The Closer It Gets

 

There are days when what we want is not far away, but waiting for it to become closer feels like a million hours will pass until it arrives.

America is, I believe, in real trouble. In the morning hours of 11 September 2001, the very real threat we were at war permeated everything. I heard jets in the sky with an urgency that I had not felt before. I wasn't scared or angry. I was too busy praying. 

Immediately, I wanted to hear from our leaders. I wanted to hear from the powers that be. Leadership was my focus. 

America's leadership, I feel, is seriously in jeopardy of being overtaken by a person that is proven to be clearly untrustworthy. 

The reasoning for supporting the felon, that I've heard, is that they do not like the man, but they like his policies.

I say, then support the office of the President of the United States no matter who wins.

For the presidential election 2024, 
I will accept and respect whoever wins. 

Please, Support the next President of the United States.

Americans need to unite, not fight each other.

Tis the Season To Be Eerie

In blog years gone by, I use to post a scary story here in October. I stopped because the feeling everyone left the room when I posted my story is too sad for me. The cyber echo blocked out my desire to continue the yearly scary tales. (Sorry if I posted about this before.)

Being raised by a generation with gloomy grim Victorian vibes, it is no wonder to me that I like ghost stories. In addition to that, my father liked to scare us kids with his true accounts of the paranormal world. In high school I became interested in Edgar Allen Poe. I also read HP Lovecraft and other ghost stories. 

Alas, Goth isn't a style I followed. The Bohemian morphing into Hippiedom is where my youth melded into tender adulthood. When life became too real, I moved into the mystery genre where I remain. 

In writing, I can only get so far with a horror narrative before I feel scared that it could happen in real life. (More about that another time.) Then one day on the way home from my father's, on a rainy, cold and dark night, I had a not normal experience. 

There wasn't a blur, a quick noise or something in the corner of my eye. The sound was clearly the result of something intelligent moving objects in the stuff I was taking home. I actually stopped, parked and got out of my vehicle, after going through the toll booth, to let it escape, run away. Nothing ran, flew, jumped or slithered away. If it had, then there was enough open space for it to be seen. 

Feeling the interior is free (enough) of whatever it was, I continued driving into the night north through New Hampshire and Vermont. And so did it.

At home, I can still see myself standing in front of my vehicle deciding to wait until the morning to bring things indoors in the daylight.

Begun circa 2004, the story is 90% finished. 

Too scared to finish it?

Nah

Well Maybe a little

Stella and Mabel Jump Into Fall

It is that time of year!

P.S.

They will be on CBS news this Friday, 1 November!

Day 299 of Week 43 October 2024

Going through Blogger photo files is a unique journey through the that last 16 plus years of blogging. There are pictures I don't remember the year, but clearly remember taking them.

The above photo, for example, is a view from the parking lot at the Robert Frost Interpretative Trail. There is an unfinished painting of the scene among my too many other unfinished canvases. 

It is good that I am painting again.

Also, I'm presently learning how to crochet a winter hat. Thus far, my effort looks like a mini sun hat with a pronounced dome. That is the result of not reading the directions. I will take out the stitches and start over.

The idea is to have a knitting and crochet project handy to work on each day. Waiting for laundry or dinner in the oven is just enough time to do several rows. 

I've sat outdoors during the beautiful warm weather we've been having here in New England. I take photos of clouds, watch birds fly by and daydream. As with blogging, a subject I try to not think about when enjoying Nature, is the current political landscape going on in America.

Please, do not under value the danger America is facing if the felon is elected. Many may like his policies, but at what price.

I am resolved to accept whoever wins the presidential election. 
It is important that Americans stand strong and united. 

Stop the bickering. Help America remain great. 

Remain...because America has always been great!

Vote!

🍁

Have a Great Weekend!

🎃

Dance outdoors to the radio

Read about the history of fiber

Have tuna sandwiches & chocolate milk

Sketch your dream cabin in the woods

Draw your hand cream container

Wash your vehicle's interior windows 

Write a scary story

Crochet something

Day 285 of Week 41 October 2024

Robert Frost Interpretative Trail
October 2022

Well folks, this is it, foliage time, leaf peeping season, the peak of all that is autumnal. Coffee on foggy mornings, frosty cobwebs, pumpkin spice muffins, and birds flying by that don't have time to stop and chat. With all that is going on in the World at home and abroad, embrace the Nature of your heart to enjoy the fall. 

My thoughts, after taking out winter clothes and putting away most of summer fashions, are on sweaters. I browsed online this morning. I found two I really like on sale. I thought about the extra load of laundry, and, the fact that I do not need another sweater. I didn't buy. I went on my merry way.

