Author: Becky

A day I can love

Arts Advocacy Day: The 2010 National Arts Action Summit is a national event that brings together a broad cross-section of America’s cultural and civic organizations, along with hundreds of grassroots advocates from across the country, to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts.

The arts nourish our souls, help us thrive, inspire and sustain us.

Imagine your world without music. Paintings. Sculpture. Photographs. Architecture. Performing arts.

No movies. No TV. No plays or musicals or ballet or opera or concerts.

No books.

That’s a world so bleak I can’t even conceive of it.

The arts give voice and vision to our shared humanity.

They help us celebrate the natural and innate beauty of our planet and universe.

The arts encourage creative thinking and solutions to complex challenges.

They lift us out of drudgery and smallness.

Art is not a luxury. The arts make us better and more complete as individuals, as communities, as nations.

LJ Runway Monday: The Big, Top Designers (PR 7:12)

On the most recent episode of Lifetime’s Project Runway, the designers were taken to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, where circus performers put on a show just for them. They were then asked to create a design inspired by the circus, with a warning to make their look more high-end than costume-like.

Full disclosure: I’m one of those people with mixed feelings about the circus. It’s not the clowns; clowns don’t really bother me. I just feel a little icky about training animals to perform for our amusement. I get that same icky feeling at amusement park animal shows. At least in reputable zoos and aquariums, where an attempt is made to create natural habitats, I feel a little better about the animals.

However, I can enjoy the spectacle of the ringmaster and the human performers, who are there by choice and are paid for their work, so I kept my focus on that circus feature.

It was also refreshing to get this photo from Summer. She’s back home preparing her VERY well-cared-for horses for a special occasion at which they only have to look pretty.

A new model was waiting in the wings to help me present the…greatest show in this journal entry.

Click here to see.

For some friends Down Under

One of my LJ friends, Christina, has a ten-year-old son, Jack. Last August, Jack and his family, who live in Australia, were watching a television special on environmentally friendly houses, including one in Houston, Texas. To quote Chris’s post:

Finally, Jack…in a disgruntled tone, said, “Texas used to be a really good place, with lots of cowboys there, but now there’s just buildings.”

That cracked her–and me–up. Because it’s true that Texas does have some BIG cities, and Houston, where I live, is the fourth largest in the U.S. I can’t blame Jack for lamenting the idea of the vanishing cowboy. But I promised his mom that when I got the chance, I’d make sure Jack knew that Texas still has cowboys. There are over 185,000 farms and ranches in Texas, using more than 129 million acres of land. Though the open range is gone, there are still ranches for cattle, sheep, goats, and horses. There are dude ranches for tourists to enjoy–many of those even offer guests the opportunity to do some of the work of cowboys (and don’t forget the cowgirls!). And finally, there are those boot-hat-and-Wrangler-wearing men and women who ride bulls, rope calves, and compete in barrel racing and other spectator sports at rodeos.

I was hoping to get to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo during March to shoot photos for Jack. Though I never made it there, I did manage to capture some of the trail riders as they came into the city for the event. When I talked to one of them, he asked me to please tell Jack that after being in the saddle all day for seven days to get to Houston, he sure felt like a cowboy.

Jack, if you ever visit Texas, I promise you can still find cowboys. And Jack or anyone who’d like to see my trail rider photos can click this link to my Flickr set. If you watch the set as a slideshow, you can enjoy the photos in larger sizes.

BEAUTIFUL day

We’re having the best weather day in Houston. Cool, breezy, sunny. Supposedly we’re in for a brutal summer, so this is something to enjoy while it’s here. I’d love to be outside pruning my azaleas, but it’s also nice not to sneeze and want to claw out my itchy eyes, so…

The dogs of Green Acres are visiting for the weekend. Here, Minute and Sparky wander,
while Paco suns himself.

Last night, Margot and Guinness got baths and new, colorful collars, which you can almost see here.

In the random department, my friend Alan tweeted that today is DABD–or Draw A Bird Day. And Shawn tweeted that it’s also One Day Without Shoes, to raise awareness of the difference a pair of shoes can make in a kid’s life. I decided to combine the two days into my drawing.


Have a great day!

Make it right

It has come to my attention that some of my readers feel cheated that I never posted anything about my thirty-fifth birthday. It was a wonderful day. Along with a pile of funny and sweet cards (some with gifts of the spending kind!), texts, e-mails, calls, packages, and the like, I enjoyed a happy evening with friends.


Me, Tom, and Tim
Lynne, Lindsey, Rhonda

sitting in front of a pile o’ grilled steaks, baked potatoes, salad, and garlic bread that they all brought and cooked without my assistance. All I had to do was eat! It was DELICIOUS. Kathy S arrived later with a wonderful plug-in candle for scented candle tarts that are also delicious (smelling).

Please click here for more photos and stuff behind the cut.

Hump Day Happy

I’ve misplaced something that I desperately want to find. I suspect I put it somewhere logical in late 2007 when we were remodeling, but since I was operating with stress and physical pain turned up to eleven during that time, “logic” then and logic now bear no relationship to each other.

In looking for this misplaced item, I’ve found all kinds of other goofy stuff, including some of Tom’s cereal box prizes. They made me smile.

While I continue my search, I’ll be glad to take the occasional break to give you something from this book to be happy about. Just comment with a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25.