Fresh Peach Cobbler

My friend, Jill, has a peach tree. A prolific peach tree. Today she posted that she was bringing peaches to her office and anyone who wanted some could come by with a paper bag and help themselves.



I called her right after five to see if she was still at the office and still had peaches. The answer to both questions was "yes" so I ran by on my way home.



This called for getting out Mama's recipe. At some point when I was a kid I typed some of her recipes. Of course, now I wish I had the original recipes, but I do have a lot of them in her handwriting.



I had a little over two cups of peaches once they were peeled and cut.



It was a little too much for the dish, but I put a cookie sheet under it and let it run over the edges. I love those crusty edges.



Thanks for sharing, Jill!

Cages

My favorite book is Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings." The reasons are myriad but one is because I, indeed, do know why the caged bird sings so I can relate.

Regardless of the circumstances one finds oneself in, there's a drive within us to express ourselves, our most true essences, our souls. Something within us yearns to be free, even if we are caged by demands of others or by bars we have installed ourselves. Sometimes we don't know if the bars we've put up are to keep others out or ourselves in. The effect is the same, but some are easier to get past than others.

We may not all be able to sojurn to foreign lands to find the bit of ourselves that needs to be let free like Elizabeth Gilbert did, but we all travel in our own ways. It may only be out to the garden, a walk in the neighborhood, or a night spent in quiet reflection, but we can all journey to our inner selves where we find the questions we need.

I've come to believe life is much more about the questions than the answers. The answers come easy. We almost always know them even before we ask the questions. But asking that question, when the answer we already know but don't want comfirmed is hanging out there unspoken, is difficult. But essential.

Not asking the question is yet another cage. And no matter how we decorate it, a cage keeps up apart from the truth, the others, the best.

Cages come in all shapes and sizes. What others believe about us, what we think about ourselves, and the roles we play can all be cages. Some roles we seek and some are thrust upon us. Despite their unexpected nature we sometimes embrace them and settle the mantle of matyrdom squarely on our shoulders.

Sometimes the cage is a real or perceived lack of time, motivation or interest. We speak words that build prison walls. And eventually learned helplessness takes over and we won't leave even when the door is opened because the cage has become comfortable. It's all we know. We can no longer dream of a world beyond the bars. So we live our lives in this small space, keeping ourselves within its confines.

But for some, breaking open the cage is all they can think about. They're always pushing and pulling, and trying something new. They are relentless. And when there's the slightest movement, a tiny glimmer of light, they redouble their efforts, certain they can gain their freedom.

They know why the caged bird sings, but it's not the only song they want to hear.

Ellinwood Kansas Underground Tunnels

This afternoon we visited the Underground Tunnels in Ellinwood, Kansas. In the 1800s this small Kansas town was a happening place above ground and below. Beneath the sidewalks were tunnels that led to a variety of stores, bath houses and saloons.



The walls are built of bricks made locally by the German immigrants that arrived in Kansas to discover there were not trees to build with.



The covers above ground offer a sunlit pattern below.





You can also see bits of history as you wander the tunnels, including some old wallpaper.



This weight was carried so when they needed to tie up their horses they could tie to the weight. The harnass shop is the first place you enter.



The tunnels house some interesting bits of history.





In 1979 the city of Ellinwood decided to collapse the tunnels because of an insurance concern. They pounded in the sidewalks from above, and then filled in the rest and built new sidewalks.

One of the town ladies fought to preserve her small portion of the tunnels and that's what you can tour today.

It's only $5 to tour, and well worth it. Call for tour times 620-564-2400 before you make the trip. I only live about 45 miles away and I've tried multiple times to go and this is the first time I've been able to connect with a tour time.

Third Thursday

Tonight was Third Thursday, after Coffee at the Cosmo this morning, so it has been a very full day. Mark is down for the weekend. It's the first time he has been here for a Third Thursday event. There's art, live music, and tonight the opening of a new store - The Owl Tree Bookstore. Mark was amazed at what was happening downtown - all the people, art and music.

