Late August light and life and a black and white and grey photo

A dear friend asked if she could take a photo of me, along with taking individual photos of other good friends who had gotten together early last Saturday morning.  I said that I always felt awkward when a camera was pointed at me, but that I was trying to get over that.  She suggested that I turn to the left.  Because this is one of the few photos ever taken of me that I like, I suspect that she photoshopped it.  

Gifts in Early August: Widow's Tears / Abutilon / Streptocarpus

Grief surprised me today, leaking from some old failing seam deep underground.  (Click to read what Lori wrote)

On August 17, I will have been self-employed for a year as a medical transcription editor, something I thought I was not capable of doing. The self-employed part, that is. The painting above, "Typists," is by Jacob Lawrence from his series on workers.  I would not have been able to make a living working on a typewriter as women did in the past, including my own mother.  I am not a skilled typist.  As a high school student, I received a D in typing, although I did well in all my other classes.  Computers have allowed me to make mistakes all day long and still manage to earn a living.  Life is full of surprises.  As I work to support myself, these beautiful flowers bloom at my side.  I'm a late bloomer, and I believe in the Love that moves the sun and other stars.

Beginning by standing on the porch and looking out from the studio into the snow and the darkness at 5 a.m.

A single streptocarpus flower, from a plant native to Africa, bloomed here yesterday on Martin Luther King Day:






































Do not depend on the hope of results. … you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”
-- Thomas Merton in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton)

(Source: beautywelove, via crashingly beautiful)

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
-- Frederick Douglass, former slave, abolitionist, editor, and orator (1817-1895)

(Source: A.Word.A.Day)

And here is something I found at Sabine's blog, along with other news of interest today:

La flor es mi profesor

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
(Albert Einstein)