It Is YOUR Light

                                Don’t you know yet?   

                             It is your light 

                             that lights the world. ~ Rumi

 

Three Important Ideals

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty, and truth."
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)

A Good Leader

"To lead the people,

walk behind them."Lao Tzu

The Way

Freedom is not overcoming what you think
 stands in your way. 

It is understanding that 
what is in your way IS part of the way. 
- Guy Finley

Reoccurence

“The long and winding road that leads to your door

Will never disappear,
I've seen that road before
it always leads me here,
Leads me to your door." -Paul Mc Cartney

My Very Best Friend In The Whole World, Mary

Today is her birthday. 

Here's a photo taken of me with Mary and our science club at Malabar Elementary school. I am seated on the far left, then my best friend Mary is seated one person away from me with the glasses.  She was my BFF then and has been throughout my life. Here's how our story began: 

  I can remember the first day I met her.  She had just started school having moved to our neighborhood from Denver, Colorado. We were in the 3rd grade.  The moment I saw her I said to myself "I want to be that girls friend!"  I walked over to her and asked her if she wanted to come and watch a play that my friends and I were putting on in the school yard.  She said okay and from that moment on, we became fast friends.   We have shared so many wonderful moments together growing up and going to elementary, junior high and high school together.  When we were teenagers we would talk endlessly on the phone every night even though we'd have spent the whole day  talking to each other.  I loved spending time at her house. She was from a big family and I envied the fact that she had older brothers and an older sister. Her dad and my mom took turns driving us to the friday night dances at the high school. We were pretty much inseparable until we went our separate ways for college. Even then we'd write to each other and kept in touch with each others lives.  We have shared all the big celebrations of life together: graduations from college, marriage and  children and have weathered sad moments of loss with one another as well. Our friendship has been one of my most treasured gifts in life. Our story of friendship from childhood through adulthood fills me with joy and gratitude.   She is my oldest and dearest soul mate friend.    

I could not ask for a better  " best friend" than Mary.

Here's to you Mary! Wishing you every joy and happiness!   I treasure all the years and all the memories we've shared. No one could ever take your place in my life.  You are my dearest and best  friend. 
Happy, Happy Birthday to you!



Best Friends
A Warm Refuge

by Madisyn Taylor

Our best friends are a warm refuge in which we feel free to be fully ourselves.

By the time we reach adulthood, many of us have had the good fortune to have at least one best friend. If we have moved around or changed our life situation repeatedly, we may be lucky enough to have had several. The best friend relationship is often our earliest intimate peer relationship, and it can be a source of great warmth and connection throughout our lives. The details of best friendship change as we grow up and grow older, but the heart of it remains the same. Our best friends are a warm refuge in which we feel free to be fully ourselves, to share our deepest secrets, to rest when we are tired, to celebrate when we are happy—a place in which we feel utterly welcome to give and receive that most precious of all gifts, love. 

Most intimate relationships hit bumps from time to time, and one of the hallmarks of an enduring best friendship is its ability to ride out the turbulence and remain intact even as it faces changes. Our best friends are those who manage to love us through all of our transitions, as we do the same for them. We find ways to embrace and appreciate the differences that set us apart and offer love and support no matter what. We allow each other to be exactly as we are at a given moment, even as we allow each other to change over time. In this way, best friends sometimes feel like family. We know we will stick together regardless of where our individual paths lead.

We may be on the phone with our best friends every day, or we may not have spoken for a year, yet we know that our bond will be strong and immediate when we do connect. This bond ties us together even when we are apart and draws us blissfully back into the warm refuge of each other’s company when our paths bring us together again. 

Here's Mary with her husband David a few days ago on Thanksgiving with our family.

And here's one when we were kids in junior high school. I'm on the far upper left and that's Mary with the glasses and plaid vest.  Just one image among a life time of shared memories. Love my BFF!

Dancing With Myself

"I'm dancing with myself dancing with myself dancing with myself ....well there's nothing to lose and there's nothing to prove I'll be dancing with myself"-Billy Idol

Thanksgiving 2012

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving at my brother Randy's home with family and friends.  We thought of all our loved ones far away and gave thanks for all the blessings in our lives. Hope everyone had a good day of  food and merriment.  Here's a little slideshow of our celebration.

