Happy Birthday Micol!

Happy Happy Birthday

May All Your Dreams Come True

Happy Happy Birthday

From another October baby

To you!

 

New Art Work!!

As promised Dear Followers, my new Day Of the Dead inspired art work. Enjoy a look at these shrines and coffin shrines. If you want to see more pics just email me, these will be going up on my Etsy site

To My Friend, I Hope You Know Who You Are

As You Have Done For Me

So strong, your calm face

Tears behind your smile

They fall silently

when I am not around to see

not there to empathize

How can I be consoled

when I so want to console? 

So strong, you're so calm

always knowing what to say

or when just to be.

Let me be there for you

to understand

instead of being understood

So strong, the strength you have

it amazes me

Never a trace of cruelty

Always so giving of your soul

I wish I could be that strong

to keep your sorrow

at bay with my

tempest weary candle
Take that from me,
Give me that at least.
When you smile,

Your eyes spill light

all over me

I'm sorry mine was never bright enough

to keep or help you out of the dark

As yours has always done for me

Too Early...

I took these shots in the Twin Falls Cemetery,  when I was in Idaho. The headstone below caught my eye and I had to photograph it. Something about the lines and sweet curves gives this memorial such delicacy and love.

I love this shot, it was just begging to be taken in Black and White!

The best part of this memorial was the inscription "Zu Frueh Schlug Diese Bittere Stunde" This is German for

"Too Early This Bitter Hour Struck"

How beautiful and romantic is that?

Words of Wisdom From a Mad Man

I say just simply this:

Heal the mind.
And then work for the air, the trees, the water and the animals.

And the people? Tough. If you want to live in my world, come and go through what I went through to live in my world. You don't just come get in my world. You have to do something to earn my world. I wouldn't let a lot of those people in my world if I had the say so about it. I don't have to destroy them, all I have to do is just say no. I don't want that in my world.

I don't want that confusion in my world.

You don't have to let those people in your mind.

You let the people in your mind that are helping your mind. And your mind is the only mind.
You are the mind. You are the earth, you are the air, the trees, you are the animals, you are everything. You are the child of god. That's the truth. Period.

Yosemite

Yosemite National Park

I hope you all enjoy the shots from my trip to Yosemite. As Frank Lloyd Wright once said; 

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.  

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver...... Martin Luther

  

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. Thomas Browne

 Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ....John Muir

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. .....Henry David Thoreau

Happy Independence Day!

Let Independence Be Our Boast

EVER MINDFUL WHAT IT COST!!

This weekend while we are all setting off fireworks, celebrating freedom and being with our loved ones eating BBQ, let us NEVER forget the men and women who make that possible for us. I hope that it never slips anyone's mind that the ONLY reason we are able to enjoy the freedom that we have, is due to the sacrifice made by people who, without knowing us all, are fighting for us and who have laid their lives down so we could sleep safely and peacefully at night.

We have no chance of being free unless made and kept so by those better than you or I; those who are NOT able to sit and have BBQ with their family because they are busy keeping us free, those who will NEVER again be able to be with their families on Independence Day because they have given up everything just to insure that we could have this day to celebrate.

I know that the 4th is supposed to be a happy time, but I can not stop thinking of everyone who passed on defending our country and those who are still out there, in harms way EVERY day.

So this weekend, while you are popping open your beer or eating your grilled goodies, remember those that are keeping you all in the lives you live, undisturbed by it all, while they sweat and bleed for us.

I want to say Thank You to all the men and women of the armed forces, but that just doesn't seem enough. It feels to me like saying "I'm sorry" to someone when a loved one passes away. It seems such a very small thing to do or say to offer some little comfort to those who make it possible for me to not only voice my opinion, but also make it possible to live the life I lead.

SEE LAST YEARS INDEPENDENCE DAY POST HERE: http://socalwendie.blogspot.com/2009/07/independence-and-freedom.html