Motivational Thinking

In the spirit of being positive about the world, my work, my place in it, and the need to feel useful to others.....

I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will.

Vacation Wrap-Up chez Nous

It's unbelievably mild outside and we are in the throes of putting the garden to rest. I want that calm sense that comes from trimming the dead branches, raking up the leaves, pulling up the dahlia tubers to winter over in the shed, the butterfly bush diminished to the ground- all the various chores that insure a nice frosty rest for the lawn, flowers, shrubs and trees. I am often awestruck by the garden's last floral display, and my current favorite is this mystery rose I found on a clearance table at the grocery store last September. Marked $1.99, forlorn and abandoned, I had to bring it home and find it a spot to thrive. Its flowers turned out to be a funny swirl of pink, orange and yellow. Yellow and orange are colors I tend to avoid in the garden, but this plucky rose seems happy here. I relish these late blooms from the plants that continue to flower under less than ideal conditions. My college student is on her way back and it was great to have her home. I really appreciate my family, my husband, the things that mostly work and all the goodness that we know, have and share. For this suburban mom, it doesn't really get much better than this.

Thankfulness

I am in the midst of thankfulness. Gratitude. Call it what you will. Despite things that seem to impact me a lot, and often adversely, there is so much to appreciate it's hard to know where to begin. So I won't. Being a female born in the United States seems like a stroke of good luck compared to the fate of so many children (so eloquently reported by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times among other, distinguished and caring voices describing the plight of children born elsewhere on our globe) combined with the good fortune of having three healthy children none of whom I imagine will ever be sold in to slavery or forced in to a desperate servitude just to stay alive. There is so much luck and good fortune that I don't begin to know where to start on the gratitude list. So, I only hope you similar lives brimming with good luck and good will and wish you many more days filled with thankfulness.

Pageviews all time history 12,000

I do really like round numbers. Nice, biggish sort of round numbers. So, a certain milestone that I must pause and reflect and digest. It certainly hasn't been me who has opened my blog 12,000 times since I started in January of 2010. Especially when I consider that I have dutifully checked the box of the "do not count" your pageviews on the dashboard of my blog's settings. So, somwehere, on some digital device, I am finding ways to share my thoughts and images. When you publish books, royalty statements are the measuring stick of your titles' success (or lack of...). Google is very efficient in sharing when and where a viewer has taken a moment to take a look. So, tomorrow I will give thanks for all the 12,000 times I managed my way into the hearts and minds of my fellow citizens of the world.

Our Post Office on Beekman Avenue....

is threatened with closure. Which makes no sense whatsoever because of the essential services it provides. As it is threatened with possible closure, petitions in support of keeping it open were compiled containing over 2400 signatures (Sleepy Hollow is listed with 10,217 inhabitants). The other evening, in the assembly room in our village hall, the community turned out to meet with members of the our Northeast regional postal service overseeing our area in this evaluation as well as the introduction of our new Postmaster for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. (Sleepy Hollow was once called North Tarrytown and until 1973 had its own zip code. Another long story.) Our Congresswoman Nita Lowey sent an aide to read a letter she had written to the Postmaster General in an effort to take our post office off the chopping block.

There were many impassioned comments from the floor of my fellow residents, including our mayor, about the importance of our post office to the life blood of our community and especially ours with its substantial immigrant community who rely heavily on post office boxes and money orders. For seniors, its location on a quieter street with accessible parking means not having to cross 4 lanes of busy traffic and then encounter stairs or ramps to enter the building. We do not want to lose this vital piece of our village. On a business level, our village will be gaining in the next ten years a 1000+ new households with the development of the 100 plus acres of the GM site which appears to finally be happening. The expansion of Sleepy Hollow is in the offing. (On a personal note, I love my local post office and am in there 3-5 days of week.) When you run the current numbers, our local post office is not losing any money so it's not clear why it is being considered for elimination in the scheme of things. 

Gathering my Wits

Various relatives including my daughter are headed in this direction this weekend so the house etc seems to require more than usual. Factor in a long list of unexpected obligations and this week has kept me on my toes. I took the above photo on my camera's built in memory recently and just learned how to transfer these files onto a memory card so that I could export it. Amazing how the pieces can sometimes fit together.

My Romance

For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with nail polish in some form or another- so I thought I would start sharing some of the artworks I have created along the way to express this fascination of mine. This image is from 1985, when I was living in New York City and taking photos for more than reasonable fees. I would use my talents and my beautiful equipment to create images for myself whenever I could. I was friendly with a wonderful hand model named Liza O'Keefe. We did some nice paying jobs together so she was happy to lend her hands to my artistic pictures. I discovered Christian Dior hand products after college and painted a lot with the nail polish during my waitressing years. Their packaging spoke volumes to me, especially when I combined it with their product on a beautiful hand!

