it's a new year - for some

that said -

a bird flew into the front of my car yesterday - so the year is already over for that sweet little soul - the poor thing was having an altercation with two crows (ravens?) and made the mistake of flying too low and right into my car - i was inconsolable for most of the day - i kept seeing the horrible scene over and over - eventually it receded enough for me to function and get through the day at work but i intend to make amends by feeding every bird in my neighborhood (as well as every squirrel, chipmunk, raccoon, possum and cat who traverses my back yard)

in other news - i am slowly making headway in my quest to conquer the upstairs madness that is my "art studio" - i have cleared some space at one end and actually have it looking rather nice, with crystals in the window, some plants and family photos - but there's a long way to go - oh, yes, a very long way to go

i have been doing other things that are good for me - getting more exercise, eating better (and less), creating things (mostly mixed-media collages in an art journal i got for christmas) - and i believe others are following suit (my brother has started going for bike rides - you go, bro!)

i suppose i need to post some sort of photo now - hopefully it will relate to this post in some odd way - but i wanted to post something before the month was out

happy new year to all and to all a good year - love/peace/hope - TJ

Autumn leaves

It's October!!

Happy Autumn! Plenty of blustery wind & rain today - still lots of leaves on the trees, but many have already turned red & yellow and fallen on the ground - so, will there be anything left by Hallowe'en? Probably not...

Mmmmmm - Hallowe'en~!

I took the photo this time last year - just a portent of things to come

October is a lovely month - changes in the landscape, weather and mood - I am trying to declutter my space (how many years has it been going on now?) to make room for my creative muse and I to work on many unfinished projects - sewing, making cards & jewelry, etc (the good thing is that I've been finding things I had given up for lost!!) I will try to document some of this process and blog about it (boring) but hopefully there will be creative things to share as well

Happy happy October!!!

rest in peace

yesterday (september 9) it's been a year since my stepdad passed away - for a while, i was having mixed feelings about the whole thing, but prevailing winds dictate that he is missed by us all (my mom, my brother, his two kids, me not the least...)






born in 1935 somewhere in Louisiana bayou country, he and his seven siblings did not have an easy life - he ended up serving in the Air Force for 20 years, got married and had three children - he traveled all over the world and moved his family to california - his youngest daughter died at the age of four of some type of cancer, i believe, leaving behind a brother, a sister and two grieving parents - after that, his marriage ended and he migrated to texas and then florida, where he met my mother, who was herself recently divorced from my father - after a couple of years, they got married and were together (ostensibly happily) for 25 years - he drank and smoked more back then, like a lot of folks did - they both worked hard, danced to zydeco music, went on trips and had a good life - eventually he gave up liquor but clung to his smokes


as he was entering his seventies, his health began to deteriorate - now he was dealing with chronic back pain and Parkinson's-like symptoms (which include the inability to write legibly, difficulty swallowing, speech impairment and mobility problems) he grew frustrated and short-tempered - his sense of humor evaporated and he became critical of everything we did - nothing we did was good enough, he found fault with everything - it's difficult to be compassionate when someone's being berated on a daily basis, but we kept trying - in the end, he made some questionable decisions (we thought later that perhaps his judgment had become faulty due to pain medication he was taking) and finally, after several visits by EMTs he went into the hospital, where he got weaker and then died


i don't think he ever imagined it would end that way (none of us did) but i suppose he was sick and tired (literally) of continuing to live with his difficulties and the constant pain - the strain on his heart and other vital organs (all compromised by this time) seemed to be too much - he told my mother "i don't think i'm going to make it" (one of the few things he managed to say, since most of the time he was under sedation and on oxygen) he even told the doctor he was "ready to go" shortly before he breathed his last breath


i tell this cautionary tale not to besmirch his name but to illustrate that the human condition is transitory and mutable - we are all attached to our own silver cord and when our life force ebbs we must grab it and follow it back "home" to learn our lessons and prepare for whatever is next for our soul's growth (one of my favorite movies on this topic is albert brooks' hilarious yet poignant "Defending Your Life" with meryl streep, rip torn, lee grant and buck henry - another good one is warren beatty's 1978 comedy "Heaven Can Wait" where beatty is teamed with the wonderful jack warden, james mason, buck henry - again! - charles grodin, dyan cannon and julie christie: it's a brilliant remake of another great film, 1941's "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" with robert montgomery, evelyn keyes and claude rains)


to sum it all up, he was a good person who, under duress, said and did things that were out of character and not up to his own standards, but he did the best he could and eventually welcomed death quietly and bravely, like a good soldier - for years he fought the good fight and made a good life for himself and my mom - he was like a second father to my brother and me - he loved his own kids, and he loved my mother, although they were often see-sawing between sweet devotion and bitter agitation, like so many couples who have been together for 25 or more years - i choose now to remember him as a nice guy who was always there for us and made us laugh - he has gone on ahead to complete the hero's journey and figure out where his next path will lead - rest in peace, A.J. - we miss you

