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Showing posts with label Autumn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Autumn. Show all posts

Saturday, September 30, 2017

I LOVE OCTOBER!

Yes, I am THAT person. That person who LOVES OCTOBER...(and that person who has a personal blog...and uses it for all manner of things silly, academic, travel, and to tout the marvels of OCTOBER.) It has to be my favorite month and for a number of reasons. I love when Autumn actually arrives and sets in and while it doesn't come until late October or even November in my home of New Orleans, here atop the beautiful "holy mountain" in Sewanee - it sure is stunning! The smell of leaves, obvious big drops in temperature, and
crisp and fresh air all mark a solid Fall. Sewanee fog is also beautiful...like living in a cloud. New Orleans fog is pretty too. Here are two of my favorite New Orleans October fog photos from the park across from where I used to live on Frenchmen Street. 
(Believe it or not, these are iPhone photos.)
I also love October because of Halloween and I love wearing my silly socks. I've got this Edgar Allen Poe lunchbox that I bought ten years ago in NOLA and it's hilarious so I use it during October and OF COURSE I wear it with my "Poe family" t-shirt :-) I have several Halloween shirts with bats or cats. I am the person that buys the chocolate eyeballs to give to everyone! If you know me and are nearby, you will likely hear just about every Halloween pun that exists :-)
I love pumpkin spice and though it's available in September nowadays, I get it more in October. I also love sugar free instant apple cider, sitting on the porch enjoying cool weather, walks or hikes in the woods, colorful leaves, and college football - 
GO USC GAMECOCKS! 

Sometimes, I get somewhere where there's a nice bonfire or smell wood smoke as I'm walking. The days are getting shorter more rapidly and it always reminds me of the good parts of my childhood when it was exciting to have shorter/darker days, walking to school, Halloween costumes, fall festivals, the SC State Fair (one of my favorite memories), apples, popcorn, and toasted pumpkin seeds. It IS always crunch time academically and a super busy month, but it feels great! 

For me, October always brings to the forefront a juxtaposition of an acute sense of the brevity of life (paralleling seasonal cycles) and the happy urgency of scurrying to finish tasks or the celebratory defiance of evening activities outside under brilliant lights before the coming seasonal cold and slumbersome stillness.

Monday, November 16, 2015

i thank You God for most this amazing day

I THANK YOU GOD FOR MOST THIS AMAZING
Photo I took in 2013 at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
     
                                          i thank You God for most this amazing
                                          day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
                                          and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
                                          which is natural which is infinite which is yes

                                          (i who have died am alive again today,
                                          and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
                                          day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
                                          great happening illimitably earth)

                                          how should tasting touching hearing seeing
                                          breathing any–lifted from the no
                                          of all nothing–human merely being
                                          doubt unimaginable You?

                                          (now the ears of my ears awake and
                                           now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-- e.e. cummings (1894-1962)
#poetry #gratitude #thanks #Nature #nola #Episcopal

Poem found at: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013/10/26

And here is a GORGEOUS choral composition written by Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) sung by The Stanford Chamber Chorale and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, under the direction of Stephen Layton. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMbSY7b0fuM

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

A Prayer for Quiet Confidence

A Prayer for Quiet Confidence

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we will be saved, in quietness and confidence will be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

~ Book of Common Prayer
Photo by Caroline Carson

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Ahhhhh, Fall :-)

Ahhhh, Fall.......

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, EDOLA