I owe a heartfelt thank you to Sandra over at quirkybooks who nominated me based on my blog post - 50,000 Plus! Thanks Guys. This is the first time I've received this award and I am, to put it plainly, chuffed to bits (in American English that means damned happy). So again, Sandra, thanks!
I also owe a gesture of gratitude to the kind folks over at…
A new award for me ... and one I've never heard of that shall require some thoughtful contemplation. Meanwhile, congratulations to Mike and my co recipients!
It is a pleasure and an honor to receive this award and I am grateful to be found worthy. Dorothy creates images and matches them with words that catch the essence of things, like starlight in a bottle. Some remarkable imagery that I urge you to explore. She is special and has a unique perspective. If you need an example, the following picture of a piece of the Sydney Opera House is a fine example of the beauty she sees.
Recognition is always gratifying and it’s lovely when an award and a milestone coincide. This one seems especially appropriate and timely. When members of the blogging community recognize one as having some sort of genuine talent, it makes up for a lot.
If prophets have no honor in their home town, bloggers don’t get no respect from family and friends. They may love us, but they know no matter how wise and witty we seem to be online, we are really the same jerks they’ve known since we were kids and probably even jerkier. Fortunately, blogging gives us a fresh start, letting us show our best face to the world. Our new friends don’t have to know about the other stuff, things we barely remember ourselves because after so many tequila shots, who remembers? It’s good to have a wider world ’cause the folks who had to haul your unconscious butt home in the back of a VW beetle will never give you an award for being versatile, inspiring, or anything else.
The Versatile Blogger Award is a favorite award because it seems more “me” than other blogging awards. I’ve never aimed to be a particular kind of blogger, never focussed on one area to the exclusion of others. Versatile and mutable would be good descriptors for me as a blogger and a person. I respond to the feelings of others as if they were my own. I react to events rather than marching to a particular drum or along a specific path. When I was younger, I could be enlisted in particular causes, but as I’ve gotten older, I try to use my energy efficiently and let life and the universe direct where my efforts will be best used. For the astrologically inclined, it’s a Pisces thing. We are tidally related to our world. As the waters ebb and flow, so do we. We do not march nor follow dogma, but can create quite a strong current when we direct our flow to a purpose.
I don’t know from day-to-day what will catch my fancy, what event, dream or thought will set my fingers flying over the keys. The relative importance of my memories and how I feel about them isn’t fixed. I feel very differently about almost everything now than I did a few years ago and will continue to change as life twists me into new shapes. I doubt 16-year-old me would recognize 66-year-old me. I’m not even sure they would like each other.
Now to the business of accepting this award. There are some rules that go with it. I bend these rules as I bend all rules. You’ll just have to deal with it. If this were the Oscars, I’d make a long, boring speech. I would thank everyone I’ve ever known until someone gave me the hook and dragged me bodily from the stage, but this isn’t the Academy Awards and I’ve always thought those speeches were stupid. I’ll just say “Thank you” and get on with it to good parts.
These are the traditional rules for The Versatile Blogger Award:
Thank the person who gave you this award.
Include a link to their blog.
Next, name the bloggers to whom you would like to pass the award and send them a link to tell them you’ve selected them.
Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself,
Since I’m not traditional, I do things a little differently. I feel I’ve told everybody just about everything they could possible want to know about me, so I tell you about my world in pictures. I so not limit myself to naming a specific number of blogs or bloggers as nominees. Not everyone wants or accepts awards and sometimes, you’ve given awards to just about everyone you know and it’s time to give it a rest for a while. Fortunately (or not?) for my community, I have a little list so after you have viewed my gallery of selected images, you may find your name listed. Some are people to whom I always give awards because I always think they deserve them. Others are recent members of my community.
Catnip/Awakenings I have intentionally omitted because she is fighting other battles right now. Sharla, I love you, and you are not forgotten. Take care of Jim and be strong. I’ll give you a dozen or so awards when you are ready to deal with them.
Friends
Love! Photo: Debbie Stone
She laughs at me!
Now the fun part. Here are the blogs I nominate for The Versatile Blogger Award. I hope when you have a moment you’ll take an opportunity to pay them a visit. These blogs have moved and inspired me each in their own way, and while I’m not always able to visit as regularly as I would like, I do appreciate you and you matter to me more than you might imagine.
