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Posts Tagged ‘pat bean’

What’s Most Important

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , on August 26, 2013| 4 Comments »

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene

You may never find that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but that shouldn't keep you from looking. -- Photo by Pat Bean

You may never find that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but that shouldn’t keep you from looking. — Photo by Pat Bean

Stepping into the Unknown

            I’m not a person who likes to give advice. I’ve made too many bad decisions in my own life to think I can mentor anyone else, particularly someone whose end goals may be 180 degrees from my own.

This refrigerator magnet is how I want to be remembered.

This refrigerator magnet is how I want to be remembered.

But the ages have taught me that if you want something in life, you should go for it. And then, if you don’t get it, you should celebrate yourself for having the guts to have gone for it.

Some things we want, like my fulfilling my dream of travel by selling my home, buying an RV and driving that first mile, only depended on me having the guts to do it.

Other things, like my dream of finding an agent and a publisher for my book, “Travels with Maggie,” depend on others – and it may never happen.  So right now, I’m celebrating each rejection slip as a triumph. I’m taking that first step toward my goal – and even if I never achieve it, I’ll know it wasn’t because I didn’t try.  

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Not Yet There http://tinyurl.com/m8clwct My morning coffee and my journal and list of things to do for the day are the way I start my days.  And so this poem and photo spoke to me.

 

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Some People Call it Lost

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2013| 15 Comments »

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. – Freya Stark  

I call it an incredible Adventure

Even when I have a view of Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater. I'm thinking about my next travel adventure. -- Photo by Kim Perrin

Even when I have a view of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater. I’m thinking about my next travel adventure. — Photo by Kim Perrin

            A friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that she was leaving her long-time home to move to an apartment in a new state. I truly didn’t know how to console her.

Every move I’ve ever made, and there have been many, has been greeted with enthusiasm and excitement: The opportunity to experience the other side of the fence has always been with me. Even as a young child, I was always exploring the world around me with eagerness, often to destroying my mother’s peace of mind.

I have friends who still pal around with the same people they met in kindergarten. I think I would like that, but I know for certain that I wouldn’t be willing to give up the transient life I’ve had, although some times the moves were just from one home to another in the same city.

 

I'm currently exploring the desert landscape, which includes lots of yucca plants, in Tucson, where my itchy feet have agreed to rest for a bit. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’m currently exploring the desert landscape, which includes lots of yucca plants, in Tucson, where my itchy feet have agreed to rest for a bit. — Photo by Pat Bean

This is probably why Freya Stark’s quote, which begins this blog, spoke to me. While my travels will never excel this woman’s adventures – who was born in Paris in 1893 and died in Italy in 1993 and wrote 25 travel books, mostly about the Middle East – I have traveled many nooks and crannies of this country with a few over-the-sea adventures as well.

As so often when someone fascinates me, like Freya did when I read her quote,  I made an online visit to Amazon to see what I could find. My bank balance is now lighter by a few dollars as I just bought Stark’s biography, “Passionate Nomad, by Jane Fletcher Geniesse,

It’s supposed to arrive by Friday. I can hardly wait.

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Hell Storm http://tinyurl.com/n4v3psm Life goes on and I like how this blogger, one of my favorite with his great photos, mostly of abandoned Americana, doesn’t whine.  

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With Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on August 19, 2013| 10 Comments »

“Poetry is just the evidence of life.  If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” – Leonard  Cohen

The Worst Poetry Ever, I Do Admit

I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

My morning visitor. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My morning visitor. — Photo by Pat Bean

The Raven

While I welcomed the morning cheerily

While I drank my coffee dearly

While I sat upon my balcony pondering

Over my daily list, wondering

There came a cawing, cawing

Tis’ a bird, I muttered smiling

Only this and nothing more

And it is August, I said and more

And it’s sunny on the desert floor

Now who is cawing outside my window

I know for certain it’s not Lenore

Because it is black and feathery

This it is and nothing more

I went for my camera

To capture an image for ever more

But alas I failed, as I was told

This device cannot record.

Would this bird too soon fly away?

Before I could retrieve the disk

From my computer inside the door

Only this and nothing more

Quickly I ran inside

And retrieved the tiny disk

That would make the camera work.

Black feathers still perched upon the roof

Waiting and cawing, cawing

Tis a raven, I said.

And nothing more.

Bean’s Pat:  Travels and Trifles  http://tinyurl.com/lsm93un  Love the quote, and the trees

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Guess Who Came to Dinner

Posted in Birds, tagged , , , on August 14, 2013| 6 Comments »

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.” — Unknown

First came the hummingbirds to my nectar feeder. Then one day I looked out and the verdins had come to dinner, too.

Young verdins taking advantage of my nectar feeder. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Young verdins taking advantage of my nectar feeder. — Photo by Pat Bean

Then came another guest. A gila woodpecker.

A hungry gila woodpecker. He drank for about five minutes. -- Photo by Pat Bean

A hungry gila woodpecker. He drank for about five minutes. — Photo by Pat Bean

No wonder my nectar feeder is empty before day’s end.

