Great quote for a Thursday

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. God is in the sadness and the laughter, in the bitter and the sweet. There is a divine purpose behind everything and therefore a divine presence in everything. Author Unknown

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, AZ

Yesterday we crossed into Arizona! It was only fitting that we snapped these photos on Route 66 and then continued west, blasting the Eagles singing, "Take It Easy."

A Quote kind of week!

How important forgiveness is can't be exaggerated.
One way of putting it is 'to be at peace with everyone.'
It also means being prepared to take everyone into your heart,
willing to share everyone's pain and joy as if it were your own. . . .
This oneness is so close that we are more one than individuals.
And so the spiritual journey can never be a privatized set of practices,
because whenever you start the spiritual journey,
the whole of humanity, and perhaps creation,
goes along and shares the journey with you.
Father Thomas Keating

Quote, What Will Your Verse Be?

A scene from Dead Poet's Society, sent by Elizabeth:

Mr. Keating: In my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and languages. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I see that look in Mr Pitts' eyes like 19th century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right? Maybe. You may agree and think yes, we should study our Mr. Pritcher and learn our rhyme and meter and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions. Well, I have a secret for you. Huddle Up...Huddle UP! We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business these are all noble pursuits necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love; these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman "Oh me, Oh life of the question of these recurring. of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these? Oh me, Oh life." "Answer...that you are here and life exists....You are here. Life exists, and identity. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

Quote

What we do is a measure of who we are. If we imagine our work as labor, we become laborers. If we imagine our work as art, we become artists.

Jeffrey Patnaude
American Author, Teacher and Speaker
More 'Imagine' Quotes
Story: 'The Carpenter's House'

February 11 -- White Sands, NM

Anything that lives where it would seem that nothing could live, enduring extremes of heat and cold, sunlight and storm, parching aridity and sudden cloudbursts, among burnt rocks and shifting sands, any such creature, beast, bird, or flower, testifies to the grandeur and heroism inherent in all forms of life. Including the human. Even in us. -Edward Abbey

Great quote to start the new week

Every moment and every event of our life on earth plants something in our soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in our minds and wills. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because we are not prepared to receive them; for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love... The mind that is the prisoner of conventional ideas, and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of an unfamiliar truth and a supernatural desire... I must learn therefore to let go of the familiar and the usual and consent to what is new and unknown to me. I must learn to "leave myself" in order to find myself by yielding to the love of God. If I were looking for God, every event and every moment would sow, in my will, grains of God's life that would spring up one day in a tremendous harvest.


-- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Austin, TX to Las Cruces, NM

We left the farm on February 3. here's a last view of sunset over the Pecan grove at Johnson's Backyard Garden.

Farm intern Dylan, on the left, and volunteer Lucas on the right. Dylan, a Michigan native, is quiet, incredibly nice, and would crack funny jokes out of nowhere. He was always making us laugh. Lucas is visiting from Germany. He is on a 6 month journey in a series of "piece of sh*t" minivans. He grew up on a large farm, so it was a natural fit for him to live/volunteer on the farm while solving his van issues. We loved having him as an addition to the farm family.

Bess, another farm intern. Bess most recently hails from Seattle, but is learning the ropes in preparation of running her own farm. Bess rocks, we loved getting to know her.

Deb gets a goodbye hug from Will, the field manager. Will has been on the farm for year. I was fascinated to learn that he was also a farrier. You could always count on Will for crazy, arcane knowledge, but you could also never quite be sure if he was pulling your chain!

Parting shot of the farm crew - (l to r) Aaron, Lucas, Dylan, Bess and Will. Will appears to be telling a story about catching a really big fish. :)

I don't have a photo of them, but Stephen and his wife Grit also lived on the farm. They are renting/renovating a house on the property, putting in some volunteer time while Stephen gets his degree in architecture. I think this structure is one of Stephen's plans. It will have a wrap around porch and a large glass window in the front. I just loved it, and its view over the gravel pit and the skyline beyond.

You can kinda see the gravel pit... there is another pit behind the farm, and one sunny day I took the dogs out there to explore. We found a random party hangout, with a giant grill, large fire pits, a smoker, a concrete trough to hold beer and ice, bars built out of cypress and nice landscaping. And a payphone, in case you wonder why you are partying in the middle of miles of gravel pits.