Thanks to all of you and I encourage everyone who stops by here to check out these wonderful bloggers. They are creative, original voices that will make you smile, make you think and maybe, inspire you to try new things and go new places.
To anyone I left out, I am sorry. Some of you I know don’t want awards, others I’ve awarded very recently. No one is really forgotten. I’ll catch you on the next round!
No matter how sophisticated we may become, no matter how many degrees in film, literatures or the arts we may obtain, we retain our guilty pleasures — by which I mean those movies, books, and television shows that we know aren’t great art and sometimes, are downright stupid. It doesn’t matter. We love them anyway.
I have a whole bushel of them, ranging from television shows about vampires with glowing eyes (Forever Knight), to reruns of the original Lassie. I’m a sucker for any movie featuring a non-human, be it cat, dog, horse, or sea creature. I’ll watch pretty much anything in which Candice Bergen starred or was at least featured. I’ll watch anything from any season of any Star Trek, even if I’ve seen it a hundred times.
I love comedies by Mel Brooks, even the bad ones because they make me laugh. Ditto the Zucker brothers for the same reason. If you can make me laugh, you’ve got me. Sometimes, I watch things that are unintentionally funny … Xena, Princess Warrior comes to mind. I don’t know whether it was supposed to be funny, but it made me laugh until I cried.
My lists of favorite movies, books and television shows are a study in contrasts. I love The Lion In Winter and The Seventh Seal. I love Airplaneand Hotshots Deux. I never miss a run of Best Of Show or A Mighty Wind. Or the original version of The Haunting. From the sublime to the ridiculous, I will watch or read whatever grabs my fancy or makes me laugh without discrimination.
It’s one of the reasons I think that “awards” like the Golden Globes and the Oscars need many more categories. How can you put a screwball comedy against a serious drama and have any kind of sensible outcome? It would be like having a dog show that included camels and goats. It wouldn’t matter how beautiful a goat or camel you have entered, it would never win Best of show.
I’d love to hear about your guilty pleasures? What makes you laugh? What cheers you up when you’ve got the blues? Are you a secret fan of Gilligan’s Island orLove Boat? Fess up! Time to come clean
I have been nominated for two awards: The Versatile Blogger Award and the Very Inspiring Blogger award by the remarkable John W. Howell, at Fiction Favorites. If you are a lover of words and books, you should visit his site. There’s a lot to see and a great deal to learn.
He is a multi-talented man and he shares his experience and knowledge freely. John, for his part, received this pair of awards from Katrina Perkins, a woman whose blog is always worth a visit since she has great scoops on the stage and film-making businesses. It was Katrina’s idea to package this pair of awards into one called The Dragon’s Loyalty Award.
She created a special logo for this duo. It’s on the right. You might not want it on the coffee table, though for me, it depends on the size of the dragon. If it’s a little dragon, I might quite enjoy having it front and center in the living room. Keep the pups in their place. Besides, we already have a plethora of statuettes. Not mine, but impressive enough for a couple.
In an interesting boomerang karmic return, Natasha Harmer at Films and Things has also honored me after one of my honorees honored her, and I want to thank her most warmly for liking me enough to select me. Please take a look at her site too. She talks with great intelligence and class about movies and things. Just like the name of her site implies.
Usually, there are a few rules that go with awards and this is no exception:
Display the Award Certificate on your website
Announce your win with a post and link to whoever presented your award
Present 15 awards to deserving bloggers
Drop them a comment to tip them off after you’ve linked them in the post
Post 7 interesting things about yourself.
This is a most propitious day to accept awards. A bunch of milestones have collided, perhaps related only circumstantially but to me, it all feels related.
1000 Posts and Counting
Yesterday, when I posted a reblog from Catnip of Life, I was caught by surprise to realize it was my 1000th post. A thousand posts. Wow. It had crept up on me very quietly. Sneaky. I knew it was coming and had been planning to write something special to celebrate the milestone. Instead, it just tip-toed up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, said “BOO!” and giggled. I had passed 56,000 hits a couple of days before, but that seemed less noteworthy than 1000 posts. I promptly deleted a few posts that were originals I’ve since re-posted. I figure I will do some more deleting too, which messes up the numbers a bit. But it was exactly 1000, so I’m sticking with that.
“Where did you come from,” I asked. “You really snuck up on me. You should wear a bell or something and not surprise a woman like that.”
“Tee hee,” was all the reply I got. A giggle, a tap on the shoulder and a major milestone has gone by.
