Tag: links

Back home

Life’s been a little nutty since the first week of the month. Tom traveled (so he could be with his family for special events!) and then upon his return, he worked from home and quarantined (for caution’s sake, as we know several people who tested positive for Covid, some after travel, some not), and I mattress surfed thanks to friends and family. Then Tuesday, after he got his second negative test, he got to go in to work, and I got to come home.


I may be a bit of an overpacker. That’s like a bin of groceries, a bin of cold foods, five or six bags, my purse, my pillows, and my laptop table, and it doesn’t show the oversized fan I took along for the night noise that helps me sleep.

It’s good to be home with husband and dogs again, and back in the sanctuary to work. Meanwhile, I’m feeling grateful the new Covid vaccinations are available. Half of the people at the Hall are vaccinated, and the other half have appointments to be. Flu shots, too. =) I don’t believe in the integrity of some state politics, but I still believe in science and medicine. And art of all kinds. And that there are vastly more good people than bad people. And good dogs. I definitely believe in good dogs.

A little mellow country for your Wednesday.

Button Sunday


I’ve been thinking a lot about bridges lately because of something I wrote. Many titles containing bridges drifted through my musings…

Songs instantly familiar to me included “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “59th Street Bridge Song,” both by Simon and Garfunkel, “Love Can Build A Bridge,” The Judds, “Under The Bridge,” Red Hot Chili Peppers, “The Bridge,” Elton John, and “Seven Bridges Road,” The Eagles. I did a Google search, and found so many more! (And lots of songs that feature bridges, too, like “Ode to Billie Joe”.)

A few movie/book titles that I’ve seen or read also came to mind: The Bridge On the River Kwai, The Bridges of Madison County, Bridge to Terebithia, Waterloo Bridge, A Bridge Too Far.

Bridges can be treacherous, beautiful, meaningful, sad, hopeful. I guess it’s all in one’s perspective, so I found a few buttons online with varying takes on bridges. I eliminated any buttons about the game of Bridge, about which I have no concept because I’ve never played or watched anyone else play.

Now that I’ve brought up the subject, it’s a safe bet you’ll start seeing bridges or hearing about them, too. The bridges were always in front of you or inside your brain, of course. This post is just helping you remember or notice. Maybe bridges are like cows, and we see one every day…

(pre)occupied


I got four of these coloring books, one each for the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I decided to start by choosing something from the 60s. I like the books with one caveat. The paper is thin, which means the descriptive text on the backs of a coloring page (which usually relates to the next coloring page in the book) bleeds through. Drawings bleed through to the descriptions, too.

You can see what I mean in this description of the page I’m sharing today.

Still, she’s lovely, even with reversed words showing across her throat, and I hope I did her justice. The colors are a little more vivid than they appear in this artifical light.

My mother loved this song, and I don’t have access to my 45s at the moment, but I feel like I still have our copy from when it was released. I swear there’s a girl in this user-created video who’s a character in the Neverending Saga. Though none of the books are set in San Francisco, the city is mentioned often and it casts a long shadow over some of the characters’ lives.


ETA: Today is my father’s birthdate, and I miss him so much. He’d be 109 if he were alive, and he’d probably tell me to get the heck out of Texas. Not sure Alabama would be any friendlier to an old hippie wannabe like me. These are not my times…not because I’m living in the past. But I’m out of sync with so much of the culture and the politics.

Mood: Monday

Photo previously posted here was of a version of Cindy Ruskin’s painting I’m Nobody, oil on canvas. You can check out more of her work on that link to her Instagram account.

More from me:

Back on June 7, I posted this photo with the intention of coming back to both those books when I felt less scattered and could create a post about them. Later in June, in a Mood: Monday post, I shared a painting of a pinecone and talked at length about Maggie Smith’s memoir. But I’m not sure I ever explained why I had all the Post-it Flags in the book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

Acts of Light is a beautiful book filled with paintings and drawings by Nancy Ekholm Burkert to accompany some of the eighty Dickinson poems within it. It’s possible my friends Christine and John gave me this book as a balm for being the first ones to tell me that much of Dickinson’s poetry can be sung to the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas.” I whimpered to them that from that moment on, I could only sing, “I heard a fly buzz when I died/ the stillness in the room” as if it were “There’s a yellow rose in Texas, that I am gonna see.” I love yellow roses and have nothing against this wonderful old Texas standard, but it’s a little upbeat for the poem. =)

Disregarding all that, I decided that at some point, I’m going to print the pen and ink drawings and color them, and those are the pages I’ve marked. I’m not sure I can ever share them online because of copyright issues, so they’ll be only for my own enjoyment. But after finishing Apple TV’s “Dickinson,” I began to wonder about art that might have been inspired by her poetry, and that’s why I found and chose the first painting on this post.


I have a few books with Dickinson’s best-known, studied, or taught poems, but I’m delighted to have received this collection (derived from a three-volume set shown in the TV show) that contains 1,775 poems and fragments. I finally have one source I can keep at hand to read favorites as well as poems I’ve never seen before. I’m sure like many writers and artists before me, I’ll get lots of inspiration.

Another sailor gone


Lynne was a Jimmy Buffett fan long before I was, and I got to know a lot of his music through her. No regrets. He was one of the good ones and will be missed.

I’ll share my Instagram post here, since I don’t have much of a crossover audience.


He’s somewhere on the ocean now, the place he oughta be, with one hand on the starboard rail, he’s waving back at me.–Jimmy Buffett, “The Captain and the Kid”

Peaceful sailing, Jimmy Buffett.

High Anxiety

Does anyone remember the film High Anxiety, Mel Brooks’s satirical homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock? I think I’ve seen it only once and barely remember it, except for Cloris Leachman’s role as Nurse Diesel.

I’m currently undergoing my own version of high anxiety, and there’s no fruit cup in the house. It’s not the frame of mind I write best in, so sewing it is!

I haven’t started the machine portion of mending this quilt. Today it was all by hand. Gives me something to focus on.

I know, I know

I previously posted a photo here of a painting called Piano Man. It looks like something I’d use for Mood Monday, but music I’m listening to made me look up art with pianos. The red guitar was a bonus. The painting is oil on canvas done in 2019 by Adriaan Lotter.

I need to leave the names below so I can find them again later. They’re helping me start the seventh book. I’m hoping their mid-century, easy-listening instrumental music is what I’m looking for.

Les Baxter
Ray Conniff
Martin Denny
Percy Faith
Heinz Kiessling
Sven Libaek
Henry Mancini
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani
Piero Piccioni
Tito Puente
Nelson Riddle
George Shearing
Werner Tautz
Cal Tjader

Since I gave you something pretty to see, I’ll leave you with something pretty (titled “It Never Entered My Mind”) to hear. =)