The cheapest local gas

Gas prices are going up rapidly these days...not a good thing for most anyone in the world. If you are in the US and you want to find the lowest local gas prices check out this suite of sites. For Indiana you can check out http://www.indianagasprices.com/. For any other state in the union, just replace your state's name for "indiana" and you will find information to help you make the best purchase.

Oh and check out www.cheap-gas-now.com/ to find tips to increase your gas mileage...they really work.

Posted by prolurkr at 03:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New personal weblog

I have a new personal weblog...totally under construction...called Homestead-Dream. Come check it out if you have a yearning for the well-connected country life.

Posted by prolurkr at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dan Fogelberg - Go Down Easy

This is one of my favorite Fogelberg songs. I played it a lot late last year...and again today.

Plus I traversed some of the general area around where this was filmed when I was in Pagosa Springs during 2006. It's an unbelievably beautiful part of the world.

Pagosa Springs trip 2006 May and June.

Posted by prolurkr at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

There are no words

I am a long time - in a good way it feels like forever - Dan Fogelberg fan. I've seen him in concert 11 times...the last concert I saw will have been his last public concert. I'm at a lose for words...it's like the sound track of my life has been silenced, something I knew was coming but still seems totally surreal.

My heart goes out to his family and friends for their lose.

YouTube has several videos of Fogelberg in concert. Check it out.

Previous prolurkr posts: Dan Fogelberg announces he has prostate cancer

To fully appreciate the scope of singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg's musical talents, dig out your copy of 1981's The Innocent Age and give it another listen. [Click image for a larger version] Dan Fogelberg

The two-disc set, which was released as the demise of disco made room for the nurturing of new wave, stands as the late Illinois native's artistic zenith. Mr. Fogelberg, who succumbed to prostate cancer on Sunday, spent his entire career based in folk music. But he then took his uncluttered melodies, storytelling lyrics and soothing voice into pop, rock, jazz and even country territories.

The Innocent Age, an ambitious 17-song cycle written and produced by Mr. Fogelberg, touched on romantic longing, familial reminiscing and ecological ruminating by tracing the varied stages of life, from birth to death.

Age will be best remembered for two of its four hits, "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne." Mr. Fogelberg's best writing breathes in "Lang Syne." The song's lovely yet melancholy melody provides the perfect cushion for the vivid words. Upon bumping into an old girlfriend at a grocery store, a conversation ensues. Time has brought them back together, but they aren't as they were when the fire first flickered inside them.

"She said she'd married her an architect," he sings, "Who kept her warm and safe and dry/She would have liked to say she loved the man/But she didn't like to lie/I said the years had been a friend to her/And that her eyes were still as blue/But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw/Doubt or gratitude."
Also Online

Through his successful run of studio albums from 1974 to the mid-1980s, rock critics unfairly maligned Mr. Fogelberg, deeming his sound too soft. Those critics failed to recognize the one-time Colorado-based artist's creative breadth.

He was considered part of the Southern California '70s pop-rock clique, primarily because he had a musical kinship with Joni Mitchell, Gram Parsons protégé Emmylou Harris and Eagles members Don Henley and Glenn Frey (all of whom were guests on The Innocent Age).

But with smooth-jazz flutist Tim Weisberg he recorded 1978's Twin Sons of Different Mothers, which had a largely jazz-focused bent. On 1985's gold-selling High Country Snows, Mr. Fogelberg ventured into country and bluegrass with such luminaries as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill and Chris Hillman. With 1987's ill-conceived Exiles, he ventured into generic '80s pop-rock, no doubt as a way to appease his label. By then, his commercial clout had waned.

His biggest pop hit remains 1979's "Longer," the folkie gem that appealed to a wide audience and still plays as warmly familiar nearly 20 years later. Before his cancer diagnosis in 2004, when Mr. Fogelberg was still touring regularly, "Longer" was his quintessential concert staple: the song to unite the young and the old, the impressionable and the jaded.

Phoenix, the album that houses "Longer," was the predecessor to The Innocent Age. Such a connection is notable since he was at his artistic and commercial peak then. Now, after his death at age 56, Mr. Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band," his ode to a dad whose musician ways rubbed off famously on his son, seems mighty bittersweet.

