Every June, there are two wonderful weekends of beautiful Music
at the Cathedral in downtown St. Augustine,
with the greatest acoustics and world class musicians,
it is heavenly!
Handel, Mozart, Haydn,
what can I say?
Thank You!
The Saint Augustine Music Festival, Saturday night.
If someone dreamed up the world that we live in,
(and believe me someone did)
then we can dream up a better world.
Together.
Sometimes with all of the bad news in the air,
it is difficult to remember that we live
in a beautiful,
magical
world.
We must remember to love.
That is the only way out of the madness.
Love.
Faery Garden at Avis' and Lee's house in Roanoke, Virginia.
Again!
Cold air meets warmish water and voila, sea smoke!
Thanks to David for sharing this beautiful phenomena in the cold hours after sunrise, Sunday morning, January 24th, 2016.
St. Augustine Beach.
In Disney parks,
a lot of things are make believe.
But the sun setting at Epcot was very real.
As was the food and the people and the friends we came with and the friends we met at the park.
All real!
Epcot Park, Disney World, Florida.
Three days, three Disney parks...
and oh so many princesses!
A whirlwind of fun, crowds and surprises,
the first time for this old gal,
with a new appreciation for the creativity
that is Disney.
The Magic Kingdom, Castle and a lovely Princess and her little Prince.
Isn't it good,
Hungarian wood?
A little green for a winter's day.
The park on the way to the castle in Godollo, Hungary.
(Sounds like a fairy tale...into the woods...a castle...talking trees!)
©2014 Michelle Moore
If you miss a double rainbow,
but a really good friend sends you her wonderful photo of it,
then maybe you didn't entirely miss it,
even though you did miss it!
Anyway, so grateful for friends who see and share!
Double rainbow, November 10, 2014, thanks to Michelle Moore for seeing this in her front yard and sharing it with me!
A swinging, singing witch?
A flying witch?
Or a laughing witch?
Whichever witch you choose to be,
today,
or in life,
have fun!
AND
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Witches of Szentendres, Hungary, or perhaps variations of Baba Yaga, wise woman of Russian and Slavic folklore.
Set this shot as my desktop photo and it takes my breath away everytime I look at it.
Borrowed from the Astronomy Picture of the Day,
the Milky Way and bioluminescence and glowing light in the sky,
along the shoreline of Victoria Lake, Australia.
Oh my!
Photo, Shooting Stars, by Phil Hart.
Snowing at night and sticking to everything,
the branches of the trees, the trunks,
the street lights.
One of the most beautiful nights of my life,
keeping me cool tonight!
The Valentine's snow storm, Baltimore, 2014. What you can't see are the marvelous hardwood trees in the background, all covered in snow.
According to the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell,
"...we cancelled the Declaration of Independence," when we entered the First World War
and re-joined the chaos of Europe.
He believed that it was a turning point in American politics that has led us away from idealism
and onto the slippery slope of greed, "the principal passion in politics".
There are a great many freedoms in America and more on the horizon,
and we are still part of the Great Experiment of Democracy,
and there is still time to get it right.
Happy 4th of July!
Reprinted from LainesBlog, July 4, 2012, with her permission!!
Sometimes we get distracted and miss something really wonderful
happening right behind us.
Or if we are lucky,
there is a nice person there to say,
"Can you see the colors in that cloud?"
Oh My!
Yes, I can!
Thank you!
St. Augustine Beach, not really as dark as this shot suggests, but the cloud was as bright and beautiful!
To be just a wet stone,
or to reflect the sky above?
Changing your focus can conjure up magic,
like this reflection in a very shallow pool of rainwater.
This bit of springtime magic is...
at the end of this,
and in a few weeks...
it will unfold into that!
We do that too,
but it takes a lot longer
to come into our magnificence.
At least for me it did, does...
So, what do you want to do today?
Walk?
You know I can fly, right?
Of course you do!
Oh, you can too?
What's metforkly?
If you go away,
and you wish for a winter wonderland,
if only for the few days that you are away,
and it HAPPENS(!),
timed perfectly for your safe arrival.
Well,
the best response is...
Thank You!
Beautiful!
Wonderful!
Thank You!
Baltimore's 14 inches of wonderful! (At least for this travelling Floridian!)
A Little Tribute To
THE BEATLES
Do you want to know a secret?
I want to tell you.
Here, there, and everywhere
Across the universe,
Your mother should know,
It's only love.
