So sleepy. Must sleep.

Very, very sleepy.

This video is beautiful and a good mantra.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Thanks to my friend Sasha who shared it in the first place.

This is my favorite painting in the world. i found it at a Goodwill or Salvation Army store and snatched it up like i was afraid someone else was going to take. i absolutely love it. There is no signature but it says $40.00 on the back. I think it is acrylic or gouache on a board. The stars are a metallic paint.

i have been writing about this painting even though i don't have a clue what the story is. The bride on the left seems like a ghost but maybe she's just not finished. The long ribbons of color make it magical realism to me. The trees, the moon and the stars are so prominent; they are like characters in the story.

DOES ANYONE KNOW THIS STORY? It may be my favorite painting in the world but i know it is probably more like folk art and not valuable. i don't care. But i really want to know the story. And i want to know if the painting is finished or is the bride on the left really a ghost?

i love to write but i'm not very good, so please be gentle. i am copying in a part of a story i am trying to write using this painting as inspiration. i guess the reason is to get your comments about any ideas in the story that you think relate to the painting.

So, mi amigos, mi chickies and roos, and especially mi Guerreros de la Luz, please help.

The Ghost Filled Moonlit Weddings of Two Brothers

The crescent moon watches the goings-on ready to add to the rituals in any manner helpful. She has seen this many times. It has it's place in the cycles. In her wake the people ride the seasons of learning, working, playing and resting. This wedding, one of so many others like it, did have it's curiosity. Moon looked again at the smaller of the two brides.

Had no one noticed her translucence or her not quite erectness? Moon tried to catch a few more of Sun's rays to reflect on the little bride's face. She wanted to get a better look but she was also confident her reflected light would compliment the bride's inner glow. The wake and the indirect light; that is what Moon could add to the rituals.

Moon was sure now. The little bride was well on her way to becoming a ghost. Fascinating, she thought.

The brides wore their moonlit gowns with all the reverence of their mothers before them.  Celesta and Menea could not have known the night’s shimmer was a gift from Moon but they felt grateful for the moon’s seemingly special glow.  The gowns were well worn, having been used by mothers and aunts before daughters, sisters, cousins and granddaughters.  

The aunts have disappeared.  They moved around the village busily doing their work but now they have gone. The moonlit wedding began with the two brides and two grooms pairing up and strolling arm in arm toward the village church. The aunts had colored the pathway giving the impression of ribbons stretching out toward the church plaza and into the church itself.

In dusk’s remaining light, full-sailed clouds tack across the sky without obscuring the star’s view too much.  Stars were warming up for the evening’s festivities and giggling like school girls.  The old mother oak and her sisters looked down on the red tiled roofs of the village and dug their roots a little deeper to ground the events.

The brother grooms have recently returned after years away and were still re-adjusting to life in the village.  Perhaps it was because they had been away so long and had forgotten, somehow, the dreamlike quality of evenings in the village, but the two men were surprised to find themselves walking in the real and the unreal. They wondered how they could have forgotten that the village was like this and they wondered why they had stayed away so long. How could they have forgotten how their feet felt so solidly on the ground here?

A Lovely Sunday

i'm still in my jammys, taking it easy, watching the hens and hummingbirds and the weather. The forecast was for snow, maybe. Well, that's enough in Portlandia to get everyone all a twitter. i over reacted by putting the warming lamp on in the coop unnecessarily. Tonight it may actually dip below freezing (not 0, just freezing) and is probably the night to put the lamp on. i try not to put the lamp on more than one night at a time. The girls get a little whack when there is a light in their coop too many nights in a row.

It did finally snow a few flakes for about ten minutes, then repeated about a 1/2 hour later. Nothing stuck tho.  Then, what do you know, the sun came out. Nice! And now the grey skies have returned and it is about 15 minutes before noon. Oh, and as i type the snow has returned.

You would be correct to get the idea that snow is a news event here. One of my favorite things to do is to turn on the TV to the local news when there is a hint of snow. It is big news and everyone gets very excited; the grocery stores empty out and tire stores get a spike in sales of snow tires.

i used to laugh at this, being from Montana where winter lasts more than 1/2 a year, but it can get very serious when it stays at freezing for a few days, followed by rain. The rain falls through very cold air and freezes or freezes on contact with the frozen ground. Now everything is covered in ice and road surfaces are like ice rinks. Of course, if this happens i immediately turn on the TV and watch the local news personalities slide around in front of cameras. Portlandia loves a snow day. Kids get out of school and lots of people stay home from work. It's a totally spontaneous holiday.

Oh, damm. i've got to upgrade my phone and i can't figure it out. i must sign off and deal... love all!
C

What I should be doing and what I am doing.

http://nyti.ms/uxTYiP

Happy Birthday Mr. President... and i want to apologize

Happy Birthday Mr. President.

i have been pretty mad at you lately and more than a little disappointed over all. That said, the email i sent you a few days ago re: the debt ceiling bill was too harsh.

i really don't regret anything i said except that i used the word coward or some form of it. I regret that word and i am sorry for using it. The word shameful would have worked better. i was trying to email you as well Rep. Blumenauer and Sens. Merkley and Wyden on my lunch break so i didn't have time for picking my words.

Also, my brilliant son reminded me that the Congress has become a fascist institution (government that is corporate controlled) and that you, Mr. President, are indeed dealing with terrorist (Oh, sorry. In the spirit of toning down the rhetoric, i'll refer to them as "hostage takers").

And i do believe you are doing your best. It may not be good enough though. You are dealing with people who have been stealing or manipulating elections for decades. They are shutting down voter's rights in several states, conducting misinformation campaigns and blocking people's rights with legislation. i want you to call them out and call them what they are (take your choice: traitors, greedy, beholding to corporate masters, hypocrites).

We have suffered enough out here while you tried to be statesmen like with hoodlums and racketeers. You say you believe in compromise but i see capitulation. i believe in compromise too but i also know you have to stand up to a bully eventually.

Mr. President, i love you but i'm having trouble liking you at the moment. i am a proud lefty so you will just have to deal with me pushing you, pulling you, shoving you as far left as i possibly can. i apologize now for any future ill-chosen words i might say in the heat of my efforts to make you see the logic of progressive ideas.

So, Happy Birthday Mr. President, sincerely.

Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Cynthia Right Over

Red Rover, by Deirdre McNamer is my new favorite. Granted, my favorite book changes frequently, but this is what i will be recommending for awhile.  My Dad has also read it and Mom will be starting it soon.

It's a historical mystery based on true events in the author's family. She had been researching a family story for years, realized she was not going to be able to write a non-fiction book out of it, so she fictionalized the events.

You are drawn along by her prose as much as for the curious events she details. McNamer knows the landscape like so many Montanans do, with their quiet, easy respect for place, and her prose reads that way.

Being a Montanan myself, i felt like these characters were my shirttail relations. Their stories, their habits, their stoic, steady, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other manner in the face of adversity. i recognized their stubbornness, their self-reliance, and that pride-of-self that isn't bragging. And i recognized men and women who held secrets. Weather out of shame, guilt, pride or honor, my people can hold secrets.

Not since Ivan Doig's McCaskill family have i felt this kind of kinship with a novel's characters.

Enough book reviews for now.  Love to all.