B-B-B-B Bad to the B-B-B-Backgrounds

16 pages/32 backgrounds to go ... rollin', rollin', rollin'!!! High.Print of a canvas I did, deco tape, remainder of the child's calendar page. There's an insert behind the canvas scan for journaling. Fun. Baby photo from The Tuscan Rose, but photocopied then transferred with a Coptic marker. Telephone dial image also from the Tuscan Rose. My photo of the grapefruit. Stickers, deco tape. Fun, right? By Request. Holly wanted an image of me in this book. Voila. Photos by my youngest male child, last summer. I love the one on the right, but the left one? Flashing my non-existent cleavage for all the world to see ... let's just focus on the cool head wrap, eh, what? These are what you see when you lift the 'Between the Lines' flap, above post. All in the Attitude I used the crow as a stencil earlier - can't throw away a perfectly good crow mask, eh? And the sassy little wench on his wing - they seemed to make a good pair. He is sifting the waters for river music to accompany her number. Notes. Wrapping paper scrap, library pocket full of little strips, each with a message of inspiration, rubber stamp images and ribbon. Believe In Magic. This is a direct rip-off of a greeting card I saw in a magazine. And the lettering has already started rubbing off my little tapes - pffft. No Llores (Don't Cry) Frida images are irresistible to me - she was SO FIERCE. Ribbon, paper, rub-ons, scrap. Frida lifts for journaling behind. Be Yourself. Everyone Else is Taken. A page inspired by Beth of the blog by the same name. She's always on fire - I love that in a friend and artist! Matchbook from a collection, magazine photo, doodle template, paper scrap, rub-ons. Used my heat gun to 'burn' parts of the page -- a nod to my inner firebug!!

San Xavier Mission-Journal Entry 2-Details

Spirituality, for me, in the details -- air, shadows, textures, vignettes, light, smells, where is nature in it all? My spirituality like architecture: roaming, familiarizing myself with the sense of place, like an interior blueline, a way of aligning and preparing myself for the formalities I eventually encounter. The wistfulness I feel, seeing in others the purity & acceptance that elude me -- ever the analyst, ever the to-the-side documentarian. I am immersed in small components, led by fragments of emotional recognition & response, but not a whole. Never a whole. Just an awareness of its possibility, its probability, & my own propensity for withdrawing -- to the quietly lit corner, the bench farthest away, the dodge of lifting my camera --
my own resistance to being taken over,
or in.
I want to maintain that reserve of SELF,
set back,
to think & digest.

Renee Award

I received this from Cinner, at "THINGS ABOUT WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE AND WHY - Life Through My Eyes". Coming from her, it means an enormous amount -- this is a place that captures 'keeping it real' for me, in the honest way our minds work, but always with a point that puts me on pause. Thank You!

I'm not sure I have the rules right except to forward the award to those who inspire me, which I'll do below. Meanwhile, can someone tell me what the origins of this award are? I believe I read it somewhere, fairly recently, but can't recall on whose blog I saw it.

Inspiration -- my sources for/of that are very consistent lately; these names will NOT surprise you.
1. Lee, at Defining Me.
2. Sam, at The Everyday Witch
3. Holly, at Your Mother Knows But Won't Tell You
4. Cam, at Journey Wildly
5. Lisa, at La Vida Artistica
6. Shreve, at The Daily Coyote
7. Carla, at Paper Pastorale
8. Beth, at Be Yourself Everyone Else is Taken

Kudos and Hats-Off to all you wonderful creative women!!

7 Angels on a Bicycle, and Looking for Elvis

Carrie Rodriguez, "Seven Angels on a Bicycle" (video wouldn't load) I love this song, listen to it twice a day at least while at work.

Looking for Elvis - Patti Scialfa -- here's the link if the stoopid video upload doesn't work; I'm just learning how to do that. Such a cool song, too!

f'get it, video uploading ain't happnin' for me today.

IRENA

This just emailed to me from my bro, The Bobfather: There recently was the death of a 98-year-old lady named Irena Sendler.

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive...

She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German).

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she also carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her backyard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family.

Most, of course, had been gassed.

Those kids she helped were placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize....

She LOST.

Al Gore won for doing a slide show on Global Warming.

Background Badonkadonk

Only 20 more backgrounds to do in Holly's book -- the spine cracked so I can continue to scan and post. I'll tape the bejeezuz out of it once I'm done, per usual! Not to Scale. This image (out of a Pier I flyer) is where I wanted to be early Saturday morning, and the dog reminded me of Holly's dog-tales ... what a fresh, sweet page! Dream Travel. Directly from a dream I had. Truck image from The Tuscan Rose. Paper napkins are the flowery background and beneath that a shop drawing/blueline sheet from work. Felty scrap piece from a swap. Sari. One of my cherished rubber stamp images. Fed Ex plastic envelope. Inside is a doctored-up fold-out thingie that came in the mail to my youngest male child. Being as it was purple, and Holly loves purple, I absconded with it for journal use. Childlike.Art from a calendar, tag & polka dot deco tape from a package I got from Ms. Juliana Coles. Gibson Girl. Center right, new rubber stamp image. Exterior of envelope. Interior of envelope. Rubber stamp image from Veronica's ETSY called Keeping watch ... wallpaper scraps from Patty, vintage envelope from my collection. 1894 -- that just slays me!

2009 Calendar: May 4th to 10th

May 4th to 7th: Prompt: analogous colors (adjoining colors on the color wheel). Kicking off with a print of one of my Mission photos. May 8th to 10th: Lots of pockets and tags and inserts here. I've had these playing cards for quite a while - will use them for journaling on the back.

