Photo stories
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Looking for dump trucks
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson My two-year-old grandson, Liam, is obsessed with dump trucks. One morning earlier this month, I popped him in the stroller and set out on a mission to find a few in our neighborhood. With so many new houses in progress, I was sure we’d spot several dump trucks at work. But no. The daily brigade of construction vehicles hadn’t arrived yet. Disappointed, we returned to the backyard to play with a mini sandbox filled with toy excavators and dump trucks. (Liam is the only two-year-old I’ve met who can say “excavator.”) Suddenly, the little guy’s…
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Inner peace
“Remember: The entrance door to the sanctuary is always inside you.” ~Rumi Whenever I’m under stress, my first impulse is to look outside myself for relief. I might reach for an easy distraction — say, snacking on something I shouldn’t eat, surfing the web, or watching a mindless program on television. But as the poet Rumi reminds us, the key to serenity is within us. We won’t find it elsewhere. The challenge is learning how to unlock the door to our own place of peace and comfort. ~CL Photo by Cindy La Ferle
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Keep it simple
“Simplicity is discerning the essential from the unessential. Simplicity is having room for the unexpected. It is savoring life. Most of all, simplicity is freedom: It’s freedom to choose what you want in your life because you’re not letting in everything that shows up.” ~Victoria Moran, Shelter for the Spirit Keep it simple? It sounds so much easier than it really is. Ours is a culture that promotes constant activity — which partly explains why some people panic at the mere thought of slowing down or having “nothing to do” on the weekend. In the past, most of the stress I’ve experienced has been the result of trying to accomplish too much…
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To your good health
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” – Thomas Edison As I age, I’m paying closer attention to the diseases listed in my family history — and trying my best to avoid them. I just completed a stressful, two-part annual physical that stretched over the past two weeks. For the most part, everything is fine, though there are some refinements I need to work on with my physician. Luckily, he’s a practitioner of preventative medicine, and his longtime guidance has kept any serious medical issues at bay.…
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Inspired gardening
“A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space — a place not just set apart but reverberant — and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.” ~Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education Gardening is one of the healthiest ways to express our creativity. It’s a great way to absorb Vitamin D while plotting borders or containers of colorful blooms, plunging our hands in water and soil, and inhaling the deep-green aromas of rosemary, thyme, and basil. I owe my mother a bucket of gratitude for inspiring my passion…
