I Was There

That Call…again….

“Your mom is dead!”



“I said your mom is dead.”




“What…what did you say?”

















Reading Steinbeck…again…
























I love reading Steinbeck.


Did you just call me a slob…again?





Did you just…call me a slob?




“Hey there…I was just playing….”






I…don’t like…being…called names.


I accept your…apology.  Sniff….


Oh…how it hurts sometimes….


This is a Favorite Re-post from April, 2010.

I’ve seen you before, again….




I see them still….

This is a Favorite Re-post from October 2010.


Top of the World

I saw Superman, again….



Days Fork – II












More to follow….

Days Fork – I












More to follow….

It never ended….









9-1-1, Where is the emergency?


Is this medical?

“It’s kind of…yeah.”

Do you need paramedics?

“Yeah, probably.”

What’s going on?

“I shot my wife and children.”

When did you do this?

“On Friday.”

This is Tuesday morning.  You shot your wife on Friday?


Where is your wife now?


And where are the children?

“I don’t have any children.”

Is there anybody else in the house with you?




And she’s dead?




And the dogs…they’re ok?


You like the dogs.

“Yeah, they’re good dogs.”


“Yeah.  I shot myself in the chin.”

You shot your wife and then shot yourself in the chin?


And you did this on Friday?


What’s your name?

“John Xxxxx.”

And you’re at 4321 West Why-Not Lane?




Are there any other weapons in the house?


And where are you in the house right now?

“I’m in the living room.”




“No.  There’s nobody here yet.”



Ok.  Are you outside?



“Nope, just the phone.”



Yes.  Set the phone down.




Did I love it…?



Revisiting “Inside the Roller-Coaster”

If you’ve read my “About the Blog” page, you will already know or understand that I spent more than ten years working as a police 9-1-1 operator, dispatcher, and communications supervisor.  While I no longer do that type of work, my daughter and several friends do…so the memories of “answering the call” are still fresh.

April 8-14, 2012 is National Public Safety Telecommunicators’ Week…as decreed by Congress at least three times over the last twenty or so years.  During this special week, 9-1-1 call centers often host open-houses and sponsor tours to give their tax-paying public a glimpse into their work lives and a better understanding of what actually happens when they dial 9-1-1.  This is also a week of celebration, essentially, when those same call-center employees are honored by various businesses, agencies, and private citizen groups and individuals for the role they play in contributing to the safety of their communities.  There is often a festive atmosphere in the call-centers during this week, when there are gifts and raffles and theme-based banquets and pot-luck dinners, all sponsored by the particular police/fire departments, the call-center administrators, and those businesses and citizen groups mentioned earlier.

In tribute to those women and men (and my family members and friends) who have worked and/or still work “answering the call,” I am re-visiting an earlier essay that details the work performed by those police 9-1-1 operators and dispatchers.  Please click on this link “Inside the Roller-Coaster” to take a closer look.

Misty Morning

the orchard is empty



As she lay sleeping

From one day…so many years ago….

“The sun’s light has faded and gone with its setting more than two hours ago.  The star of stars ended its daily cycle behind our valley’s western mountains as it has done every evening now for what must be the past several million years.  Now, left in the twilight created by the nearly concealed bathroom light around the corner from where I sit, my eyes perceive this bedroom-world in hues of light and dark.  Only gray, black, and lighter gray can be divined by my night-adjusted eyes.  In focusing upon the slowly closing eyes of my little loved-one, they disappear with my concentration, but if I look to either side, I can see them clearly, rather, as clearly as the suffused light will allow.  My baby’s purple dinosaur pajamas are only a darker gray than the blackened, navy sweat-shorts that I am wearing.  She is singing ‘I love you’ in her fifteen-month-old’s dialect as she fights the valiant efforts of the Sandman.  Holding her on my lap, I can smell the fragrance of her baby-shampooed hair, just as she, maybe, can smell the scent of ground weeds and back-yard vegetation that lingers on my hands as I caress her ever soft cheeks and jaw line.  The contest is finished, and that enchanter of sleep, Mr. Sandman, is victor yet again.  His wooings are too much for the protestations of my little one.  She has succumbed to the calling of sleep, where, hopefully, she will rest the night through – so that my bride and I can do the same.  Good night, Fair One.  Sleep well and know that you are loved.”

And from another….