please take a number

photo by tjgoogins/moon at EPCOT/all rights reserved



today is my brother's birthday


the interesting thing about it is (and he gets credit for noticing this before i did) that this year i turned 57 in may and he turns 53 today - what's interesting about this is that he i was born in '53 and he was born in '57


although this may seem unusual, apparently this is not uncommon among siblings - i have done no research on it, but i talked to another person who told me the same thing happened to her and her sister


something similar happened to me and a friend of mine - five years ago i turned 52 and she turned 25 - amazingly, when i'm 63 she'll be 36 - and so on, every 11 years... too bad we're not friends anymore, i'd like to see how it all turns out - perhaps pythagoras was right - the universe is made up of numerical sequences or some such thing


at any rate, i want to salute my brother - talented musician, animal lover, turtle and dog rescuer, handyman, good son, brother and friend, and all-around funny guy - on the occasion of his 53rd birthday - i love you, bro!!


love, sis

cairns in the wild

i've been meaning to blog about this for some time - a friend of mine recently contributed photographs of cairns for an exhibit at the local library, which i got to see - lovely photos of rocks stacked and piled in all sorts of places...

here's what wikipedia.org has to say about CAIRNS:

little cairns & stream/photo by tjgoogins 2010/all rights reserved

A cairn (carn in Irish, carnedd in Welsh, càrn in Scots Gaelic) is a human-made pile of stones, often in conical form. They are usually found in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, or near waterways.
In modern times cairns are often erected as landmarks. In ancient times they were erected as sepulchral monuments, or used for practical and astronomical uses.

They are built for several purposes:

* They may mark a burial site, and may memorialize the dead.
* They may mark the summit of a mountain.
* Placed at regular intervals, they indicate a path across stony or barren terrain or across glaciers.
* The Inuit erect human-shaped cairns, or inunnguaq as milestones or directional markers in the Canadian Arctic.
* In North America, cairns may mark buffalo jumps or "drive lanes."[citation needed]
* In North America, cairns may be used for astronomy.[citation needed]
* In Norse Greenland, cairns were used as a hunting implement to direct reindeer towards cliffs[1]
* In the Canadian Maritimes cairns were used as lighthouse-like holders for fires that guided boats, as in the novel The Shipping News.
* In North America, cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other animals.[citation needed]
* In the United Kingdom, they are often large Bronze Age structures which frequently contain burial cists
* In parks exhibiting fantastic rock formations, such as the Grand Canyon, tourists often construct simple cairns in reverence of the larger counterparts.[citation needed]
* They may have a strong aesthetic purpose, for example in the art of Andy Goldsworthy.
* They may be used to commemorate events: anything from a battle site, to the place where a cart tipped over.
* Some are merely places where farmers have collected stones removed from a field.

They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of engineering. In some places, games are regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn.[citation needed] Cairns along hiking trails are often maintained by groups of hikers adding a stone when they pass.

as for these, my friend and i saw them in the woods when we went for a walk one day this summer (or was it back in the spring?) anyway, cairns are cool - which reminds me, i want to create a walkable labyrinth in my back yard - more on that next time!

until my next blog... "love the life you live - live the life you love"

mermaid's necklace

this is a page from a wonderful book, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black - it shows what a mermaid would make to wear (various found objects like sea urchin spines and shells and things floating in the ocean, strung together with pieces of fishing nets)

so i got some hemp twine and wrapped some shells and stones and sea urchin spines and made my version (still might add a shark's tooth or a few more pearls to it)

it's not for everyone, but i do get some nice comments when i wear it...

that's it for now - i'm off to work - enjoy the weekend!!

where's chippy?

an earlier post showed us chippy the chipmunk in his natural habitat - sitting on a stone wall, nibbling on something, showing general disdain for his/her viewing audience (me and the cats, who spied him/her first)

a short time after that episode of chippy tv, i happened to hear some rustling in the black raspberry bush where a few dried-up berries were still visible deep inside (a place no birds had dared to tread) and when i looked closer, i saw chippy high up in the dang bush, hanging upside down, a** over teakettle, being very "stealth" so i wouldn't see him/her! i sprinkled some sunflower seeds on the sidewalk next to the bush and sure enough he/she found them and stuffed them all in his/her cheeks and took them home with him/her as quick as ever he/she could

twice now, we have seen him/her in the evergreen bushes in front of the house - we think he/she is eating some berries (possibly bittersweet berries, which are coming on now, or whatever little berries the bush itself puts out) so here are a few snaps of our industrious little chippy, hard at work, cute as a button... and of course, he/she got rewarded with more sunflower seeds (chipmunks are small striped ground squirrels, so they dig and climb just like regular squirrels, but i've just never seen one cavort in the bushes like this one!) and now, the latest episode of chippy tv: (photos - chippy/tjgoogins 2010/all rights reserved

i'll be back with a few photos of recent crafts & jewelry projects - and an update on how the upstairs sorting is going (hint: real slow, no visible results, but order will prevail)