I must have been about nine years old.  Our church had sponsored three families from Laos.  "M" and "B" were the first couple to have a baby born in the United States.  "B" wanted to name his son "Lucky"... after all, he was lucky to have been born in the United States.  My dad explained to "B" that Lucky would not be an acceptable name.  Children could be cruel.  Names outside of the mainstream could be easy targets for bullies, harrassment and cruel behavoir.  "M" and "B" thought it over.  Paul.  Yes, they had decided to name him Paul after our church - St. Paul's church.  The name fit.

My dad had gone over to "M" and "B's" one Saturday afternoon to see how things were going.  My dad counseled the parents on everything from jobs to ways to save money.  We were at their house often, and their English slowly improved.  This particular day, was different from the rest.  The house was all a bustle!  Food was being prepared.  Children were running around and having fun.  I was taking the whole scene in.  I went over to the table where some of the prepared food was sitting.  I gazed into the eye of a cooked fish.  Hmmm... I had never been exposed to anything like THIS before!  I decided to head to the kitchen to see what the women were up to.

I entered the kitchen, smiled and waved to all of the women.  I stood in the corner and watched them cook.  The place was all a bustle!  I just stood there and watched.  All of a sudden, I thought I saw a potato sack on the floor, move.  Nah... that would be impossible!  I continued to watch.  I swore that I thought I saw the burlap sack moving again.  I gently pushed it with my foot.  The sack moved.  A low, collective giggle sounded around me.  I looked up to see what was happening.  All eyes were on me.  I blushed.  One woman came over and removed a young, white hen from the bag.  She let me hold it.  I walked around the house holding the hen.  Her feathers were as soft as silk. 

My dad had left the house to run an errand.  "B" came over to me.  He told me that he wanted me to keep the hen.  In the Laotian tradition, when a child is born and they have a party for that baby, there are three hens.  Two are killed, plucked, prepared and served.  One is to live out a normal life.  He went on to say that maybe someday, she would give me something special.  I was sold.  He didn't have to say another thing.  My dad returned and I gave him my sales pitch.  He sighed and shook his head.  "Your mother is never going to forgive me for this.  Okay, we'll try it."

We brought "Lucky" home and as expected, my mother wasn't thrilled.  My mother told my father that he was setting me up for heartbreak.  "We can't possibly keep that as a pet." she explained.  "Let's just give it a try." my father stated.  We had Lucky for 8 years.  She was a faithful pet.  She followed my brother and I around the yard.  She tolerated the cat and the rabbit.  Lucky wouldn't stand for intruders.  Squirrels tried to steal food from her food dish.  They quickly learned that she was a force to be reckoned with.  She got into fights with those squirrels - defending her turf and her food dish.  One such fight left her with a bitten and bleeding comb, but she had pecked that squirrel between the eyes, and he never returned to harass her.  The neighborhood cats also learned quickly.  They tried to have Lucky for lunch once, and only once.  She was pure muscle covered with feathers.  When she opened her wings and flapped them, her feathers could actually hurt and cut you.

Lucky grew old, but my love for her never did.  It was summer time, and my best friend, Lisa looked after Lucky for me.  When I returned home, there was a note taped to my front door.  I sat down and read it.  I wept.  My beloved Lucky had died, and my best friend had been there for her.  Even as I type this - all those years later, I am crying.   She is buried in the back yard of my childhood home - the home that was owned by my mother for 35 years.   

Animals have always been part of my life, and continue to be.  Lucky wasn't the only magical one.  Missy was our first pet: the most loyal, gentle, intuitive dog and patient dog I have ever met.  Missy was always jealous of other animals, and her nose was really out of joint.  You can only imagine how she acted when Lucky and Abracadabra (a dutch bunny that I found on my way home from school one day) came along.  I also had Hansi, a light green parakeet.  Hansi was my bird, and he waited until I returned from school, to die in my hand.  I had Snuffy the hedgehog (rescued from being abandoned) and currently have Taz and Georgie - my cats and Harriet and Ginger the ferrets.  