“The Angel sleeps in the lighted room, peacefully unaware that the sun is as bright here as it was in the out-of-doors where she spent the afternoon playing.  Looking at her sleep, I am captured by the essence of a baby completely at rest.  The tiny curls at the back of her neck are slightly wet and somewhat darker than the rest of her not so long crowning glory.  Lying on her belly with the two middle fingers of her left hand motionless now, still from their suckling, she is oblivious to my presence and adoring eyes.  Her feet are bare, thanks to her own playfulness; you know she is proud that she removed the socks, smiling with her eyes almost closed to slits…she sleeps.  Tousled hair and tiny ears adorn her face and perfectly shaped head.  Her right arm is thrown forward and up where it rests on her favorite blanket; miniature lungs cause her little back to rise and fall with sustaining breath; sleep my Little One.  Rest safely for another day.  Sleep at your ease.  When she is gone, my chest will be empty where my heart now beats.  I never knew I could love like this.  I never cherished holding a tiny form as I do now when I hold her.  I was reborn too late.  My soul is miserable for not knowing how to love my own then, as I do her, now.  Those ticks of the clock have ceased even their echoing.  I hope they will forgive me.”


This is a Favorite re-post from March, 2010.

Lightning or….

Lightning or nerve endings or naked Aspen in the sky….

Sometimes Golden

Does it ever exist in a pure form?  If we are not deaf, can we really experience it?  If we are deaf, do we really experience it at all?  I cannot answer for the deaf.  Their response may depend on the level or nature of their deafness.  It may be that, for it to truly exist, one must have never heard words to have them become thoughts.  For the hearing, however, I do not believe it exists.  We are only familiar with its silhouette, the mere image of its self.  This shadow is what we call “silence.”

When it appears that there is nothing present to stimulate our hearing, when we would normally say we are in the presence of silence, something creates a sound.  Even when it is just our thoughts, fears, imagination, or blood coursing through our lobes urging a tingling hum, true silence is not there. Its image, however, is a normal part of our lives.

Sometimes, it enters with a sly, tiptoe step; other times, it is so vivid, one would think it is the resounding tromp of a platoon of soldiers.  Casual circumstances, anticipated events and unexpected tragedies are all tinged with silence.

Walk with me…into the penumbra….


Overhead, the loudspeaker commanded certain somebodies to go or come to such and such station on the third floor.  Swinging doors crashed open and closed, before and behind her.  The gurney banged into the delivery-room table, jarring her through the pain, making her wonder, again, if this was all worthwhile.

A multitude of thoughts sped through her mind while she was lying there, exposed with disregard, looking up at the ceiling, pushing, breathing, hurting, waiting.  But what about during that pause in her heart’s beating, in that long silence before the doctor spoke, what was she thinking then?  Did that interminable moment incubate the seed of anguish or jubilation?

Agitating the silence was the lazy humming of the overhead lights, the clanging of instruments into stainless-steel bowls, the beeping of the baby’s monitor and the rustling of paper gowns.  It seemed to go on forever.  The silence was too long.

The doctor was quiet, he didn’t say a thing; he just worked.  With swift, confident hands he untied the cord from their baby’s neck.  Still the silence, a moment more.  Did she dare breathe when her child had yet to take his first gasp of air?  Could she live if he didn’t?

Finally…the tiny cry!  “He’s fine – you’ve got a little boy!”  Happier words were never spoken!

He was just standing there, trying to be someone or something that she needed, telling her how beautiful their baby was, how beautiful she was, asking her, awkwardly, how she felt.  Snap-shot photographs of the last several months crashed through his mind as he watched with awe, this orchestration of birth.  Tears of relief and happiness streamed down his cheeks.  The silence was over!


For the last two months of his life, he would have spells where something inside of him would cause him to cry out, almost scream with a nameless pain.  At first, they thought it was probably kidney-stones; then, they thought it might be his hips getting worse – they had known for years that they were bad.

Their veterinarian was businesslike in his description of a not-so-uncommon immune-disorder that affects older dogs.  This miracle-worker for animals went on to detail the possibilities of tumors, intestinal bleeders, etc., that could be causing the myriad problems.

After their dog was on mood-altering, immune-system-enhancing medications for about four or five weeks, they came home one day to find the evidence of internal bleeding in several locations throughout the house and yard.

