drifting

Here's another great YouTube video. Oh, the artistry of guitar.

better together

Better Together by Jack Johnson. It never fails. Every single time I play the In Between Dreams playlist or CD, I have to play this song several times... back to back. The lyrics are just great. The lyrics on just about every Jack Johnson song are great, but I can't hear Better Together enough. I think of my wife every time. The life we have together. How we compliment each other. How much I love her and how much she loves me. I was in Austin, Texas all last week and I listened to this song every single day, just after calling my sweetie and just before retiring for the evening.
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Song 585: Better Together
Artist: Jack Johnson
Album: In Between Dreams
Year: 2005
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There's no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing
But I can try for your heart,
our dreams, and they are made out of real things
like a shoebox of photographs
with sepia-toned loving
Love is the answer
at least for most of the questions in my heart, like
Why are we here? And where do we go?
And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and
sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together

Mmmm, It's always better when we're together
Yeah we'll look at the stars and we're together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah it's always better when we're together

And all of these moments
just might find their way into my dreams tonight,
But I know that they’ll be gone
when the morning light sings
and brings new things
for tomorrow night you see
that they’ll be gone too,
too many things I have to do
But if all of these dreams might find their way
into my day to day scene
I'd be under the impression
i was somewhere in between
With only two,
Just me and you,
Not so many things we got to do
or places we got to be
We'll sit beneath the mango tree, now,

Yeah It's always better when we're together
Mmmm, we're somewhere in between together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, it's always better when we're together

[MmmMmmmmMmm, Mmm MMmmM]

I believe in memories
they look so, so pretty when I sleep
Hey now, and when I wake up,
you look so pretty sleeping next to me
But there is not enough time,
There is no, no song I could sing
and there is no combination of words I could say
but I will still tell you one thing
We're Better together

the good, the bad and the ugly

Check out this YouTube video. I love it!

Thanks Brett!
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Song 584: Lost Without Your Love
Artist: Bread
Album: Lost Without Your Love
Year: 1977
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Lost and all alone
I always thought that I could make it on my own
Since you left I hardly make it through the day
My tears get in the way
And I need you back to stay

I wander through the night
And search the world to find
The words to make it right
All I want is just the way it used to be
With you here close to me
Ive got to make you see

That I'm lost without your love
Life without you isnt worth the trouble of
Im as helpless as a ship without a wheel
A touch without a feel
I cant believe its real...

And someday soon Ill wake
And find my heart wont have to break

Yes Im lost without your love
Life without you isnt worth the trouble of
All I want is just the way it used to be
I need you here with me
Oh darlin cant you see...
If we had love before
We can have it back once more

window washers

Although those two little specs you see in this picture look a lot like some kind of bee, they are not... they are window washers hanging outside the 7th floor windows of the tower where I work. I would love to have their job. Think how great it would be to be able to rappel at work every day. OK, I suppose it would get old after a while... hot sun beating down on you... 90 degree temperatures... swinging from ropes all day. Well, it still looks like it would be fun for a while.
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Song 583: Lay Down Sally
Artist: Eric Clapton
Album: Slowhand
Year: 1977
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damage from the storm

As of today there are still 50,000 homes without power in our county. Crews from all over the state are here helping restore services, working 24-hours a day, 16-hour shifts to help get things back to normal. There are still traffic lights out in spots all over the city. It has been several years since the last straight line winds came roaring through here and I hope we never experience them again personally.

After work today I drove to the William B Clark Preserve to see how much damage the storm had done and much to my surprise there wasn't that much. A few trees had been blown down, as you can see above, but the boardwalk was all intact. No broken boards. No trees laying over the boardwalk, although there were a number of branches littering the boards. All in all, I'd say it weathered the storm quite well. Yay!
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Song 582: Just A Song Before I Go
Artist: Crosby, Stills and Nash
Album: CSN
Year: 1977
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straight line winds

