There and Back Again

Pondering: I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see. (Peggy Noonan)
Everything I have seen during this trip reminds me of how small I am in the grand scheme of things. The vast ocean, the endless snow-capped mountains, the age-old [...]

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Pondering: When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. (Mohandas Gandhi)
Today didn’t start out right at all.
It started last night, really when we got news that there had been a landslide early in the day and so therefore [...]

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Pondering: To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us. (William Hazlitt)
Day 2 of our cruise. I woke up early, around 430 p.m. to find two things that brought a smile to my face: first, the vessel was slowly approaching the port of Ketchikan, in the southeastern [...]

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Pondering: Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. (Diane Ackerman)
For the first time in my adult life, I had a massage. Not a back rub or the occasional neck massage my sister gives me [...]

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Pondering: A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. (Robert Frost)
It has been ages since I’ve written anything.  This is worrying because it’s either I haven’t had the time, in a long time to write, and/or nothing’s happened to me in a long time that’s worth [...]

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Pondering: Beauty and sadness always go together.Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth upon the earth without a meet alloy. (George MacDonald)
Some pictures or images invoke a feeling of sadness and happiness. These ones I found while perusing Google Images brings a melancholy for moments that happened before my time.

The Kennedys

Charlie Chaplin

The Beatles

Brian [...]

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Pondering: It’s all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back. (Mick Jagger)
I saw this question at some random website, can’t remember anymore which one: if you were a songwriter, what songs do you wish you composed? If I were a songwriter, these are the songs I wish I wrote [...]

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Pondering: Sailing on summer breeze and skipping over the ocean like a stone. (Harry Nilson, Everybody’s Talking)

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Pondering: Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am overjoyed when I read what my dear nephew Mike August (now fondly called Mique) is up to nowadays. Last time I saw him, he was only a baby - five years old, I think. Now he’s [...]

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Pondering: One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. (Elbert Hubbard)
I got tagged, so I had to…. The rule is, once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you and tag [...]

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