Happy Halloween

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
~ Charlie Chaplin

Room with a View

I don't care what I see outside. My vision is within! Here is where the birds sing! Here is where the sky is blue!
~ Mr. Emerson from A Room with a View

The Cat and Her Apple

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
~ Robert A. Heinlein

The Chase

If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?
~ Will Rogers

Powerful

I went to an art fair today and one booth (for the Audubon Society) had live birds on display. The red-tailed hawk is one of my favorites. I usually see him flying in the air so it was pretty cool to get a close-up shot.

Everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Smile

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.
~ Walt Whitman

Moon on Fire

This isn't another shot of the eclipse. It's what the moon looked like at 5am this morning underneath the smoky air.

See yonder fire! It is the moon
Slow rising o'er the eastern hill.
It glimmers on the forest tips,
And thought the dewy foliage drips
In little rivulets of light,
And makes the heart in love with night.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Blackness

In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come -- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
~ William Styron

Another Year Gone

My birthday today...

Lunkwill: Do you...
Deep Thought: Have an answer for you? Yes. But you're not going to like it.
Fook: Please tell us. We must know!
Deep Thought: Okay. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is...42
~ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Wildfires

In case you hadn't heard, Southern California is ablaze with no end in sight. The winds are horrendous. I didn't think I would see any smoke since we are pretty far from most of them, but one started earlier today about 45 miles from us and the clouds you see in the photo is actually smoke. It covered the sky for miles.


If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.
~ Robert Fulghum

Look Around

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
~ Robert Louis Stevenso

The Landing

The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.
~ Claude Monet

The Power Nap

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.
~ Carrie P. Snow

Lunchtime Abstract

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.
~ Charles F. Kettering

Potluck

E had a potluck in his Arabic class today and had me make couscous for it. I was very glad to find out it was a big hit.

There are as many kinds of couscous as there are pastas, including dessert couscous with cinnamon.
~ Paula Wolfert

Now This is Classy...

The building has all the requisites of a great aunt. She is neither very pretty nor elegant, but she has enduring qualities of character.
~ Richard Oulahan

Reading, Watching, Listening To....

This happens to be one of those days when nothing creative is coming to mind so I'm relying on an old standard.
Reading: The English Patient
Watching: Psych (on the web)
Listening To: Annie Lennox "Songs of Mass Destruction"

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.
~ Michael Ondaatje

Twins

My nieces had their 10th birthday party tonight. It's amazing how fast time goes. The photo does not do them justice at all; they are beautiful...

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: Twins.
~ Josh Billings

October

I went on a hike this morning and met up with the nicest man. We ended up walking seven miles together while he showed me how to look for wildlife. We spotted so many deer and he showed me bear and bobcat tracks. I have to post two shots today.


October is a symphony of permanence and change.
~ Bonaro W. Overstreet

An Open Door

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
~ Helen Keller

Through the Glass Darkly

I've tried to blend in
But it seems I don't belong
I don't know what it's coming to
But I'm looking through the glass darkly...
~ Annie Lennox

Ah.... Sweet irony....

Remember the trail they started work on several months ago? It was supposed to be done at the end of June. We are now in October and the trail seems to be done. The only thing they have yet to do is remove these signs.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
~ Robert A. Heinlein

Television

Ninety-eight percent of American homes have TV sets, which means the people in the other 2% have to generate their own sex and violence.
~ Gene Baylos

Flying White

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
~ Helen Keller

Inspiration

Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
~ Ella Fitzgerald

Innocence

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul.
~ Francis Thompson

Vulnerability

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
~ C.S. Lewis

Free Burma

Sign the PETITION.

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
~ Carl Shurz

Running With Scissors

I subbed again today and came up with this stunning, original photograph. :-P

Where would we be without our painful childhoods?
~ From movie "Running With Scissors"

Hidden Treasure

The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.
~ Charlotte Bronte

Cobwebs

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of your heart.
~ Mort Walker