It has prompted some conversation about communities and how they develop, the power of one person and their vision/drive, and friendships. So much to think about.

I'm blessed to have really smart friends, like Mark, who can intelligently discuss these sorts of topics.

Dreams Come True

One of the things about seeing people's dreams come true is that it gives us all hope that our dreams can come true too.

Teresa Sindelar is someone I met during our Leadership Class a few years ago. At the time she worked at the Cosmosphere, where I now work. Soon she'll be going to a new job - her dream job. I pretty much wrote it all on the Cosmo blog, so I'll let you take a peek at that instead of repeating myself.

I sometimes envy people who have such clear purpose to a dream. But, I'm very, very happy she's getting her dream.

Time for Meditation

This morning I spent some quiet time before work in meditation. It is becoming apparent that I'm not setting aside enough time for quiet or meditation.

I require quiet on a regular basis. I think it's part of the reason I'm so comfortable being alone so often. I can control all the sound in my world that way. Despite this I'm not getting enough time for quiet and meditation.

Today was incredibly busy, and much happened in it. I started at 5:30 this morning and it's now ... well, it's now the next day at 12:21 a.m. Regardless, it has been a long day.

At lunchtime was our social media club gathering and it was great. We had 15 people show up, and that was fabulous. I didn't get a chance to visit with everyone - seems that's always the case with something like this - you can really only visit with the folks in your immediate vicinity. But, it was a great group.

I had a very busy workday, too. I'm putting together an article about an employee who's going to work for NASA. We're all so proud of her! I first met her when we did leadership a few years ago.

Then after work I went to see the Drum and Bugle Corp competition. This is obviously a very, very big deal for many folks, but I was pretty ignorant of the whole thing. But, it was something I'd never done before, and I had the opportunity to go, so I did.

Finally got home after 10 and started on my list of personal things to get through. I'm hoping to get to sleep before 1 a.m. I'm starting to see why I don't get enough quiet time.

No Holds Barred Conversation

I saw this beautiful cloud formation on the way back from Hesston tonight. I met Marci and WenDee at Ruffino's in Hesston for dinner. It was really good Italian.

Even better than the food was the conversation. It was far-ranging, but was meaningful. When we see each other in an environment where we can talk it's like we've all been saving up tons of questions for each other. There's never enough time to get them all asked or answered.

I'm really blessed to have people in my life that can delve right into real conversation. I've learned in the last couple of years that this isn't something everyone feels comfortable with. And, I've learned that my direct manner of speaking, and the fact that I am very definitive, can be off-putting to some.

It was a real delight to visit with Marci and WenDee and not feel the need to hold back at all. Love that!

The weekend

I've had a really productive weekend. I spent a lot of time in the studio. I ran across this box of vintage stationery I had in my stash and did some work with it.

When I went to bed last night I wanted to kick myself because I forgot the flea market yesterday. We have one each month and yesterday was the day. But, I didn't leave the house yesterday, and obviously, didn't check my calendar. So, I missed it.

Considering I spent a large part of the weekend moving around stuff I already have in my house, maybe I didn't need to bring any more into it. But I did make a lot of progress upstairs in the house.

I've discovered, much to my chagrin, that I need a gift wrapping room. I know, that sounds insane, doesn't it. I have a table in my studio that's devoted to gift wrapping which is, by and large, Christmas, because I don't give too many other gifts that require wrapping. I knew that I had "a lot" of stuff associated with this - from giftwrap (one of my little addictions), to the boxes and such. However, I've been cleaning out the closet off the studio where I stored a lot of those sorts of things and I'm astonished at the assortment of things that have accumulated.

Some of them are on their way to Goodwill, but I confess that there isn't much that I don't want to keep.

In the process of going through the closet, I also found some other things I had either forgotten about, or lost track of. Apparently it has become somewhat of a catchall over the last couple of years. That would explain why the studio is now completely trashed because I've hauled things out of the closet into it.

Ah, always this cycle... things look worse before they get better. At least I hope they get better.