DALLAS/FORT WORTH

February 4 - Visiting Sarah (fella Hollins alumna), Jess and their dog family in their home in Forht Worth. What a cool house!

The youngest member of the dog family, Nava, asleep after a big day of puppy play.

Idgie, having none of the shenanigans.

Dinner at Sushi Axiom in Fort Worth This is "The Tower," four layers of spicy tuna, crab, avocado cucumber & sushi rice. If I were on death row, this would be my last meal. SO GOOD. (If I am ever quoted on that, let me also add that I would want mom's ham & bean soup with fresh, hot, buttered corn bread and dad's homemade spaghetti along with sushi in my last meal.)

February 5 - The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, TX. From the sixth floor, far right corner window, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy as he was driving down this road. So, so tragic.

The JFK Memorial.

Deb, at the JFK Memorial.

February 6 - Driving the back roads west through Texas, on our way to Roswell, NM. We realized that our Airstream battery was not recharging, so we found a certified Airstream service dealership in Lubbock, home of Buddy Holly. The folks at Billy Sims Trailer Town were awesome. It was an easy fix, and we also got a new chain on our sway bar, after a link cracked on the previous chain.

West Texas oil pump jacks.

Feb 7 - We spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot, then headed on to Roswell in the morning.

My first time in New Mexico, hooray! A few miles in, the landscape started to change from the yellow grass of west Texas into wild shades of orange, charcoal, green, blue and red. It was desert technicolor. A line of mountains in the distance broke up the endless flat skyline.

Roswell, NM, outside the UFO Museum that chronicles a supposed UFO crash site in a nearby field and the subsequent government cover up.

Deb photographs the alien dummy created from firsthand accounts. This dummy was used in the 1994 movie, "Roswell."

Onward south, to Carlsbad Caverns.

Catching up on Martha Stewart. I finally got my November Thanksgiving issue.

I'm so excited to be at Carlsbad Caverns! Even though it is too late to go in today. We decide to camp in nearby White City and visit the caverns the next morning. White City is a dead, dead, dead ghost town. But it has potential. We heard that the original owner of this "tourist town" had passed it onto his son, who subsequently ran the town into the ground. A new owner recently purchased the town and is in the process of renovating it. We're very, very lucky that the diesel pump was working, because the rest of the buildings were long ago shuttered and closed.

February 8 - The drive to Carlsbad Caverns.

The steep entrance into the caverns.

The Whale's Mouth formation.

This formation did not have a name. Naturally we called it "The Boob."

Remains of an old expedition ladder. Can you imagine descending into that hole?

The "Big Room." All told, we spent about 3 hours underground. It was breath taking, in a beautiful way. Not in the way that in some places bat guano had collected to depths up to 40 feet. I was sad to learn that the bats do not fly during the winter! But I am also really happy that this isn't the tourist season.

Onward to Las Cruces, via a descent back into Texas and through El Paso.

The Texas state line.

Getting closer to the Guadalupe Mountains.

This was one of the most beautiful drives of my life, up there with Wyoming.

Neat shelter as we drove around the base of the mountains.

We saw signs of a tourist past along the route. This random, lonely and very closed casino was one among many dilapidated buildings scattered along our route.

The Hueco Mountains outside of El Paso, TX. To the left, outside of the frame of this photo, we also began to see the Juarez Mountains of Mexico.

We debated about spending time in El Paso and going over the border into Mexico, but El Paso freaked us out with some crazy traffic and unfriendly drivers. So we continued north, back into New Mexico and were greeted by a most spectacular sunset, throwing warm shades over the Organ Mountains.

From the beginning of this journey, Deb has petitioned to revisit a favorite childhood memory -- dinner at La Posta, in historic Mesilla outside of Las Cruces, NM. Yum!

February 9 - We parked in the Mesilla Visitor's Center lot and I got a thrill when we found another Airstream parked next to us!

Today, February 10, we had planned to drive up to White Sands National Monument. Until it started snowing this morning. I dunno, it has warmed up to 35 degrees... who knows. We'll likely spend another night in the parking lot and go tomorrow, when it will be sunny. This particular Wal-Mart parking lot has a very active RV/trucker overnighter community. It's kinda... homey.