Hello everyone! Hopefully you live in an area that was spared the disaster of Sandy. If you happen to live within its reach, I hope that you and your loved ones are okay. Please know that a whole nation is praying for you. That means me too. As many of you already know, I live in Denver, Colorado, so I am fortunate to be nowhere near the destruction. I do have a son in Baltimore who I haven't heard from yet or been able to reach, but I know where he lives and I think that he was spared from any real damage. Hopefully, we'll find out something today.
I want to thank Marglyn for reading my novel, Rescue of the Heart, and also for giving me such a very nice review on Amazon. I was about to give up. I thought that it may not be good at all because no one was letting me know their thoughts on it. But now, thanks to Marglyn, I know that it is as good as I thought it was. I sure worked on it long enough. So, God bless you Marglyn. Now if I could only get some more reviews like that. I love knowing that somebody likes my work. It makes me feel like a legitimate author.
This morning I was blessed with a sight that I am sure was not seen by many. I was on the outskirts of Denver and driving westward, back toward home. The sun was just coming up behind me. The road I was on was a straight, two-lane highway that had no other traffic at the time. To my left were power lines running toward the mountains in the distance. On my right was a train track and about a quarter mile down the road there was a train coming my way and it had it's headlight still on. The overall lighting of the area was soft, leaving a peaceful feel to it. It was pretty much quiet where I was because I could not yet hear the train. Looking up in the sky and toward the mountains was a full moon on the right side of this view. On the left side and just off center were four wispy clouds. I don't know what type of clouds they were. They were just wispy and appeared to be stacked like a set of plates atop one another. They were a soft pastel pink with a pastel streak of blue lining the bottom of each cloud. The rest of the sky was clear and still carrying the last hint that night was giving way to the new day. The terrain around me was open fields. It was a beautiful sight that I wish the whole world could have experienced.
It reminded me of my younger days when photography was everything to me. I lived for moments such as this. I would often stay out all night just waiting on the perfect moment to photograph a scene, sometimes on the Arkansas river or sometimes atop of Pinnacle mountain just waiting on the perfect lighting so that I could capture the perfect picture.
Those days are behind me now. When digital photography came on the scene, even though I fought against it, my love of being the great photographer slipped away. Film is hard to find nowadays and is too pricey. Everyone and everything has gone digital and automated. I prefer to take all day to get one shot as long as it is just right. With digital, you can fake so much of the picture. On film, what you see is what you get. Dimensions and depth of field is so much better produced on film. To me, a digital picture is nothing more than a snapshot. In my eyes it has the appearance of snapshots that have been glued to a poster board. So, my desire to create the perfect photograph has gone away. It was my art.
Back in the day, I would have stopped at just the right spot and unloaded my gear to capture that special moment. I wish you could have seen it.
I don't know why, but yesterday I was thinking about whistling. My daddy taught me to whistle way back when I was a young whippersnapper. He always enjoyed the musicality of whistling and would often be whistling one tune or another. He was pretty good too. That is the way I learned, whistling tunes. But as I grew older I found that a lot of folks thought it was annoying, so eventually I stopped doing it. Whistling had become something you did to call your horse or your dog or just to get someones attention. This type of whistling I could never do. I wanted to but I never could do it. I still wish I could but somehow that talent has never landed here. Nowadays, if I try to whistle, no matter which way I try it just sounds pathetic.
