Namibia revisited

What is your intention?

I.  What is my intention?
I have had several people to pose this question to me. One of my first thoughts is, what is my motive? as if sinister. Then I thought what do I want from you might be the answer.  But, my friends it is deeper, much deeper than this. You are never going to get anything if you do not know what "it" is!
In my readings I have found that successful people know what they are headed for; how they might get there is changed as need be, but the goal is in the crosshairs.
When I mentioned this to my husband he said he never really thought about being a dentist, but that dentistry would be a mechanism by which he could get the things he wanted in life.
I have never really thought about my intent.  I guess it gets back to the next point,

II.  Do I have clarity in my life?
Well, frankly I didn't in the past. I just rolled along with the profession, the husband, the child, my friends and did not have to have a script for it was pretty well written for me. Now that most of my life is behind me, things are crystal clear.  I have had it all mixed up. I did not know I was responsible or could control my destiny.
I do not mean to skip over this one lightly, but I have not conquered this yet.

III.  Another big question: " Are you # 1 on the list? : of folks to care about? to listen to? to please?" Heaven forbid, that would be selfish to think of myself first in health, food intake, beautification, rest...

But I am here to tell you that Jesus even knew us when he said "to love they neighbor as thyself". so, I guess we really are supposed be concerned about "numero uno".
(The girl is the photo was called Number One; anyone remember the series that held this character? Touted to be the most intellectual on the ship.)

Finger pointing on this that should be back on ourselves and make sure that it for the good of others that we prepare  for service in whatever our walk of life may be.

There is a new morale mantra that is permeating our culture.  And this is good.  My generation was  concerned with saving what our parents did and beat them in income. My goal was $40K by age 40; I did it and it was a feat for that point in time. Cannot imagine what the goal is know
The next generation wished for it and this generation is spending it.
I think I shall teach William to be self-sufficient.  Make his own candles, build a fire, cook out of doors,  use a can opener, you know, the critical stuff.
I do believe though that the answer to these questions will come very easily if you are pure in motive.  any one who is trying to cheat his neighbor, be crooked in business, deceive by intent will surely not have satisfaction to these questions.
But first, you have to ask , "do you know yourself"?
I surely found out that is a very tough series of thoughts.
Still working on it.

Pieces are coming together. Stick with me... sign up to follow as I dig deeper into this life altering series.

Compare the look

This is way too coincidental that these two look so much alike.  The mama is above in 1973; her baby is below taken in 2010. I get to have her twice! What a special gift for me, wouldn't you say?

The mosaic of life .... got to love it and dwell in it........

Heritage matters! and 22 years later!! Buffalo Rome

A friend of mine who owns an alpaca farm, has this as her motto: Heritage matters ! It does in many ways. if a child is brought up not knowing its roots, whatever they may be, they are not grounded. If a child is not brought up in knowledge of God, he is not grounded. It is the responsibility of parents and grands to make this happen.
I was given that photo in side bar of William and me and thought of another in a similar pose. This is Heather as a 10 week old baby being held by her grandmother, Mary. Can you see the way that she and William  favor each other? I think I am reliving the past as I care for him and see that same strong piercing look he gives. That was done to me before in an earlier life! Yikes!

Mary is in that typical 1970 up-do. The challenge at that time in her life at age 50 was to find a silver hairpiece to match her own hair. Sometimes it worked, other times, not. This surely was a clever way to stay away from bad hair days. Wash it, rat it, pin it and with thousands of bobby pins, make this sucker hang on the back of your head. If you have seen Memoirs of a Geisha, you will see the block these girls put under their necks to keep the hair from getting mussed up during sleep. This hair piece did the same, elevated the head, having to stay on your back and sleep. I have tried that with rollers and yanked 'em out every time. Princess and the Pea, me thinks...

Ever heard of SWSWSWSW?
Some will, some won't, so what? someone is waiting!
I have an individual in my world that shared this acronym.  Will share more about her later.This
acronym was a real wake up call to the my mind-set of my potential customer, client, party list, or the like. 
Not everyone is on the same wave length as you.  It is not personal!
I needed to hear that for I take any rejection as personal, got to get over that and now!
(www.christinekane.com)

Twenty two years ago today, my husband and I were married in a ceremony is a private garden home of M/M Bob Duke in Montgomery, AL.  What a perfect day.  The martens were singing their hearts out for us.  (We have martens this year and 6 babies tried to fly yesterday, they sort of  fall to  the ground, then take off. i I think their mamas push them out of the gourds. Will know when Sergio comes up to tell me if we have to have a burying ceremony.  We give a Christian burial to anything that dies on this farm, just have to do it.)
Anyhow, Bob filmed the event and as we watched we realized that 5 of the 25 are no longer with us, two are now ex-wives, and the rest are very much different!
BTW, Barbara's son is Bill McCorvery, Jr of BuffaloRome  http://www.buffalorome.com/music
He is awesome. Creative and most musical, got it from his mama!

