WELCOME NEW YEAR!

Virginia, Illinois Cemetery Angel

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,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 

 ~St. Francis of Assisi~

For Janis

Album Cover

OMGosh!!! I just did something I've NEVER done before in my life.  I got up in a bar and sang karaoke! We haven't been out on the town in years (heck, tens of years!), but my husband and I went out to eat at our favorite pizza place tonight. Then we stopped in at a couple of other watering holes on our way home and somehow I got roped into singing --- ME! A karaoke virgin!

I belted out "Me & Bobby McGee" and got a standing ovation! It was a rush, and it was all for you, Janis!

A Requirement of Genius

The reluctance to put away childish things 

may be a requirement of genius.  

~Rebecca Pepper Sinkler~

Winning

Of all the people I have ever known, 
those who have pursued their dreams and failed 
have lived a much more fulfilling life than those 
who have put their dreams on a shelf for fear of failure.  
~Author Unknown~

A Copy Exercise

"Church at Auvers" (after Van Gogh)

In Al Shull's painting class at LLCC in 2006, one of my favorite assignments was to make a small copy of a painting by a favorite artist, and then make a larger painting of our own, using what we learned about the artist's technique. I chose this one by Vincent van Gogh.  

"Church at Pere Marquette" (detail)

My own interpretation was Church at Pere Marquette (see the Postcards from the Heartland page).

To Lillian

"To Lllian" 18x24 collage   ***SOLD***

This collage is made up of leaves, rocks, bb's, bits of old letters, a faded photo, and acrylic paint.  The young lady in the photo was my Aunt Evelyn, with her portrait made during the Roaring Twenties.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!  

May your New Year be blessed with 

health and happiness and all good things!

Putto

Dickeyville Grotto, southwestern Wisconsin

According to my dictionary a putto is a representation of a naked child, especially a cherub or a cupid in Renaissance art.  It's pronounced POO-toe, and the plural is putti, pronounced POO-tee.
This sweet little fellow dwells in the beautiful Dickeyville Grotto, in the town of Dickeyville, Wisconsin.

Free Ride!

The Illinois River ferry at Kampsville is one of only two free ferries still running in the state of Illinois. It operates 24-7 and connects Greene and Calhoun Counties.  Driving along the bluffs on either side of the river or a venturing up and down one of the many "hollers," makes for a relaxing, scenic road trip any time of year.

Swirly Tie-Dye

I took a bit of tie-dye and swirled it in Photoshop.  Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!

Tools of the Trade

Life beats down and crushes the soul 

and art reminds you that you have one.  

~Stella Adler~

Farmin' Buddies

My husband and son, circa 1991

It is not flesh and blood but the heart 

which makes us fathers and sons.  

~Johann Schiller~

My Favorite Breakfast

One of the very nicest things about life 

is the way we must regularly stop 

whatever it is we are doing 

and devote our attention to eating.  

~Luciano Pavarotti~

A Bit of Magic

Merlin Impersonator at a street fair in Hannibal, Missouri

Sometimes I've believed as many 

as six impossible things before breakfast.

~Lewis Carroll~

The Out-Back

Washburn, Wisconsin

When I was a kid, we had one of these, though not as pretty.  We called it the Out-Back.  As in, "Mommy, I need to go to the Out-Back."  I was amused to find out, as an adult, that Australia has an Outback of another kind.

Walking for Pleasure

Trail near Washburn, Wisconsin

An early-morning walk 

is a blessing for the whole day.  

~Henry David Thoreau~

Mud Season Blues

The end of autumn and the beginning of winter is our "secondary" mud season here in central Illinois. (The primary mud season comes at the end of winter when the ground thaws out and becomes a quagmire.) Beary is four years old now, but he still gets plenty muddy.


This morning I was so disgusted. It's rained for several days, and after Beary plays for a while in his play-yard, he comes inside with legs and belly dripping mud. There's no use to mop the floor until the outdoor mud has dried up. But this morning, as I walked barefoot across the floor, I knew I had to clean it up. Even if it was an exercise in futility.

I hate winter --- but I look forward to the ground freezing, and even snow.  At least snow's clean. A wet dog's better than a muddy one any old day.

Here's Beary during his first winter. When he was a tiny puppy, my husband had to rig up a ramp so he could get up and down on the deck. I'm sure he had one of the cats cowering under the ramp when I snapped this picture.

Family Plot

In an old cemetery somewhere in NW Illinois.