I have been spending a lot of my free time trying to photograph sea gulls, ducks, geese and swans.  I speak softly to them, and wonder if they understand that I mean them no harm.  I've gotten pretty close to the swans lately, and it makes me smile when I think about how gentle they've been with me.  I just bought a screech owl nesting box.  Karl and I are researching how and where to hang it.  Animals are an important part of my life and I'm thankful for them.   

Oh,  I love this question!
Today, I feel like tangerine.
It is so cold and windy outside here, but tangerine...
tangerine is warm~
like a sunrise...
or a sunset.
It is a swan's beak...
a splash of light.
Tangerine is a smile~
for friends and for those I have yet to befriend.
It is a giggle on a busy train...
a splash of color on a dismal day.
Tangerine is a feeling you get deep inside~
it's like a humming... reminding you that you're alive!
It is like a drink
for you
and a drink
for me...
Nice, bright, happy tangerine.
Won't you pick your tangerine crayon up, and color with it too?
Add it to your color palette and let creativity lead you...

My father always wanted a daughter named Susan... not Sue, as I used to call myself, but Susan.  It was not an issue that was up for debate.  He liked the name and that's what he always dreamt for a name, if he should ever have a daughter.  Susan is of Hebrew origin and means lily.

My middle name is Helene (heh LEH neh), which is my father's, mother's name.  My Oma, Helene, just turned 93 on Monday.  She will forever be a part of me - in name, and always in spirit.  I love her and miss her very much... she lives an ocean away, but I carry her close to me, in my heart.

Susan Helene~ a perfect combination.

I'm in school 186 days a year.  I like to come to school... no two days are ever alike.  No two students are ever alike... similar, perhaps, but never identical.  I see traces of students past in the children of today. 
     *I love the smell of crayons.  I still sniff an open box before I choose a color. 

     *I like the hum of the pencil sharpener, and the way a freshly sharpened pencil looks, smells and writes.

     *I listen for the pitter patter of footsteps in the hallway, and the laughter of friends - usually up to something other that what they SHOULD be up to! 

     *I like shelves and shelves of books.  Old books, favorite books, good books... books that feed my soul... books that make me smile... others that make me cry... they are like old friends to me.  I don't think that I can ever own too many books.  That is something that my ex-husband never understood.  He wasn't a reader and a lover of books like me.  "Sue, how many books can one person own?  If you don't touch those books in a year, I'm throwing them out." he once said to me.  Little did he know, that I touched them every single week.  I teacher has got to feed her class... and books are so satisfying. 

     *I love the sound of scissors as they cut into paper.  I sometimes imagine that the sound is an animal as it eats its way into the paper.

     *I wait for that Ah, Ha! moment.  The look, the illumination and animation of a child's face when he/she finally gets it!  That look is priceless.

Most of all, I love the way this place, and the people in it make me feel.  I feel like this is my home away from home.  The students and their families are all extensions of me... extensions of my family... we are connected.  I love it when a child gives me a hug... just because I'm here. 

Two things were fighting for my attention!

     1. Was my "smart technology" alarm clock smart enough to spring forward?  Last time it goofed and didn't.  I woke up, looked at the clock and compared it to the time on my cell phone.  Yes, the alarm clock had advanced the time by an hour.  One less clock to fix.  LOL!

     2. What kind of weather would today bring?  The weather man was calling for rain on the 11:00 news last night.  Was he going to be correct in his prediction?  It was actually an amazingly, beautiful day!  I think the rain is waiting until the sun sets.  Perfect timing all around, today.

My father sent me a link to this New York Times article this morning.  I really liked what it stands for.  The Great Disruption HAS begun... it's time for us to wake up before it's too late!  The time for change is now.

Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can't resist quoting from it. Consider this faux article from June 2005 about America's addiction to Chinese exports:

FENGHUA, China - Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the "sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy. Often, when we're assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,' I will say to myself, ‘There's no way that anyone will ever buy these.' ... One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless [garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I've made for them," Chen said. "And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible."

Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall - when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can't do this anymore.

"We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children," said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks - water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land - and not by generating renewable flows.

"You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior," added Romm. "But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...' Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy."

