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Big, Bold and Beautiful

Posted in Art, Books, tagged Donna Howell-Sickles, pat bean on May 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

Great book, great art from my bookshelf.

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius

I Like Color

A page from the book, and one of my favorite paintings by Donna.

Totsymae commented on “Cowgirl Rising,” one of the books on my bookshelves that I gave readers a peek at yesterday. The comment gave me a laugh, but reminded me that I hadn’t looked at this particular book recently.

It’s an art book featuring the works of Donna Howell-Sickles, whose work I first saw at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas. I immediately fell in love with her work. I saw her huge, colorful art again at an art gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, a half dozen or so years ago.

Totsymae’s comment on yesterday’s blog encouraged me to simply spend some time with Donna’s book. All I can say now is “Thank you Donna for once again giving me such pleasure, so much so that I simply had to share your work with readers.”

So enjoy all. And a big Bean to totsymae at wordpress.com for your comment.

And another page.

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Posted in Art, Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged pat bean, slang, texting, twitter on April 1, 2014| 6 Comments »

The New Language

“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.” – Carl Sandburg

Daily doodling. — without typos. — Illustration by Pat Bean

I’m Belly-Laughing, Not LOLing

I must admit that the texting- twittering new language often leaves me befuddled. I mean take LOL, which I assume means laughing-out-loud and is the easiest of the acronym-craze to understand .But LOL could mean many other things, like living out loud, loving only lions, or liars often lie.

I would much rather be birding here than proofreading. Wouldn’t you?

OK! I’m being facetious. But then I just had this conversation, over coffee with a friend who is outraged about all the grammatical mistakes and typos found in today’s printed words, so much so that she can’t continue reading when she comes across a misused word.

Thankfully, she doesn’t own a computer, because when I reread my own posted blog, I often discover one or more of those overlooked verbiage gremlins. Like the rest of the writing world, I need a proofreader, a career that mostly disappeared with the ascension of technology. These days, writers have to be their own proofreaders.

Since I read for content, I can easily overlook an occasional grammatical error, well unless they’re many and truly a sign of sloppiness. Good writing is what is important to me.

Meanwhile, I’m currently trying to catch all those misused-misspelled-typo gremlins in my recently finished book, “Travels with Maggie,” before it gets published. I don’t want someone to stop reading because they found a grammatical error or a typo. It’s very hard work for someone who is a writer — and not a proof reader.

Oh, by the way, I never use LOL when I really mean belly laughing. I guess that’s because my brain was formed long before the days of texting and twittering.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Interesting Literature http://tinyurl.com/nhhsob4 Just because it’s April Fool’s Day

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Thinking About Chihuly

Posted in Art, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged Dale Chihuly, Desert Botanical Garden, glass art, pat bean, Phoenix on March 12, 2014| 8 Comments »

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” Pablo Picasso

From a distance, these looked like plants. Instead they are the welcoming art of Dale Chihuly the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. -- Photo by Pat Bean

From a distance, these looked like plants. Instead they are the welcoming art of Dale Chihuly to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. — Photo by Pat Bean

And Realizing I’m not Like Him

I recently caught an exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s glass art at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. One word says it all. Fantastic!

Nor was this a celebratory stack of balloons. — Photo by Pat Bean

It was the second time I had seen Chihuly’s colorful glass creations in a foliage setting. The first was in 2006, when I was living and traveling full time in my small RV, Gypsy Lee. The setting then was the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, where Chihuly’s work represented everything from reeds and Mexican hats to herons and meteorite-looking balls plopped down among a bounty of foliage and brilliantly hued flowers.

When I later looked at the photos, I found I had mingled Chihuly’s art with the creations of nature so well that I sometimes had to stop and ask myself which was which.

That night, as I lay in bed awake, I pondered how a genius like Chihuly came to be – and the answer suddenly hit me: Single-minded focus and dedication, which I knew was something I lacked.

For almost as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a “great” writer, yet I was always finding excuses for not writing. I knew I lacked the focus of a Chihuly, or a Van Gogh, or even an old boyfriend who religiously practiced his guitar four hours a day, seven days a week.

Don’t you just love the color yellow.

While in my youth, I flagellated myself for this lack, today I’m thankful for it.

