavarotti

Family

I know. I know. A picture a day... not seven pictures. I couldn't pick just one tho since all of them together tell the whole story better than just one could.








If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going, 'you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.
~ Jeff Foxworthy

Dinner

It's not the best picture but I had to post it. B took charge tonight and made dinner while we went to see a movie (Zodiac). I was so proud of her; she did a wonderful job. I think I'll have her do it more often!
The qualities of an exceptional cook are akin to those of a successful tightrope walker: an abiding passion for the task, courage to go out on a limb and an impeccable sense of balance.
~ Bryan Miller

Window

On a walk today I fell in love with this window. I wanted to be in that room looking out through these beautiful purple and yellow drapes watching the people on the street walk past looking at me.

Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.
~ Jean Houston

Library

This is what happens when I go to the library for one book...

The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos

COLOR!!

I enjoyed my black and white month tremendously, but it is nice to be able to post in color again. It is the perfect time of year for it, too - blue skies, sun shining, flowers blooming, and strawberries ripening...

Red is the ultimate cure for sadness. ~ Bill Blass