Teach Your Children...

c. 2006 Godar Graphics

Today is TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO SAVE DAY. This awareness day was established by the American Banker’s Association Education Foundation to express the importance of teaching our children how to save money, how to set up and use budgets, how interest works to make savings grow, and most importantly (in my opinion anyway) how to recognize the difference between needs and wants.

Weathervane

Galena, Illinois

The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, 

their written language is too difficult for human minds, 

and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.  

~John Muir~

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, fellow Earthlings!

Walk gently, observe joyfully,

Live responsibly and respectfully!

And a special Thank You to Home Depot for the free pine seedling!

A Postcard from Jacksonville

This is one local cemetery I still have yet to visit.  A very dear friend of mine was buried there a month ago (I didn't find out til days later---it was a private family gathering), so someday soon I'll go look for where she rests.

What Blooms Here?

Does anyone know what flowering bush this is? I shot the photo in Minnesota.

'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!
~William Wordsworth

Poverty of the Modern

Fewer and fewer Americans possess 

objects that have a patina, old furniture, 

 grandparents' pots and pans, the used things, 

warm with generations of human touch, 

essential to a human landscape.  

Instead, we have our paper phantoms, 

transistorized landscapes.  

A featherweight portable museum.  

~Susan Sontag~

I Go to Nature...

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, 

and to have my senses put in order.  

~John Burroughs~

A Glimpse of the Past

A glimpse of the past through a shop window, Old Town Galena, IL

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.  Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day.  Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down.  
And this is all life really means.   
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

My father died in 2005. Today would have been his 85th birthday, and I still miss him. Chuck was an outdoorsman, through and through. He taught me the love of nature. He was a hunter and a fisherman, and truly lived off the land.

This photo may repulse some, and I apologize to anyone's sensitivty. (This is the only photo I have of him on my computer --- my scanner is broken --- and I'd really rather not use this one, but....)  My dad understood the importance of hunting for keeping wildlife populations in check. Coyotes, unlike other predators, have adapted to the presence of humans throughout their wide range. They reproduce prolifically and even mate with feral dogs. They carry rabies and heartworm, and would just as soon eat someone's pet kitty or small dog as a wild rabbit or squirrel. So I make no apology for hunting them.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!  If you were still here, I'd fry you up a mess of crappie and mushrooms today, and toast you with a brewskie. You may be gone, but you're not forgotten

Dang!

I missed a day! The first time this has happened since I started my daily blog in November.

Be Yourself!

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, 

instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.  

~Judy Garland~

Kitty in the Clover

No amount of time can erase 

the memory of a good cat, 

and no amount of masking tape 

can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.  

~Leo Dworken