Per Janie's suggestion: My handsome husband

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

--Robert Heinlein

e. e. cummings

"love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

& in this world of yes live

(skillfully curled)

all worlds"  

My other beautiful daughter

"When you really look for me, you will see me instantly-

you will find me in this tiniest house of time."--Kabir

Chicken Little, the sky is falling!

"Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is." -- German proverb

"Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I hate fear.  It scares me." --Daffy Duck

"Fear sends stock market plummeting - Gloomy outlook - Asian markets tumble - Mortgage frauds - Hard times"

Ah, the news, isn't it great?  These are headlines from USA Today's Money Section, October 16, 2008.  We, like many other Americans, are losing lots of hard-earned money.  We can't help but wonder about the future.  With all the doom and gloom it's difficult to know what to do, if anything, or what to think.  The politicians are talking but no one knows what the solution could possibly be.  

It's even more difficult not to run amuck with fear.

But what is fear?  It's an emotion.  Is it based in reality?  Sometimes, but it's not usually immediate danger.  Not like standing in front of an angry bear with large claws.  Ordinarily we do not live with that kind of fear.  Ordinary fear is usually the slow, water-dripping kind.  The kind that lets you build up all kinds of unused adrenalin that results in health problems.  The kind that ruins your sleep or causes constant anxiety.

So I look around and today (and just for today), I still have my family, my house, a car to drive, food to eat and a sunny sky to enjoy.  It's back to that theme of choice.  What do I choose to focus on?  I'd rather count my blessings than get out a calculator with my financial statements and count every penny lost.  I'm not adopting a head in the sand attitude either.  I acknowledge that perhaps our country could be in very deep trouble for a long time.  The flip side of this mess is that collectively we have created it and collectively we could get ourselves out of it by making some major changes.  

Deepak Chopra wrote a wonderful book, Peace is the Way.  A basic premise of his way of thinking is that we create our own reality, that peace begins within each of us.  What we are experiencing socially is herd mentality based in fear, the perpetuation of fear and the hard-core selling of fear by someone in the Oval Office and all his corporate minions for the last 8 years.  It does not have to be this way!  I refuse to emotionally buy into hysteria until the bear is in my face.

"Fear is only as deep as the mind allows it." --Japanese proverb

"A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us." --Pema Chodren

Early morning walks and friendship

I have a great neighbor, Kaye, who likes to walk with me in the mornings. Sometimes our schedules conflict, then we don't walk.  Sometimes it's windy, cold and snowing so we don't walk then either.  Maybe we are a little fair weather in our habits; however, walking as much as we can is better than never walking.  The best part of our time together is the talking.  One morning Teena heard us laughing clear down the road.  I guess we are a little boisterous sometimes.  Other times we are quite serious because we are sharing our hearts' aches and pains.  Good friends are hard to find and ones who will get up early and walk with you are even harder to find.  It's definitely worth the effort.

Sunrise

"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed." -- Kahlil Gibran

Sun rise on Dry Fork Canyon as seen from the Flume Trail

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light." -- Helen Keller

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." -- Anais Nin

Thank you to all my friends.

Sunday morning after the rains

Sometimes I feel so incredibly grateful to live in such gorgeous surroundings.  

All I had to do this morning was go outside in my bathrobe and flipflops with my camera and start snapping pictures.  I've been using my camera and telephoto lens a lot more since I started blogging.  My artistic background has been kicking in again which means I look more at light and shadows and think more about composition.  It's been really fun.

I love sparkles (and fairies.)

"At the still point of the turning world...neither from nor towards; 

  at the still point, there the dance is."--T. S. Eliot

To the southwest of the house

Dry Fork Canyon Rocks!

To the northeast

My beautiful daughter

"Sometimes life's shadows are caused by our standing in our own sunshine."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson