a little faith

face it, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.

-- Doug McLeod

jammed up

overflowing, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There's the given and the expected
I count my blessings while I eye what I've neglected
Is this for better is this for worse
You're all jammed up and the dam's about to burst.

I hear the owl in the night
I realize that some things never are made right
By some will we string together here
Days to months and months to years
What if everything we have adds up to nothing.

-- Indigo Girls

the best things

a watched pot, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

-- Ben Okri

virtue isms

the other way, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The excessive regard of parents for their children, and their dislike of other people's is, like class feeling, patriotism, save-your-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

-- Thomas Hardy

well seasoned

harbinger, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Summer makes me drowsy.
Autumn makes me sing.
Winter's pretty lousy,
but I hate Spring.

-- Dorothy Parker

prodigy

two tracked mind, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If I was the protagonist of a movie, she said, I’d be they lady who, no matter how many times she tries, could not remember the differences between the movie theater that offers terrific afternoon matinee prices and that other one.

what are you suggesting

bean juice, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

-- Mae West

one out of four

gravity holds us down, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

-- Rita Mae Brown

directionals

reading leaves, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us-and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning.

-- Louisa May Alcott

making plans

princess daydreams, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

-- Gloria Steinem

surprises

red shutter, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.

-- Eric Hoffer

choices

possibilities, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices no more easily made. And give, give in any way you can, of whatever you posses. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.

-- Kent Nerburn

watching for signs

mum, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me.

Brian Andreas, Story People

fleet

steadfast foundations, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

-- Bob Dylan

theirs to ours

wanilla wodka, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Maybe it's other people's reactions to us that makes us who we are.

-- Fox Mulder

un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq

five cubes, originally uploaded by McBeth.

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

-- Chinese proverb

weapons down

getout 'n stayout, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

costume change

coming alive, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?

-- Chuck Palahniuk

remember this day

remember this day, originally uploaded by McBeth.

These things that leave you so frustrated will pass.
They will.
When a day like this happens again you will know what it feels like because you've been here, before, today.
Even though you will cry and feel just horrible, because that's what you do, it will pass.
And you'll feel a whole lot better knowing that ,
at least,
you're trying to do something you believe in.
That's something.

to the library boys, who will never read this

fidget works her warm fuzzies, originally uploaded by McBeth.

First of all: I'm old enough to be your mother. Even if I wasn't I am a fellow student who wants to just get through this time so I can move along to what comes next. You don't have to be a dick when someone asks you to not do something annoying. Try using some of the manners that I hope I am not wrong to assume your guardians taught you.

When I asked you to please lower your voices because I couldn't concentrate you were awfully attentive to my needs, like that cosy little moment when you suggested that I go into the 'Quiet Room' section of the library if I want quiet. Really, the way you are looking out for me nearly brings a tear to my eye it is just that touching. But c'mon dudes, look at the situation! I am seated at a school computer - in a LIBRARY. It's not like I can yank the cables out from the back of the Dell and drag computer guts into the Quiet Room to do this non-interactive online work. I have to sit at one of the school computers where it is set up and plugged in, to do this thing I'm doing. You don't have to be in a library to share the best secret hunting spots you've discovered across the tri-state area. Go somewhere else to yack.

Yes I concur with you, the library is indeed a public place. But it is also a LIBRARY, where people are doing homework and research and reading and studying. Were you raised in a barn or something? Did nobody every teach you the concept of indoor voices? Use them. Trust me on this one... annoying and interesting are two very different animals. You're not that interesting. If I squint a little I can understand why you'd think you have every right to carry on a loud conversation about hunting and blowing up crows with inappropriately large guns, but the thing is not all of us think you're awesome or that your immaturely gruesome hunting stories are exciting. Not everyone else seated around you wants to hear what you expect you should have every right in the middle of a LIBRARY to chortle over. Want to hear about my menstrual issues? Mmhmm, thought not. Context, my little friends, context.

And try some freakin' manners. Sheesh.

solid footing

inaugural socks, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Set your expectations high; find men and women whose integrity and values you respect; get their agreement on a course of action; and give them your ultimate trust.

-- John Akers

back home

crawfish , originally uploaded by McBeth.

When I get away from home for too long I start to get crazy, so I need to get back, ... We have to get back just to get our feet in the mud, in that crawfish juice, or something.

-- George Porter

headed there

as the crow flies, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Life begins at 40 - but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.

-- Helen Rowland

a one and a

on a scale of one to ten, originally uploaded by McBeth.

According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

-- Jerry Seinfeld

small medium and large

available at fine retailers everywhere, originally uploaded by McBeth.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

-- Mark Twain

ten inches deep

scarletta's snow day, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Worry is as useless as a handle on a snowball.

-- Mitzi Chandler

preferences

anticipation, originally uploaded by McBeth.

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, -- it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Test

This is a test

stillness in action

meditation, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat.

-- Lao Tzu

those lessons are finally paying off

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

don't hold back

buffalo pilgrim, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

-- William Arthur Ward

close your eyes. listen.