The song's hook could make you sigh. "I'm just a living legacy/To the leader of the band."

Sadly, he isn't anymore.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Winter is at the door

This picture was taken around 4 p.m. today, I was standing on my front porch looking North. It has been cold and wet all day...and gray...very very gray. Winter has arrived though he has yet to hunker down for his long stay outside the yellow house.

As I went to the mail box this morning, trudging through wet fallen Maple leaves, I kept thinking "wasn't it just yesterday that it was so hot?" So hot that I was living in shorts and workout tops before I broke down and turned on the air conditioning. Wasn't that yesterday? Where is this year going...that is one of the worst part of aging...years go so fast now.

I hate gray, II've always figured I could stand a winter in the Rockies even with all the snow, just because it's so rarely gray. Ahhh the dreams of 300 sunny days, on Piano Creek above 9,000 feet.

Posted by prolurkr at 05:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Thanksgiving" is an action word

This morning I gave the sermon at our Thanksgiving Service. I decided to post it for posterity. Hope you enjoy it.

When I was a kid I would have told you that Christmas was my favorite holiday for two reasons – music, and presents – not necessarily in that order. Nevertheless, looking back, I think that Thanksgiving was actually my favorite holiday – Christmas was too focused on who got what gifts and was the amount spent on everyone exactly equal, and Palm Sunday and Easter were often confounded with my birthday, which is in April. No I think Thanksgiving was my favorite with it’s focus on those we care about the most and on food.

I was blessed to have wonderful women in my life…women who showed their love with their hands when they cooked. My father’s mother’s angel food cakes were legendary…having spent her life on the farm with fresh organic free-range eggs and whole unpasteurized unhomogenized milk she could take those wonderful wholesome ingredients and whip up a cake with frosting that would set my pre-teen heart a flutter. Sometime you should ask my brother or sister about the Angel Food cakes with Carmel Icing we loved to have as birthday cakes.

My mother’s mother, having been a farm girl who became a town wife, didn’t have her prime ingredients immediately at hand, but none the less, her yeast rolls are to this day a family legend. As the only bread baker of my generation, not that I actually bake it all that much, I am assailed with requests to make “Aunt Annie’s” rolls whenever I am to attend a family gathering in Indianapolis. A request I have yet to fulfill.

You see, I can make yeast rolls. I make good yeast rolls, even ones that look like Grandma’s rolls - since she taught me the secret two-handed flip that made them come out so smooth and rounded on the top. However, while they look like Grandma’s rolls they don’t taste like them.

Part of the reason my rolls don’t taste the same as hers is that the ingredients I buy in 2007 just don’t taste like the ones she had in the 1960’s. Store bought butter isn’t as buttery now, flour seems to be old and sort of off even when you open a new package that you bought only minutes before.

However, that’s only part of the reason mine taste different. Mine taste different because I am different. I was a farm kid in the 1960’s not the 1910’s. I’ve spent my life around cars, and manufacturing machines, and books, and computers; not raising kids and primarily taking care of a home and a family. Therefore, while I can mix the ingredients – there is no secret recipe here; Grandma’s yeast roll recipe is straight out of the old Betty Crooker Cookbook. I can knead the dough, form the rolls, and do all the proper raising and proofing required…the essence of me that the rolls absorb from my working them adds something different than the flavor she gave.

Oh and there was one other huge difference between my Grandmother’s baking and my own. You see my Grandmother did the baking for me on Thanksgiving, not to keep me feed since Thanksgiving in the U.S. is not, for most of us, about daily sustenance. Rather, Thanksgiving for most of us is about abundance. No, she did it for me…to show the love she could not have then expressed any other way. And I ate at that fountain, and would do so today if the opportunity were available to me. Because as William Jennings Bryan said, “On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.”

On Thanksgiving Day, we acknowledge our dependence on each other for emotional support when we are in trouble. We acknowledge our families and our friends who support us when we cannot support ourselves.