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Some Understanding

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.

— Sylvia Plath  

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone, Everywhere!

May your hearts be filled with gratitude for all the goodness in your lives.



"I won't have turkey tonight but I will replace it with some shawarma or kebab...the food may not be "appropriate" but the feelings will be the same as last year and some years ago...It does not matter where you are and who you are sharing your experiences with, as far as you are somewhere and have someone around, than you have enough to be thankful and grateful for!"
- Marino Forlino Thoughts on celebrating a Thanksgiving in Tunisia

Writers

“As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.”

— Aimee Bender

 

To Be Found

"Where your treasure is,
 there will your heart be also."
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Wild Geese

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Dream Work)

My Father In Law Nate Cabot

Yesterday my father in law passed away.  He was 89 years old. He was a loving and faithful  husband to his wife Lucy for  65 years and a supportive, loving  and caring father and grandfather.   Nate led a full and happy life and enriched ours with his tender ways, his humor and his good nature. He always had a joke for us and I always believed everything that he'd tell me and then with a smile he'd say, "Oh Barb you're too easy!" and I'd laugh and say, "Oh dad you fooled me again!" We will all miss Nate Cabot, my 2nd dad.
 My daughter Aria posted this these two photos and this T. S. Elliot quote which I wanted to share here.

"Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the

 point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time." - T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

My other daughter Athena posted the following with this photo:

"Saying goodbye to my Grandpa Nate today. Remembering 

fondly the life of a wonderful family man, WWII veteran,
firefighter, the best joke teller, and one hell of a banjo
player. He was one of a kind."

Rest in Peace my dear Father-in-law.  We will miss your gentle and kind presence.  You

were a dedicated family man, a wonderful father and grandfather and someone we could
always count on for unconditional love and support.

The Way You Wear Your Clothes

Anne st. Marie 1959

"A dress has no life of its own unless it is worn, 
and as soon as this happens another personality takes over from you 
and animates it, or tries to,
glorifies or destroys it,
or makes it in to a song of beauty." -Elsa Schiaparelli, Shocking Life

The World Belongs To You

"Be content with what you have,
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you."
- Lao Tzu

Today

"Light tomorrow with today." - George Barnard Moore (Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans: Repetition and the Emergence of Modernism)

Guard This Well

"Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness.  Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness."-George Sand

Mike's Big Award Night November 9, 2012

Here's a little slide show of last weekends "Big Night" for my husband Mike.  His company held a weekend long celebration in recognition of 18 project teams across the U.S. who demonstrated excellence in their performances and deemed "The Best of the Best in 2012" by the Boeing company.

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Marcel Breuer

The  Wassily Chair is constructed of tubular steel with a polished chrome finish, as well as a thick Leatherette in black, brown, or white. German designer Marcel Breuer  conceived the original Wassily chair while an apprentice at Bauhaus in 1925. Inspired by the bicycle and named after Breuer's friend and contemporary Wassily Kandinsky, the Wassily chair has endured as art and furniture for nearly a century.  

The Wassily Chair, 1925
The Wassily Chair was designed in 1925 and seems to be his more experimental phase in design. The actual piece was inspired by the shape and form of bicycle handlebars and was made for Wassily Kandinsky, an influential Russian painter and art theorist of the time. The frame was made from tubular steel which later became chrome plated and the seat came in a black canvas, fabric or leather.

Always the Wish

“It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you.
 Believe me: life is right, in any case.”- Rainer Maria Rilke  

Measured In Time

"Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."-Andy Warhol  

Things of Interest

 “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” -Henry Miller

Come Away With Me

"And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I’m safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me..." - Norah Jones

Autumn

“One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Another Kind of Miracle

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,


 the master calls a butterfly. -Richard Bach

Within You

Australia via Athena 2012

"The energy that creates worlds and universes is within you."

It works through attraction and energy.
Everything vibrates;
everything has a vibratory frequency.

Previews of Coming Attractions

"Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions." ~Albert Eintstein

Before I Knew It

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the 

words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in 

the middle before I knew that I had begun.” 

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Romance

“Romance is the glamour 

which turns the dust of everyday 

life into a golden haze. ” 
― Elinor Glyn

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