This song is a childhood memory that surfaces from time to time. My older sister was in the Luther College Nordic Choir, as was my uncle Buzz. When I was young I dreamed about being in Nordic. I used to hit that soprano 1 note 4:23 in. But never ever will anyone be able to direct it like Weston Noble directed it. He was a elf of a man, slightly built and quiet. With Weston you got huge direction from his barely-there direction. It was like a magic trick you thought you'd see coming but each time you'd be surprised all over again. I say this like I know him well, ha. I did participate in a few choral events under his direction in my pre-college days. I didn't know him well and wasn't his student per se, but he knew my family and was so kind to the weird kid I was so, believing he took a special liking to me, I took a special liking to him too.

Each time I saw this piece performed by Nordic it was at the beginning of this song that I remember Weston's slim frame sort of hunched over forward as though burdened, or tired. Then, as the song unfolded he'd physically open up, raise his spinal colum, raise his chin, his arms, widen his posture until the shivery place there at the end of the piece, each time, when I realized I had just watched a man transcend.

it is coming

first of the season, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

-- Alfred Hitchcock

clarity

vanilla sunshine, originally uploaded by McBeth.

This is the mysterious world which is available to you if you can pass the jungle of questions and doubts and reach into the clear, where there are no questions and doubts, and no answers either. Just you are in utter silence, with immense clarity, with tremendous sharpness.

-- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

how does this thing work

bus stop, originally uploaded by McBeth.

We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

it's not so bad

fork it over lady, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I bring to my life a certain amount of mess.

-- Kitty O'Neill Collins

for so many, the beginning of prayers answered

looking up, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The V is for vote

winds of change, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It might not hurt to take advantage of early voting by stopping by your local place where voting can be done (for me, it was the local town municipal building) and just get it done without lines, and in peace.

Knowing I took care of the important-est business I can now either pay attention or not for the next week.

Please vote.

they did it with bras, we can do it with bills

kd and mom, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Mom spent the better part (or worse, depending on how you want to fill that particular glass) of this past summer either in hospital or in rehab center following a full knee replacement and a (hello St. Mary's Hospital? Yeah, this one is for you...) a seriously ugly major medical error in having given mom meds that she was known to be allergic to, as in meds listed on the charts as big hairy no-nos. As in, meds the intake nurse and the anesthesiologist and the other nurse and those other people all talked with her about, both pre- and post-surgery. Each person who went over her chart with her talked about medication allergies and this particular one came up repeatedly in discussions. I was sitting there, people. She might not have remembered much through that month but I kept a handy little notebook into which I jotted down the particulars, including the name of the doctor who authorized the panic. Just for fun I think it'd be a hoot to have the individual who made that landslide decision and all the short-tempered staff we had to deal with following the breakdown be fed enough of whatever pills could induce psychosis so they also are able share in the heartfelt experience, the joy of being even more unwell and in way less manageable ways. Please don't misunderstand, there were some very very kind and patient staffers, particularly nurses, who provided care for mom and who took the phone calls from her children, and the repeated questions and the follow-ups and the follow-up follow-ups. I would like to thank you few for the work you do. You are underpaid and vastly under appreciated, and I want you to know I saw the support you offered my mother and my family is grateful to you.

I've heard that people can die by hospital error and frequently do, while hospitals still don't have to assume responsibility for making a person be dead. In fact, 18 patient safety indicators evaluated contributed to $9.3 billion excess charges and 32,591 deaths in the United States annually.

I think that sucks. Yes of course it's true that users and malingerers exist, people who want to swing from someone else's coin purse. But I just want to say here to the collective staff -and specifically, to the billing department, who probably only ever handles the credits and debits- at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison Wisconsin, who has been sending bills, including charges for the week of care they provided to my mother after they had to re-admit mom from a rehab center when she took that drastic allergic reaction downturn: My mother isn't one of those malingerers. She was merely trying to get healthier while in your care, and you broke her. After the insurance payments shake out she may have some out of pocket expenses for her first few days there, but as for the time and charges for the time following that mistake you made? You can eat that one.

She came out alive. You were lucky.

All this is to say, my mom is smiling and walking and is much more mobile with her new bionic knee. Not everything is easy to do yet, but not everything was ever easy to do. She's healthier, fitter, and looking sassy here on my brother's wedding day.

buttercups

snowdrops, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Pea gravel pellets
slap their open fists at the top of my head,
It’s impossible to do anything
but shiver life back into wet skin, I admit.

Five degrees’ warmth can
make all the difference in
today’s squalling
sodden wind.

Given conditions, I decide,
you would have to agree.

The brighter times,
when the swelling undertow of
buttercups drifted us toward one another,
to shake the apples
from the tree.
“They’re meant to be eaten”, you grinned.
There’s no harm in trying. Do you remember it?

That was a remarkable time,
Just before you bought me
the trip of a lifetime, that shiny
one-way ticket to the valley
beyond Coventry,
where it rains and rains
between fine moments.