Did you know that Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” at a time when Puritanism had forced a decline in Christmas celebrations? The Industrial Revolution, in full swing in Dickens' time, allowed workers little time for the celebration of Christmas. Dickens' describes the Christmas holiday as

a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

This was what Dickens described for the rest of his life as the "Carol Philosophy". Somehow, we’ve turned Christmas into a “give me” season rather than the purer celebration of Christ’s Birth that Dickens envisioned.

Many years ago, I spent a Christmas Season working backstage at Indiana Repertory Theatre (IRT). That year was one of the seasons were “A Christmas Carol” was performed. For that month of eight-shows-a-week, I handed props to actors as they went on stage and gathered the props back once they were no longer needed. For eight-shows-a-week I was surrounded by Dickens’ world, and what I remember most is the turkey. It was a huge bird, the size of your average 7-year-old child. Moreover, while it looked like a real turkey to the audience, it was in fact a hollow bird…a wireframe wrapped in paper and covered in latex, then painted to look like a perfectly baked turkey. I will always remember my father’s mother’s reaction after she saw the play that winter. “I wouldn’t want to try to cook a bird that big it would never get done.” However, you see that was in fact part of the point, the bird was for show not for a real family’s celebration.

Like the apostles in our gospel reading today [John 6:25-35], it is easy to miss the underlying meaning of things when we have a full stomach. You see first “thanksgiving” is an action word, something we do toward our Lord and other people. Like the manna the Bible refers to, our Thanksgiving should go beyond providing sustenance to our bodies…it should feed our souls as well. Without the food for our souls, our Thanksgiving is as hollow as the IRT turkey, or as unfamiliar as comparing my yeast rolls to my grandmother’s. However, you can’t – in fact - compare that big-ole-fake-bird to either of our yeast rolls, since the rolls were, and are, made with love.

As my grandmother aged the life she had lead took its toll on her, as all our lives have or will take their toll on us. She became fixated with what she ate and blamed food for all her troubles. Nevertheless, even when she was in that dark place and would not eat bread believing herself to be allergic to wheat, she still made yeast rolls for us. Lovingly mixing, kneading, forming, and proofing those future brown balls of goodness…because and only because, my brother, sister, and I loved to eat them so much.

You see my grandmother got it, at least in part, Thanksgiving is an action word. She gave thanks for her grandchildren, not through words – which are often as hollow as that huge turkey – but through actions. And as we all know, actions are what show our real thoughts and our real feelings.

By way of a prayer will you join me for two short poems – the first from George Herbert and the second from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thou has given so much to me,
Give one thing more – a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything, Thy goodness sends.

Amen.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Finally!

After more than four years of his affair, almost 15 months of separation, nine months since he filed, and exactly a month since our mediation hearing, and less than 60 days from what would have been our 17th wedding anniversary...my divorce is finally FINAL - effective November 7, 2007. I would have thought I would feel bad, but the truth is I feel a great sense of relief...now he can go mess-up his life without any more of the muck sticking to me.

My financial future is pretty bright now that I won't have to plan on bailing him out regularly - the fact that he owes roughly $300,000 to the bank, the IRS, and me (mine is a very small chunk of that amount...a very small chunk...and I will have the wire-transfer in hand by tomorrow morning) never seems to make an impression on him. Oh well, I'm sure the future Mrs. Douglas Brougher, has been ready to bail him out since their affair began...wonder how far she can stretch her minimum wage job. LOL Now my financial future is my own, I just have to finish my diss and get a real job.

The picture, with this post, is something I find amusing...it's a wedding ring coffin. It comes with six plaques you can attach:

• Bury the past and move on to a new tomorrow


• Rest in Peace


• R.I.P.


• Gone and Forgotten


• I Do...NOT!!


• Six feet isn't deep enough!

Well it's all "Onward and Upward"* - My favorite way to move into my day, and it is a phrase that Ex hated...he also hated when I said "If that's the worst thing that happens today we are doing ok!" Optimism is not his thing.

*Note: Attribution - Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), U.S. president. address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sep. 30, 1859. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 482, Rutgers University Press (1953, 1990).

