Discovering Beauty in Everyday Life

Hello Everyone, So many of you knew my niece Lara.  I want to share this with you.  See you very soon, Linda Jo. Remembering Lara Calloway 1973 - 2015 May 8, 2015 MacLean Ballroom, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Guest Book "I loved her. I'll miss her. She exuded love and acceptance...." - Carrie Rubenstein View Sign More Photos View all 4 photos LARA LEE CALLOWAY  Funeral rites for Lara Lee Calloway will be at 3 p.m. Sunday in the village church at Canada de Los Alamos in the valley below her childhood home on the Old Santa Fe Trail. She died in her sleep on May 3 at home in Chicago. She lived in an artful world filled with colors and fabrics and images and fine trinkets and sacred illuminations and people with stories to tell. Growing up, she worked in Santa Fe galleries, ushered at the Opera and traveled often in Georgia O'Keeffe country. She graduated from St. Michael's High School in 1991 and received a

My past-tense life, full of dangling participles, A closet full of un-done novels, waiting for their final edit. Shoe laces frayed from long gone hide and seeks. Again, again, I see it all, stinging the air in front of my eyes; Cracking, shattering, splitting, fading, Finally the here and now again. I see it all. I do from time to time, I conjure up an arrow, cat gut pulling— Don’t let me go! I see my flabbergasted sinews dangling loose, Their life swooshing toward some unknown target. No bulls eye here for me! Should I have stayed with that simple dartboard after all? Well, now here I am, a feather for a friend, Sinking into a spring-green branch. What time is it anyway? ‘63 in Paris? Or Milan in ‘71? Why drag that blackened coal-shoot past Into this sparkling, solar-driven day? It’s time to let those finite multi-sided polygons Leap for their circles at last!

I know I missed Easter and Wester, and You, Thanksgiving and Chrismas, Columbus Day too, but my Spirit was with you; I had to make do! I even discovered a secret or two: The seasons keep rolling the hour glass sifts, regardless of whether or not I exist. If I don’t pay attention the matter at hand continues along just as though it were planned, Not by me, Never mind! I’ve got plenty to do, without thinking about how to discuss it with you! Not that I wouldn’t enjoy the exchange, If it weren’t so totally hard to arrange. I think I’ll go look for a wish and a star. I found one! My gosh! And it isn’t that far! What a beauty, oh my! Has it always been there? In my eyes, in my care, It’s just too much to bear. Easter in Central Park ~ 2015

Along the Williamsberg Bridge to  Bedford Stuyvesant Entering Monroe Street Beautiful Woman Sitting on Staircase Upstairs

Almost finished! Next: Preliminary walk-through....

On the J-Train The J Train in Brookly, across the Williamsburg Bridge Arriving at Gates Avenue Beautification of Subway stops: Gates Avenue, Brooklyn One of 4.5 bathrooms (yes, I know!  It doesn't have a soap dish yet.  But one has to get exactly the Correct Soap Dish!  This bathroom is a beautiful grey and white, although it doesn't look like it here.  It also is a fairly large bathroom--I guess I have to spring for a wide-angle lens like all those other people! Oh yes.  Indoor plumbing!  What a gift, even without soap dishes and towel racks! Mission for the day (should you choose to accept it): 1.  Enter into a bathroom; one with tub or shower.  Avoid gas stations, for example. 2.  Revel in the beauty and convenience of Tile!  Think what a mess the average shower might make without it. 3.  Check out the very simplicityof a water repellent floor!  Nothing fancy, just tile, tile, showers, water, toilets with double flush, maybe a mirror!!!!  A mirror. 

Seriously?  This is more than I want to know about mechanicals!

I love this video on mute as well....also try full screen.