One more trip to the vet.  One last trip to the vet.  The doctor explained how there was really nothing he could do to fix their dog.  There was nothing he could do to restore sound health to this old man of a canine they called their pet.  It was time for him to go on – to go wherever it is that old dogs go when they die.  After that last injection, that last yelp, that last beat of his heart, he just lay there.  He was gone.

Normal sounds of life still ring throughout their home.  The children and the other animals are still there; the planet hasn’t ceased its orbit; life still goes on, but…it is quieter than it used to be.  He doesn’t follow the man up the stairs or down the stairs, out into the yard or around the yard and back into the house again.  He’s not there waiting for a morsel to drop to the kitchen floor, not there to nudge a hand for some love.  No longer is he heard breathing, lying next to the bed at night.  They still step over his sleeping form when they get out of bed, but he’s not there. He is gone.  Except for the quaking in his master’s heart, he is silent.


One could describe her life as very busy.  There was seldom time for her and her husband to be alone.  Hell, there was rarely a minute that she had to herself without interruption, without someone or something demanding her attention.  Managing a house-full of children and pets, attending the university with a full schedule and perfect grades while holding down a full time job required an enormous amount of time.  A full life.  One with many facets.  One with many colors.  A life with many concerns.

Not a torment, but a near constant preoccupation with the deeper, heart-wrenching aspects of other people’s lives filled her mind.  The lives of children.  Not only her own kids, but the rest of them too.  The ones whose lives were documented in the newspapers and chronicles of the day.  Children whose lives were put to paper in big binders with case numbers attached to them.  Innocent ones whose lives were casually thrown away by the give-a-damn adults who ran the world.  These were the ones who filled her mind.

Most disconcerting to her was the fact that she could not do much for these children at the time.  She still had to finish school.  Until it was over, she was bound to her current occupation.  Nowhere else could she make the kind of money she did and nowhere else could she have the time off from work to do the things she wanted to do.  Essentially, she was indentured to her meaningless, mindless, of-no-consequence job.  She would continue to be a flight-attendant until she had reaped every possible benefit from the company while pursuing her goal; until school was over.

From her occupation, one would be inclined to think that she liked dealing with people.  One would think she was a people-person.  One would also think she enjoyed the hundreds of faces and personalities she ‘mingled’ with every day at work.  One could not be more wrong.  She thought people were okay in the right setting, but not in those amounts and not in the confines of an airplane.

Where is refuge when one is inside a Boeing 737, traveling at 535 mph, at 35,000 feet?  Where does one hide from the constant analyzing, discriminating and stereotyping eyes of everyone aboard the plane?  Where does one go to flee the leering eyes of half-drunk, red-blooded males?  Where does she go to escape?  She locks herself in the bathroom.  In that closet-sized hideaway, she finds solace from the airborne hundreds.  She mutters oaths at the closed door and cries tears of anger and frustration in the company of her only friend, the woman in the mirror looking back at her.  Aboard the plane, locked in the bathroom, she finds it.  It has been there waiting for her.  It removes her from the meaningless chores and takes her home, if only for a few minutes, where she is important, where she is loved.  In spite of the engine noise and the storm of people on the other side of the door, it is there.  She has found her silence.


They arrived on a Thursday afternoon in the last week of January.  Nobody answered their knock at the door, but they knew where the extra key was hidden, so they let themselves in and made like they were home. In a sense, they were.  This was where she had spent the last several years of her childhood and this was where they had started their courtship.  Now, this was their haven from the adult world.  They felt safe here.  It was always a pleasure to come home after being away.

He went to visit some friends for a while and she stayed there with the kids, recuperating from the trip.  After a bit, her sister came home from school and there was the usual heartwarming reunion that made the long drive worthwhile.  It was so good to be home!

An hour or so later, he came home and went out to the shop to put together some toys that her mom had bought for the kids.  Meanwhile, the older son was out in the acre, beyond the walled-in back yard, playing with his trucks.  The younger son was following her and her sister around the yard and house, visiting and wondering at all the things that fascinate two-year-olds like himself.  The phone rang and she and her sister went inside.  In what may have been minutes later, the older son called from outside the gate for his dad to come and let him into the yard.

Leaving the shop, where he was still working on the toys, he noticed the big-wheel floating upside down in the pool.  He let the older son into the yard and then went to see if he could reach the toy – floating out there, near the middle of the pool.  He noticed that the big-wheel was just sitting there, upside down, not moving and not causing even the slightest ripple in the water.  Just sitting there.  Suddenly, everything was quiet.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something floating near the opposite side of the pool.  Not something, but someone, a very small someone, face-down in the pool.