As I left work yesterday around 4:50 the sky was dark but there was no wind and no rain. About ten minutes into my commute home it began to sprinkle and then to rain and then the rain began coming down hard, fast and almost parallel to the ground. An 80mph straight line wind came tearing through our county, uprooting trees, smashing houses, overturning 18-wheelers. I was right in the middle of it. The sky turned so dark that it felt almost like twilight. The trees on either side of the road were twisting and cracking. As I drove along this residential street four trees came crashing down, one right after the other as if someone was chopping them down in sequence. My little car shook from side to side but it was also twisting and rocking. I fought with the steering wheel to keep it on the road. I turned on the radio but only static came across all but one station and it was faintly audible. The DJ was warning everyone in the vicinity to stay in the innermost parts of their homes and stay off the streets... too late. I was there. I tried to call my wife and my daughter on the cell phone but there was no reception... no bars. I think was one of the most frightening weather moments I have experienced. And then, just as suddenly as the winds came, they rushed past and the air was calm... only a slight sprinkle... the sky lightened up to its normal rainy day gray. As I slowly finished the ten minutes to my house, I could see trees and debris strewn everywhere. Traffic lights were out, signs dangled from posts, power lines lay across the ground. I arrived home to a dark house. The power was out and did not come back on for fourteen hours... and we are some of the lucky ones. There were initially 131,000 homes and businesses without power. I think the number is still around 115,000. It's been a long night and day.

young artists

This girl is one of 13 students participating in Art Camp this week. My wife is an art teacher and she has been challenging these kids with different art techniques every day. Today I got to assist her with the class because... they were using an art technique that I became familiar with in college three decades ago. During a summer painting class way back then, I was painting in the usual and customary way... pallet knives and paint brushes on stretched canvas. My art professor strolled through the class one afternoon and stopped behind me. "That's nice... that's good," he said. And then he said, "I know you can paint. I see you painting. But I want you to put down your brushes and find another way to paint. When you come to class tomorrow, don't bring those paint brushes with you. Bring something else to paint with." Hum. I searched my house over and just before going to bed that night, the solution came to me... toothbrushes. I took toothbrushes with me the next day and I had a ball splattering paint and throwing paint on my canvas... jabbing paint... scrubbing paint... using the bristles, the sides and the back of my toothbrushes. One of the painting I did that summer still hangs in the hallway of our house. It's a painting of the Grand Tetons, done completely with toothbrushes.

So today the kids used toothbrushes to create their masterpieces. Some of them came out really good... I mean really good!
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Song 581: Jet Airliner
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Album: Book of Dreams
Year: 1977
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lichterman

It's been a couple of years since I've been to the Lichterman Nature Center, so today I took the opportunity to spend an hour or so walking the boardwalks and trails of the center, enjoying nature and photographing the flowers, trees and lily ponds that abound there. The center was also filled with the laughter and curiosity of fifty or so elementary school children learning about the flora and fauna that inhabit this place.
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Song 580: Hotel California
Artist: The Eagles
Album: Hotel California
Year: 1977
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On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
�this could be heaven or this could be hell�
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the hotel california
Any time of year, you can find it here

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the captain,
�please bring me my wine�
He said, �we haven�t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine�
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin� it up at the hotel california
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said �we are all just prisoners here, of our own device�
And in the master�s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can�t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
Relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

digging for sharks teeth

My wife and I hosted a fossil dig yesterday for about 20 friends. The Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park is located at Frankstown, Mississippi and is just full of 75-million-year-old fossils including sharks' teeth, annelid worms, sponge, oysters, scallops, ray teeth, turtle shell, bony fish, mosasaur bones, and an occasional pterosaur bone and Native American artifact. Everyone that went on this dig went home with at least a handful of fossils. Some more than others. One of the least of the diggers [a little girl about 7 years old] found almost 20 teeth. The weather was perfect, the creek was low and we all have a very good time.

You can see a few more Frankstown pictures on the Argon[one] Photostream.
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Song 579: Handy Man
Artist: James Taylor
Album: JT
Year: 1977
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loyalty, respect, independence, creativity and love

There are books about parenting. I've never read one of them because, quite frankly, I don't think parenting can be taught or learned from a book [other than the Bible]. Each parent is different. We have traits of our own parents, but we are different. We have our own thoughts, patterns, processes, beliefs, concerns, needs, wants, ideas and ideals. Each child is different. They have traits of their parents, but they are different. No matter how many children are in a family, each one is individual. Each one is set apart, different from the others. I am the youngest of six children. My wife is an only child. We have two children, and the four of us collectively add up to four individuals. Each one of us is an independent thinker, and yet we need each other. We love each other. We depend on each other and help each other. When one of us hurts, we all hurt. When one of us succeeds, we all celebrate.

