An African Soul

To my friend who dares to love.

(picture borrowed from her website)

Here she is in Beira, my birthplace. Visit her blog where she shares her love for Africa.

The sun sets in the valley

VBS - A Week of Fun and Learning

A beaker showing a week's worth of good deeds.

Lyrics to a song.

Singing.

The underlying beauty

This object is amazingly beautiful. Can you tell what it is?

Books

When I find myself with some free time to spend as I wish, I find myself thinking only of the bookstore. Being in a book store is like being with a million people who want nothing but to impart wisdom and share knowledge. The books line the bookshelves waiting to to be opened and eager to touch lives. I cannot be without them. They are good company and enrich my heart and soul. They are friends, like the book "Some of my best friends are books" describes.

In the MInd of the Spirit

We all blossom in the presence of one who sees the good in us and who can coax the best out of us.

- Desmond Tutu

Nature in the West

My visual self just loves recording these breathtaking locations.

Michael Saint Michael and Sanjiv Parvati

They are two very entertaining characters that I have the privilege of knowing. :-)

What Pablo Says

"Every Child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when you grow up."

-Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Tia Carmen's Philosophy

(click to enlarge)

It's a middle age thing people...

With All Our Heart and Mind

If being involved in others' failures through love and caring brings us personal suffering, so be it. We follow a crucified God, who truly suffered for love rather than retreat to the power of unmoved self-sufficiency and detachment.

- Sidney Callahan

With All Our Heart and Mind

For bag lovers

Duffel bags

With a pocket for a friend.

These are big ones.

With rope ties.

What I most wanted from my father

For him to encourage my strength and celebrate my savvy. It didn't happen often enough.

Here's how to do it.

Life's Miracles

A human egg has been filmed in close-up emerging from the ovary for the first time, captured by chance during a routine operation. Human eggs are produced by follicles, fluid-filled sacs on the side of the ovary, which, around the time of ovulation, produce a reddish protrusion seen in the pictures.
The egg comes from the end of this, surrounded by a jelly-like substance containing cells.
The egg itself is only the size of a full-stop, and the whole ovary, which contains many immature eggs, just a couple of inches long.

What kids do on summer vacation

Play with mom's hair...

... which makes mom happy.

18 million cracks...

"Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it … and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time."

pic from CNN website

That was one of my favorite lines in her concession speech yesterday.

Voice of the Day

Anyone who loves words will tend to let themselves be satisfied by them, and as a result stop short of true satisfaction. For true satisfaction...comes when I am silent and listen.... When God’s voice is drowned out by incessant clamor, whether inner or outer, in whatever shape or form, then continuous dialogue with God becomes impossible.

- Esther de Waal

A Life-Giving Way

Song of Songs

I come to my garden, my sister, my bride;

I gather my myrrh with my spice,

I eat my honeycomb with my honey,

I drink my wine with my milk.

Eat, friends, drink,and be drunk with love.

Song of Songs 5:1

Sai uma bica para ti, Pai.

Celebrating my father after 3 years of him being gone. Cafe Expresso is entrenched in the Portuguese culture. He went to the cafe all the time, mostly without us. Going for um cafe, or um garoto, became a ritual for us when we lived in Furadouro in 1976.

Any good Portuguese youth is familiar, if not a consumer, of the bica, no matter where in the world you find them.

I am thinking of you.

Ponder this

The influential artist Robert Rauschenberg died recently, and one of his obituaries carried a quote I find very relevant to being a dad:

“Screwing things up is a virtue,” [Rauschenberg] said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

Can you tell I have been thinking about my father? Let's honor mistakes... after all, it's how we learn life's most important lessons.

A daughter's Wish

That fathers of yesteryear had access to this resource. Great things could have been created.

The Cook's Thesaurus

This is a nifty resource for those of us semi-serious cooks.

The Cook's Thesaurus is a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions

Eating Out

At the local Olive Garden.

Pizza with topping of choice.

A new chicken dish.