Something new

For the third time in my almost four years at the gallery, we just held what we call our "out-of-the-box" challenge.

As you might guess, it's a charge to break out from the normal routine and try something new.

My friends at the gallery bring a new dimension to my life. The way they see things in the world and find beauty in the grand and the miniscule, in color and in value, are just a few of the ways they open my mind.

One of our founders, a sweet, dear woman, told recently of how she was cleaning her stove top but had to stop because the designs made by the cleaner and the dirt were so interesting she had to get her camera for a picture.

Some people think out of the box all the time.

So, as before, this month's challenge found one who usually works in two dimensions trying something in three. One who normally paints in precise detail tried something impressionistic, a pastel artist tried spray paint, a oil painter applied a smashed soda can to a worn board.

I tried painting.

And it was pretty scary.

Here's what I started with:
And before I show you how it ended, let me just say I know.

I know I'm not going to be an artist with a paintbrush. I was always in music classes and didn't even get the training that most people got in junior high and high school.

And I'm not patient.

And I'd rather be doing other things.

Like taking pictures.

But I'm still glad I tried the challenge.

Because now I know how hard it is to mix the right color. How hard it is to get the right angles and capture the right feeling. How hard it is to get the brush to do what you want it to do.

Now I know how hard it is to put something out there that you gave your best creative juices to and have people analyze it or criticize it or walk by it.

Now I know why great art is so great.

Just so you'll know:
And when you're through laughing, just let me say that doing something out of the box -- taking a different route, trying a different flavor, excercising a different muscle -- is a great way to start a new year.

It opens your eyes. It makes you glad for people who do things better than you do. It makes you appreciate things you hardly noticed before. It makes life even more interesting.

Gifts

One of the great gifts in life is people.

They don't come brightly wrapped in packages with ribbons and bows, but they are gifts just the same. And when one takes time to get to know what's inside the packaging they do come in, life becomes richer in many ways.

This Christmas included time with people who are interesting and funny and who are leading lives of worth. It also included correspondence from people I haven't seen in ages but still admire and still want to learn about.

Each person is a book. Each brings experiences I'll never have, but can learn from through the things they share. Each conversation is like reading another chapter and brings a new way of seeing into my life, making it richer and fuller.

All my love to all who have shared a part of themselves this Christmas. To the friend I first met in 1980 who took the time to e-mail, to the former neighbor who shared her husband's frightening diagnosis, to the ones who traveled in difficult circumstances to get here -- love and thanks for who you are and what you share. You are my gifts.

When you're cute...

...there's no such thing as a bad-hair day.

A walk on the beach

The anticipated ice storm and snow didn't come, so we were able to make it out to the Coast from Portland without any problem last weekend. And then the sun shown all day. And at evening, the cloud bank stayed just enough to the south and east that the sun was able to peak out before setting. And the tide being out made the beach all shimmery with reflections. And this is what happened:

These colors are all as captured by my camera. I made no changes. Credit goes to the Creator.

'Tis the season

....to write so many lists you need a list to keep track of your lists.

....to be thinking of so many disparate things that you forget one very most important thing.

....to stand in line at the post office and the grocery store and the photo lab and tell yourself that this is all part of the season you're happily sharing with those really slow people in front of you.

....to wonder how you were ever busy before, when you didn't have wrapping and shopping and decorating and sending to do -- just cleaning and cooking and picking things up at the store and volunteering and working.

'Tis the season to turn on the holiday music really loud and sing along with whoever's singing and remember that everything you do at Christmastime is going to make someone happy. And that will make you happy too.

Here's a happy picture:



Here's a happy verse I wrote some years ago and attached to a Christmas cookie cutter, to help my friends, similarly yoked, with their holidays:

I can shape the holiday, I've all it takes to start
The decor, lights, the treats and gifts are only just a part

I also have a family whose joy I want to feel
And faith to know the Savior's birth makes celebrating real

The shape of every busy day is largely up to me
I'll start with prayer, set steady goals, remember He taught peace

I know the Savior knows my needs, to follow is my choice
That on this holiday to Him, I can, with all, rejoice.

Love to all!

When they're down

The only way to get noticed is to mess up.

I first noticed this at church with organ music.

Organ music is just there, like light fixtures and carpeting, until something goes wrong. Hit a sour note and everybody looks up to see who's playing. Even if you've played 239,647 notes right, the one's that's wrong gets the attention.

This, I would tell a friend organist commiserating over a goof, is why it's OK to mess up on the organ now and then: To get noticed.

But there's messing up and there's messing up. There's accidentally messing up and there's stupidly messing up and there's intentionally messing up.

And the news has been full of all manner of messing up lately.

Take the local quarterback, whose post-game tirade has sucked all the glory out of hard-won victory. It was stupidly messing up and it's what people are talking about and remembering more than his game-winning touchdown.

Take the party-going interlopers who thought it would be a lark to crash a White House dinner. Their intentional mess-up is probably not bringing in the kind of attention they'd sought.

Take Tiger Woods, who messed up in all three ways, and do with him what you will. I can't look anymore.

The rhetoric is tiring. The ugliness depressing.

It's a kick-em-when-they're-down culture we've become.

If everybody could just all go through life and not mess up....

But since we can't apparently, maybe we should just let people fix their own messes without our nosy interventions and maybe we should just admit that sometimes we mess up too and maybe we should try and remember where possible, those other 239,647 notes.

I hear the White House dinner really was quite nice.

Finding the good

My computer was in the fix-it shop for SIX DAYS last week. Six VERY LONG DAYS.

Things you can't do when your computer is in the fix-it shop:

--Find out who is sending you messages via e-mail and assuming you got them.

--Watch Office episodes you'd missed.

--Confirm that the local theater company mispronounced Jean-Francois Millet 1,000 times during its play.

--Get the agenda of the Kaysville City Council meeting.

--Broadcast your family news to the family newsletter.

--Find out what the stock market is doing at any given second and why.

--Get directions to your next appointment.

--Draft letters and stories for various assignments.

--Download pictures and send them off to interested parties.

--Locate hotels for future travel plans.

--Post new blog entries.

Things you have to do instead:

--Wait in line at the library with mostly pre-teens, for your turn at the computer.

--Get all your Internet business done in 30 minutes due to library rules.

--Listen in on the couple next to you at the computer, who are trying to get a $20 gift card for spending $100 at Walmart by yelling at managers on the phone, while sitting at the library computer.

--Clean your desk at home.

--Clean the drawers in your desk at home.

--Clean your toenails at home.

But, as with every trauma in life, good comes of trial. And this good comes just in time for Thanksgiving. Now, in addition to my usual appreciation for home, family, food, health, church and country, I am thankful for:

--Computers

--Phones of all types

--Cars

--Planes -- so, so grateful!

--Cameras

--Furnaces

--Men who fix computers

It's a great time to be alive!!

Oh, and could I add ... sunsets?!