Over a billion people today suffer from water scarcity; deforestation in the tropics destroys an area the size of Greece every year - more than 25 million acres; more than half of the world's fisheries are over-fished or fished at their limit.

"Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we're living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets," argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: "Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts."

One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment - when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once - "The Great Disruption."

"We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder," he wrote me. "No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply." We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let's grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

Gilding says he's actually an optimist. So am I. People are already using this economic slowdown to retool and reorient economies. Germany, Britain, China and the U.S. have all used stimulus bills to make huge new investments in clean power. South Korea's new national paradigm for development is called: "Low carbon, green growth." Who knew? People are realizing we need more than incremental changes - and we're seeing the first stirrings of growth in smarter, more efficient, more responsible ways.

In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: "When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?' " Often in the middle of something momentous, we can't see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker - the year when ‘The Great Disruption' began.

~ Thomas L. Friedman
    Op-Ed Columnist
    New York Times

School bus is running late...

there is time to watch the Robins hunting worms in the rain

time to appreciate the fact that it's raining on a Monday...

Today is just one example of amazing things mixed in with the ordinary.

Thank you for slowing me down enough to notice the beauty in the word.

The sunrises and sunsets are paintings that I used to ignore-

Now they are works of art in the gallery that nature has provided.

Thank you for letting me get close enough to the beauty that it touches my heart.

People used to just be faces - mostly a blur.

Now I have personalized them with names.

Your patience, while I take it all in and let it wash over me, will never be forgotten.

Thank you for finding a way for me to get Susan back.

What's in a name?
It was the Q&R recently.  On top of that, in sixteen years of teaching, I have come to find that sometimes, there's more than meets the eye when it comes to a name.  Oh, there have been plenty of times when I have gotten names wrong.  I have been corrected... attitudes swirling around... and the classic eye rolling, tooth sucking, neck swiveling, hip shaking response accompanyied by "That ain't how you saaaaaaay myyyyyyy name!'  Jeeze!  I have 450 names to learn, and sometimes I have a bad day.  I mean, sometimes when I see the name "Jesus" on a paper, I just want to call on "JEE-zuss", and I forget that I'm calling "HEH-soos".  Some days I'm fit to be tied. 

There have been some real jems over the years.  Let's see... there was Mallijuan - we just called him "Mall" for short.  I don't think that he ever learned how to spell his name the "long" way.  Then there was Sallesky - pronounced "Sah-JESS-key".  I asked her one day if her name was a family name.  "Nah.  My mom just took a bunch of people's names from our family - took a few letters from each name, and put them all together.  Sallesky is what she came up with."  I think I stood there with my mouth hanging open for a few seconds before I could talk.

My all-time favorite is DaJean.  Common sense led me to believe that her name was pronounced Da (kind of like the slang word for the) and Jean.  I called out the names on the class list.  "Da-Jean" I say.  "It's DAY-juh-NAY!" she replied, rolling her eyes, sucking her teeth and doing all kinds of girating motions with her neck and waist.  UGH!  "Sorry.  The accent mark is missing." I reply... my standard response, that manages to keep me out of trouble.... especially when kids have an attitude!

Over the years, I call her Da-Jean in a joking kind of a way.  I always get at least an eye roll and a tooth sucking noise in return.  It makes me laugh.  On Friday, I called her Da-Jean and we went through the whole routine surrounding the pronunciation of her name... I couldn't help myself... I was just in a playful mood.

"DaJean is an unusual name.  Does it mean something?"  I had heard rumors that it meant "breakfast" in French, but I couldn't fathom that a parent would be so foolish as to name her child breakfast.  DaJean looked at me with a twinkle in her eye.  With an attitude she replied "DaJean means breafast, lunch and dinner!  Sometimes it even means brunch!"  I looked at her in disbelief.  I almost busted a gut.  If you could have just seen her face.  It was a mix of seriousness mixed with a little impish smile.  I replied, "You've got quite the buffet there, haven't you?"  She took one look at my face and fell out laughing.  We both laughed long and hard.  "DaJean, you're the best.  You know I'm only playing with you..." I said.  "I know that, Ms. C!" she replied.  I looked at her and she looked at me, and we smiled. 