May your pieces fall into place.....

Holy Kiss

We are admonished, in four separate places in the New Testament, to greet each other with a holy kiss. This is my friend, Jane Hemmer. truly giving William a holy kiss. She and her husband, John, gave Fr. Don Harrison the green chasuble that a priest wears over 200 days of the church year. The priest at St. Anthony's, Winder, GA, did not have one and at the couple's request this was their wedding gift to Heather and Ross McGee.
This woman is a Daughter of the King. She prays always.
I have traveled with her to Russia on pilgrimage, to Israel to the Holy sites and each time have grown in my search for the true Peace.
She is always writing in a journal. Not quite like a diary, but similar. She sketches icons, landscapes, buildings, thoughts of the moment.
Her brother, Garland Reynolds, is an architect. There is such creativity and artistry in that family. Jane did not have the privilege of having her own mother to raise her. She has made up for that void in many ways with her own grands. There are three girls and one boy child. When she is holding them, is truly a sight, one on each hip, wanting her undivided attention of their Grand-mommy.
I have grown to love this family and particular my soul sister!

William got Baptized

I have to share this with you.  I am sending this idea to the iconic Martha Stewart. It is that good!

William had a fully loaded diaper when my daughter, Heather, handed him to the Priest on Sunday.  She had been bouncing him to soothe him, then the Priest bounced him, he was sprinkled and more bouncing, and they bounced as he went up the aisle to show the congregation,"the newly baptized".

What everyone did not know is that the "load" was working its way up the back of the diaper, out the top, onto the onesie and out onto the christening blouse, which was mine from yesteryear. A luscious shade of jonquil yellow!

As Heather left the nave, it was so close that I feared the Priest had it on his robe sleeve.

Now this is my idea.  If you are in a situation where you need to "soak" something, be sure you have a gallon size ziplock bag with you.  In this baggie, place some detergent for soaking, or a Purex sheet cut in 1/4 and slip it into the bag and stick in bottom of diaper bag.
When the need arises, fill the bag with lukewarm water, the soap dissolves or the sheet renders its product and you can have a soaking going on in the bottom of the diaper bag.
We had noises coming from this little fella a while before the hour of the service, and just as they stood up to go to the altar rail, he cooed, smiled and the parents knew what was going on.

Of course, the proper grandmother was totally in a freeze-frame as to how this was going to play out. No time to dash to the back, they were up!
Anyhow, when William and his mother returned to the service he was in a big boy outfit, no more dress for him, and he was perfect the rest of the service.
William was  joined by his great-grandmother, Mary, all the most immediate family and the Hemmers, our dear friends . I will tell you more about them in next post.
It is amazing how stained something can get from a riboflavin rich diet!
We are still chuckling over how close a call this was.....
Heather's friend Michelle says he looks like a "little pope"....
Was truly a blessed day for us all.

Habits-Changing of the mind.....

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about choices that I make.  Choices in what I do with my time is the focus.
I am finding that if my time is not occupied with active, body moving, creative things, I wind up in the kitchen.  Now mind you, the kitchen is a warm inviting place, but it is also a death trap.
I did a "deep cleansing" of the refrigerator and the freezer.  It is empty, basically.

Except, now I have lots of fresh produce, , fruit and very few condiments.
My friend Gladys Wyant's son was hanging in front of the refrigerator when he was a teen home from school  and said " Mom, there is nothing in here but condiments!" 
I thought oh my goodness, mine is the same way! Needed another refrigerator for I thought I was out of space!
So why do we junk up with so many kinds of mustards, pickles, sauces, salsas, and the like? I think these items add a spark to otherwise dull tasting food.
So, I have made a trek into the spice rack for embellishment and put lime/lemon juice on everything.  I have now gotten away from pickles and things that even has the mention of sugar.  They are pitfalls and even though you eat only a few, they rev you up to have an increased appetite and you eat more than you should. Don't get me wrong, I love a great dark stone ground mustard, but that may be the problem.  I am putting too much emphasis on food embellishment and not enjoying the flavor of the food itself.


After cleaning out the fridge, I then set about looking at what my mindset was about food.
I had to re-boot.  Change the rut, even though tasty, had to make some changes.
So here we go with my first steps.