I am proud of my wife and our children. I am proud of what they have accomplished, the goals they have set [the ones they have achieved and the ones that are still on the horizon], their beliefs and their desire to help mankind in any way they can. My personal mission statement [yes I have a mission statement which I thought about and wrote down several years ago] is to help make other people's lives better. I can see this same attribute in my wife and in each of our daughters. We all aspire to the same values.

As a family we have these things in common:

[01] Loyalty to each other and to God
[02] Respect for each other and for ourselves
[03] Independence [some would call this stubbornness, but I see independence as a very important part of being able to set goals and make decisions]
[04] Creativity [God has blessed all four of us with the ability to be artistically creative]
[05] Love for each other and for God

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails..." – I Corinthians 13: 4-8 [NIV Bible]

Our youngest daughter is away for the summer [two months!], working with children at art camps and sport camps. Our oldest daughter is just a few days away from moving into an apartment. This is going to be a bittersweet summer for our family... lots of changes... both directional and emotional. The picture at the beginning of this post is Teddy. Teddy was given to our youngest daughter when she was born. Before she flew out this past weekend, she clung to Teddy. After she departed our oldest daughter clung to Teddy. Teddy is now in our oldest daughter's care until the end of summer.

As we push forward into the future, I can only hope that all four of us have gained [and will continue to gain] wisdom from decisions made and those to be made. We have an index card on our refrigerator that says "There are two things you can give your children. You can give them roots and you can give them wings." I think we are at the "wings" part now.
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Song 578: Go Your Own Way
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Album: Rumors
Year: 1977
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Loving you
Isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things
That I feel

If I could
Maybe Id give you my world
How can i
When you wont take it from me

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You an call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up is all you wanna do

If I could
Baby I'd give you my world
Open up
Everythings waiting for you

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You an call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

if at first...

In 1832 a young American was a candidate for the legislature. He lost. In 1834 he was again a candidate and this time he won. In 1847 he went to the United States Congress but served only one term. He was not even renominated by his party. He campaigned for Zachary Taylor for president, hoping to be appointed commissioner of the General Land Office. He wasn't. He returned to private law practice. In 1854 he again ran for the legislature and won but soon resigned because he hoped the new anti-Nebraska party would support him for the senate. They didn't. In 1856 he was nominated for the office of vice-president of the United States and lost. In 1858 he ran again for the United States Senate and lost again. In 1860 he was simply nominated as a favorite son from Illinois for the presidency, and later that year he, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president of the United States.

Like Lincoln, we must never allow yesterday's mistakes to bankrupt tomorrow's efforts. You've heard the old saying... "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Abraham Lincoln is an example to all of us that you cannot give up on your dream. Set your goals and strive to attain them. Remember that your goals are YOUR goals, not those of your peers, your friends, your siblings, your parents, or your grandparents. Hang on to them. Set goals that are attainable. Once you reach an attainable goal, set another goal, and reach for it.

Also remember this... you may need the advice and help of your peers, your friends, your siblings, your parents, and your grandparents to reach your goals... so seek that advice and help along the way. Nothing is ever accomplished unless you try. Goals begin as dreams. Goals fulfilled become reality.
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Song 577: Evergreen
Artist: Barbra Streisand
Album: A Star Is Born
Year: 1977
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Love soft as an easy chair
Love fresh as the morning air
One love that is shared by two
I have found with you

Like a rose under the april snow
I was always certain love would grow
Love ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two

You and I will make each night a first
Every day a beginning
Spirits rise and their dance is unrehearsed
They warm and excite us, cause we have the brightest love

Two lives that shine as one
Morning glory and midnight sun
Time we've learned to sail above
Time wont change the meaning of one love
Ageless and ever evergreen