Scenes of the Day

It has been a nice Saturday. I slept late, a rarity for me these days, and then went into the studio. I did make it to the farmer's market and the Et. Cetera shop, but the highlight of my day was lunch with Trish. She took a break from campaigning to meet me at Anchor.

At one point today I drove past the community gardens and couldn't resist a photo of the sunflowers.

Hutchinson had its fireworks tonight. They had to postpone them because of the rain last weekend.





I'm not in a very "talkative" mood tonight so thought I'd just share some pix. I'm mulling over a lot of things these days. I'm sure I'll have much more to say in the coming days.

Not working on the house

Every weekend I have the best intentions of working on the house and tidying up. Every weekend I seem to do the most basic I can - laundry and dishes - and spend my time in the studio.

Art and Age

I've had a little time in the studio the last few days. I thought I'd share some snippets of various pieces. One of these days I will get things posted on etsy, but so far I haven't had time to do that. But, one day. Really. One day.



This weekend I'm finishing up a magazine article and writing my column for Kansas Country Living. Those things must be done before Monday rolls around. I have a very long list of other things that should be done but I guess we'll see how the weekend goes.



I'm so glad it's the weekend. I really needed some quiet time at home, which I've had tonight. When I don't get enough quiet time I get really grouchy. I just need time to be still and quiet and think.

Something that's on my mind these days that I'm not sure what to do with is age, and how for some people it's such a dividing topic. Virginia and I had lunch today and were talking about this and she made some good points that it's hard to communicate sometimes with people when you don't have a lot of shared experiences in common. Well, I should be more specific and say communicate deeply.

I've always had friends of multiple age groups, and I'm very comfortable with that. Yesterday at lunch with the Ellsworth ladies I enjoyed meeting Rosemary, a lovely woman, who is 93. Last night I had a nice conversation with a twenty-something man who was at the movie at the Wichita library, and continued on Facebook. I'm comfortable with both ends of that spectrum. I probably have more in common with the 20 something, but certainly don't want to miss out on the 90 something, 80 something, 70 something, etc.

I've really been puzzling over this for a while. I live in a community where the focus is on getting young people to move here. "Young" in this case is defined as those under 40, although under 30 would be preferrable. I'm in my 40s and feel very much like I'm not wanted here anymore. I feel like I've "aged out." I'm just not sure what to do about that yet. Obviously, I've been thinking about it for a long time and haven't done anything except think. Maybe by the time I get around to making a decision the focus will have changed yet again and people my age will be welcome again.

Quote of the Day

"There's no point in arguing with someone who's certain in their beliefs."
- Joe Winston, filmmaker

I went to see Winston tonight in Wichita and he made this comment. I was reminded of how many times I've puzzled that we ignore facts, even when it would be in our best interest to not do so. It's a theme that repeats itself. I'm sure that means there's a lesson I need to learn, but as of yet I've not been able to figure it out.

Always A Great Day

This afternoon I went to record a radio spot and stopped to take this photo of the door on my way out. It has written on it: "Welcome! It's always a great day at the Eagle Media Center."

When you go into the lobby this is the first thing you see. I wonder what kind of impact that has on people - even subconsciously. If it's always a great day there you probably expect your experience to be great on some level.

Just this morning I was engaged in a facebook conversation about my general "perkiness" level. I was explaining that I grew up with a mother who believed if you were going to be interacting with people you should be pleasant about it. It's good training for life.

When I wake up in the morning my first thought is, "Wow... okay... cool... I woke up... I'm still breathing, thinking, talking, walking, functioning... nothing bad has happened overnight to me or anyone I love... thank you, God." When you're grateful for these things, it feels as though a good 90% plus of your day is taken care of. These rest is just gravy.

People sometimes ask if I don't ever feel down. I certainly do. But being happy is a decision I make every day. I choose to find the positive parts of a situation whenever possible. I've discovered that focusing on the negative doesn't really do much to address it, and it wears me out. Finding the positive may not do much to fix the problem, but it doesn't hurt anything, and I feel better on the other side of things. As far as I'm concerned that's reason enough.

