Istanbul, Turkey

Ash sunset over the Marmara Denizi.

San Gabriel Valley, California

This is downtown LA from the mountains above my home in Pasadena, CA. I climbed up a storm drain to get this shot, but it was so worth it. I will miss this place.

Oh Los Angeles we leave you now,
at the setting of your skies.
As we leave the comfort of your ground
with your angles we will fly.

You carried us in broken dreams,
like a mother does her sons.
We were scattered ‘cross your dirty streets;
we were dying, one by one.

And you held us in your city lights,
when our eyes had lost the stars.
And we made our peace with lonely nights,
and you healed our broken hearts.

Peter Bradley Adams

Poppies. Seattle, Washington

Life and beauty in an abandoned lot.

“Those whose business it is to open doors, so often mistake and shut them!”

George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

We had finally reached where we could see more earth than sky.

Back yard, Dohnavur House, Pasadena, California

“I believe you should live every day as if it’s your last. That is why I don’t have any clean laundry – because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?!”

Cathy Ladman

Wine Country, California

“The very pink of perfection.”

Oliver Goldsmith

Big Bear, California

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

Charles Dickens’ House, 48 Doughty St., London

 ”Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
  . . .
“Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.”

Charles Dickens

On the road from Fargo, North Dakota to Minneapolis, Minnesota

I
Let us live in a lull of the long winter winds
Where the shy, silver-antlered reindeer go
On dainty hoofs with their white rabbit friends
Amidst the delicate flowering snow.

All of our thoughts will be fairer than doves.
We will live upon wedding-cake frosted with sleet.
We will build us a house from two red tablecloths,
And wear scarlet mittens on our feet.

II
Let us live in the land of the whispering trees,
Alder and aspen and polar and birch,
Singing our prayers in a pale, sea-green breeze,
With star-flower rosaries and moss banks for church.

All of our dreams will be clearer than glass.
Clad in the water or sun, as you wish,
We will watch the white feet of the young morning pass
And dine upon honey and small shiny fish.

III
Let us live where the twilight lives after the dark,
In the deep, drowsy blue, let us make us a home.
Let us meet in the cool evening grass, with a stork
And a whistle of willow, played by a gnome.

Half-asleep, half-awake, we shall hear, we shall know
The soft “Miserere” the wood-swallow tolls.
We will wander away where wild raspberries grow
And eat them for tea from two lily-white bowls.

Elizabeth Bishop, “For C.W.B”