My life has been richer for the fact that I didn’t give up riding roller coasters with my grandkids, arguing politics with my friends, discovering who my grownup children had become, exploring new hiking trails, white-water rafting with my river-rat buddies, mindlessly watching the sun rise and set, piddling with my watercolors, reading Harry Potter final book the day it came out, and sniffing every flower in life I came across.

Writing is a part of my life, and will always be, but it will never be my whole life.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: The Why About This http://tinyurl.com/p7w7bll As an Old Broad who evolved from a barefoot and pregnant southern girl to an associate editor position at a 65,000 circulation newspaper, this blog has special meaning to me. And to this day, Helen Reddy’s first time out as a song writer continues to inspire me. I listen to it regularly, but loved this chance to see her perform it in person. I hope you will, too

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I Love a Good Mystery

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged bird watching, Dorthy Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey, mystery books, writers on January 30, 2014| 8 Comments »

“Without mysteries, life would be dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?” — Charles de Lint

Can you identify this bird? Or will it remain a mystery?

Which Is Why I Enjoy Bird Watching

“My detective story begins brightly, with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. Now why did she wear a pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands upon the murderer, but he’s a very cool and cunning fellow…” – wrote Dorothy Sayers as she plotted her first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery in the early 1920s.

Cover of Are Women Human?, which contains two of Sayers’ feminist essays. — Wikimedia

When the book, “Whose Body” came out in 1923, the naked victim was male, but the pince-nez clue was still there. Many Lord Peter Wimsey books followed. I think I’ve read them all.

Along with writing the Wimsey mysteries, which like Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple books, continue to be popular today, Sayers was a poet, playwright and advertising writer.

One of the latter efforts included a toucan jingle for Guinness Beer: “If he can say as you can. Guinness is good for you. How grand to be a Toucan. Just think what Toucan do?”

This same kind of humor continues in the Wimsey mysteries, which is consistent with the character’s name-play on the word whimsy.

DVDs of some of the Lord Wimsey films I checked out of the library get the credit for this blog idea.

The joy of reading Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries for me is that it is all about figuring out whodunit before the killer is revealed.

It’s sort of the same with bird watching. You have to read all the clues – profile, coloring, beak size, and a jillion other field marks – if you want to make an identification before the bird flies away.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: She’s a Maineaic http://tinyurl.com/psgwdqx Einstein said what about anger?

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“Writing Down the River”

Posted in Art, Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged " female writers, "Writing Down tthe River, grand canyon on January 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

” Hunter S. Thompson

The first time I rafted down the Grand Canyon, the Little Colorado River entrance to the mightier Colorado River was red and thick with mud from recent upstream rains. The second time it was crystal clean, and we floated in its current. I’m the middle blonde, and I was 60 when the photograph was taken.

A fantastic read.

Bookish Wednesday

A fairy tale begins with “Once upon a time.” And a river story with “No shit! There I was,” said outspoken journalist Linda Ellerbee in her essay about rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

And there she was — on an adventure one summer taken by 14 other fantastic female writers. The 15 women ranged in age, and in lifestyles that went from city women who had never peed outdoors to athletic women who considered nature their true homes. They each wrote about the Grand Canyon from their own perspective, and about how the fickle river and the high rock walls affected and changed them.

Being a female writer who has been on this same adventure twice in my life – the last time as a birthday present to myself when I turned 60 – my soul triumphed with joy when I came across their book, “Writing Down the River (1998, Northland Publishing, photographed and produced by Kathleen Jo Ryan) in the public library.

Of course I checked it out. Reading the book these past few days has brought back many memories of 32 days, 16 for each trip, that rank high on my list of the best days of my life.

Among my own writings about my Grand Canyon trip was one about the canyon wren, which often serenaded us during our early mornings on the river.

Among my own writings about my Grand Canyon trip was a bird column about the canyon wren, which often serenaded us during our early mornings on the river.

The first time I went down the river, I paddled myself almost the entire 225 miles in a small raft. I came away from the experience a whole person, accepting both my strengths and my weaknesses.

The second time I let the boatman (she was female but she was still called a boatman) oar me down the river, an admission that time had come for me to slow down a bit and take more time to smell the flowers and watch the birds – but also that my adventuring days were still far from over.

I highly recommend this trip for all women who are at turning points in their lives – and if you can’t go, at least read the book. The words and photographs can’t help but touch your heart and make you stronger.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean/s Pat: Where Have All the Flowers Gone http://tinyurl.com/l89g62e In honor of Pete Seeger and my generation of flower-child music.

