Category Archives: quotes

birdsong

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I love stumbling across this kind of stuff on the internet, enjoy!

Jarbas Agnelli explaining his video – Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating. I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper. Here I’ve posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds). Music made with Logic. Video made with After Effects.

The world is but a canvas to the imagination. ~Henry David Thoreau

best of youtube

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Thinking about my mom a lot this week as I celebrate my fiftieth birthday today and approach the first anniversary of her passing at the end of the month. Love Josh Groban’s voice and this beautiful song has certainly taken on new meaning for me, enjoy!

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. ~Lucille Ball

circle of life

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I took this photograph over the weekend during a family barbecue. Aunt Bessie is 98 years old. My new granddaughter Brooklyn is only 8 weeks old. When I look at the two of them it feels as though I am looking at the whole of a woman’s life – the history of girlhood and school days, of friendships and lovers and work and marriage, the fierce new love a young mother feels when she holds her sleeping child, and the fierce grief a woman lives as she strokes her dying husband’s hand. Can you see it? All that has happened in the creases and lines of Bess’s beautiful face, and all that is yet to come in the smooth angelic face of my baby granddaughter. A life nearing its conclusion and one that is just beginning. The circle of life, strung out between their two ageless spirits like the glistening white pearls of Aunt Bessie’s necklace.

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.  ~Havelock Ellis

See other (nearly) Wordless Wednesday participants here.

horny cows and letting go

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Last Sunday while on our butterfly hunt, my husband and I came across these handsome fellows grazing in a nearby field. They are African Watusi, and I couldn’t help but wonder how they have adapted to our harsh Michigan winters coming from such a warm, dry climate. The lazy days of August are coming to a close here but they are feeling much more like the cool crisp days of October and I’ve caught myself saying at least it’s not snowing several times already! I do believe that my life would be much easier, happiness much closer at hand, if I could adapt to change like the beautiful horned cattle in the photo above apparently have. I want to learn to embrace not only the crazy weather patterns here in Michigan, but also the roller-coaster ups and downs of this thing called life. In two weeks I’m turning fifty and the one year anniversary of my mother’s death is coming up at the end of September. I can’t believe I’m that old and that my mom has been gone for a year already. I’ve never been very good at accepting change, at “going with the flow” as they say, but I’m making a real effort to improve on that skill. I have to of course, because change is inevitable in every life and as we grow older the ride only speeds up and those peaks and valleys only grow taller and much deeper. My birthday gift to myself is going to be to learn to let go, to put my hands up in the air, feel the wind on my face, and enjoy the rest of the ride for as long as it lasts:)

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear . . . . It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to. ~Marilyn Ferguson

See more PhotoHunt Saturday: Surprise entrants here and Camera Critter Meme players here!

wordless wednesday

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On Sunday, Doug and I went to the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens hoping to get some butterfly photos. As you can see from the picture above, the gardens were in full bloom, but we were disappointed to find only bees buzzing around the flowers. We took a few photos, whining a good deal of the time about the lack of the lovely winged insects, and then we set out for home. As we were driving down the freeway there was a sudden loud “plunk” as a large insect hit the windshield. When I turned and looked over at Doug he simply said, “Yes…it was a butterfly.” The irony continued at home when while sitting out on the deck the swallowtail pictured below fluttered and flapped and feasted leisurely on the flowers growing in our own backyard pots. As I looked at the photo of Doug on my computer the next day, surrounded as he was by masses of beautiful flowers, I realized how foolish we were that afternoon not to be grateful for the present moment just as it was, even if it did happen to be butterfly free. So I guess our lesson for the day was – You don’t necessarily need to wander far from home to find your heart’s desire, but if you do,  for heaven’s sake – stop and smell the flowers along the way!

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, it may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

See other (nearly) Wordless Wednesday participants here.