Rushing to the other side, he noticed again the stillness of the pool.  How long had his little one been there?  What period of time would it have taken for the water to calm after he had ridden the big-wheel into the pool?  How many minutes had his son been floating there in that god-damned silent pool?  Where was the noise that water is supposed to make when someone falls into it?  Why didn’t he hear the silence of the big-wheel?  Why in the hell wasn’t he watching his son?

No!  What would he do without his son?  It wouldn’t be the same.  Life would never be the same.  No!  He couldn’t die!  He fought the numbness in his mind and began to do what he’d studied so many times in the past.  Just last month he had taken a refresher course and he specifically remembered not to breathe too hard into his baby’s mouth.  Pounding on his back as if there was something stuck in his throat, he cursed and prayed for him to come back.  God, how long did this take?  Over and over again, breathe into his mouth, not too hard.  Push onto his tiny chest.  Now flip him over and pound on his back some more.  Come on!  Breathe!  Please, come on!  Yes!  Cry!  That’s it!  That’s it!  Breathe!  Come on – that’s it, cry, come on!  Damn the silence – Cry!


The excitement of graduation night paled somehow in comparison to the spectacular event that would take place the next morning.  She and her family were going up north for a vacation and they had asked him to go with them.  Each of her sisters was bringing a special friend – and she invited him, her special friend.  The trip was a graduation present from her parents.  As a family, they had been to the lake several times in the past, so they knew he would enjoy it.

They left home early in the morning, hoping to reach the lake with enough daylight remaining so they could work on the boat when they got there.  In return for letting them borrow the houseboat, her mom’s boss had asked them to replace the carpet and fix some things that needed to be repaired.

The six-hour drive seemed to pass in less time than it actually took.  New scenery and friendly conversation caused the miles to slip away without notice.  Before he knew it, they arrived at the lake-town, located the boat and started to work.

With all of the work completed and only an hour of daylight remaining, they set off to find a suitable spot to spend the night.  When they pulled away from the marina he turned around and looked at the sky.  It had been brushed with magnificent hues of orange, yellow, rose and gold. This sunset would have made the sun-god proud.

The whole experience was an adventure to him.  In his seventeen years he had never been on a vacation with anyone other than his own family.  Now, he was there, at the lake, with his girlfriend and her family preparing to enjoy one of the most memorable events of his life – ten days on a houseboat with absolutely nothing to do but relax and enjoy life and its offerings.

Their days were filled with leisure.  They would cruise through the waterways of the lake’s filled canyons staring in awe at the massive boulders and rock lining their passage.  At different times of the day, they would pull over to the bank, tie up the boat and go hiking.  Climbing the rocks to the highest point they could reach and then just sitting there, admiring it all, wondering at the forces that combined to create such a marvel.  Other times, they would get out the inflatable rafts and go off by themselves, paddling along, enjoying the theater of nature before them.  Whatever they wanted to do, they did.  Sleep, eat, drink or swim.  Whenever they wanted to do these things, they just did them.  No schedules were allowed.

One of the best things about the whole trip was the time the two of them had together. Uninterrupted, they could talk for hours.  If there was nothing else to say, they would sit in the quiet splendor of their retreat and simply be together.  Saying nothing, just being together.  Near enough to touch, near enough to feel each other’s spirit within them.  A time of true communion.

At night they would lie next to each other on the roof of the houseboat and watch for stars shooting across the sky.  They felt as if they were in a cathedral, looking up past the darkness of the canyon walls to see the ceiling of stars overhead.  It was truly a magnificent sight.  The greatest artist ever commissioned to paint a chapel ceiling would have balked at the thought of trying to recreate the incredible brilliance of this heavenly portrait.

To say it was quiet on the lake would be an understatement.  Barring all other experiences from their memory, this place would be the origin of silence.  There were no clocks or schedules on the lake.  There was no screaming society telling them what to do and when to do it.  Silence ruled…and because it ruled, they were free.


Once again, I do not believe true silence exists.  For a hearing person, I do not believe there is a condition possible where there is absolutely no sound.  We can only recognize the shadow of silence, its image.  Whether it is tarnished or golden, blatant or subtle, mediocre or spectacular, the silhouette is what we call “silence.”