Today is post number 1001.
About a third of my posts are reblogs and scoops, but even so, I’ve published and written a lot in a short period of time. The past 7 or 8 months has been the most prolific of my life. I think I must have been saving up words all these years. I gotten a lot of positive feedback from other bloggers, but Freshly Pressed apparently doesn’t think I’m particularly interesting. Whatever is they are looking for, I’m not it. I try to not let it bother me because if in a thousand posts they have not found something that makes me worthy, I doubt more will attract them either.
Blogging has been deeply gratifying for me. It has given me my first chance to write and publish without answering to anyone. It’s the first time I’ve gotten any “formal” recognition for writing and it’s the first time I’ve experienced being a part of a community of writers and artists. All of you are wonderful and I am grateful for your friendship and support. Awards are delightful and heartwarming. Although they don’t come with a check attached, nor is there a fancy statuette to display next to my husband’s Emmy on top of the TV, these come with love. Not a statuette, but it makes me feel all toasty. I wish all of you were my real neighbors so I could come sit with you and chat over a cup of coffee. Writing can feel very isolated sometimes, especially in the winter.
Hitting the 1000 post milestone number on the day John awarded this honor to me seemed propitious. And moreover, it’s my 66th birthday tomorrow. Sixty-five was a legal occasion and felt a bit impersonal. Social Security kicked in, Medicaid kicked out. I became officially senior, precipitating fear and trembling since our society does not honor elders. The younger generations would just as soon we went away, taking our experience and our opinions with us. It isn’t personal.
It’s just they want the world for themselves. We stand as reminders of events that are brand new for them but which we attest have happened before. They are not interested in our history and stories of the old days. They want to inherit what we built, but without us. Alas, but this next generation will have to cope with the painful realization that they did not invent the world nor do they own it. Every generation wants top billing and believes they deserve it — right now. Maybe they do, but like all who have gone before them, they will have to wait their turn.
Statuettes at home – Not mine.
This birthday is personal. I’ve had a year of senior citizenship. I’ve fought my way through the bureaucracy into the next phase of personhood. I realize I am closer to 70 than 60 which is very strange because in my head, I’m still just a kid. I am under no illusion that 66 is the “new 28.” I remember being 28 and this isn’t it. My bones tell the story of the relentless movement of time. My empty bank account is a poignant reminder of my daily struggle to survive. I worry about my friends; the crowd is thinning and the holes left by each star as it winks out is a gap I can’t fill.
The world isn’t such a pretty place as it was when I was young. I feel bad about it and the generations that will inherit such a mess. I would fix it if I could, but I’m old enough to know I can’t. This is a time for acknowledgment, recognition, understanding limits and liabilities. Coming grips with reality. It’s also the last prime time to taste every possible drop of joy from life because endings no longer seem far away or theoretical.
Today, I have received two awards. I announce having passed my thousandth post, I see myself a year older. I’m glad to be here, grateful for my friends. Thank you, all of you.
Time to give some well-deserved recognition to other worthies in the blogging community. Please note: I am not giving awards to anyone who has directly or indirectly told me that he or she doesn’t want them.
You know who you are. If you have gotten awards from me and never acknowledged them, I take this as a clear message you don’t want more awards. If I’m mistaken, let me know. I’m always happy to share the booty but I also don’t want to make a pest of myself and annoy anyone with stuff they don’t want.
We get to the part that always leaves me a trifle baffled. Seven interesting things about me. My blog tends to be something of a tell-all, so I can’t imagine what more there is to tell about me that everyone hasn’t already heard. So instead, I’m going to post pictures of me that you may or may not have already seen. I know it’s not the usual thing, but really, what more can I say about me? I’m getting tired of talking about myself and I didn’t think that was possible.
Here’s a gallery of me-ness. Looking good, looking weird, looking young, old and drab. It’s the various colors of Marilyn.
On a good day, I make time to take a few pictures.
Unlike most of her fans, I was unacquainted with Connie Willis before reading one of her least amusing and most ambitious works, Doomsday Book. It’s part of her Cambridgetime travel series and I’m a big fan of time travel and a history buff too. Perhaps history and time travel are inevitably wed. Even better, I’ve always been fascinated — as are many history buffs — by the 14th century. The Plague, endless civil war, a divided Papacy, economic and social collapse in such a short period of history, however horrible, tends to grab ones attention. It’s western civilization in a bell jar.