God himself took a day to rest in, 

and a good man's grave is his Sabbath.  

~John Donne~ 

Two Books Worth Reading

Photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/   Thanks, Jon!

BOUND FOR GLORY by Woody Guthrie  ©1943

and

THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME by Elizabeth Partridge  ©2002

I’m so glad I read these two great books together. Woody’s autobiography was raw and immediate. I felt like I was sitting in the same room (or boxcar or migrant’s tent) with him, listening to him drawl out his long, lonesome story; listening to him play his guitar while telling a tragic story in song. Partridge’s biography of Woody patches up the holes, explains some of the mystery of the man, and continues on with the rest of the story.

Woody wrote his autobiography in the early 1940’s. It’s mostly about his childhood and a series of unfortunate events that left him destitute and homeless as a young man. But he did a lot of living in the years since, up until his death in 1967. Partridge’s book features lots of great photos and brings closure to Woody’s life story.

Bob Dylan said it [Bound for Glory] left more of an impression on him than Kerouac's On The Road.  I have to agree 100%. While similar (talented ramblin’ men who found it hard to settle down), Kerouac’s Beat Generation represented the hedonism of self-indulgence, while Woody’s story showed a deep concern for the poor and oppressed of the Great Depression/Dust Bowl Days.

Woody rattled around the country, carrying his paint brushes in case he could paint or repaint a sign here or there for a meal. He  carried his guitar and made end meets on the tips he got for singing anywhere he could. He  traveled as a hobo by boxcar, hitch-hiked, and did a lot of walking. He was always looking for “a job of work,” which in those days was hard to find. He was fortunate to be able to get by doing the things he loved: writing & singing songs, painting, and writing.

At first I was a bit peeved with the biography, because the author told of his childhood as if she were copying it from Woody’s book.  But then I noticed that Woody’s version left out some important details: like the true cause of his mother ending up in an insane asylum. I excused this because he was just a boy and perhaps had repressed the sad memories.  But when he never mentioned in his autobiography his first wife, Mary, and his three small children he abandoned when he took to rambling (which came out in the biography), I downgraded his book from 5 stars to 4 for covering up aspects of his life that he apparently was too ashamed to deal with.

The cover photo of Bound for Glory features a photo of Woody looking achingly sad and lonely. Reading either book shows that he had a hard life fraught with too many heartbreaking tragedies for one person to bear. Both books give an insider’s look at what life during the Great Depression was like, and I can recommend them as a portrait of a difficult time in our nation’s history and of a flawed, but great musician who lived and sang about those tumultuous years.

Sister Kittens

KittenYahoo

These are baby pictures of my cats KittenYahoo and KatMandu. (My son named them Harley and Suzuki, after his motorcycles, but sorry, I changed their names.) Kittie has disappeared.  We see her occasionally, but Kattie won't let her come around.  

KatMandu

She viciously drives her back into the woods.  So Kittie is living the feral life, and we hope the coyotes don't get her.

Glass on Glass

Vases in the window of a shop in Bentonville, Iowa

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.  No man has learned anything rightly, 

until he knows that every day is Doomsday.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

The End of Fall

No photo today, my friends.  Just a general complaint about the weather. It's too cold for me to venture out and try to find photo-worthy subjects. It feels like winter already, but the winter solstice isn't for another week and a half.

Unless it snows, winter in Illinois wears drab grays and browns. It's hard on an artist's eyes to be surrounded by only semi-monochromatic trees, to be deprived of the colors one craves. Where did all those greens go?  And the fall colors seemed to be here today, gone tomorrow.

Winter is the time for me to stay indoors where it's warm --- and color my world with my paints.  I'm trying to finish a half-done painting that I gave up on a couple years ago.  It started out as a watercolor on illustration board, but it just wasn't happening. I liked the velvety texture and I may leave it in the background, but now I'm turning to acrylics to see if I can finish this thing up. It has potential...

Wheelie

Here's my son, popping a wheelie and giving me gray hair. 

He raced motocross from age 12-22.

My Garden Cairn

Here is my favorite cairn in my garden. It has a balanced rock on top. 

My husband found the huge base rock while plowing a farm field.  It was probably a foundation stone from a long-ago barn. It weighs more than I can safely lift.

Cairns

I love to build cairns wherever I go. Cairns are simply man-made piles of rocks, often used as landmarks or as trail markers.  There are National Parks where cairn-building is forbidden, because unofficial ones would tend to confuse hikers.