Wait Until Dark (in Sleepy Hollow)

My daughter Sarah is in our fall high school drama of "Wait Until Dark" and I photographed a rehearsal yesterday for my local Patch to promote the upcoming shows (also did headshots of the actors for the lobby- I felt a little busy). Their director, Mr. Kennedy, does a great job with the directing and the staging. This is also my fifth year with Mr. Kennedy as a parent because my daughter Nora was in many of his previous productions as well. Sarah is playing a criminal character with a New York City accent and is a lot of fun to watch on stage. My talented daughter!

Refashioning Chic for a Good Cause

I photographed a fashion fundraiser "Project Greenway" yesterday at Scarborough Church to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester. Contestants were invited to refashion an item and invent a new way to wear it. An array of ages participated and the turnout was great. One contestant, Conner Ives, stood out from the crowd with the long gown he crafted of coffee stained doilies and filters. For pure talent and execution, I was floored in the nicest possible way.

(and to see Connor Ives' creation for the 2012 Project Greenway fashion grow- click here)

An Unexpected Reversal of Fate

When things fall apart in your hands it's take a little bit to gather your wits so to speak. Take the long view, the short view, the philosophic view, the tortured view and all the other ways you can find to make sense of events that don't really make sense at all. Kind of like the image that dissolves in front of your eyes when the light changes, the cake that refuses to rise, the deal that goes south in the blink of an eye. There is the interval of confusion and self doubt before you find a way to look at what has transpired. When we traipsed through Howe Caverns last weekend and saw the millions of years it took to create this spectacle below the earth- it gave me a unique perspective on opportunities that fail to gel. Things tend to work out for the best. Nothing ventured is nothing gained. Onward and upward. To thine own self be true. And all that.

Home Fires Burning

I am in this not everything going according to plan mode- all of which is fine, especially when nothing dire is looming on the horizon. It was a week of running around, photos, seeing a friend from long ago, dinner with relatives and sundry obligations. Saturday night found us resting at home with with supper crafted from the contents of the refrigerator. Kids on the move and wandering through with friends in tow to wander out again allowed us to pause and watch a movie starring (among others) the very telegenic Robert Pattinson by the glow of the fire.

Time Away Well Spent

We made a plan to go away sans kids and pets courtesy of a generous friend who agreed to stay with the household. We travelled north and stayed at the Mariaville Lake Bed & Breakfast which had a lovely setting, delicious breakfasts and the largest mirror I'd seen in a long time.

We amused ourselves exploring the area, shops, yard sales and stopping for well deserved snacks.

En route later, we saw the most amazing kind of firework in the sky. It burned intensely bright, threw sparks and died. It felt extremely close- and James told me we had just seen a meteorite that was hundreds of miles up in the atmosphere. Turns out it was spotted in the night skies from Michigan to Nova Scotia.

Our last excursion came about the next day when James learned that Howe's Cavern was close by. We travelled 150 feet below ground by elevator to reach the uppermost part of the cavern for our two hour tour. My husband loved seeing this amazing geological marvel. A guy, rock formations, crystals and tiny passageways. Claustrophobia, anyone?

By 2 p.m. it was time to head home. We arrived to a calm and happy household. Nothing like 48 hours alone, no pressing obligations, and no teenaged disputes to resolve.

Humming Along

Life is in a rhythm of cold dark mornings and later, lighting a fire in the fireplace in the early evening. More books and magazines are in drifts around the house. The property beckons for its own tucking in before winter truly descends. Last weekend's freak snow storm put winterizing on the top of my to do list. Still, the toad lily survived the storm and blooms profusely as is intended for its internal clock, the lemon verbena continues to put out new growth and the leaves on the trees turn their brilliant colors. The calender is squarely on November as I survey what awaits us all next. No college applications pending, no employment to seek, or big decisions to occupy my mind. It's a quasi stress-free time to work and plow ahead.

Hotel de Ville

I recently joined The Katonah Museum's Artists' Association and as they are having a group exhibit at the Katonah Library, I decided to make something to hang in the show. I remembered this image, taken one late morning in August in a small village in France, the moment of snapping the shutter as a bicyclist rode through my frame. I found the negative and scanned it and then Linda at Inc. did a beautiful job of printing it for me. I framed it with something on hand but I wanted another element. Adding the nail polish gave it a decorative detail. It could probably use more dots- but I was going for restraint and some smudges. Fun to look at something I created 20 years ago and never really looked at before.

Not So Good

"Just once I would like to wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day."

I cost Liza $11.25 and two hours of her life yesterday when I drove us to see "In Time". I think Justin Timberlake is wonderfully talented and a true triple threat, but in this movie his performance was often like watching paint dry. The art direction of the film created a future where there was less color everywhere than in the above photo (shot during last weekend's storm). It's the kind of movie that is hard to watch in its entirety. Upon leaving, Liza recommended that she pick the picture next time and I felt relieved to be off the hook that easily. I am also the one who suggested we see "Charlie McCloud" starring another talented actor (whom I can find very appealing in an "on camera" sort of way). Within 15 minutes of "In Time" we agreed that even watching Charlie McCloud was more entertaining than this.