Doomsday Book was written for me. Although it is not light reading by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, it is beautiful as science fiction and history. It is the style of time travel literature that inserts a modern reader into an historical context so that events of the past can be viewed from today’s perspective.
I loved the book and immediately continued through the series, reading all the other books in the Cambridge time travel series: To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackoutand All Clear. Although I recognized that Ms. Willis was witty with a sharp sense of humor, I didn’t really experience the full force of how very funny her writing can be until I read All Seated On the Ground, then Bellwether.
All Seated On the Ground had me laughing until I cried, but it is a novella. Bellwetherwas the first of Connie Willis’ full length non-time travel novels I read, first on my Kindle, then on Audible. With each reading, I picked up nuances I’d previously missed. I’m sure I’ll find more when I read it again.
Bellwetheris described by the publisher thusly:
Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novel from the Hugo and Nebula Award – winning author of Doomsday Book.
Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O’Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions – with the unintended help of the errant, forgetful, and careless office assistant Flip.
Not merely was I highly entertained by the story, but I learned a lot about chaos theory, fads, sheep, and the meaning of “bellwether,” a term I’d heard and used — misused — for years but never really understood either its literal meaning or its social implications.
________________
bellweather (bell·weth·er)
Noun:
The leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.
An indicator or predictor of something.
Synonym:
leader
________________
It was the sheep connection I never got. I understood its meaning as a “predictor” but never as a leader of sheep. What do I know about sheep? And why would I care?
It turns out, sheep and people have an unnerving amount in common. The original meaning of bellwether is the sheep who the flock will follow. There’s no specific reason a bellwether is the leader of the flock. She just is. There is something about her that makes other sheep want to do whatever she does, mindlessly, blindly. The sheep are not even aware they are following the bellwether. They just do it.
The book is funny, witty, creative. It has an underlying message that’s funny and disturbing. The parallels between human behavior and a flock of sheep is the running theme of the story. It explains much about human behavior and many events throughout history that never made sense. Even after you understand what happened and (sort of) why … events still don’t make sense. Everything just happened.
Human life, history and relationships are neither logical or reasonable. They happen. Humanity is the epitome of chaos and the only predictable thing is unpredictability.
As is true for any book, whether or not you will love it is subjective. I found Bellwetherwonderfully original, intelligent, amusing and thought-provoking. I can’t imagine what more anyone could want from a book than to be entertained, amused and enlightened. I recommend it both in its printed and audio versions. Both are delightful and memorable. This is a book you will read and remember.
Okay. This is the first Oscar show I’ve ever seen that was really funny. Seth McFarland was good. “We saw your boobs” must be the funniest song to ever open the ceremonies.
Otherwise, it was an interesting year. A couple of expected wins — Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor for Lincoln and Argo for Best Picture — but Life of Pi, which nobody picked as the big winner of the evening did very well … and Lincoln didn’t do nearly as well as expected. Overall, they spread the goodies around … and managed to produce a genuinely entertaining broadcast.
Playing the theme from Jaws when Oscar recipients wouldn’t shut up was hilarious and they physically ejected at least one awardee.
The show still ran past midnight, and here I am to tell you about it … at nearly 1 in the morning
It was good. I didn’t expect it, but it was really excellent. Just when I was about ready to give up, they went and made it better. And Michelle Obama giving the Oscar for best picture? How cool was that?
I need to mention the Grey Poupon advertisement. This is great stuff.
Not only the funniest Oscar opening, but the best advertisement in many a long year. Have fun and sleep tight.
At 13 you can be a Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish man. You turn 15 and become a real “teenager.” Maybe mom will let you go into the city with your friends on the subway. You reach 16 and that means you can get a learner’s permit. Totally cool because at 17, you get the car and that means freedom!
Special numbers full of power and mystical significance. Turn 18 so you can join the military. You can vote and make your voice heard, legally an adult.
You can start drinking, if that’s been one of your goals because now, you’re 21! You are free to sign binding contracts, enter into serious financial agreements. Your parents aren’t responsible if you screw it up (whoa, that’s a bit scary).
Next stop 30. It has no force of law, but it’s a serious number. Everyone feels it as a major turning point. We aren’t kids now. Time to pick a mate, a career, a home. Maybe start a family. You aren’t getting any younger, you know. Might be time to undo the starts you made in your 20s when you were too young to know better … maybe switch your career, divorce that first mate, get an upgraded model. Out with the old, in with the … different? Not necessarily new, though. Because we don’t become different people. The magic does not transform us, though we may think it will.
