May 18, 2025 a thought for today, There is never a valid reason for arguing. Native American Hopi Proverb

My first upload for yesterday was “the beauty in simplicity”. As I was observing the kids at the birthday party I was observing other things around me. This is one of the flowers I spotted. It seemed to fit the challenge perfectly. 

The next upload was “crayons”. I found this one again when I was at the birthday party. It was int heir home school room. Another prefect fit for my challenge.

 The last upload for yesterday was “morning light”. I wanted to get a start on the photo for yesterday before we left for the party and the sun was full up when I got up so didn’t fit my expectations. So this one is from my archives. 

Life today. We went to a birthday party yesterday. It was a wonderful day. There were a couple of people not there that I would like to have seen but I will see them another time. All the kids there had a great time, almost non-stop movement. Drew got lots of interesting and exciting gifts. His energy and excitement were endless. It’s always good to get a boost like that even though for the most part it’s observation for me. That’s enough to last till next time...the memories will hold me over. 

Today the fellowship at church was another high point in the week end for me. Another memory to carry me through the week. I needed the connection and the surroundings of the sanctuary to wrap around me to help with a problem in my thinking that I am trying to solve. I need His direction. I have it every minute of everyday but those surrounding give it a bit of a stronger boost.

Today’s first upload is “on the table”. I try to find captures of time and space in most places that I go. This habit has grown in me as photography and its way of “Journaling” life have developed over the years. This one was taken at my church. 

Being Sunday and as my usual custom I have a short to-do list. I received four of my window garden flowers to plant so I did that when I got home from church. I don’t really think of that as “work”. It is comforting and in touch with Gods nature. So far the plants in the full sun window seem to be struggling. I hope they take hold. I may have to make some adjustments down the line with the particular plants I use in each location. Right now it is a learning process, a fun one at that. It make take a year long lesson to see what works each season. 

The weather is cooler today than the last few. There are more clouds today. Oh, speaking of clouds, the clouds on our trip to Zanesville yesterday were awesome both going and coming. If we get some rain I hope it will be gentle for my struggling window plants. 

The next upload is “industrial”. This is also in my archives of memories and time.

The word is afraid.  I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. Alexander the Great.  I am not afraid... I was born to do this. Joan of Arc.  I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. Louisa May Alcott. There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. Soren Kierkegaard.  Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature. Blaise Pascal.  If you love someone who is ruining his or her life because of faulty thinking, and you don't do anything about it because you are afraid of what others might think, it would seem that rather than being loving, you are in fact being heartless. William Wilberforce.  That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward. Edgar Allan Poe.  A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me. Abraham Lincoln.  We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him. Aristotle.  He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies. William Hazlitt.  I am more afraid of those who are terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself. Saint Teresa of Avila.  Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. Plato.  

The last up load is a simple one and one found almost everywhere “grass”. The lady next door was doing some yard work as I was looking for this photo challenge. I think it would have been more artistic had I taken a photo of her work. This one could become an overlay for another photo with the appropriate image. 

Article: I thought we needed a bit of art information. I guess the visit to the Art Museum here in Columbus a few weeks ago along with art being the universal language in both time and space brought this on. The title is: “Ancient Americans made art deep within the dark zones of caves throughout the Southeast”. It was written by a professor of Anthropology. The story starts with telling about a date in 1980 when a group of “cavers” took a trip in south Tennessee. To get to their destination they traveled “a slippery mud slope and a tight keyhole through the cave wall, trudged through the stream itself, ducked through another keyhole and climbed more mud”. They finally got to a dryer passage into the cave’s “dark zone”, a space where there is no external light. As they moved on they saw “lines and figures traced into remnant mud banks laid down long ago when the stream flowed at this higher level”. I noted that it was mentioned in the article that no “modern or historic graffiti marred the surfaces”. In it’s place were images of animals, people and “transformational characters”.  The author of the article mentions that these works are among the most “compelling of all artifacts from the human past”. These pieces of ancient art “speak to us from deep in time”. The cave that started this article was the first ancient cave art in North America. After that dozens more have been found in the Southeast. From these discoveries it was learned when the cave art first appeared in the area. Along with that part of the discoveries it could be determined how frequently it was produced and what it “might” have been used for. As part of the experience the explores have learned more from living descendants of the original art makers. These descendants are “present-day Native American peoples of the Southeast”. It is learned from these people what the cave art means and how important it was. Before the discovery in 1980 the first in the world’s cave art was found in 1879 in Spain. The article says that the “earliest expressions of human creativity, some perhaps 40,000 years old, European paleolithic cave art is now justifiably famous worldwide”. The site of the 1980 find is called Mud Glyph Cave. One expert has determined that some archaeological work from the Mississippian culture would be 800 years old. It showed “characteristic of ancient Native American religious beliefs”. To date there have been 92 dark-zone cave art sites in “Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia”. Further on in the article it is mentioned that the “oldest cave art sites date to some 6,500 years ago, during the Archaic Period (10,000-1000 B.C.)”. In conclusion surveys continue, one was found in 2021.....I found this description in Google: (Cave art could have various meanings, from religious and ceremonial practices to communication and even potentially serving as a form of early writing. It was important because it offers a window into the lives and beliefs of early humans, demonstrating their symbolic thinking and capacity for artistic expression.)

Either Pasta Fagioli or creamed chicken on biscuits for dinner. 

Joy 

                      once on the downtown Scioto River