May 12, 2025 a thought for today, Talk to your children while they are eating; what you say will stay even after you are gone. Native American Nez Perce Proverb

My first upload for yesterday was “the subject is yellow”. I am not sure what these flowers are but they are appearing in my lawn this year. I don’t remember seeing them here before.

The next upload was “rain”. We seem to have had plenty of that this season
here in Ohio, I think much of the country has had a lot of rain too. 

The last upload for yesterday was “a moment of joy”. My daughter and son in law brought me a wind chime, candle and this balloon. The message was special. 

Life today. We had a reception after church yesterday to celebrate two college graduates. We have a pretty good turn out for the event. 

After I got home Tami and Andy came by to visit for Mother’s Day. It felt good to just sit and reminisce about some of the good times in our past. They brought balloons, one for Sue and one for me. Tami gave me another wind chime. It is another one with a solar light. I also received a scented candle. Lately I have been enjoying a candle light even during the day. When they put my window boxes up they/we realized one of them needed a little extra support. So Andy had cut some wooden support for them and brought them yesterday to put up while they were here. Now I am ready to start my small “senior” sized gardens where they are just right in size and location. 

The first upload for today is “favourite colour”. I like almost all colors. Today the shades of green in the tree touched a mark. 

For more than three hours this morning it looked like they were ready to pave the street butttt...all of the trucks have moved, since having been just sitting there from 8:30 to 1:30. I presume they were getting paid for that time. Sue and I have an invitation to an early dinner. We have to leave about 3:30. I think they have moved to the other end of the street, two blocks away or elsewhere?. If they come back to this block to pave I am not sure we will be able to get out of the driveway. 

I have been productive all the while. I have the bulletin finished and out to those who need it to make sure it is what they needed. I also got a Sunday School lesson generated and uploaded to Instagram and Facebook. I got some dishes done as well as some things put in “storage” in the garage. Oh, and the little thing of bringing the trash and recycling cans up from the curb. 

The weather is a bit on the cool side but having some of the windows open feels and smells good. I have a sweat shirt on. The air seems just cool enough for the extra warmth

The next upload is another of the “my choice” and is one of my series of “shadows”. I liked the lines of the shadow. I also liked the red in the image. 

The word is admit.  I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. Daniel Boone.  It is a bad plan that admits of no modification. Publilius Syrus.  No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Alexander Pope.  Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors. Ludwig van Beethoven.  The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We all wish to reach a ripe old age, but none of us are prepared to admit that we are already there. Francisco de Quevedo.  I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. Thomas Jefferson.  The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about. William Hazlitt.  To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain. Henry David Thoreau.  It is admitted on all sides that we must equalize the revenue and expenditures. The scheme of borrowing to make up an increasing deficit must, in the end, if continued, prove ruinous. John C. Calhoun.  

The last upload is “earth”. I am not really happy with this one but does show one form of the word “earth”. 

Article: I like to see what kinds of courses are added to teaching/leaning curriculums whether it be new technology or not so new. The title to this article “CCAD Class Uses Wildlife to Teach, Wolves, flamingos, more join students to aid in drawing course”. The article started out that most of the students experience with “wildlife” has been squirrels and birds. Now they will get the chance to observe “ponies? Turkeys? Wolves?”. There is a weekly drawing program at the  Columbus College of Art & Design called CCAD Sketch that “features animal ambassadors”. The class was created in 2014. It is planned for this to “increase students’ visual vocabulary and sketching speed through gesture drawing”. In some lines of work for artists they are expected “to produce about 24 sketches for every one second of animation”. So it requires speed and efficiency. Not only sketching animals as they move about, active sports events would also require the speed and efficiency. This weekly class is a “six-hour drawing course primarily taken by animation majors, spend each Friday sketching out in public”. The article mentions that sketching people is not a crucial or dynamic part of drawing. So for a more complete learning experience it seems a good idea to “introduce something more unpredictable”. That is how the idea of bringing animals “ambassadors” to the campus came about. The class is using a program called the Ohio Nature Education program where there are injured animals kept and cared for since they can no longer live in the wild or at the zoo. So far the class has sketched “creatures from arachnids and reptiles to flamingos and falcons to sloths and potbellied pigs”. The class instructor said the live animals have “long been” a practice of artists. She said one time when this was noticed was in the 1940s when Walt Disney “brought live deer into the studio for animators working on the film “Bambi” to study”. Recently at CCAD Ozzy came to visit. Ozzy is a 15 year old wolf. He id one of eight wolves that live at a wildlife center run by CCAD. He was in the class room curled up on the floor close to the students. In sketching animals some parts of the sketch have to be made from a quick memory as the animal moves. They students pay attention to how the legs move and how they cock their heads. The instructor has noticed that “one of the biggest improvements she’s seen is ...speed”. She claims that what she hopes for is “removing that perfectionism and getting into that flow”.Mother’s Day dinner at Olive Garden. 

Joy

these old and worn steps puts me in mind of a path into or out of a forest setting