Posted by prolurkr at 04:11 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

I Needed the Quiet

I found a beautiful plaque on eBay - I am the eBay Queen you know LOL - and I hung it in my bedroom when it arrived yesterday.  I think this poem is going to be the story of my little yellow house.

I Needed the Quiet

"The words of wise men are heard in
quiet" -- Ecclesiastes 9:17

I needed the quiet, so He took me aside,
Into the shadows where we could confide,
Away from the bustle where all the day long
I hurried and worried, when active and strong.

I needed the quiet, though at first I rebelled,
But gently, so gently, the cross He upheld,
And whispered so sweetly of spiritual things,
Though weakened in body, my spirit took wings
To heights never dreamed of when active and gay,
He loved me so gently, He drew me away.

I needed the quiet. No prison my bed,
But a beautiful valley of blessing instead,
A place to grow richer, in Jesus to hide--
I needed the quiet, so He drew me aside.

– Alice H. Mortenson

Posted by prolurkr at 04:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A new home for my new life

Well I've begun my new, soon-to-be-single-again, life by moving into a house that is perfect for me. LOL You win some and then you win some. I've been promising some folks pictures for a couple of weeks now, so here are outside shots. You won't get many inside shots until I'm completely unpacked, which will probably be middle to late July...my new desk isn't even being shipped until July 6th.
	Ok so let's get the one and only thing wrong with this place totally out into the open...it has Harvest Gold colored siding. Well you know it could have much worse things wrong with it. LOL Like soon-to-be-exhusband's (STBEx) house does. So if this is the worst thing I can come up with, we are DEFINITELY doing just fine. LOL
	The house is surrounded by fields, this season they are seed corn fields with huge irrigation systems. Sadly the irrigation is running a lot since we are in drought. You can just barely make out the running overhead irrigation system in this picture.
	The house is a two bedroom, one up and one down. It also has an attached two car garage and a nice breezeway between the house and garage. The breezeway is cat territory, and they seem to really enjoy just hanging-out out there. My psycho kitty even seems calmer here, and she is actually using her litter box...but more on that later probably.
	The previous picture shows the lovely bay window in the "dining room". Of course I'm not using it as a dining room, I'm using it as a living room and am making the living room into my study. Come on who of us doesn't spend more time in the study than in most any other room of the house? So since I'm the only human living here I might as well use the best room as the place I spend the most time. The cats don't care what I use the rooms for as long as the doors are open to them and they have lots of windows to sleep in. The house also has two porches, one on the main house and one on the breezeway. My plants have taken over both...I had nothing to do with it. LOL I spend at least some time each evening, and often several times throughout the day, just sitting on the porch and being surrounded by the quiet. Quiet was not something you ever really got at STBEx's house...he had to have noise, as does his father, and the house is on a busy country thoroughfare so it was very rarely anything close to quiet. I love the quiet, and the low distant hummm of I-65, roughly 2 miles away as the crow flies, on I-65 I can get anywhere I need to be and get home to my little yellow country place.
	There are several mature trees on the property, as well as an old falling down barn (not pictured). This one is on the eastside of the backyard and has become my "lounging" area. I don't spend as much time there as I would like, I'm still unpacking and sorting and running and doing stuff because of the move and the divorce.
	At the old house the only high speed internet access available to me, at least for several years, was satellite. I bought a system and paid a high monthly fee to use it...our old dialup was so slow I simply could not stay connected to university systems. Well now I have a really large boat-anchor in my garage because the new house is connected to the internet wirelessly. This tiny "sign" is the antenna. And believe you me, wireless beats satellite hands down. This system is so fast that sometimes I am just awestruck. My provider Citizen Communication Corp Broadband has one of their two local towers less then a mile away from my house. When I called them about service they asked me if I could see the tower from my house and I paused, the sales person quickly jumped in saying "Can you at least see the light on top?" I laughed and said, "I was trying to decide if I can see half of it or 2/3rds." LOL She immediately said "Then we should be able to set you up no problem." And they did exactly that...with no problems.
	And now for those that are interested in what the house looks like inside, here's a little taste. This is the main entry hall as seen from the study, my desk chair actually. The floors on the first floor have been painted white. My denim carpets will be down in two of the three main rooms, I need to get the last one down in the living room. So far my decorating style is "shabby chic" though in truth I've been shabby chic all my life and didn't know it until lately. For those that don't know, shabby chic is the current rage using old furniture and surroundings that have been distressed and look lived in and on. LOL Well for a country girl whose furniture has been acquired mostly through inheritance or auction, shabby chic is just how it is. LOL I love it I'm in style...live long enough and everything comes around again. Oh, and the green leather basket on the stair post is my "upstairs/downstairs" basket. During the day I put whatever needs to go upstairs into it and when I go up I take it with me. Then at night I put in whatever needs to come downstairs, and reverse the process. Not a new idea...but it is a newish basket...I found that beauty on a clearance rack for $5.00. I have no idea why it was there but I'm glad it was.
Well that is a quick look at my new digs in the sticks of Southern Indiana, well barely Southern now. I think in fact I'm more Central Indiana here. Either way...it's my quiet safe secure home where I can write and recuperate from the last year, aka the missing year.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The end of a yeasty era