Yup.  Dejeuner... it's not just breakfast anymore.  It's a whole smorgasbord and a sassy, little girl all rolled up into one, giant buffet!

My school recently celebrated the 100th day of school.  The chidren in Kindergarten have been counting the days, bundling sticks into groups of 5 and then into groups of ten... counting finally, up to 100.  It's a big day in the life of a Kindergartener.  The children bring in collections of 100 items, and there is a party.  The collections are shared with the class.  The whole school is excited because it means we have passed the halfway point... only 82 more days before summer!  Yeah, baby!

Fabio (yes, that's really his name, but the I Can't Believe it's Not Butter commercials with the "real" Fabio have made his name a thing of humor for me) brought in a collection of 100 Cocoa Puffs... arranged into a neat 100 and glued onto a piece of paper.  There were collections of pennies and beads... cheerios and cotton balls.  Some of the collections were housed in baggies while other collections were glued onto cardboard or paper.

Daniel and Ryan are also in Fabio's class.  They are as thick as thieves... always together, always in motion and ALWAYS in trouble.  I'm pretty sure they were twins separated at birth and then re-united in Kindergarten.  They are cut from the same cloth, and their antics are usually scandalous!  The 100th day of school would prove to be no different!  

The children were working on an activity, when Fabio alerted the teacher to the fact that someone had "eaten" part of his project.  Fabio poined to the piece of paper, and the teacher looked at it.  Sure enough, half of the Cocoa Puffs from the numeral one had been eaten... glue and all.  The only thing that remained were little brown stains where the Cocoa Puffs had once been.

The teacher moved quickly.  She noticed that Daniel and Ryan had guilt written all over their faces.  "Boys and girls.  Does anyone know what happened to Fabio's collection of 100 items?  The children all had blank stares on their faces as they slowly shook their heads side-to-side indicating no."  The teacher looked at Daniel and Ryan.  They had small smirks on their faces.  "Daniel... Ryan... do you know what happened to Fabio's Cocoa Puffs?" she asked.  "Uh, uh... " they replied in unison.  "You didn't eat them, then.  Did you?" the teacher continued.  "No!  We wouldn't do that!" Daniel and Ryan replied.  As the boys replied, the teacher could see that their molars were lined with the chocolatey, brown Cocoa Puffs from Fabio's project... glue and all.  The teacher asked them again whether or not they had touched Fabio's project and eaten his Cocoa Puffs.  Nope... No was their answer, and they were sticking with it.  

The teacher asked them each to open wide.  She shook her head slowly.  The teacher got out the camera and took a photo of each boy's teeth.  She turned the camera around after each photo... the boys stared in disbelief at what they saw.  They were busted.  Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs... they had been driven to steal and eat glue laden chocolate puffs.  They would have probably eaten them all, if Fabio hadn't caught them when he did.   

Sonny the cuckoo bird would have been proud of what happened in that Kindergarten classroom... especially since it would have proven to the rest of the world that he's not the only one who's Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
LMAO!

I would leave the following note:

Where the Sidewalk Ends 

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

     ~    ~ Shel Silverstein

I hope you go to where the sidewalk ends...
take off your shoes and socks.
Let the cool sand shift under your bare feet.
Collect treasures like sea glass and shells.

I hope you go where the sidewalk ends...
off the beaten trail and into the wood.
Let the song of the owl take you on her wing
while you soak in the cool beauty of the shade.

I hope you go to where the sidewalk ends...
into meadows of wild flowers, butterflies and bees.
Lie on your back, look up at the clouds
Let your imagination carry you to new worlds.

I hope you go where the sidewalk ends...
into seas of strangers that will become friends.
Live and laugh and love... respect and appreciate
all you come in contact with.

Remember that you only have the here and the now.
Make your time count.
Take the time to see the beauty all around.
Really see with your eyes,
hear with your ears,
and feel with your heart.
Breathe,
smile,
live...
Be yourself
find your niche...

I know I tried my best to do these things
and my life
was
richer,
because I did.

