I love ’em. What can I say? It reminds me of pouring over printed pages and illustrations from old books that my parents stored away. They were textbooks and pulp novels from the late 19th Century through the early 20th. Even if I did not want to read the book cover to cover, I would scan each page looking at typography, although I didn’t know about the subject, I just loved the form of the letters. And old illustrations. I loved the compounding of message with the use of just the right image. That this could be done with just a few lines of ink amazed me. I loved being amazed.
This widget from Old Book Illustrations is my new favorite find, click on the image to go there.
So instead of an app of the week this is a widget of the week that will give you different images from the site for decoration on your site, if you are in search of such a thing. You can select among various sub-categories of images such as plants, people, buildings.
The site also offers some freebie graphic downloads with no strings attached and some fee for service offerings.
February is for Love
I miss writing about “important stuff” here on my personal site, so while I once viewed NaBloPoMo as a true challenge, and a total commitment to the discipline that writing requires, I am now undertaking a month of posting every single day right here on Reason Creek out of needing to write for the love of writing. Working on my site for Boomer and early Gen X women is fun but it is a structured task and an editorial and business venture, so… I sort of miss just writing. So this month I will be posting here for the love of it and I might even follow some of the prompts for the monthly writing challenge.
Today's prompt at BlogHer's NaBloPoMo is: The last time you said I love you. I thought about taking this prompt up, and talking about true LAST times I said I love you to someone. But that did not sound like fun, at all. Nor did it seem like it would provide any opportunity for spiritual growth. So I will just say, I learned that lesson long ago. The last time I said I love you to my husband was this morning. The last time I said I love you to my daughter and brothers was when I last spoke to them on the phone.
But the last time I articulated all the things I love, if one can actually love a thing, is a long time ago. So I think I will do that today, just for fun.
Activities I Love
- Cuddling with my kitties
- Taking a long, deep, hot, epsom salt bath preferably with jets
- Quiet walks in ancient places
Things I Love
- Fresh warm linens straight out of the drier
- 11 circuit labyrinths
- Things worn smooth with age and use
Places I Love
- The tiny creek just north of the farm house where I grew up
- The oldest part of my home in Tucson built in 1929
- Deserted places where land and water meet
Scents I Love
- lilacs
- hot apple pie
- alpine air
This was good. I needed this. It is calming and comforting to think of all these things.
If Wishes Were Horses, Then Decisions Would Never Have To Be Made More Than Once.
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. That is what the old saying, sooth or otherwise, announced to the children to whom it was taught along with nursery rhymes, counting songs and the like. “I learned this when I was little,” was what my Mom would tell me when she was teaching me things she learned as a child. Sometimes she would add information about who taught it to her, or her surrounding when she learned it. No matter how the nuances split away from the main story to create the specifics of the thing she was teaching me, I recognized the main big lesson that underlay them all was that things repeat, life is a line that spirals circularly through time creating the illusion of sameness or repetition. Someone taught her, and now she teaches me, and someday I will teach others. I had the comfort of knowing this was true, that life had constants and I was a part of that cycle.
I so wish every state had a repository of women's knowledge. One of the great things about the beginning maturation of the internet is that women are using it to collectively share, and also archive, women's knowledge in a way that has not only been not only difficult but discouraged for centuries, if not for millennia. It should be a place for women to write, to study, for projects focused on preserving previous generations knowledge and skills in all areas.
Women's culture is different, and more expansive, than men's culture. I won't argue that point here. It is a given in my understanding of the world. I see it everyday in the groups I follow and in which I participate. I participate in a group called, GBE2, for bloggers. Every week the organizer of the group posts a writing prompt for the week. This week the prompt is free writing. This is my free writing product that happens to incorporate the prompts for the previous three weeks as well.
Esteem of Women in Vedic India
Yuletide Greetings
Hello dear friends and readers,
Merry Christmas and Happy Yule! May whatever holiday of the season you most cherish be a blessed one spent with family and friends making memories to treasure.
I will be taking a bit of time off from blogging over the next couple weeks to organize myself for the coming year, sending my desktop computer in for a tune-up, mapping out the remaining stages of putting my Munchausen by Proxy memoir together, and finishing up several projects around my home.
I’ve been pulled in so many diverse and competing directions this year and had it punctuated with so many sad events that I need to step back and figure out the schedule for the year that will see several projects through to completion no matter what may come.
Some of the greatest things about this year have been related to writing and community. For that I am very thankful, and I had intended to write a bit more about the wonderful group of women “of a certain age” that I am coming to know as a tribe and writers circle. That writing will come as I launch The BoomHer Net.
I may or may not put up a post before the New Year, but in any case, be well, be safe and – of course – be reasonable.