This is a Favorite re-post from September, 2009.

Faces of the Falls

This is from my first visit to the Bells Canyon’s lower falls in October 2010…

…and five months later in March 2011….

…and in July 2011 at the height of the snow-melt…it was hard to photograph any closer because of the spray….

…in September 2011…

…and a couple months later in November 2011….

…and now in January 2012…the only time I’ve seen it frozen-over….  I could barely hear the water trickling beneath the ice….

It still thrills my heart to live in a place where there are significantly changing seasons…different times of the year when the natural world puts on another face and shares a side of herself that we would miss if we didn’t visit her often….

I found you here…

I found you here the other day, in a windswept cemetery next to a highway where trucks and cars and all manner of other wheeled things go rushing past in their hurry of doing this and that.

…and saw you lying there with a stone for a crown and wild flowers and grasses for a burial gown…and I wondered so at how you came to be there.

…when I was a passerby on that same long highway, going to get my little one, to join her with the one who traveled with me.  We stopped to see you on a cloudy day with drops of rain both here and there.

…as I walked among your family members, as I trod the grass and smelled the wet desert air swirl about my reddening cheeks and numbing fingers, as I wondered about my days and yours in the steel-flavored wind.

…and saw you there and noticed that you shared your birthday with my little one, although yours was 110 years before his.  You only lived for 13 months and were gone, and gone away, and brought here, to where I would find you.

…and you were special in my heart, even though I never knew you.  The wind froze tears on my cheeks as I thought of your mother holding you that last time, as I thought of my little one…and I wondered so…

…and I found you there.


Little Cottonwood Canyon has become something of a treasure trove of subject-matter for my winter-snow-ice photography.  Upstream from the Mormon Temple Quarry, and situated in the Wasatch Resort area proper, there is a water-plant (?) where water from the stream is captured and diverted into huge pipes and transported into Salt Lake City and surrounding cities for further processing and eventual incorporation into the cities’ water supply.

After I had taken the photos of the ice crystals standing upright on the white granite boulders in the empty stream bed…and had taken the pictures of the evolving ice-tubes, I continued up-stream to the water-plant and found this nice bit of frozen water coming down the chute from the plant.  I thought it was a pretty sizeable chunk of ice….

Looking rather large up close…

If we continue up the trail that follows the course of the stream, we will come to a huge rock…and behind this rock is another cement chute that has been touched by taggers…an unsettling find out in the middle of the forest.  We will come back to this rock in a moment, but this is what it looks from the front side –

Probably another half to three-quarters of a mile up the trail, there is another collection point that gathers water from the main stream and another pipe that seems to bring water in from another smaller stream that comes from one of the gulches or draws further up and away in the canyon.  I had thought that the bit of ice from the first picture was rather large until I saw this chunk growing out from the pipe at the second water collection point.  This mass of ice might not actually be as large as the first one, but it does appear to be somewhat more dramatic…or unusual –

And now if we turn around and go back down the trail to that huge rock, we will see something that makes this chunk of ice appear less awesome…

This was actually the first time that I have been on the left side of the stream and behind the huge rock.  All other ventures to this location have been from the right side of the stream and essentially behind the massive rock. The water level of the stream was low enough this time that I could step or jump from stone to stone and make it to the other side relatively safely; on other occasions, the stream has been flowing more forcefully and there would be no way to cross the stream at this location; it could only be gained by parking off the road in the canyon and then hiking down to the stream….or crossing the bridge another mile up-stream and going off-trail all the way back.  At any rate, this bit of water has created a huge ice curtain…and invited me to engage in further explorations “on the other side.”  More to follow….


Brother Mine

I was returning from my lunch-time walk to the park and back when I saw a man ahead of me on the sidewalk; he was on the same side of the street, but about a block north of me.  I could see that he was pushing some type of cart, but couldn’t make-out exactly what it was…and given that he was wearing a t-shirt and pants of that sturdy brown color used by a certain parcel delivery company, I allowed that he might have been pushing a hand-truck or dolly loaded with packages…except that there was no matching sturdy brown truck nearby.  As I continued up the street and heading directly toward the man, I noticed that he kept walking back and forth on the sidewalk, first up the street I was on, and then back and forth on the street that ran perpendicular to the one I was on, the one that I would have to cross very soon as I made my way back to work.