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Paper Fetish

Posted in Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged Brazos Bend State Park, journaling, paper, pat bean, trees on January 17, 2014| 6 Comments »

Yesterday’s use of paper included adding a kestrel painting to my sketchbook, writing down dates to remember in my diary calendar, which is full of paintings and quotes, and writing in my to-do journal, which includes a hodgepodge of notes and ideas to myself. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with meaning.” – Maya Angelou

I’m So Sorry My Beloved Trees

I love paper, crisp new pages in a book, cold pressed and textured artist sheets, fanciful stationary, designer pages for my scrapbooking and even the thick block of white for my printer.

But I especially love the blank pages that fill new journals, even more so when their artistic creators have filled bits and pieces of the pages with fairies, flowers, dragons or animal images, and even more when they have left words behind to tickle my little gray cells.

Like these words, which I came across yesterday: “Let’s talk about mountains. You start climbing one, you toil, you sweat, you finally reach the top, and what do you get? Well, along with a sense of accomplishment, of peace, of a job well done, along with the satisfaction of doing what you set out to do … you get a great view of the next mountain. Looming, Challenging, Calling your name.” These words were left me behind to ponder from the journal creators, Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers — And ponder I did.

I wonder if the spirits of trees, like this beauty in Brazos Bend State Park in Texas, are infused into the paper I touch and use daily.

These days, I usually have several journals going at once, the most used being a daily journal in which I write to-do lists (Things I want to keep from this journal get rewritten into my computer journal, which I began several years ago to preserve my writing fingers from cramping), and a journal that I keep beside me when I read, and use to write down quotes and a mishmash of thoughts and ideas.

Even though I love computer journaling, which these days includes this blog, I can’t imagine a day without putting my hands on real paper. It’s an oxymoron for me, because I also love trees. Sometimes I wonder about the origin of the paper I write on, and almost feel the trees talking to me. I hope they forgive me.

The Wondering-Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: The Blood-Red Pencil http://tinyurl.com/lm2k2pg This is for all the writers who have procrastinated until the deadline monster is close enough to bite off our noses.

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Just for No Reason

Posted in Art, Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged bald eagle, life, pat bean, reasons on January 7, 2014| 13 Comments »

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

Fly free and high in the New Year. — Quick sketch of bald eagle doing just that by Pat Bean

I Call Horse Manure

I’m not sure what is in the air, but all this past week – during which I was on hiatus from writing this blog – I kept running across quotes that in essence said that everything happens for a reason.

A page from my sketchbook, which I hope to use more during 2014.

Put bull and my one and only cuss word together and that’s what I say to that idea.

Not everything happens for a reason. The good, the bad, the beautiful and the horribly ugly things happen randomly to everyone. While there may be causes, no baby dies of crib death for a reason, no beloved pet gets run over by a vehicle for a reason, and no one dies in a nature disaster for a reason.

We can add reason into the equation by learning and growing from the experiences when life boosts us up, or knocks us down, but there is no reason why things happen in this chaotic world in which we live.

In essence, we are not what happens to us, we are what we make of what happens to us.

What do you think?

Bean’s Pat: The Philosophy of Old Age: http://tinyurl.com/k63qnas I thought this was worth sharing. Even you youngsters might enjoy it.

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Photo Challenge: An Unusual Point of View

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Journeys, Nature, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged morning walks, nature on September 9, 2013| 3 Comments »

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” – Henry David Thoreau

Mother Nature used the rain to paint this canvas of wet and dry gravel pattrns. My apartment is at the top of the stairs yu see in the background. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Mother Nature used the rain to paint this canvas of wet and dry gravel pattrns. My apartment is at the top of the stairs you see in the background. — Photo by Pat Bean

Morning Walk with Pepper

It was lightly drizzling this morning when Pepper and I took a walk while dawn made her presence known. This is my favorite time of day, and as usual, Pepper and I had the apartment complex courtyards to ourselves.

This is a close-up of the lavender blossoms on the bush next to the tree, which a gardener neatly trimmed. I can’t help but wonder how many blossoms were lost to the trimming tool. — Photo by Pat Bean

Some mornings we leave the manicured grounds and take the short trail beyond the parking lot ,so as to glimpse a view of the unfettered desert in its many moods. But not this morning.