At 40, nothing is new. We know we are far from old, but we can no longer claim the exemption of youth. We own our failures and our successes. The lapses and poor choices are no one else’s problem. Time to fix mistakes, trade up to better homes, jobs … better … friends? Wives? Husbands?
Maybe things aren’t going well. We are sliding backward. This is when we realize, with a sinking feeling, we aren’t going to get the better job, bigger pay check. And there’s that subtle (or not so subtle) sense our bodies are changing. Little warning signs. Bald patches, graying hair, wrinkles around the eyes.
Death starts to take the older generation and picks off a friend or two. A little too close to home, definitely too close for comfort. Don’t look now, but your world has boundaries. You can not do anything you set your mind to. There are limits and you begin to recognize them. Reluctantly, even kicking and screaming, but there’s no avoiding it.
The kids are growing up. Your daughter, your niece, the kid next door is 16, a woman, not a little girl. Your son’s voice changed. He’s rebuilding your old car. Is that a tattoo on his shoulder? When did that happen?
We create our own magic numbers: “When I earn $50,000 a year, I’ll know I’m on the way.” From where, to where?
“$100,000 is the breakthrough! That’s when I’ll know I’ve made it.” What’s “it?”
It’s all magic numbers. And somewhere, along the path, you know although some people make it, many don’t. You may be part of either set … and you can switch from one to the other, though the older you get, the more likely you are to be moving down, not up. Now you need personal goals, human, not number driven .A loving family, a grandchild to cuddle. A marriage that is the center of your world, a mate you want with you for the rest of your life.
You’re 50. So suddenly, where did the years fly? You need to feel good about yourself. More than that, you need to feel like you have, are, and will make a difference in the world. You don’t need to revolutionize anything in particular, but you want to have touched others. Most of us want to feel that we’ve done some good.
There’s no magic number that says “life has meaning.” What you’ve earned, how much you’ve sold doesn’t matter. Numbers don’t cut it. The flapping noise you hear are chickens coming home to roost. You can, if you choose, count them. Maybe that’s the magic number you’ve been seeking all this time.
In the world of blogging, we have many milestones. Awards from fellow bloggers, recognition by others, gaining followers among people whose work we admire. Forming friendships with followers … making the virtual world more real.
No one forgets the first time you have a really “big” day and stare in astonishment as the numbers keep going up. There are markers all along the path by which we can choose to measure success … or lack thereof. Sometimes it’s hard to know which is which.
Photo: Debbie Stone
But what is success? Is it numbers? Numbers do count; you can’t completely ignore them. Even the weird flukes that have nothing to do with our core strengths bring visitors to our site, some of whom will like what they see and keep coming back for more. We all need a bit of luck to lift us up, but when the luck runs out, you need substance, quality and persistence. You need to be interesting and maybe even (dare I say it?) talented.
If numbers are all that matter to you … well, to each his own. I can’t imagine popularity alone would be satisfying, but everyone is different.
Now, I’ve crossed the 50,000 mark. That’s impressive. It feels less like an achievement, more like a road marker, a point on the map. It tells me how far I’ve come, but not how far I can or will go. It’s not an end.
Blogging has been a roller coaster ride. Luck, timing and coincidence have played a role in my getting to this point as much as skill.
The meaning of my numbers is changing. Instead of lots of single hits, I’m seeing people who come and read multiple posts. They come. They stay a while. More become followers than previously. These may be people who genuinely like my work and will come back again and again. That’s meaningful. Smaller numbers, but more solid.
So here I am.
Sometime during the wee hours last night, my hit count passed 50,000.
I’ve put up more than 900 posts, about 60% of them mine, the others reblogs. Of the 60%, half are photographs with little or no text, the rest written, researched, pulled out of memory and often including a piece of my soul.
It’s good to hit the big 50,000. It’s a nice round number. And now, I’ll be moving along.
I love writing and photography. Writing was my profession and my vocation for my entire adult life. Photography has been my hobby and my avocation for more than 40 years.
I spent decades dutifully writing whatever my contract, client or boss wanted. I needed to earn a living while trying to maintain my own standards. Although photography was occasionally professionally useful, it has mostly been fun and it gets me out of the house and into the world.