How My Brain Works

This weekend when Mark was here we had a conversation about how brains are structured. I was explaining my own thought process with the aid of the diagram above.

I'm thinking about hundreds of things at any given moment. Each thought branches off others, but each one continues to its natural conclusion. When something occurs to me that requires some action, I move it to the front part of my brain, in the part I've highlighted with yellow. It takes tremendous energy to keep something in that "top of mind" position, and it slows all the other thought processes. So, my solution is to write it down. Then my brain can be free to continue all its thoughts.

If something interrupts me I am physically jarred by all of these thoughts ending abruptly. I'm likely to lose some thoughts and it takes a lot of energy for me to restart what I was thinking about on at the time. This is why I hate unnecessary noise.

If someone yells, or uses a car horn, it signals danger and means there's something I need to pay attention to. But if there's no danger, and I've stopped all these thoughts for no reason I'm not a very happy camper.

The way my brain works allows me to be thinking about hundreds of things at a time. If something is requiring a lot of intense thought, and using a lot of that "top of mind" part of my brain, the other thoughts are slowed.

At some places I've worked other people have assumed I did not have my mind on "work" because I would always be making notes about other things at the same time - from calling for a dentist's appointment to an art project I want to make. By the same token, in my "off" hours I'm still devoting thought to my work place and making notes about things we could do there.

I've come to realize that this thought process is one of the reasons I really value intense conversation with people. When I'm involved in really good conversation, fewer of these thoughts are happening and it's "refreshing" for lack of a better term. It's why having lunch with someone in the middle of the work day makes me much fresher for the afternoon than I would be otherwise.

I'm a prime example of how if people are allowed to think/work in the way that's natural for them they produce more. I am far more productive for my workplace, and with my own projects, when allowed to have this natural blending. Obviously, some work days and some evenings at home don't allow for this sort of thought process, but when possible it's better for all concerned.

Noise

Our world is noisy. And it seems to be getting noisier all the time. I don't understand the point of noise. Why do we need it?

Obviously, a yelp of surprise is reason for us to pay attention. It's a way to warn us of possible danger. A car horn tells us to exercise caution. But noise for the sake of just noise makes no sense to me. It's jarring to me and disrupts my thought processes.

I grew up in a household that came with a lot of noise. My first career was in radio, a job in which I controlled sound. I've always thought it was probably no accident that I liked having volume control buttons on the sound in my world.

When editing audio, being able to hear subtleties is important. If you cut in the middle of a breath, or don't let someone have a natural pause, it sounds artificial. I was very good at those details of audio editing.

Some years ago I had a boyfriend who would walk into my apartment and turn on the television. It was an automatic wish to have that noise going on. The relationship didn't last long, and that was part of the reason. Unlike him, I had absolutely no need to have extraneous noise in my world.

I read a few years ago there are very few places left on the planet that have no man-made sounds bleeding into them, and no where left in the US where you can experience that. In the intervening years I'd tried to find a spot. I've listened carefully in canyons near Amarillo, open prairie in Kansas, the jungle of Guatemala and the desert of Egypt. Unfortunately, I've not yet been able to experience a moment without some manmade sound being present.

I find that terribly sad.

Flooding in Hutchinson Kansas

Main and 13th street in Hutchinson, Kansas is one of the many places that are flooded in town.













Water is getting into Carrie Lynn's Flower Shop. They've sandbagged the doorway.



Some seem less bothered by the flooding.



It's not your typical Fourth of July.

How to Have a Successful Fourth of July Parade Float

The quickest, easiest way to have a Fourth of July parade float is to stick a cute kid and a flag on any driveable conveyance and proceed immediately to the start of parade route.

A bonus is that if your business is written on the door, you are automatically advertising it when eyes are drawn to the aforementioned cute kid and flag.

If you can find a kid, like this one, who offers an abashed smile, as if she's surprised you're taking her photo, all the while posing perfectly, it's all the better.

