Right in your Own Back Yard

Photography by Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney ©08 Shot in Imperial Beach, California July 2008 in my dearest friends, the Wards m back yard

Rising Full Moon

Photography by Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney ©08

I was greeted as we pulled up with a huge red moon at susnset and had to scramble for the camera and managed to get a few shots. The Hotel Del Coronado has been in existence for over a century and has been in numerous movies. As my friend and I walked behind the Del to enjoy the ocean breeze and susnet, it was very nostalgic for me to be at the ocean again even for a minute.

I Sunset

Photography by Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney ©08 Silver Strand Beach, Coronado, California July 2008

Patience is the key to paradise~- Turkish proverb

Ocean To The Sky ©08

Sand Beard Dunes, Michigan

While lying here this eve…

My innards are just a’grinnin’

Scripting gratitude notes in the clouds to all who gifted me with their attendance

Sending me off to where the ocean runs into the sky

I am blissfully in high spirits right now

As I have added to my sentimental journey

Drawing together yet another linkage

To a textured life as mine have been

That of having come together with you,...

No matter how brief a measure it was .

This time is right for me to be right…

In going to what is new without doing away with what is not getting any younger.

And that is time

And it is time

From an unadorned whisper to the Creator

Brought you forth to me today to spend some time..

He who answer a prayer that had not been uttered...

For which I forever more would be grateful

So that my departure would be as pleasant as the arrival have been.

I carry you all forth with me sitting in the company of many...

That it’s been my privilege to know ...

As I embark to where the ocean runs into the sky.
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Photography by Anders Rasmussen-Denmark

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today~ Will Rodgers

If Poem by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it

And - which is more - you'll be a (Wo)man, my son /daughter!

What Will You Do?

www.cityyear.org

Making a New Rule To see what You can Do Too!

One of the best goals you can set for yourself is to be a little kinder than necessary. It can be easy to let stress build up and consume your daily life. When this happens, being kind can be difficult. So, tonight think about some ways to decrease your stress levels, making you able to be kinder than necessary tomorrow and on.

Thank you Sparks People!

Visit their website at www.sparkspeople.com

Courage speech by the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz

Actor Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion:

Courage. What makes a King out of a slave? Courage.

What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage.

What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?

What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage.

What makes the Sphinx the 7th Wonder? Courage.

What makes the dawn come up like THUNDER?! Courage.

What makes the Hottentot so hot?

What puts the "ape" in ape-ricot?

Whatta they got that I ain't got?

Dorothy & Friends: Courage!
Cowardly Lion: You can say that again.

Awareness through downshifting

Excellent commentary from http://www.sparkspeople.com/

Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer.
~ Lion from Wizard of Oz

Often our first reaction to a stressful situation is to overcompensate and overwork to overcome whatever it is. Sometimes though, the best thing you can do it step away, take a breath, and come back to tackle the problem with a clear head. Replacing important things in your life with work only causes anxiety to build up--not to mention that it takes the joy out of life. Vacation does not have to mean physically leaving your everyday life and jet setting to the beach. Whatever relaxes you, brings more clarity, or calms your mind during times of stress can certainly be enough to rejuvenate! When logic tells you to quicken your pace and pile on the extra work, yet your heart is reminding you of the meaningful time you are neglecting with family, friends, and yourself, it's time to slow down. Often letting off on the gas for a period of time can compose and refocus your mind.

There is Room for Both:Looking over the Horizons at the Possibilities ©08

Bridge over Troubled Waters~ Photograph by Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney. T. The bridge is to the Westbank, New Orleans, La shot 3 months after Katrina 2005. From the Changed Waters series

©05

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next".~ John Stuart Mill

This bubbled up this morning in my mind about looking over the horizons at possibilities we might not have imagined. What could be done if we are willing or even a cursory nod toward the idea that there may be a new (might we even dare) improved possibility of doing things differently?


The other night I listened to a late night talk show that in my opinion is trying far too hard to be hip, modern and sophisticated have as their subject matter about the “epidemic” of obesity especially among people of color. I listened as they trotted out every horrible stereotype with their right arm sideman with cruel, rigid “jokes”. They tried to have a veneer of “concern” but it was just plain out right meanness.

Even the panel of experts there was one, the fitness trainer whose lack of awareness and her bias toward ones obese made me think “That would be the last person I would pay my hard earned money or time or trust placing my health in her unyielding hands. The resident psychologist tried vainly as the program went on to keep a balance as the cruelty increasingly got worst. All I could think of is the ones who were either in the audience or watching the program possibly shrinking their already (some) fragile egos as they were totally dissesd on national TV & how many may have thrown in the towel or now would do something potentially dangerous or harmful to themselves because of this programming.

I decided I was going to write the show and the network. True enough it will probably be tossed in the round file cabinet, but ya never know. They need to be challenged to look over the horizon and not rely on what was never true from the giddy-up. I may would have respected them more if they just outright declared that they were bigots and have at it rather the very shaky justification of concern for health. The unfortunate thing is there are more people who believe like them, just like some who do have a weight challenge also believe it. Or see them a victim, hopeless or hapless.

However if we allow people to confine us by defining us we will pay for it in many ways as well as deny to others the abundance of what we can contribute to the world and who would want that?

Imagine how the world would have been if no one had ever thought of some of the things that we’ve come to think of as having been around forever. These advancements we may have come to question when the world seems turbulent/ swaying to & fro angrily and grabbing hold of something solid seems near impossible by some. This is the time which is pregnant with possibilities of somehow creating something new out of a necessity which is indeed the mother of invention.

People love to wax poetically the “good ole days”, except if you sit long enough you will find that those proverbial good days were not quite as good as we thought except what was softened by memory and a need to hold onto something recognizable.

My looking over the horizon is not earth shattering our global world changing but it will for me a great thing in a small way. I had not thought ever that I would find myself with the prospect of designing a park like garden for a college campus. I have zero, zilch, nada formal training or experience in this other then an appreciation of nature, harmony and an artistic eye.

But how providential is it to have an attachment to an academic environment that will be allow me to foster that exploration with some degree support and needed information as I go along to create my Edge Of the Waters Meditative Gardens surrounding the exterior grounds which will not only benefit the campus, but the neighboring community.. What I may lack in formal training I far more make up in eagerness to learn new things, challenge my horizons & plain old chutzpah (the nerve)..

My wanting to know why not got me in trouble as a child and later in adulthood some disapproval or even worst not taken seriously. There was always someone who would get indignant or question me as a troublemaker or impertinent for dare wondering why it could not be a different way. Not that I was trying to dissolve the status quo, but perhaps a little variation of that status that for the most part wasn't immoral, illegal, harmful or unethical, just a little differently but it did make some uncomfortable. I know now it has far more to do with their being nervous about change rather then anything wrong with me. But it did not stop me from having considerable angst over the years until I figured that out.


To a degree not having that formal training left freeness or any room for "Oh no that cannot be done. It must be XYZ instead". If it’s a "mistake" I /you won't know, right? That ignorance can turn into an intelligent new level as we can always say & do the "why nots"? My thoughts are not in reference to doing things foolishly, haphazardly as even in looking beyond the horizon does indeed mean looking into the tools to make it happen. You won't have to rush headlong into something that may not work or could potentially be dangerous, but if can give some leeway of trying something a little differently if you allow to see a bigger picture of thinking outside the box.

Be mindful I am not in opposition to formal training; I do believe it has its place and I like that part to. It is more of a matter of being balanced, the yang & the ying be on familiar terms with that both have a place. What I illustrated here necessitate looking over the horizon and then act otherwise we will continue to wax with nostalgia the (not always so) good ole days.
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