Today, we simply walked the path we walk several times a day, keeping our eyes open to the world around us. Well, I keep my eyes open and Pepper keeps her nose open. Like most dogs, she sees more through smell than I see through my eyes.

Her nose lets her know there is a lizard hiding beneath that rock over yonder, and that Ellie, a favorite German shepherd playmate, peed beside this tree. Of course she pees on top of the spot to let Ellie know she’s been here, too.

My eyes, meanwhile, take in a canvas painted by the rain. It’s the pattern of wet and dry gravel beneath a tree just outside my apartment. I don’t have my camera with me, but after our walk I retrieve it and go back down from my third-floor apartment to capture Mother Nature’s whimsical drawing – well that’s how I see it.

And then I realize that it can serve as my point of view for the week’s photo challenge.

Bean’s Pat: Hoof Beats and Foot Prints http://tinyurl.com/nz6fu4o This is a blogger who also takes time to capture the simple things that can be found in a day, when you take the time to look.

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You Gotta Love Rejection

Posted in Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged pat bean, rejection on September 7, 2013| 12 Comments »

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.” – Louis Ferdinand Celine

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get me going, rather than retreat.” – Sylvester Stallone

I wonder if bears care about rejection, or if they are always all about being themselves — even if they are blue. — Photo by Pat Bean

Life Lessons from an Old Broad

These days I take rejection slips that result from someone not buying one of my writing submissions with great pride. They are evidence that I put myself out there.

And would a giraffe feel rejected if it looked different from the rest of its kind? OK, so I’m being silly. Reject me. See if I care. == Photo by Pat Bean

But that kind of thinking wasn’t always a part of my psyche.

Looking back on my life, as I sometimes find myself doing, I suddenly remembered all the times when I didn’t put myself out there, whether it was not applying for a promotion, or not taking the risk of revealing my true self because I was afraid of being rejected.

It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of rejection, but that I was afraid for others to know, on any level, that I had been rejected.

Now I realize how foolish I was. Not only is it true that nothing ventured means nothing gained, but the only person who can truly reject me is me.

Does that make sense? This wondering-wanderer says: “Yes.” Now I just wonder why it took me so long to come up with the right answer.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Lightning Dropets http://tinyurl.com/kdkr6bn This blog about writing rejections is what got me thinking about rejections on other levels

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Take Time to Smell the Flowers

Posted in Art, Journeys, tagged flowers, gusto, mottos, pat bean on September 5, 2013| 2 Comments »

“I will be the gladdest thing. Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers. And not pick one.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Afternoon on a Hill.”

I took time to smell the flowers by sitting down to do art with a grandson, and this is what I drew while he drew the Batmobile.

Mottos to Live By

When I woke up from my unthoughtful, unlived life at nearly 40, my motto for the next few years became “Grab all the gusto you can get.” It was plagiarism of a Schlitz beer commercial: “You only go through life once, so you have to grab all the gusto you can get.”

With nearly half my life blown away, I realized that the only regrets I had were for the things I hadn’t done … well mostly anyway.

My grandson Patrick’s Batmobile.

During the next three plus decades, I did many things – and have regrets for none of what at times may have been an “excessive life.” Perhaps that’s because I did nothing I would have been ashamed to tell the world, which, along with the mottos “do no harm” and the Golden Rule form my spiritual center.

But these days, which now number more behind me than ahead of me, my passion has become one of “taking time to smell the flowers.”

Doing so interferes with more ambitious goals, such as finishing my book, “Travels with Maggie” – which is still moving slowly along. But then I can’t imagine giving up the flowers to make the writing go faster.

Of course smelling the flowers is more than just blossoms.

This morning, it was simply taking time to sit on my bedroom balcony, drinking my cream-laced coffee, and to stare up at the Catalina Mountains while the sun made its entrance for the day.

I suddenly realized it was as close to meditation – meaning emptying the mind – as I have ever reached in my life. I have been too busy grabbing all that gusto, when the flowers needed more quiet smelling.

But then I smiled, thinking about all that gusto. I wouldn’t change a thing.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: September writing resolutions http://tinyurl.com/mfkmqxf Fine words to live by for the month, except that I already keep a timer by my computer and set it for 15 minutes. Old broads need to move often so they can keep moving.

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