Suggestions:

1)  Change of modality:  In my changing of "food-style". I have moved our dining place from the big dining area to the porch. We spend more time eating and viewing the alpacas in the  pasture and talking. When we finish eating we just sit for a few more minutes rather than racing to see the news cast, which by the way repeats itself for you, or maybe the movie.


2) I also have removed anything that is fat except the olive oil.
3) Plan ahead
4) Do not let yourself get ravenous. A bitch wolf cannot be hungrier that I sometimes!
5) As said before, clean out the refrigerator and freezer down to the shelf and add back only good stuff.


The main thing in this mind-set change is to stop thinking about food,
.......or the next meal,
........... or what I am missing at the club,
..................or the Mexican restaurant.
Just stop thinking about it and think of something else.
Clean a closet, go on a road trip.
Bathe the grand-babe, bathe the dog. Plant some herbs, groom the roses, get out of the house or turn off the lights in the kitchen.  It is closed !!! til meal time.
Simple? Heavens no. It is awful. but my friend Brooke tells me that in a battle there is a winner and a loser.  When your selfishness beats/wins over your will and you eat improperly, you actually lose. So in the battle you are a loser.  Got to change the scenario here and reverse this crap of a resolve.

Check back to see if this works!


Another piece of the puzzle?

MOSAIC: Fiber on a mission

Click on the link below and you can see what we are doing to help out.  That seems to be my mission is to find places where we can help.  Maybe in a small way, in the background and trying to be effective.  The Gainesville Times, our local newspaper got it right.  The Gulf of Mexico may be in peril and the citizens and their remote lovers of the beaches are coming together. Booms of pantyhose are being stuffed by volunteers.  Stuffed with alpaca fiber.  It works!The gulf stream is going to get that oily blob and move it where she wants, but the panhandle of Florida will be ready!

http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/33260/

Wild life will adapt.  Remember when there was so much discussion ove4r the Corps of engineers taking mandatory draws off Lake Lanier when we were in such drought? We were below pool level and they had to keep a minimum downstream to afford the luxury of life to a snail.  We would be interested to know where that snail plays into the food chain of the marshes for smaller species and fish, which become food for the bigger ones.  They all have to adapt to changes in environment. That is what they and we do; that is what is called evolution.  Some environmental changes are temporary, some accidental and some permanent. There is perfect balance if a population does not outgrow its food supply.  Malthus has a theory about this.  The consequences of a population outgrowing its food supply is quite detrimental; almost as if there were no food supply.  War, pestilence, famine and death. It is a cycle. 
I had a heavy feeling this PM.  Our friends who were vacationing in Maine lost a dear friend in a kayaking accident off the coast on Sunday.  One was from Hoschton. There was a Facebook plea for prayers, but they found the kayaks on Sunday and the girls on Monday.
Also, our cousin Deborah had three horses that were gifted from her father, George Bishop (Waccamaw Pottery founder)/or born to her from that seed .  Lightening struck all three at once in that horrible storm Sunday evening.  It is tough loosing an animal, but the last physical vestige of your father's influence can be heart-breaking.

William is 7 weeks old and he saw his great-grandmother on Tuesday. She is 87 and he was perfect, as usual...
More pieces?

"KAPUT"

"Kaput" is the word the old Namibian resident medicine man said to me as he waved his hand in front of his throat signifying "the end".  It was the signal that a zebra foal had given me  her last breath of life.  For you see, her mama was accidentally killed and she was orphaned at only a few weeks of age.  She had managed to fare for herself but you could tell her body score was low and her digestion was off.

The PH took her back to the farmhouse.  After scrounging around the compound, I found a baster (I could not find a baby bottle) and made up some electrolytes, sugar and water to give to her but it was to no avail.  She was too weak and frightened.  She succumbed in my arms on that lonely fall morning in July of 2008.  I cried as if my heart would break, I was inconsolable.  That day has haunted me, for her size so reminded me of the crias playing in our front pasture here in Georgia..  I am way too tender-hearted to be a livestock manager, but that is what I do!

My husband, bless his heart, made arrangements for her to be brought to the USA to be prepared as if she were in her normal setting, alive and full of zeal.  The taxidermist ( Wilderness Taxidermy, Franklin, NC) did a superb job.  Kaput, as we named her, is in our den and is in a  very robust demeanor that a zebra can ever be. I had collected baggies of red desert sand every where I went over the last eight visits to Africa and the artist was able to take that sand and adhere it to the base over the papier machie'
You see, I know that every living thing has an inner part that  God designed.  When the life of a being is over, that spirit has a place. Sometimes we humans are so locked up that only God knows our inner being.
Reflect back on a previous post I wrote of the role of the human in the balance of wild life.  That post was a preface to this story so you would understand. Here again we played an integral role in one of God's precious beings.