I build my cairns as a way to say a surprise "hello" to anyone who happens to find them.  This one was built on the rocky shore of Lake Superior, just north of Washburn, Wisconsin.

Scenic Overlook

Scenic Overlook, southeast of Galena, Illinois

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~

November Book Reviews

Since I started this blog on 11-11-11 with reviews from the books I'd read thus far in November, I've decided to post my book reviews for the previous month on the first day of each new month. So here are the rest of the books I read in November:


OPENING THE INVITATION - Oriah Mountain Dreamer
©2004 This little gift book contains the poem “The Invitation” which apparently became an internet sensation when the author sent out copies to people on her mailing list that had attended her spiritual retreats. The poem spread like wildfire. I was surprised to see such a tiny book at the library, and then I was further intrigued by the author’s name.
 
The book explains how the author came to be known as Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It also goes into detail about the very ordinary event that gave birth to the now famous poem that begins, ”It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing…”

I found the book to be a common-sense appeal for the reader not to take for granted that he or she will live to see another tomorrow. To live life to the fullest and deepest.

My favorite stanza of the poem is, ”It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much
money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.”


MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA - James McBride
©2002 War is sad…and this book is sad. It’s a novel about four Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S Army’s 92nd Division (made up of black soldiers) who get lost behind enemy lines near the end of WW2, as one of them tries to save a little Italian boy who has survived the massacre of Tuscan villagers in the Church of St. Anna. The Germans are advancing in large numbers, and the four U.S. soldiers are holding a German POW as they await rescue by the Army. Be ready with the hankies.


A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY - Libba Bray
©2002 In this YA fantasy novel, a Victorian teen discovers she has supernatural powers while attending a girl’s boarding school in Britain. She and her friends open the door to a parallel universe while exploring the mystery of a fire at their school years ago.


END OF THE BEGINNING (bk 2) - Harry Turtledove
©2005 I’m really disappointed with this conclusion of the alternate history WW2 epic, Days of Infamy. Not disappointed with the story plot or characters, but really sort of mad about the repetitious writing style. I mean how many times does the reader need to be reminded that zebra doves are so tame and slow that they’re easy for the starving folks in paradise to catch and eat. Or why, whenever a pilot lands his fighter on an aircraft carrier, we have to read his thoughts of how important it is to obey the on-deck flagman instead of trusting his own instincts on how to land?

I liked Part 1 of the epic. See my review (last month) on Days of Infamy. My last sentence was, This is a meaty book that roars on to its finish and leaves you hanging, eager to continue with the sequel. The trouble is, the sequel wasn’t needed. Both books had 440 pages each. But the story could have been more skillfully written in a single volume of about 600 pages. The author spent the first 100 or so pages of the second book reintroducing the many key characters. It was just wrong to try to get two books out of this with wordy redundancy.

As for the story, Part 2 was almost shockingly vulgar compared to the first book. The editor must have urged the author to sex-up the conclusion. If filthy language, graphic depictions of torture and rape, and brutally graphic battle scenes don’t bother you, this is an exciting, well-thought-out “what-if” novel. The ending is basically predictable though.


ANGELS IN THE WILDERNESS - Amy Racina
©2009 I never get tired of reading true-life outdoor survival tales. In this one, the author is a physically-fit, middle-aged female hiker who enjoys backpacking solo in the wilderness. But on one fateful trip into a remote valley in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, she has an accident: a 60 foot fall into a ravine that breaks both her legs and leaves her praying for a miracle. The miracle comes, after 4 days, in the form of three backpackers, the “angels” in the title, who find her and are able to keep her alive until help can be summoned.

The first half of the book features her love of nature and the great outdoors, her hike, and her accident and rescue. The rest of the book is about her long, painful road to recovery and the friends who helped her through it. Her healing is both soul-searching and spiritually uplifting. I'm glad she lived to tell her story.

The Sun Sets on November-2011

It was a beautiful sunset tonight!  The bad part about living in the woods is that I only have one sunset vista, through the trees.

It was a lovely day, too. The wind, which has been blowing icy for a week, finally layed down ---so it was pleasant to be outdoors. People must have felt the goodness of the day like I did, because I went to town, and everyone I came in contact with (at the gallery, the pizza place, the eye doctor's, and the vet's) were all full of good cheer.

Little Turtle Yummies

We had THANKSGIVING DINNER compliments of Marlene and Dale. THANKS, YOU GUYS! Tons of food, and all of it---oh so fine! Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, cranberry salad, sweet-tater casserole (with marshmallows on top, like Mom used to make),rolls, pies, pumpkin cupcakes.... mmm-mmmmmmm-MMMMMMM!!!!