Bean’s Pat:  Great Friends http://tinyurl.com/mdplxmy It makes me wonder if the hummingbirds had sent out invitations to dinner for their unusual

friends.

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Family Matters

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , on August 8, 2013| 12 Comments »

“The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective.” — Robert Brault

It’s All about Love

Family is like this waterfall, turbulent at times but always with a rainbow in sight. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Family is like this waterfall, turbulent at times but always with a rainbow in sight. — Photo by Pat Bean

I was listening to a woman tell a group of us what a wonderful family gathering she had just come from, and was beginning to inwardly moan at yet another “perfect family” story  when she added an addendum to her first words.

“Of course the fun was in spite of the fact that everyone in our family has big personalities. It only took an hour or two before the tensions erupted.”

In a nut shell, she had just described my family, which has been fractured and thrown to the four winds time and time again. But we’re family. And that means something — even if I’m not always sure what it means.

I’m the matriarch of five children and five spouse-in-laws; 15 grandchildren plus two more by marriage, plus seven or so grand-spouse-in-laws or partners, plus several non-related young people I claim as grandchildren; and  two great-grandchildren plus two more by marriage.

I’m not even going to count the numbers, because what counts is that each and every one is family, and family matters. Not a single one of them – I dare say not even the great-grandchildren — is perfect. And they all have big personalities — and in those two things I can truthfully say they all take after me.

I feel like the luckiest, if at times the most frustrated, person in the world.

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat:  So you just write the book http://tinyurl.com/ltyqwl6 As one who is struggling with the third rewrite of “Travels with Maggie,” this tickled my funny bone. Writing is darn hard work  — even if you love doing it and consider it as necessary as breathing.

 

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Time for Nonsense

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, tagged , , , on August 6, 2013| 3 Comments »

The Llama Song – Listen to it: http://tinyurl.com/2jy2tc

            Here’s a llama. There’s a llama. And another little llama. Fuzzy llama. Funny llama. Llama llama duck. Llama Llama. Cheesecake llama. Tablet. Brick. Potato llama. Llama llama, duck.

            I was once a tree house. Lived in a cake. But I never saw the way the orange slayed the rake. I was only three years dead. But it told a tale. And now listen little child. To the safety rail.

            Did you ever see a llama? Kiss a llama. On the llama. Llamas llamas. Taste of llamas. Llama llama duck.

            Is that how it’s told now? Is it all so old?  Doorknob. Ankle. Cold. Now my song is getting thin. I’ve run out of luck! Time for me to retire now. And become a duck.

IMG_3743

Here’s the llama… — Photo by Pat Bean

Laughter is Good for the Soul

And here's the duck. They were both photographed at Riverside Park in Bayfield, Colorado -- Photo by Pat Bean

And here’s the duck. They were both photographed at Riverside Park in Bayfield, Colorado — Photo by Pat Bean

 

And this crazy song makes me laugh and laugh, Supposedly it was written by someone called Burton Earny in 2004, who has since gone into hibernation.

What makes you laugh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Pete Scully http://tinyurl.com/mwtwo5o One of the artists whose blogs I’ve begun following. I love Pete’s sketches.

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Why I Write My Thoughts Down

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Quote for the Day, tagged , , , on August 1, 2013| 7 Comments »

“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” — John Burroughs

Because of What Happens when I Don’t

            I had this great idea about what today’s blog would be about just as I was dozing off to sleep last night.

I love it when I wake up to the twitter of birds, even if I've forgotten the great idea I had the night before. -- Pat Bean sketch. .

I love it when I wake up to the twitter of birds, even if I’ve forgotten the great idea I had the night before. — Pat Bean sketch. .

I slept easier knowing the subject of today’s blog had been found. I even awoke remembering that I had this great blog idea – then realized Mr. Sandman had stolen it during the night.

Maybe I’ll find it again, I thought, as I looked at the unused note pad and pen that is always on my night table – just in case a great thought runs through my mind while I’m in bed.

Of course there are mornings, when I have remembered to record my great idea on that same note pad — and I find what I’ve written laughable. In the light of the morning sun, I discover it isn’t a great idea at all.

Isn’t life fun? I just bet you have such moments, too. Come on. Admit it.

Bean’s Pat: Happy Birthday Miss Mitchell http://tinyurl.com/mvehh4v I’ve told my granddaughters they owe me a debt for fighting for equal pay, for equal work, for women – which today my granddaughters may, or may not, receive. Maria Mitchell deserves much credit, too.

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Posted in Books, Journeys, Lakes, Nature, tagged , , , on July 18, 2013| 1 Comment »

Bookish Wednesday

            “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” Caroline Gordon

The dark mirror in the book of the same name is a dark lake. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The dark mirror in the book of the same name is a dark lake. — Photo by Pat Bean

The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier

Yup! I may be an old broad, but I still haven’t lost my ability to stay awake when I’m in the middle of a good book.