Feel free to pass these writings along to a friend who might would like to read them.

Today has been a day of reflecting and planning.
Bought the heirloom tomatoes for the pots on the deck.
Prayers offered to Charlotte, for her Daddy passed on Sunday AM
Prayers for Mrs. Peeples, my in-law counterpart in Anniston, AL. May she find comfort and peace.
Hugs to Carrie and Craig.
And to William and Heather; hope your bond was strengthened and fun today.
A few more precious stones to add.......

One of the pieces-AFRICA

Having gone to Africa for eight times now, I discover something magical about the primitive, yet connectivity of the people of the desert. They are reddish brown, with dark hair and perfect white teeth.

These people are the color of the Kalahari sands. 
Our mode of travel on most of these journies has been on the train.  The Rovos Rail to be exact.  On these travels we learned of the balance of nature.  The role of the hunter and the prey.  One of the most interesting of balances is the sole, lonesome, end of a career breeding bull of the antelope species.
Once his duties have been fulfilled in making the future generations of a particular species secure, and with the advent of a younger, stronger, more agile and cunning opponent, the bull go to a life of solitude.  Once these bulls are isolated from the herd, they then become desired prey; for the meat is delicious. 
Into the picture now comes the educated and trained Professional Hunter (PH) who identifies the most vulnerable who happen to also have the most prized set of horns.  On the balance of the equation comes the hunter who pays tremendous fees just to enter the arena of stalking, plus the trophy fees if one is secured. The real bonus is that the  local people have a dance of joy and thanksgiving for the harvest of fresh meat, delectable organs and casings for presevering. They have employment for their skills at tracking, skinning, and preserving the mount. The women-folk have employment as laundress, cook, houskeeper for the Great White Hunter.
I explain all of this for I had a previous misconception of what happens on a hunt in Africa.  I summarily obtained the knowledge that the hunter is one step ahead of the cheetah or the hyena, who sometimes take a prey just for the devil of it. The end of life is much more tranquil having a choice made for them.
The hunter becomes part of the balance of nature.  My favorite part of the study of the antelope species is that veterianrians are somewhere in the mix.  The measuring of horns, the girth, estimated weight and general conformation is necessary information for a country to know who well its natural inhabitants are doing.  These trophies are examined for parasites, stomach content and evidence of scarring from battles of yesterday.  I appreciated the ritual that the PH does with chosen trophy.  Prayers are offered up for his past life of fulfillment; grasses and water are place in his mouth for food for his journey and always respect for photography that yields only the  best poses.  This is not taken lightly.  This is one big piece of my mosaic in life's lessons learned in a far away place.

Next piece: "Kaput"

MOSAICS- how abstract shapes make up a whole!

Title of the new version of pieces of my thinking to share with you is called MOSAICS.  We all are made up of little bits and pieces of experiences, happys, sads, good stuff, bad stuff, wish I had of, why didn't I?
I heard a song by an smokey-voiced artist who is coming to Spoleto. The two liner that caught me was  " let me in ; or let me go!"
That is how I feel about a lot of stuff.  It is sort of an "in" or "out" .
Love it or leave it.  If you do not feel passionate about something, do not let it clog your mind or sap you of your good thoughts and thus get it off your mental plate.

There are a lot of little abstract thoughts and happenings that make up the whole being.  I will share with you some profound discoveries that have passed through my life that just might help you over a hurdle.
It is said that no man should be an island unto himself.  So, seek out the wisdom of your elders and make new mistakes, not ones that have already been tried and a result is known. Sometimes the situation in life is that folks who have had experiences never open up thus you never get the advantages of their wisdom.  My husband is like that.  He is so full of good stuff, but he is a slammed up tight, like a clam, kind of guy.  Every once in a while he will let go with something profound.  When he does, I will share it.
For instance, he finished a book this afternoon on the battles during WW-I.  He had a furled brow and said, " a lot of men were killed in those battles".  He said ,"if the USA had not been there to help, the French and English might still be throwing rocks at each other! "Think about the ramifications of that.
Also, think about would life be if the Knights of Malta had not stopped the Muslim ships through the Straits? We would all be a different color for sure!
The image to the right is globe on my piano that has all the continents and countries in different semi-precious stones.  This is Africa.  Look on the lower left and the green jade is Namibia with Tiger jasper making up South Africa.  These two countries are part of my mosaic.
What are your abstract pieces?