Wait -
All you need is love.
Oh Darling,
Golden slumbers,
Goodnight.
Song titles from the assorted collection of Beatles' albums, including: Introducing the Beatles, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road, Let It Be, The White Album.
What if you are here on this beautiful, physical, gravity based planet,
simply because you want to be here?
You like a challenge!
A funny thing happened when I got to the beach this evening.
There were quite a few sea gulls soaking up the last rays of sunlight over there,
and when I reached into my bag to get a camera to take a shot of the sky blending with the horizon,
all of the gulls and their cousins and their cousins flew over to me.
I was surrounded and they were really close and looking me right in the eye.
I explained to them that it was just a camera, and not food,
but they did not believe me.
So I took photos of them and chatted a bit and took more photos.
Finally, I walked the rest of the way to the water's edge,
and they followed me!
All of them,
walking behind me and beside me and some of them flying.
IT WAS WONDERFUL!
I felt like the Pied Piper.
Eventually they went their own way,
but the magic that they had bestowed on me had already taken hold
and I was just plain stupid happy!
On my way back along the beach, someone came along who looked a little like me,
(even if it was a guy)
and sure enough he had a bag of food for my new best friends.
So everyone was happy -
including the surfers!
St. Augustine Beach. Sky meets water meets surfer!
It's the sun that's on fire,
not the bushes!
Our brightly burning star is a mere 93 million miles away,
yet it only takes 8 minutes for its light to reach us -
8 minutes, traveling 186,000 miles per second.
It's a mind boggling universe.
Late afternoon sunlight shining across Moses Creek into the woods along the path.
(Yes, it was Moses who was also startled by a burning bush.)
When warm(ish) salty water
meets the cold night air,
there is a mist that calls to the soul
like the sirens of myths and fantasy.
No danger to the land lubber,
just a reminder
that this is heaven now.
Yesterday's sunrise, caught lovingly by David Gardner © 2014.
Thanks to David for this and all of his wonderful daily sunrises over St. Augustine Beach. You are a gift!
Now here's a gruesome thought...
(bear with me)
Since we - each and every one of us -
(except those magicians among us)
are going to die one day,
then we really are the
living dead.
Rather than being a depressing thought,
this idea has the potential to liberate us
from the fear of living...
of really being alive.
After all, it will too soon be over and then what?
Ok, so the idea is a little rough around the edges...
how to smooth it out?
Perhaps with a question...
What are you waiting for?
There, that's better.
Happy Halloween!
Ok, there is a name for this phenomenon.
The sun is setting behind you,
and looking east, there are rays of sun and shadow -
created by what?
St. Augustine Beach, this was opposite the previous photo. Rays in the west and east.
Drum Roll Please...
The next post will be my 500th!!!! It might show up on Friday morning or Saturday or Sunday or Monday...but it will show up with some favorite quotes from my 500 posts! WooooHoooooo!
Music, that strange juxtaposition of sounds - melodies and harmonies and syncopations -
is as ephemeral as the wind.
Bette Davis once said that music was the one thing that she could not live without.
It's a kind of magic soup that is cooked up by wizards of many stripes -
from geniuses to crickets and frogs!
The young band pictured here is certainly making some fine music.
Can't you just hear it?
Magic Lantern slide print The Band, by Patricia A. Burke ©2002, with stars and moon added by this photographer!
Look at all of those teeth!
A little over three months ago this was his wonderful smile...
He's been working hard on those teeth!
One of my very best pal's baby, possibly my grandchild...
It still snows up north,
even though it is 75 degrees here in St. Augustine.
It's less real than a dream,
and impossible to conjure up the actuality of snow!
In this photo it's snowing one of those magical snowfalls,
where the flakes quietly stick to the branches,
transforming the forest.
You might say that this shortcoming of ours, not being able to invoke snow,
is a plug for being in the moment,
because all that we are is here and now.
Gentle snowfall in Beech Forest, Cape Cod.
Have you ever had a day where one moment was so very important
that your entire future rested upon it?
A day outside of space and time,
when you must keep your appointment with the gods
who decide your fate?
Mythical moments, like the shard of a rainbow,
and all is well, if at the end of the day
you feel that the gods have smiled on you?
How many masks do we shed in a lifetime?
Each one seems to be the "real" one, the "last" one.
until it is peeled away to reveal another,
and another,
and
another.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?
How many more to come?