This piece of Urban Flora is a prime example of a Time Warp Tree.  Notice how it is confused and out of focus!  This specimen is carrying a whole forest of wilted fall leaves, and uncountable leaves that simply refused to fall.  Even the winter snow cannot discourage these soggy hangers on (or, if you like, hanger ons).  Looking carefully, we see greenish leaves still clinging on from last summer.  Notice as well the half enclosed trunk.  What is that about? And to completely sadden one,  this Time Warp Tree is trying to shelter not tulips, not boxwood, but ice-encrusted garbage bags!  How thankless, yet noble. Time Warp Tree also appears to be wearing a tree-sized friendship bracelet.  Sigh. Time Warp Tree with Red Tree-Friendship Bracelet

We are all breathing sighs of relief!!! Things are looking like beauty will prevail... Beautiful New Office--Work is Looking Good! Fellow Contractor Sam Admires the Beauty

A blank page has nothing, no nothing at all, but it makes itself over with letters and scrawl, nevertheless it remains quite pristine on the edges and margins and spaces between all those letters and such that don’t matter much so if I recall it at all then one word in twenty is plenty. Early (really early) Magnolia buds in Conservancy Garden I've sped read through more books than I can count, and I am really and truly great at it. I have become so proficient that I need only drive by a bookstore to read a book, much like ConEd reads meters. (You may not be aware of the special radio-frequency chips inserted in the spines of most best sellers.) So of course I think you should try it! Here's How: Open your eyes wide, and focus on your smart phone (how do you think that phone got so smart? Downloads!) Anyway, focus, focus. Concomitantly, Flick the pages past with a suitable finger; I prefer the two middle finger method. Now, work hard at remembering a few

I am hardened by the unrelenting cold Scorched by winter, moribund with icy calm Burrs scratch and itch, puncturing the edges Cold dirt. Talking drum calls out for me A drop, a flake, a pinch at a time By the tip of a root I become me again. Untermyer Fountain /Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott, French Conservancy Garden, Central Park.

Dry leaves rattle and bones click against the soft satin, shredded by time, A coffin day. I don’t know what to do when it comes down to it; Nothing seems to say itself, It just all seems out of proportion, There is no spring back in the touch, no sap of life, My fingers are aching with the sadness of it. And there’s the stupid sun, spreading itself over the morning. Look at that. A tree down for the winter, Gone, gone. Gone, gone, gone. They say the sap is just below the surface, Sticky with life, rich, and waiting. Colorado, Winter 2014

Hello Linda Jo I will share my experience on creating or growing a house, as you requested from your friends. First of course, you must accept the fact that I'm a friend and that the request includes me. I built my first house when I was 13 with the help of my then best friend, Ludwig (Luddy). It was in the in the midst of a deeply wooded area, but actually about 40 yards from my parents's house (just in case). The sides were made from orange crate slats - or maybe Apple crates. I don't remember. The roof was cardboard, procured from the local grocery. We told the owner we needed them because our parents were moving. It was merely a white lie because it was The Great Depression and our parents moved often. But the roof was not water proof and was rather mushy after the first drizzle. To us, it was the precursor of Hurricane Sandy. But we were determined and sneaked into a junk yard and found some corrugated tin. It was not considered stealing since i

I’m dizzy and ditzy as a bee can be. Yet to be a bee is not for me, I am simply too busy to be a bee, IN fACT….I would like to know where all those behive engineers and botanists are! Where are the gardeners, the tree surgeons, the cultivators and the rose grafters?  It is time to unite behind the latest and greatest sustainable home design in the history of –well, the World.--  WE ARE GOING TO GROW A HOUSE . Why put up with all those joints and connections and what nots? Why not just manufacture a couple of seeds with a few house chromosomes? You know, a few plumbing stem cells, an electronic segment, a brick and mortar constructor? Sheet rock? What is a house but a few organs and an inner and outer skin? Of course, there’s some insulation for fat, a couple of entrances and egresses to manage maintenance, processing and waste. We just need a nice drainage system and some plumbing for circulation to carry the oxygenated water around. Can you experts not design a speci