Happy Birthday, Connie!

I agree.

"I must confess to a feeling of profound humility in the presence of a universe which transcends us at almost every point. I feel like a child who while playing by the seashore has found a few bright colored shells and a few pebbles while the whole vast ocean of Truth stretches out almost untouched and unruffled before my eager fingers."

Sir Isaac Newton 

beautiful nature

The tide pool at Kure Beach is also called a coquina outcrop.

regular helper

This fellow comes every Sunday morning and sweeps the sidewalks at the church. Looks like he comes on Saturday, too as he was sweeping this morning when I came for an extra choir practice. Members said they have offered him money, food, clothes, places to sleep and rest, but he always turns them down. Today I saw him, got my camera and snapped this picture from afar. Then I tried for another and asked, "Do you mind if I take your picture?" He answered with a long disjointed tale about Mt. Zion, and I took it as a yes.

at home

Over the past couple of months, I have bought a lot of new clothes. Choosing not to add to my existing, rather shabby wardrobe during the previous season plus a new Belk credit card made me do it! After struggling to get the pretty new items in my closet, I thought I just needed more hangers, but what I really needed was to purge. So I went through everything in there, old pieces I brought from Greenville and some newer bad purchases, and I bagged up the no-longer-needed items for recycling. But where should I take them?

Maybe a year ago I went with someone to a second-hand place. When I walked through the door, it felt familiar, and I knew that long ago, I had been there with my grandmother. But where was it? I googled "Guyton's old grocery Wilmington," and some nice historian had listed all the old grocery stores and their locations. I found my drop off spot.

This may be a boring story, but I tell it just to say I love the old memories that surface during my meanderings around town. It is affirming and comforting, threads and knots in the fabric of my life.

rest for the birds

From last weekend, a Ft Fisher tree. Have been in a tree frame of mind.

on the job

It was the last day of the spring art show, and we had lots of visitors. A special one was this dog who is an employee with the sheriff's department. He was so cute! He isn't a bloodhound but a breed that is similar to one. He didn't let anyone get away with stealing the valuable art. We all worked hard!

open for business without further incidents

It seems as if the whole of Wilmington knows about the painting that didn't make it into the show!
I think it has generated many conversations, especially by people who don't have the facts. (That is usually the way it goes.) Thankfully I have received much positive feedback and appreciation. The show opened early today, and some of the first visitors was a group of special needs young people. Then a young mother with her three little children came through. I was so glad the association held the line on Monday and didn't allow one demanding person's erotic paintings to muddy the 35th year of this Azalea Festival event.

During the past three years that I have been involved, I felt that there were some last minute niceties that were left undone when the show opened. This morning I got there about nine to do them. Things like placement of trash cans and chairs, alignment of slats in the blinds, the right places for flowers and lighting, etc. Now it looks pretty! On with the show!

I need a press secretary.

For the past year or so, I have thought the so-called news to be "he said-she said," feelings and opinions, not newsworthy events. Today I got caught up in it.

This is the week of the big art show our organization does every April. The show is open to the public only three days, but oh the preparation that goes into it!

Yesterday the art came in. One of the artists who dropped off work had to be called later to be told that (only) three of her pieces (out of thirteen) were not suitable for the show. The paintings were nicely executed, but naked human beings in their entirety just don't fly for a family/kid friendly event. She should have known. The entire team of artists working there agreed they were inappropriate. On the phone when talking to the show chair and to me, she was clearly mad and let us backward people who didn't understand true art have it! A little later when she came to pick up her pieces, she created a scene. On the way out the door she loudly proclaimed she was going to the local paper, and that we had not heard the last of it. She was picking a fight!

And that is what she did. Today I received a call from a reporter who, based on the one voice he had heard, asked many pointed questions that I answered the best I could. He quickly wrote an article that went online, and tomorrow it will be in the paper.

I tried to be nice about the whole situation to both the dissident artist and the reporter. I didn't want to be insulting or arrogant even though my nursing career did give me plenty of insight into people who push limits and act out.

It is not just the guidelines we need to go by or the consideration of the public with whom we have built a good relationship, but we also must respect the policies of the community arts building we rent for the show. They did not want those pieces either. Our policies say we can pull a piece at any time. It is an out for such a situation.

Maybe since it is a titillating subject, the story will be considered interesting, but it seems to me just another empty "he said-she said" spiel instigated by someone who wants her way and who disregards the rights and decisions of others. And I, as the president, had to speak up in support of my organization.