As a kid, when I was playing outside in the summer, I could always tell when the temperature was getting high and the humidity was going up as well.  No, I wasn't a weather maven watching dials and gages.  All I had to do was sniff the air and I knew.  I knew because the aroma of rising yeast dough and sugar glaze would be all around me wafting the 5 miles or so between my house and Sap's Bakery, home of the famous Sap's Sugar Glazed Yeast Doughnut.

Because of that overpowering smell, and the tour I took of the plant in about 6th grade, I haven't eaten many doughnuts as an adult.  I think the tour did me in when I saw men in hip-waders, like my uncle wore to clean up the milking parlor, standing in a sugar vat scrubbing it out.  Hip-waders = cow manure = sugar glazed doughnuts = enough said.  LOL

Though in truth my doughnutlessness may have happened simply because nothing made now tastes like a Sap's Glazed Yeast Doughnut.  Nothing even comes close.

Years ago the bakery was sold to what is now Interstate Brands, maker of Dolly Madison products.  Dolly Madison = saw dust= also enough said.  LOL  And in today's edition of The Republic, our local newspaper, it was announced that Dolly Madison has ended it's poor attempt to mass produce Sap Essex's stellar doughnuts.  The end of another remnant of my childhood. 

What can I say, the old-timers around here knew that Dolly Madison's version wasn't even close to the same as Sap's taste treat.  You ask how we knew?  Well no smells emerge from the Interstate Brands Bakery...none at all...unless you count the scent of diesel fuel from the 18-wheelers loading and unloading their cargo outside the plant.  The products just can't be the same if nothing smells sickingly sugary sweat and yeasty over 5-miles away.

Sap's yeast doughnut no longer produced

Related links: 

Posted by prolurkr at 09:34 AM | TrackBack

A sad sad day

Like many of you, I like to think of universities as special revered places.  Sadly today in the U.S. we get to see how special a campus can be.  I'm crying thinking about the students and the faculty that died so senselessly...and what had to have happened to the shooter to make him think this was something he should do.

The campus has now been closed and students evacuated

A US shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech university has left 33 people, including a suspected gunman, dead.

 

 

 

Posted by prolurkr at 06:18 PM | TrackBack

Have you ever had one of those days?

Well today appears to be one of them for me.  *sigh*  Multi-tasking got me into trouble, so...

Steve from Indiana Rep, I pushed the wrong button on FaceBook...email me your user info and I'll add you in.  Sorry.

Dan from BSU, now in Chicago, I can't find your email addy so if you see this email me please.

Thanks all.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:27 AM | TrackBack

Which Serenity character are you?

Your results:
You are Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)

Posted by prolurkr at 08:44 AM | TrackBack

Purple & Gold Converse Chucks look 4.5" heel size 11

Ok I am a huge fan of Chuck Taylor Converse. In my time I have had red ones, and green ones, and white ones, and black ones among other colors...in high-tops or low-tops. Right now I'm bidding on a pair of bright yellow slip-on's on eBay.