If you don't happen to have a cute kid handy, you have two other viable options.



Option one - a very large flag.



Option two - bright, colorful, child-like attire on an adult.



If you are a person with a legitimate, real cause, you can be serious and not have to carry big flags, dress like a clown or involve juveniles. See a fine example here by my friend, Trish Rose, who's running for judge.



But be aware that cute children and flags will abound. Of course, these happy smiles are generally only seen near the beginning of the parade route when feet are not so tired.

Happy Fourth of July!

A Holiday Weekend

Michele, who I work with, designed the buttons for the Fourth of July Festivities in Hutchinson. I asked her to autograph a couple of them since she did the artwork. Mark is down this weekend and both of us like buttons. So, we have autographed ones!



Tonight there was a free Blues concert in the park downtown. It was Little Smoke from Wichita and they were really good.

Tomorrow is the parade and then I'm meeting a film crew at work in the early afternoon. Like most towns across America, Hutchinson has a whole slate of festivities scheduled for the holiday weekend.

Photos with the Evo Phone

Greg has a new phone - the Evo - which I took this photo of him with. Isn't that an amazing pic for a camera phone?

The Evo does all kinds of cool things that my seven month old camera doesn't do. Of course, now I want a new one.

Greg asked if I liked his new phone. I told him yes, that the only thing I didn't like about it was that it wasn't mine.

I'm quite amazed by the clarity and color of the photo. I didn't do any color correction on this - just cropped in on it a bit.

Grateful

I'm in an incredibly grateful frame of mind this evening. Grateful beyond words.

Grace seems to be my nearly constant companion, for which I'm thankful.

I am blessed. The miracles in daily life are astonishing. I lead a charmed life.

A little paint is good for electronics isn't it?

I try to be careful in the studio but I'm a messy painter.

Every day starts better when art is involved.

I got a little time in the studio this morning before work.

William Stafford Archives

This weekend at the writer's workshop one of the faculty was Steven Hind, a Hutchinson poet. Steven has published a number of his works and has an amazing command of the language, as most accomplished poets do.

He mentioned William Stafford multiple times. Stafford was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, the town where I live. He's featured on a mural downtown, and his son, Kim, has spoken here more than once.

I was looking up something about Stafford tonight and found the William Stafford Archives, which are a treasure trove.



Stafford was one of the most important poets of the 20th century and received the National Book Award. He wrote more than 60 books of poetry, and had well-formed ideas about peace, nature and education.

One of the things I've always loved about Stafford is that he wrote every day. The website says, "Stafford wrote every day of his life from 1950 to 1993. These 20,000 pages of daily writings form a complete record of the poet's mostly early morning meditations, including poem drafts, dream records, aphorisms, and other visits to the unconscious, recorded on separate sheets of yellow or white paper or when traveling, often in spiral-bound reporters' steno pads."

They've done a beautiful job with the archive, showing each poem from its handwritten version to published state. I always love to see inside a creative person's brain.

I didn't find the quote I was searching for, but ran across this poem, Prairie Town, about Hutchinson.

The archive has more than 7,000 items, a nearly complete record from 1937 to 1993. Quite amazing. And we can all enjoy it with a few clicks on the computer.

Quote of the Day and Workshops

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
---Mark Twain

These days I'm imagining a new opportunity. At the urging of friends I'm organizing my thoughts about putting together a series of workshops about how to get the most out of your life.

People often comment that I seem to always be doing something interesting and how do I know about these things and how do I find the time. After many conversations with people, I've figured out there are some techniques I employ that are not common knowledge. I'm still working out all the details, but I'm getting a bit more of a handle on it.

I'm not sure how these workshops will be structured yet, but probably a Saturday afternoon for a few hours - maybe 1-5. It would be so fun to meet people and get to interact in this way.

It's still in the notecard planning phase, but I expect it to take shape pretty quickly, so maybe I could do the first of these later this summer.

If you have thoughts I'd love to hear them. I'm excited by the possibilities