Love / Update June 1, 2025

Still finding a need to share in a simple way what moves me and heals me, I'll be posting what I find on Tumblr from now on.  It's part of that something new that my psychotherapist suggested for April 2024.  I'm not deleting this blog because I want to honor the healing years from December 2006 to April 2024 and the world-wide community of friends I found here whose blogs I will continue to read and leave comments on.

Love,

am

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UPDATE ON JUNE 1, 2025:

No longer on Tumblr

500 little redwood trees

"It pleases me greatly to know that some of these trees will grow and thrive and continue to bless people and the environment for many years to come."

(Sister Julie of Starcross Community)

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Van Morrison lyrics:

Oh redwood tree

Please let us under

When we were young we used to go

Under the redwood tree

And it smells like rain

Maybe even thunder

Won't you keep us from all harm

Wonderful redwood tree

From Wiki:

In April 1971 Morrison and his family moved to Marin County, California, before he recorded his previous album, Tupelo Honey.  Their new home was on the side of a hill in rural countryside close to San Francisco, with redwood trees nearby.

"Redwood Tree" is a song of reconciliation, which seems to graft Van's Belfast childhood onto California, where redwoods actually grow, "Keep us from all harm", an invocation to the spirit of the ancient wood.

(Brian Hinton)

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Could that song have inspired the creation of the largest redwood forest outside of the United States"

What is the Giants Grove?

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Having grown up in the company of redwood trees, not all that far south of where Van Morrison and his family lived in 1971, I'm delighted to learn that Van Morrison, too, experienced redwood trees as protectors.  My request to my family and friends is that my ashes be placed at the base of a local coast redwood tree, one of very few in this part of the world and dear to me.

One thing leading to another (again)

Following a series of long winding paths on the internet, I was surprised to discover the photography website of a woman who worked for decades in the Children's Library section of our public library where I volunteered as a shelf-reader for several years in the early 2000s.  Her husband plays the autoharp and appears on the album of an Irish musician.  What a joy to see her photography and find these videos on her website just now.

 

Sheila Atim

Irish playwright, Conor McPherson

So much going on for all of us.  Doing the best we can.  Saved by beauty, by music, by friends.

Sending love.

Joy / Little pencil drawing (3 x 4-1/2 inches)

"... go for walks, do mundane chores, never letting go of the koan of stymied creativity. And I still show up at my desk or studio when I normally would. Sometimes I just sit and do nothing. Sometimes I just read or stare out the window. Then, eventually, but always, I find the words, the colors, whatever music it is I need to go on. Then comes the joy."

(Terrance Keenan, from interview at the blog called Writing Our Way Home)

Here is where I found the above interview via Whiskey River.

My plan is to use my little drawing of a few days ago as a starting point for a computer trackpad drawing with working title of "Girl with Crow, Orion, and Cat on a Starry Night."