Hugs!
-Susan

When you're young, life seems to go along at a slow pace.  Vacations and summer seem like forever... so does waiting for them to arrive!  The world is your oyster, and you don't even realize it.  Somehow, we are in a rush to grow up.  Always looking forward to the future... forgetting to soak up the here and the now.  Forgetting to be grateful and thankful for what you have - somehow always wanting more and more and more.  

Your days on this earth are limited.  On friday, Danny V., one of my former students went to visit a friend.  Franklin, Danny's friend's brother, answered the door with a revolver in his hand.  According to Franklin, the two of them engaged in "horseplay" - joking and wrestling over the gun.  The gun fired, shot Danny, and killed him.  Dead at 16.  He never attended a prom, his football days cut short, he will never marry or have children or grandchildren... He never got to explore life and love to its fullest.  Dead at 16.  When are the children in this community going to learn.  Guns kill people.  I can not tell you how many times I have said that during my 16 years as a teacher.  GUNS KILL - sometimes on purpose, and sometimes accidentally.  They are not toys.

Stop me if you will... I have engaged in a lot of horseplay, joking and wrestling over the years, but never did any of those activities involve a gun.  I don't consider my childhood years to be sheltered ones, and maybe I'm just plain lucky to have never been placed in such a position.  Guns are not toys.  I have been trained how to use a gun, and I have gone to target practice.  I have found shooting a target to be satisfying, but I know that I could never harm an animal or a person.  I learned a very valuable lesson about the power of guns about 15 years ago.

The squirrels were always in my bird feeder.  I think I fed more squirrels than birds.  My ex husband always said "Just pop 'em in the ass with a pellet from the pellet gun... one pop will do 'em.  They'll feel a little sting and never touch your feeder again!"  Okay, I thought to myself.  Seems easy enough.  I was home alone one day and looked out the window to find a squirrel eating away.  I opened my window.  "Hey, Squirrel!" I shouted.  "Get ooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuut of my feeder!"  The squirrel turned his head and looked at me.  Stopped chewing and just looked.  "Do you hear me?!?  Get out.  If you don't, I'm going to teach you a little lesson."  He turned and went on eating.  I got the pellet gun out from under the bed.  I pumped it once.  It was kind of hard, or maybe I just have poor upper body strenght.  I tried to pump it a second time, and had to use my thighs to get the darn thing closed.  I warned the squirrel again and got no response.  I lowered the barrel of the gun, lined up the sight, took a breath, held it and let some out, slowly squeezed the trigger and fired off a pellet.  I was horrified to see that I had caused the squirrel to bleed and drag his little body off into the woods.  I will never harm another living thing.  I learned the hard and sad way. 

Danny is gone, and nothing can be done to bring him back again.  At 16, his life was cut short.  A good boy with a pure heart.  Quiet, gentle, friendly and hard working.  Danny was always polite, a friend to all and a great person to have in my class.  A gun took his life.  One bullet... that's all it took.  The only consolation is that maybe, in this case at least, only the good die young. 

Get to know the people around you.
Personalize it.
Your perspective and your attitude will change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6VLLa29zs&feature=related  (in case you can't see the video)

Here's a clip of George Winston playing Rain, from his Summer album.  I always get goose bumps whenever I listen to him play.  In this footage, George also talks about how nature inspires him.  I am inspired by this amazing pianist and his ability to convey his feelings about nature through music.

Happy Spring.  May you find beauty and magic in each step... for the whole season.
Hugs!
-Susan

     They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul... to look within is to take a moment to see what others are seeing.  It may even be a chance to see what you could be sharing or offering others.  There is so much more to each of us than what is on the outside.

     The world has taught me to remember not to judge.  I don't know what others have been through.  At times, I have been quick to hold an opinion about someone without knowing all of the facts.  The world has taught me to stop and really try and see others ~ to look within, to be patient when searching for answers.

     On Sunday, I went to Danny's wake.  I was reminded that his family, friends and the families from his neighborhood are amazing people.  On the surface, it would be easy for others to judge them.  They don't have the finest clothes or drive the fanciest cars.  They live in places where many of us have the means to never have to live.  Those aren't the important things.  The important things are what you have in your heart.  How you love and how you live.  Making time for family, God and helping others... even when you don't really have enough for yourself, as it is.