And the woods and rocks of the landscape are integral to the story. -- Photo by Pat Bean

And the woods and rocks of the landscape are integral to the story. — Photo by Pat Bean

But I must admit that it’s been a long time since I stayed awake reading – actually I was listening to an audible book – until 4:53 a.m. That was the time on the clock in my kitchen – I don’t have one in the bedroom – when I finally looked.

I had known it was late, but not that late.

The book was “The Dark Mirror: Bridei Trilogy, Book One,” by Juliet Marillier.

I  knew it was getting late last night, and I kept saying I was going to put the book down as soon as I found out what was happening next, but by the time I did that, there was something else going on that kept me reading. And so it went all through the night.

“The Dark Mirror” was the first Juliet Marillier book I’ve read. I was delighted to know she’s published many more.  This first, published in 2004, is an epic fantasy with tangled plots, characters with depth and good writing.

I just downloaded the second audible book in the trilogy onto my Kindle. It is 23 hours long. Let’s hope it keeps me as intrigued about what’s going to happen next as book one.

I predict many more sleepless nights ahead of me.

“O frabjous  day! Callooh! Callay!” – and who knows what this is from?

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: The Blood-Red Pencil http://tinyurl.com/lbxm4nv The woman, who is proofing and editing by book, “Travels with Maggie,” and I differ over the use of commas, which is probably why I enjoyed this blog so much.   Perhaps my writer-readers will enjoy it, too

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Monday Morning Wondering

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on July 15, 2013| 6 Comments »

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” – Richard Wright

            “It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.” — Vita Sackville-West

This is the view of the Catalina Mountains from my third-floor bedroom balcony. The sliver of rock between the two larger humps is called finger rock. I've adopted it as a finger pointing at me, asking: "So have you met your writing goal today." -- Photo by Pat Bean

This is the view of the Catalina Mountains from my third-floor bedroom balcony. The sliver of rock between the two larger humps is called finger rock. I’ve adopted it as a finger pointing at me, asking: “So have you met your writing goal today?” — Photo by Pat Bean

Is it Good Enough?

            I’ve been a writer for half a century, although I didn’t call myself one for many years. It seems to be a failing with writers. Many of us think that unless we’ve written a best-selling book, we’re just a piddler of words.

I recently met such a person, a retired history professor who read a chapter of his book in progress. He started it by saying “I’m not a writer.” But he was. His words were richer and more readable than those of many a published author. I later told him he was a writer, and should call himself just that

The place where I spend many hours a week. Sometimes I simply open the shutters and gaze out the windows, wondering. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The place where I spend many hours a week. Sometimes I simply open the shutters and gaze out the windows, wondering. — Photo by Pat Bean

Yet, even as I accept that my book, “Travels with Maggie”  — which  is undergoing a final editing — contains some of my best work,  this Monday morning I found  myself asking: “Is it good enough” – good enough to throw out to the public and risk it not being good enough?

Perhaps I’m still thinking about the words contained in a blog I read this past week: “The fine line between creativity and crap.”

Why do writers have such a hard time admitting they are writers when asked their occupations?  What’s the proper usage of passed and past? Do I write my book in first or third person? Will what I write offend a loved one? What will someone think if they read my journals and learn my true feelings? Why can’t I find an agent for my book, is it not good enough?

The questions are endless, and writers seem to have too many of them rattling around in their heads, like a poisonous snake coiled and ready to kill their ability to write. Some call it writer’s block.

I’m learning to call it simply wondering.

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Lime Bird Writers http://tinyurl.com/nv7mrs6  One of the writing blogs I follow regularly. This day’s  blog offers some market opportunities.

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Just a Reminder

Posted in Books, Journeys, tagged , , , on July 13, 2013| 6 Comments »

             “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C. S. Lewis

Some say the Mourne Mountains in Ireland were Lewis' inspiration for the land of Narnia. -- Wikipedia photo

Some say the Mourne Mountains in Ireland were Lewis’ inspiration for the land of Narnia. — Wikipedia photo

The Chronicles of Narnia

            One of the nice things about growing older is the opportunity to go back and reread the books that you loved reading as a child. I recently did that with the “Chronicles of Narnia.”

What fun!

And this is how film makers pictures it in one of the Narnia movies.

And this is how film makers pictured it in one of the Narnia movies.

As a child, I read for the love of the adventure, not being able to turn the pages fast enough to satisfy my need to know what happens next. I still do that. But I also sometimes take time to look for deeper meanings.

It was easy to find them in Lewis’ Narnia, which he wrote about in seven fantasy novels for young people. The books sold over 100 million copies, and are now being made into movies that  have hit it big at the box office.

I guess I’m not the only one enchanted by Lewis’ imaginative mind and words.

More C.S. Lewis

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to earn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

            “You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

            “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”

            “We are what we believe we are.”

            “Reason is the natura order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Being Present http://tinyurl.com/pxzl5nk Something worth remembering.

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