Posted in Art, Favorite Places, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged color, downtown dallas, pat bean, postaday, Thanksgiving Square, weekly photo challenge on September 30, 2012| 10 Comments »
“Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.” — Allen Klein
Downtown Dallas
Ceiling of the chapel in Thanksgiving Square in downtown Dallas. — Photo by Pat Bean
Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged aransas pass, brown pelicans, matagorda island, mustang island, pat bean, postaday, solitary, weekly photo challenge, whooping cranes on September 23, 2012| 13 Comments »
“Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, are of the fullness of your presence rather than the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.” — Alice Koller
One Brown Pelican
A lone brown pelican photographed in Aransas Bay during a trip out to see whooping cranes on Matagorda Island. It was a cool day and I had the choice of standing alone on deck or enjoying the camaraderie of other mothers inside the boat’s cabin. I did both. — Photograph by Pat Bean
I daily count my blessings, and one of them is that I enjoy my own company. That’s not to say I don’t like people. I do, and I need them.
Just not all the time.
Posted in Favorite Places, Journeys, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged everyday, grandmothers, john lennon, memories, postaday, robert frost, weekly photo challenge on September 15, 2012| 11 Comments »
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost
Part of my everyday Sunday life was sitting on the back steps of my grandmother’s home early in the morning watching her wring a chicken’s neck so we could have the best fried chicken in the world for dinner. It spooked me the way the headless body of the chicken would flop around. My grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Dallas is now condemned. — Photo by Pat Bean
Mine from the Ages of 3 to 11
These are the steps I ran up every week day to catch the school bus. I tripped on them once and chipped a tooth, which the dentist said was why it finally fell out when I was in my 60s. — Photo by Pat Bean
When I was 11 years old my grandmother, the only person I thought loved me – of course I was wrong – died. My whole world then changed, and it wasn’t for the better.
I recently searched out my grandmother’s old home. As Robert Frost said, life had moved on. But the memories of my everyday life as it was back then are still etched into my soul.
“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
This is the tree in the next door neighbor’s yard that I climbed most everyday. I loved this old tree, which back then was young and perfect. The house on the right was a corn field. — Photo by Pat Bean
“Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.” – Anton Chekhov .
Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged dogs, free spirit, postaday, weekly photo challenge on September 1, 2012| 6 Comments »
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable” – Helen Keller
Always up for adventure, Pepper is telling me to hurry my lazy butt along — Photo by Pat Bean
I Live With One
Pepper! Did you do this?
“Properly trained, man can be a dog’s best friend.” — Corey Ford
In March I lost my beloved canine traveling companion, Maggie, a black cocker spaniel that I had rescued from a life of abuse when she was a year old. She went from being scared of her shadow to a spoiled diva queen after I promised her no one would ever hurt her again.
Maggie’s replacement was a four-month-old Scotty-mix puppy that turned out to be as different from Maggie as a spoiled regal queen is from an exuberant pig-tailed tomboy. Of course I’ve come to love her every bit as much as I loved Maggie.
Pepper, who is now about nine months old, is a rowdy thing who enjoys nothing more than rough-housing with dogs twice her size. While there’s not a hair of aggression in her, she’s usually a bit too rambunctious for smaller dogs.
“Me?” Yes, you. “The cat did it.” We don’t have a cat.
She is truly a free spirit, although she prefers accomplishing her hijinks within my sight. She bonded to me the first second she saw me. It took me at least two seconds before I knew I had a new traveling companion.
Posted in Art, Favorite Places, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged chicago, postaday, sara peretsky, urban, weekly photo challenge on August 25, 2012| 7 Comments »
“I adore Chicago. It is the Pulse of America.” Sarah Bernharndt
Chicago
I prefer Mother Nature over big cities, but every time I’ve visited Chicago over the years, I’ve always had a great time. –Photo by Pat Bean
“Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.” Frank Lloyd Wright
This photo was taken shortly after exiting the Chicago Museum of Art, which I had spent the afternoon exploring earlier this year during a visit with a son who lives in Chicago.
“I live and die with the Chicago Cubs.” – Sara Paretsky
Paretsky is the author of the V.I. Warshawski mysteries that are set in Chicago. She’s one of my favorite authors. I love her tough-gal PI, and her descriptive images of Chicago. Perhaps her books should be displayed in the travel section of a book store and well as in the mystery section.
Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged great sand dunes national park, growth, postaday, weekly photo challenge on August 4, 2012| 4 Comments »
“You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.” – Irish saying.
Great Sand Dunes National Park
Think of it. Grain by grain is how these great sand dunes grew. — Photo by Pat Bean
“The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass f our life, the clearer we should see through it.” — Niccolo Machiavelli
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. — Photo by Pat Bean
“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination and wonder.” Ronald Reagan.
Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged 1904 world's fair, aviary, inside, pat bean, postaday, roseate spoonbills, St. Louis, weekly photo challenge on July 21, 2012| 6 Comments »
Roseate spoonbills in the aviary built for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. — Photo by Pat Bean
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies … it would be a sad situation if they were better than the meat wrapped inside it.” — Albert Einstein
World’s Fair Aviary, St Louis Zoo
The swamp inside the aviary was the real thing — well almost. — Photo by Pat Bean
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” — Norman Cousins
Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged black vultures, pat bean, postaday, unusual, weekly photo challenge on March 19, 2012| 2 Comments »
“Today is a most unusual day because we have never lived it before; we will never live it again; it is the only day we have.” — William Arthur Ward
Unusual guardians of the lake are these black vultures. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Bean’s Pat: Jack Elliot’s Santa Barbara Adventure http://tinyurl.com/7n7eope Bald eagles
Posted in Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged day of the dead, distortion, pat bean, postaday, san antonio, weekly photo challenge on March 3, 2012| 8 Comments »
“The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.” — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Body Distortion: Day of the Dead, San Antonio, Texas -- Photo by Pat Bean
Bean’s Pat: Slowing Down to Save Time http://tinyurl.com/6wzf65g A lesson I would do well to take to heart.
Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged indulgence, pat bean, postaday, weekly photo challenge on February 25, 2012| 9 Comments »
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is more restful.” — Mark Twain
A quiet place to sit in the outdoors on an awesome day is my idea of indulging myself. I can read a book, or just sit quiet and let nature come to me. -- Photo by Pat Bean
Bean’s Pat: Galen Leeds: Following the tracks of history. http://galenleeds.com/ The kind of wandering/wondering walk I love to take.
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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