I contributed the green bean casserole. I mean, what kind of holiday feast would it be without the green bean casserole? That's as traditional as Campbell's soup, right?

I also made some little treats I saw on the internet yesterday morning.  It was on somebody's blog, and it sounded so simple; so I added the ingredients to my shopping list, and I fixed them up in a little Christmas tin. Everybody loved them.  I knew they would.  I could hardly stay out of them myself. So rich and chewy! So simple to make!  I call them LITTLE TURTLE YUMMIES.

Grease a cookie sheet and preheat your oven to 300 degrees F. You start with a base of pretzel, and I think the only ones that'll work with this are the Snyder's of Hanover Butter Snaps, because they have the smallest openings. Put a Rollo chocolate on each pretzel (and this is my least favorite part, unwrapping those darn Rollos from their silly foil wrappers). Then place a whole nut on top of the candy. You can use walnuts, but for a true "Turtle" taste, I prefer pecans.

You heat these for only 5 minutes, then remove from the hot cookie sheet to a plate covered with wax paper. Now comes the fun part. Lightly press down on each nut so that the melted chocolate spreads and covers the pretzel. Cool in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

(Actually, I love them to eat them while the chocolate is still warm and gooey!)   Enjoy!

 I LOVE THESE!

AND YOU WILL TOO!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

 For the beauty of the earth

photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

  



For the glory of the skies,

For the love which from our birth

 Over and around us lies:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

this our hymn of grateful praise.

 HAPPY

THANKSGIVING

EVERYONE!

That Time of Year Again

It's that time of year again:
OPENING DAY OF SHOTGUN DEER SEASON.

We live on 35 acres of woodland, surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods owned by two different farmers, a doctor, and a buffalo rancher. All of them either lease their woods to hunters or simply let anyone who asks hunt on them. My husband and his two hunting buddies hunt on our land.

That means the woods are crawling with hunters. It often sounds like a battle is being fought out there, with all the guns going off.  I don't even dare go outside unless I put on orange apparel.

So, for the next three days, I'll be cooped up in the house.  But even indoors, I worry about stray bullets hitting the house. I try not to go to town during the hunting season, to avoid the risk of getting shot as I drive down the road. But I guess if there's a bullet with my name on it, it's going to find me no matter what I do.

Every hunter out there is looking for that enormous trophy buck, but my guys mostly harvest young deer, which are the best eating.  People who have tried venison and say they didn't like the wild, gamey taste have probably eaten a tough, old buck.

Venison is our "beef."  We make hamburger from it, grill the backstraps, dry it for jerky, make summer sausage, and enjoy venison roasts and stews throughout the year.  Since the guys do their own butchering, the only cost is for the hunting permits and ammo. They fill our freezers and theirs every fall with some of the best eating you're going to find anywhere. I don't like beef, pork, or chicken grown on factory farms with the aid of antibiotics and growth hormones. Deer are naturally lean and chemical free, and it's just about the only meat I'll eat.

Where I live, these beautiful wild animals breed in such numbers that they're public nuisances. Cars hit them all the time on the highway, and people have actually died from the accidents they cause.  Right here at home, they make it almost impossible to garden.  This year they mowed down two rows of sweet corn in our garden; we never got a single ear. They also feasted on our tomato and pepper plants and regularly ate the brussels sprouts and young cabbage and even some of my flowers. Just like goats, they'll eat just about anything.

A young doe will usually only have one fawn her first season. But after that, twins and triplets are the norm.  It's important to thin the herds of does, to keep the population manageable. If hunters didn't harvest a certain percentage of them every year, there would be so many, the herds would become diseased, not to mention the increased damage to farmers' crops and mayhem on the highways. So even though I dread it, I understand the importance of deer hunting season.

I always swear that next year, I'm taking a vacation by myself, to someplace far from deer hunting.  But every year finds me manning the deer camp kitchen. Now I have to go bake my dinner rolls and prepare my green bean casserole and the backstraps (from a couple of young deer they got bow-hunting earlier this month) for grilling.  We always have the traditional Opening Day feast around 11 a.m., then the guys take a short nap before going back out into the woods for round two.

Don't Forget the Pumpkin Pie

Thanksgiving is next week...

Don't forget the pumpkin pie!

Ah! on Thanksgiving day....
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
~John Greenleaf Whittier