When pressed, you’d admitted
your confliction,
spare though it was.
Disease ate at you
Like a plump caterpillar gorging,
wanting more and more after the
first lush taste on your tongue
of the underside of green.

Before the idea of you
and we dissolved like sand,
parenthetically between
the edges of my cupped hands
I leaned in to brush my lips against
the warmth of your cheek.

In this interminable downpour I surrender,
walking searching circles,
stepping a little closer to out there.
With each breath, each backward glance,
each prickling memory, scanning
for directions I seem unable to make
lead agreeably away,
toward anywhere.

None of the signs lead me away from you,
nor to, but I have an umbrella.
I will be fine.
If you’re ever able to find the field again,
bring me to the apple tree
dormant with her grief,
a bouquet of buttercups and daisies at her feet.
I will forgive you.

hearing things

creepy crawlies, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

-- Dr. Seuss

inspection collection

leaf collection, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

-- Henry David Thoreau

our task is to embrace

where we go from here, originally uploaded by McBeth.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-- Albert Einstein

don't skimp

whatsit, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Never neglect the little things. Never skimp on that extra effort, that additional few minutes, that soft word of praise or thanks, that delivery of the very best that you can do. It does not matter what others think, it is of prime importance, however, what you think about you. You can never do your best, which should always be your trademark, if you are cutting corners and shirking responsibilities. You are special. Act it. Never neglect the little things.

-- Og Mandino

barging my way through

twostep, originally uploaded by McBeth.

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.

-- William Shedd

seeing things

north was not indicated on the map, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

-- Albert Einstein

7. 14. 25. 5.

sunset in burnished gold, originally uploaded by McBeth.

When I'm worried or tired or sad or melty or feeling vulnerable I can sit still for hours, moving only my index finger to the 'refresh' button for inconsequential split-second updates on the number of individual image views of four consecutive pictures on my Flickr photostream. This can go on like that, with me unmoved, in that spot, for hours.

You would think there would be some ultimate reward for the devotional steadfast unmovingness, some personal satisfaction or reward, but if you did think that you would be wrong. The numbers stay the same. The numbers always stay the same. For hours and hours they will remain, unmoved,


Seven.
Fourteen.
Twenty five.
Five.

click.
click.
click.
click.

walk this way

you can fly, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

-- Beverly Sills

cow magnetism

three cows, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I'm sure there must be all kinds of studies done on cows because, well, there are an awful lot of cows grazing around the globe right now so it'd make sense that if something exists somewhere, someone will start picking it apart to figure it out, including cows. But the one that recently caught my attention and a good deal of my chin stroking rumination time recently is this one. Someone wanted to know if cows responded to the Earth's magnetic North<-->South pull. So they found a way to start counting heads, researched it, and were pleased to announce that yes indeed, cows gravitate to the magnetic north.

We marked the cattle’s longitudinal axis by drawing a straight line with the Powerpoint drawing tools and estimated for each animal separately its direction to the nearest 5° by overlaying a circular scale with 10° steps.

I find this news not only fascinating, but deeply gratifying. All these years I've noticed this phenomena -and in southern Wisconsin there is ample opportunity for cow watching. I figured I was making too much out of it, or that I just kept seeing random occurrences and making up associations to suit myself. I do like making things up into far more fanciful compounds than they really need be. If I didn't, though, I'd get terrifically bored. But as it turns out this time I wasn't making anything up after all!

I'd love to see the extrapolated research on cow magnetism.

For instance, would it make sense, then, that if cows gravitate to magnetic North we could assume the cows would feel most natural, most comfortable pointed that direction? And if that's true, then would construction of the barns and milking houses based on the magnetic directional pull, specifically during those times the cows are standing to be milked or are eating, cause any difference in the milk production and the general contentment of the herd?

My mother tells me a story about old farming relatives, or it might possibly be farmer friends of my farming relatives. The specific 'who' is less important than the action, though, so lets agree not to pick nits about that one thing. The men of the family had to do something, go somewhere, be away from the farm for a few days, so the women of the family took over the outdoor chores, including milking the cows. The women sang while they worked, which the cows apparently loved, because their milk production increased several fold. There's another local guy, loveable salt of the earth musician farmer guy, who performs violin concerts for his cows. The cows have not written one bad review yet.

I'm not sure I can write a coherent explanation to express my impression, but might this magnetic pull on cows research might also support the argument for string theory and quantum physics? If this magnetic property exists in cows, then what other animals are similarly affected, and why does it happen? If it is true of humans then what might be the manifestations of a magnetic pull on us?

Next cow research I'll be scoping out will be evidence to support my theory that in every herd there will always be one cow evacuating its bladder or bowels when you pass by them at 55mph.

great and small

backseat driver, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

-- Charles Dickens

it could happen

oh please oh please, originally uploaded by McBeth.

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

-- Charles F. Kettering

start creating

I'm melting, mellllting, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake...

-Francis Bacon