But my all-time favorite pair were the purple high-top's I bought my senior year in high school...I throw them out a couple of years ago because I can't wear them anymore.  It's depressing, our feet continue to grow throughout our lifetime...which is not something those of us with big feet want to hear. LOL

Check out the auction notice
Purple & Gold Converse Chucks look 4.5" heel size 11

My love of Chuck Taylor's might have been slightly influenced by Mr. Taylor's time on the Columbus (Indiana) High School Basketball Team...aka my hometown but not my high school.  He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969. Wikipedia has a nice entry with a picture see Chuck Taylor (salesman).

Posted by prolurkr at 06:45 PM | TrackBack

Spring has come to the farm

Spring has sprung in Southern Indiana, all of the necessary signs are in alignment.  All three happenings must be present for spring to be declared on our homestead.  First, the snowdrops have been in bloom for about two weeks.  Second, we have lambs...I love lambs.  They are so cute and fuzzy and I can see them popping across the pasture from my kitchen window, they are four-legged popcorn springing around...to bad they grow up to be sheep.  Three, the Northern Spring Peepers must be croaking their mating calls:

The loud, peeping chorus of Spring Peepers means winter is finally coming to an end. These little frogs are among the very first to call and breed in the spring, often starting while there is still snow on the ground and ice on the lakes.

So by the power invested in me by no one with any sense...LOL...I declare it SPRING!

Posted by prolurkr at 05:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Ice and snow descend on my yard

There is little in this winter world that is more destructive then an ice storm...and little that is more beautiful….the way the tree branches are coated with the glimmer of ice…each fragile branch surrounded and encased with the hard edges of ice. It is stark and amazingly beautiful.

But it is destructive even with all this beauty. There are already large limbs down in our yard, our old soft maples can't take the weight especially with wind.  I figure there will be more by sunrise tomorrow when the storm should have moved on into Ohio and moving toward points east.

I went out earlier to see the damage and, as usual, I ended up wandering around taking in the winter sights and sounds in a space I know so well…my own yard. The snow has nestled in the rows of the hay field, to the west, creating lines reminiscent of parallel cross-country trails. The birds have moved up to the yard from the back woods, at least they do so during the day, on days when the feeders are full. A pair of noisy blue jays lord over the groundfeeders driving smaller birds off so the bullies can grab the peanuts before the littler guys can get their fill. None of them seem to realize there is enough for all of them…I have more in the potting shed ready to refill the feeders when it is needed.

Some of the neighborhood wildlife has moved in closer to human habitation as well…the mangiest raccoon I have ever seen is living in our old garage. It comes out on warmer – a relative term if ever there was one – afternoons to sun itself near the door and lick its nether regions in the sun. For some strange reason it seems to like sitting in the electric watering bowl…which makes me glad that the state doesn’t check the sanitation of our serving area. LOL It will be enjoying our hospitality for a few more days until hubby is well enough to take care of it...it's a non-paying guest who has clearly worn-out it's welcome.

The feral cats stalk the bird feeders or try to chase the resident outdoor felines away from their Little Friskies when I put out their morning and evening bowls. One of the feral cats, an almost duplicate of one of my house cats, has taken to spending hours laying in my ground critter feeder…a small trough about two feet long with 10 inch sides. He seems to think that he has the advantage in catching birds from that location…I don’t think anyone has told him that sitting on the bird's food is not the best place to be if you want to spring out and surprise them. LOL

Oh well…more ice tonight and more snow…so tomorrow should bring more interesting sights and sounds in the yard.

p.s. The picture is not from my yard, rather it was taken in Bloomington somewhere near campus from the look of it. I swipped this from one of the Indianapolis television stations webpages, WTHR Channel 13.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:48 PM | TrackBack

Happy Holidays to all

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (I'm a little late, sorry), Blessed Be for this year's Winter Solstice (also late, sorry), a joyous Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year to all of you and your families.

May 2007 bring all of us peace and joy, and a few publications just to keep us all on track.  *S*

Posted by prolurkr at 12:44 PM | TrackBack

A moderately religious woman's prayer

Thanks to Thomas Merton for a prayer that mostly catches how I am feeling these days where I can't see the road or it's end.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that