While I was waiting for the various cars to pass in front of me and allow my clear and safe passage to the other side of the road, I was better able to see what the man was pushing ahead of him.  It was a shopping cart, and not one that was over-loaded with belongings, not one that would reveal the more transient nature of his life, but one that contained a solitary “something” or other…just a single thing…and not many.

I made it to the other side of the street and continued on my northward march up the sidewalk, quickly gaining on the man and paying special attention to the fact that he had stopped and was looking back at me…or in my direction, anyway.  As he stood there in his short-sleeved t-shirt in the 31 degree weather, evidently being warmed by something he carried within himself…maybe something flowing in his veins already at this almost early hour of the morning, I wondered what the question was going to be.  He was already working on it, too, slowly loosening his lips and mouth, making empty motions and aligning the thoughts of words, the mental sounds of them, maybe, in preparation for my impending arrival at his side.

I was expecting to be asked about the change I had in my pocket and was a little surprised when the man said, “Excuse me, Brother…dhhhooo you know…you know where there’s a restaurant around here…here?”

In the several seconds that it took the man to prepare his words and manage to offer them to me, I noticed that his one hand didn’t stray from his shopping cart…the rickety four-wheeled device that he was using to carry his unceremoniously-opened 18-pack of Bud-lite…and nothing else.  In those seconds, I also looked more directly at the man’s face and noticed that maybe I could have been his brother…after all, we were both men…and we must have each had a mother…so maybe….

Cars and assorted traffic passed behind and beside us as we questioned the day and wondered things in our separate minds in those fast and fleeting moments…as the man still stood there in his short-sleeved shirt with his long black hair tied loosely in a pony tail.  His golden-brown face was flat and thickly fleshed and had deep lines extending from the outside corners of his eyes and mouth; his nose was also mostly golden brown, but reddish, too, and bulbous, and heavily veined with red and blue road-map capillaries that spoke of years of opened beers and other kinds of things.  His black-brown eyes were glassy as they passed and twitched at mine with his stumbling words and wondering words and with his outstretched arm, and then,  “Izzzzz it that pa-hink…is it that p-hink building over there?”

I did happen to know where there was a restaurant nearby, so I told the man no, that pink building was a set of old apartments…you need to go back down the sidewalk and turn right at the street in front of us and head that way for a couple blocks…the restaurant is called “Rico-something-or-other.”

“Oh…ok…thank you, Bhrother.”

Field Visit

They said I’d find her in an old house behind Edison’s Supermarket, which wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if there had only been one of them.  Walking door to door only led me from one abandoned home to another, one place where lives had been lived and then picked-up and moved to another place, sometimes because the owners of those lives had wanted to move, and other times because they had no choice, the greater life was moving them along against their will or staid complacency.  And there was a desolation, too, that ran deep and into the dirt on that clouded day; it ran beneath the broken asphalt of the streets and the buckled concrete of the long unused driveways and sidewalks that led to burned-out garages and weather-warped front doors.  It spoke to my wondering soul and prompted more questions than there were answers to fulfill…and left me feeling sadly empty and alone despite the fullness of my own life.

I walked the streets and alleys for hours that morning, entering the castaway homes and calling and looking for a blonde and stringy-haired girl whose life was circling an abyss of injection and want.  I couldn’t find her…or didn’t, anyway.  Maybe she’ll be rescued on another day….


Last “Good-morning” and Last “Good-night”

I don’t suppose it’s too unusual for someone to watch the sun rise and set on the same day, but it is/was unusual for me to have camera ready and to capture photos of each event today, the last day of 2011.

This sunrise photo was taken along Interstate-15 somewhere around an hour and a half south of Salt Lake City…maybe around Nephi…or farther south?

The sunset photo was taken on the side of the same freeway a few miles north of Fillmore, Utah.

So…on this last day of the year, and in the waning minutes, too, I want to thank my family and friends and blog-friends for your support and encouraging comments throughout the past 12 months.  Your comments have been wonderful additions and complements to the contents of the posts, as well as being inspiration to continue in my endeavors here.  Thank you, again…and I hope to continue to have the pleasure of your visits and comments in the year to come….

P.S. – And thank you, too, Lori Kim, for my new camera…the early Christmas present has enabled me to capture so many beautiful photos that I simply could not have taken without it.  🙂


Boundless or framed, it’s more beautiful when there’s something in it….