Blogging was a gift for me. It opened the door to a bigger world. Blogging lets me do what I love while sharing it with others. Moreover, it fits my style. I used to laughingly say that I did my best work writing letters. Blogging is a lot like letter writing — focused and concise.
Writers need readers; readers need writers. It is the ultimate symbiotic relationship. Writing for yourself is a diary. You don’t need a blog to write for yourself. It’s just like publishing a book. If you bother to publish, you want an audience. Blogging is publishing. Having a blog tells the world you want to be noticed. If we didn’t want attention, we could keep our stuff on our own computers and it would be sufficient.
The point of blogging is sharing. It’s a statement we believe we have something worthwhile to share. We think other people will enjoy our work, maybe find it interesting, useful, beautiful, inspiring, entertaining or thought-provoking. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, if you don’t care whether or not anyone sees what you do, why would you put yourself on a public venue? Why display yourself and your work on the most public venue: the Internet.
I get a bit impatient with people who claim it doesn’t matter if anyone visits their site. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t blog. It would be an exercise in futility.
Starting a blog is easy. Fill in a form, find a name, pick a format and voilà, you’re a blogger. Maintaining a blog, developing it, designing, writing, sorting through your art to find stories or pictures you think are worth sharing, then doing it not occasionally but day after day requires dedication. Dedication comes from a need to share things that matter to you. So I openly admit what seems to be the dirty little secret of blogging: I want people to read what I write. I want people to look at my pictures.
I like it when others enjoy my writing and praise my photographs. Vanity? Call it whatever you like. It is the nature of artists to need art lovers, writers to need readers. I’m not trying to take over the world, but I like knowing I make a difference to someone. That’s my payoff.
Self-expression feels so self-indulgent. It’s the chocolate of life. To be given awards for doing something I enjoy so much … well, it’s the icing on the cake. Just when I thought I’d sampled all the dishes life could offer, I discovered a buffet of goodies I never knew existed.
I seem to spend an awful lot of time thanking Sharla at Catnip of Life & Awakenings. She has been so very generous in her support, in sharing and in being a friend — the rarest and most important gift of all. It has been a long time since I formed a genuine friendship. It’s tough to find like-minded people as one gets older and making a new friend … a real friend which Sharla has become … is a big deal.
This is as good as blogging awards get because it says I’ve made a difference. Influence is a word with profound implications. To be influential means you have changed someone or something. It tells me I matter, that I have, against all odds, continued to be relevant. I makes me happy, proud and encourages me to keep going. It tells me the effort is worth it. Thanks again, Sharla.
There are no requirements for this award except to pay it forward and pass it on to one or more bloggers who influenced you. You don’t have name all your awardees all at once, either. You can give the award over a period as much as six months.
On this occasion, I’m going to award this to a single blogger. I have to think on who else I would like to give it to. I need to ponder on “influence” as opposed to “enjoy.” There are many bloggers whose work I admire and enjoy, but I think that’s not quite the same as influence.
The envelope please.
To the person who authors the first blog I followed. If not for him, I would not have begun blogging.
I’d like to give this award to Andy at ATMTX Photography. Following his blog gave me the idea to start a blog of my own. He answered questions that helped me move forward as a photographer. He provided useful information from which I was able to figure out what equipment would best suit my style. Most importantly, his work encouraged me to experiment.
I had never considered doing cityscapes, nightscapes, architecture and objects rather than landscapes and casual portraits — the staples at which I’m good and which are easy for me. I decided to move beyond my comfort zone. This has improved my work and increased the fun factor in photography by 100%. Because of Andy, I carry a camera everywhere I go. He didn’t make me do it but led by example, the finest kind of influence. Thanks Andy!
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
I have been nominated for two 
Blogging has been deeply gratifying for me. It has given me my first chance to write and publish without answering to anyone. It’s the first time I’ve gotten any “formal” recognition for writing and it’s the first time I’ve experienced being a part of a community of writers and artists. All of you are wonderful and I am grateful for your friendship and support. Awards are delightful and heartwarming. Although they don’t come with a check attached, nor is there a fancy statuette to display next to my husband’s 
which we attest have happened before. They are not interested in our history and stories of the old days. They want to inherit what we built, but without us. Alas, but this next generation will have to cope with the painful realization that they did not invent the world nor do they own it. Every generation wants top billing and believes they deserve it — right now. Maybe they do, but like all who have gone before them, they will have to wait their turn.