Have a Very Merry Fall Weekend!

Bake a squash with cinnamon

Read a funny short story

Draw a pumpkin patch

Attend a local festival

Shop leather gloves online

Check your vehicle winter kit

Watch the Hocus Pocus film

Sing to a falling leaf

I walked to Chimney Rock for answers... Hurricane Helene Aftermath

Reflection Monday October 2024

October Along the New Haven River
Lincoln, Vermont

 How often do you settle

instead of staying on course

with your first choice?

We decide much of what shapes our lives.

How much is from fate, outside forces,

adds to our view of self.

When you are at relaxing in the moment,

thinking of this and that, chilling out,

ask yourself what you are chilling about.

Are you the river or the landscape? 

Foliage Check In

Robert Frost Interpretative Trail
Ripton, Vermont
Georgie's Trail
3 October 2024

 

Rt 125, Ripton, Vermont
Just above Robert Frost Interpretive Trail
3 October 2024

A quick trip for lunch to the Robert Frost Interpretative Trail on a sunny afternoon to check on the foliage progress today was nice. I didn't walk around much. 

At the higher mountain elevations there are more trees showing colors than middle and lower elevations. Along Route 125, there are colors in a tree here and there. At this stage, peak will take few more days. I expect this weekend and all of next week will be the best leaf peeping. 

Voter Registration Purges

 

The Voter Purge Project, State Score Cards

Brennan Center for Justice, Voter Purges

Voter purging is when a registered voter is removed from the voter registration list where they vote. It keeps the voter registration lists up to date. 

In Vermont, for example, if you don't vote in 2 consecutive general elections, then your name is removed aka purged from that voter registration list. 

I've been voting in Vermont for decades. This is the first time I remember my voter registration being purged. I've missed elections in the past, but never that I recall purged because of it. I re-registered online.

This is a Very Important election year.

Please, make sure you are properly registered to vote.

Update, Monday:

Today I received a confirmation email from Vermont dot gov.

My re-registration over the weekend has been received and approved by the city clerk. I am a registered voter!

Wild Apples & Creativity

Wild Apples

    

Are they though? Wild apples, I believe, grow outside an orchard or in somebody's yard. Along the roadside you can see shrubs that you know must have been planted by a house, but there is no house. The same is true of apple trees in a group. Then there's the issue of wildlife carrying the apple seeds into the woods by various means.

    One morning on a slow walk the sunlight was catching a bunch of wild apples just right to make their rotting shapes look lovely, almost ripe again. I took a photograph to paint from. The canvas has been hanging around. The photo hasn't. There are folders labeled, ToPaint, that I use. Once in a while though, a picture becomes lost. Like the apples, it has gone wild.

    Autumn is a season of reflection, I feel, more than the other three are. We harvest our knowledge, our memories, our expectations of where we have been and where we are going. 

    I'm thinking that way because I've been painting again, regularly on a few canvases at a time, old as well as new images. Depression isn't selective. It mows down much of what we enjoy doing in life. Being an artist that doesn't paint is not comfortable for me. The irony is that when I am in a severely deep episode, art is where I retreat from the pain. This time, however, it is the resolve to be Artist, not pain that brings me to pick up a brush.

    I feel that there are times in life when we don't need to figure out why. It is better, when it happens, to just enjoy our creative selves.

Oh That Tree!

East Main Street Along Rt 22A
11x14 inch acrylic ~The After version

Over, (I estimate), 15 years ago I started a series of paintings for places I see on my walks around town. The above is the first and only artwork I've done. Projects get put aside for other projects.

The small painting has been hung in various places over the years until today. The large tree on the left has always bothered me. I intended to add more branches. I mixed the colors. And then got lost on other areas. The house behind the tree, I didn't even notice I was covering it up.

Main Street Before

I see now from the Before version, what my mistakes are. At one point, I signed it as I was determined to leave it as is. The tree will go back to being smaller, the house more visible, and the shrubs on the left less shrubby.

As that's all going on, I look up to see another painting that I planned to finish hanging on the wall. Mostly because I liked the way it was except for the sky.

An October Morning at the Field Puddle
16x20 inch acrylic on canvas

As I was painting, to my surprise I remembered the original idea for the image. It is taken from several watercolor sketches I did in 1999 of snow geese landing with the sunrise to their backs. The sketches are missing. I have no idea where they are. Thankfully, I have the pencil sketches in a sketchbook. More painting to do, this time I hope I don't lose sight of what I'm trying to achieve.

Update: The sky is getting there. The tree had to go. It would be in the way of the snow geese landing.