     I had judged Danny's shooter and perhaps even his family.  As I stood in a long line, in a packed chapel, waiting to pay my respects to a sixteen year old boy - taken way before his time, I felt remorse.  The mood was somber, as to be expected.  I was okay until I heard his mom sobbing.  I had judged.  The whole incident was a lose, lose situation.  Danny lost his life and the shooter and his family had really lost two lives... that of Danny AND that of a son and brother.  Two lives and the hearts of the people who loved those two lives; torn apart.  Who was I to judge? 

     By the time I got to the casket, all judgement had washed away.  Do not judge... that has been a lesson that I sometimes forget.  Instead of judging, try to see the situation from a perspective other than your own.  Your life will become richer because of it.

Security...
     As a teacher, I see so much insecurity.  Children can be cruel to one another.  In order to carve a niche - a safe haven, in a world that is so unstable, children will crush anything in their way in order to feel secure.  I'm working on showing my students that sometimes circumstances are out of our control.  If we were positive toward one another, and if we didn't make others feel small to make ourselves seem larger, all of us would feel a little more secure.  We wouldn't have to feel like clothing, fast cars or cool sneakers make us feel secure.  If the walls of insecurity were to fall, I think people would be more authentic, happier and more free.

I'm helping my oldest daughter with her science fair project.  Is has to do with normal distribution of a random sample... I offered her easier topics, all of which were turned down.  She recorded the dates and mass for a random sample of 1000 pennies.  The question being, would the masses fall into a normal bell curve?  Graphing it is the problem.  It isn't straight forward.  Therefore, pennies are on my mind.  I dream about pennies, standard deviation and mean... more pennies... graphs and charts and interpretations.  UGH!  Part of me loves her quest.  Other parts of me can't wait until it is finally over.  I will be helping her put together the presentation board this weekend.  I guess it's safe to say that I've got a lot of science and math going on in my head, and so does my daughter!  At least we've go each other!  :-)

I trust my family and friends.  They may let me down from time to time, but nobody is perfect.  My family and friends are some of the finest people I know.

     Recently, I was at Bond's Dock.  I was waiting for the sunrise.  I was keeping one eye on the horizon and my other eye on the swans.  I had noticed that my favorite pair was eating breakfast along the shoreline near the boat slips.  Jeff had stopped by to chat.  While we were catching up, Jeff said "Let me show you something."  I followed him around the corner, and I immediately chuckled.  I knew what he was going to show me.  He walked right up to the rock tower that is pictured in the photograph above.  "You built that?"  I inquired.  "I always wondered who was building that" I stated.  I had driven by it daily, and daily, I wondered who was creating art on the edge of the harbor.  Now I knew it was my friend, Jeff, and it all made sense.   

     Yesterday morning, when I drove by, all of the rocks were gone.  Hmmm... I wondered what had happened to them.  Was Jeff starting all over again?  Perhaps he was building a new rock tower.  I took a closer look at the surroundings.  The roadway was wet.  There were old reeds strewn about.  I chuckled.  I surmised that the new moon had caused a super-high high tide.  The tide had gone beyond its usual boundaries, and the tide had washed away Jeff's masterpiece.  

     I saw Jeff this morning.  My supposition was correct.  The tide had washed away his art piece.  That's okay.  Nature has given him a clean slate.  I can't wait to see what he comes up with.  Isn't nature great? 

The beauty of yesterday for the beauty of today.

    
     I took these photos the morning of March 22nd, the first full day of spring.  The pair of swans that I have become interested in were at Bond's Dock.  They were over in the boat slips.  They came closer to the shore to feed.  Before I knew it, they were right in front of me as I was gazing at the sunrise... drinking in the beautiful golden light.  Before I knew it, they were swimming over to greet me at the boat ramp.  Spring has sprung.  I am in love with the majesty of the swans.  I look forward to the beauty of Mac's Harbor as it unfolds.  I can't imagine it can get much better than this, but I have a feeling the magic has just begun.

I see beauty all around.  I look for the magic moments and I try to share them with others.  Plenty of times, they don't see what I see, but that's okay.  I love looking for beauty in unexpected places.