San Xavier Mission - Journal Entry 1

An hallucination, it must be -- such a sight, in such a place? A desert mirage, a desert miracle. No wonder it was called a Mission -- imagine, 300 years ago, a lone rider, or a group of dirty dusty men moving cattle, or a family in a wagon crossing an expanse of nothing but brown sand and pale sage cacti for days, rationing water all along the journey -- coming upon this building? Receiving all the water craved, beds, perhaps medical attention, and certainly balm for their hearts. Conversation, again, with another human voicing a tender message. Fanciful view, I suppose, but look at the image! It doesn't seem to embody the violence, the raw bluntness of life in the West back when it was built. It tells of its own 3-foot thick walls offering cool respite from a relentless sun, of corridors of silence to still a nervous soul or restless foot, at least for a night. It welcomes, it smiles, it says PEACE. Paz. The pavement fell away the closer I got, and so did the sense of present time. There, the glistening white Mission amid parched desert acreage and mountain ranges surrounding it, the ranges lending sweeps of odd blue-violet shadows overhead, up into the air (how?) and across the sand and cacti. This the gated archway beckoning me inside. I hesitated, of course, and took up my camera, shooting pictures while gauging my internal readiness for the sanctity of the inner Mission courtyards and church itself. My spirituality is so immediate in the approach -- the wide low mountains, the sea of dusty sand gusting in puffs around eclectic cacti studs here and there, the magnificent architecture of the Mission and my camera-at-hand to capture it in my preferred manner. But the acts of the inner workings? The singing, the words, the prayers, the deeply reverent manner of the elderly ones there? The tiniest, most fragile elderly people I've ever seen, barely as tall as my chest, frail, bent, using canes or the arms of younger loved ones, but going going going to that chapel, stretching gnarled backs, then arms, to reach the Holy Water container up on the wall ... eyes closed as they crossed themselves. Eyes watery with emotion as they moved their eyes carefully and more carefully around the walls and inside carved domes. Hands gentle as birth when they touched the relics on the side altars and lit their candles. Does that kind of spirituality only come with that age? I can recognize it, but I don't experience it personally. My spirituality ... did I know when I took some of these pictures that I'd see myself, this part of myself, in them? No. I'm the cactus, prickly, standing back, looking but gathered to myself. The sounds thrown by the bells, the shadows cast by the bell tower, I lean into those, grow under them and because of them, but I guard my proximity and surrender, also. I shoot photos of carved doorways like this, like those at Notre Dame, at Saint Catherine of Siena, but only in appreciation of the artist's work. I don't understand or want to understand all that symbology clustered in one spot so densely. I find spirituality in open spaces, quiet simple spaces, calm approachable buildings and art on human scales. I finally sat down, looked outward, over, upward. I did it! I drove here myself! Directionally challenged as I am, got lost BAD at the beginning though I did -- imagine my pride, sitting here, HERE, at my point of destination, and gazing through my lens at such a view. A scene I would shoot, have shot, anywhere in the world I encounter it -- bell towers. Italy, Paris, Tucson, and certainly England when I go there. How I wanted to hear them sound, resonate through that wide unencumbered sea of sand, over the heads and voices of those singing from within the main chapel. Here is representation of my spiritual garden -- plants odd & tenuous, but reaching. Strangely shaped and casting unfamiliar silhouettes. Prickly. Defensively armed, tender within, tenderly rooted and gathered. Difficult to identify, or label. Present in silent observation. Serene woman - is this Mary? And who or what is the angel? cherub? man? supporting her from beneath? I want to go back and shoot this in color.

A May Award! And it's LOVELY!!

A new friend, Joss, whom I met via the SoulCollage group, gave me this award -- & oh MY! I think it's gorgeous!

Here are the rules:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I've been stodgy about blogging lately, keeping to my same posse and not really exploring much. So to all my regulars, you are herewith and hereby awarded, with my love and appreciation!! [All the addresses are in my Soul Food Sidebar for curious readers.]

Joss, thanks! And thanks for keeping me going with the SoulCollage journey, too!

My Love, Ciera

Ciera's 2nd grade class photo. My bro', Chris, had chosen a desert background but got prairie instead. S'a'right, cuz Ciera comes from serious prairie stock on her Daddy's side of the family! Chris wrote: "Christine would've been 44 yesterday! Ciera and I (and Patchy) went to her grave this morning. Ciera made her a card and also wanted to leave one of her class photos there." Christine was Chris' wife, Ciera's Mom, who passed away before Ciera was 2 ... we all take care to remember her, and to carry on her traditions as she wanted for My Love, Ciera. As Chris wrote in his subject line: Happy Birthday, Christine!

San Xavier Del Bac Mission

This is where I spent my day today -- drove down, myself, this morning - it's 6 p.m., just got home. Am famished, sunburned, and in need of a shower (dust dust dust) ... but I had to look at my photos first! Here are a few shots -- more to come in the next day or so, once I've sorted and culled and had time to get into my journal with some self-expression of what I saw and felt.

Holly's Journal - Movin' & Shakin'

Lake Dreamer. New stamp image I received yesterday and I wanted to try it out immediately! Fine Handmade. A magazine image I've loved a long time. Wallpaper snippet from Patty. Lemon Merengue ribbon end; Jenni Bick tag from the travel journal I ordered for our England trip, a wee moleskin. Page intersection ... these would NOT scan any other way. Note: If you're going to do crack, do it this way! Leisure. Photo from Anthropologie catalog. I think this new model's face is SO interesting! Buried Treasure. Sandy beach image from magazine, rubber stamped images, overlaid by a decorative vellum page that came with a stamp order I received yesterday.