DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

The "Dog Days" of summer are hitting us hard here in the "Heart of Dixie"...The muggy humidity.....you long for rain hoping things will "lift" and cool off, but, no, the rains just make things "steamy"...literally....what DID people do without air conditioning to at least take a little of the humidity out of the air. I don't mind heat...it's the humidity:(

Even our dogs look like the dogs in the delightful painting above by folk artist John Sperry. It's painted on a large piece of old roofing tin and hangs from a nail in our (now) spare bedroom...It's the first thing you see when you walk upstairs and always makes me smile:)

Anyway...our dogs just lie around in the bushes, diggin holes:( in an effort to get cool dirt against their bodies....

In spite of my pessimism....

Have a Lovely Day!

-Mug

...As We Dance through Life...

TO HALLIE....

And the Rest of Us as We Dance through Life

In early October 2007, my sister was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. She began chemotherapy rather quickly, so by December her hair was beginning to fall out.

So I wrapped up the above two paintings and left them on my sister's porch along with a poem that I wrote for her....only it turned out to be speaking to me also and maybe even to you:

Hair and hats.....hats and hair...

The "dance of life" to the music of prayer.

The music of prayer is sometimes just music...

...When one can barely hold on and is about to 'lose it'.

But if we can make ourselves listen...if we hold on 'real' tight,

The music of prayer guides us through the dark night.

Sometimes the music signals the entrance of others...

...to add to our 'dance'...all our 'sisters and brothers'.

God is the 'Conductor'...He directs the song;

Our job is to dance ...just to 'play along'.

As we dance to His music, we follow His plan;

...He shows us the steps as we hold onto His hand.

So...Hairless with hats...or hatless with hair...

...The Holy Spirit guides us ALL through the music of prayer.

-Mug

P.S. Hallie has finished her chemotherapy and her radiation; her hair has grown back; she's gone back to running marathons (or maybe half-marathons...and wins them for her age division - she's 45years old) whenever she can, is engaged to a wonderful man, and is currently cancer-free:)

Have a lovely day!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT....

Oswald Chambers always makes me think.....

....and I am learning - I think- that God cares not so much whether I teach school or own a little folk art gallery...These are small things to Him. It's the little things that are BIG to Him....Am I walking with Him minute by minute and obeying him in the DAILY things of life? ...Am I learning (like Paul) to be content in whatsoever state I am? (Phil. 4:11)

The devotional for today in My Utmost for his Highest by Oswald Chambers begins with this verse:

And straightway He constrained His disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side.....Mark 6: 45-52

and says this:

...What is my dream of God's purpose? His purpose is that i depend on Him and on His power now. If i can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God. God is not working towards a particular finish; His end is the process - that i see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because i see Him walking on the sea. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying God.

And he goes on to say...

...If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present....

Hmmm....I have spent many years...and tears..."stewing" over what God's will for me is....His ultimate will is for me to learn to be content in whatsoever state I am, and I can only do this if my whole being is focused on Him. I am beginning to have fleeting moments of this....very fleeting....almost intangible...they flutter and flitter on the edges of my being and then go away...

Thank you, Lord, for those fleeting moments.

-Mug

GET OUT YOUR MONEY...!

Fok artist Butch Anthony's rendering of my father painted about 15? years ago.....

And another 'folksy" column by the "mayor"...or as he has been called...

"The Pundit of Pittsview"...

GET OUT YOUR MONEY –
DOG RACING HAS COME TO PITTSVIEW

All this talk about dog racing these days is a little confusing. All the politicians are busy declaring whether they are for it or against it.
If they don’t like dog racing, I guess they’d better stay out of Pittsview, because we already have it.
We have a half-mile measured track from George Boon’s store down to the graveyard, right through the middle of town.
If you want to see dog races, come on down and just park under one of our oak trees for awhile. Bring your own dog if you want to.
But he won’t stand much of a chance. These country dogs are in pretty good shape.
I don’t think we have many greyhounds. In fact, I’m pretty sure we don’t. But we do have plenty of dogs that can and do race daily.
Some days only two or three will race. Some days all the dogs in Pittsview seem to get in on the fun.
My own dog participates about once a week. Most of the time he just hangs around the house listening for the screen door to open. But about once a week I reckon he gets bored, and he decides to follow me to downtown Pittsview.
By the time he gets to the main street, ole Beau is really moving. The regular dogs in Pittsview are caught napping.
Beau just streaks on through till he gets to my old store building where he drinks a lot of water, slobbers on everything, and then stretches out on the cool concrete floor. He is preparing for the trip back.
Meanwhile, the regular Pittsview dogs are watching for him. They have learned that when he flashes through their territory like that, it won’t be long before he will be coming back.
When I start back home in my truck, ole Beau strikes out down the main street ahead of me. A great big black dog hangs out at the first house, but he doesn’t stand a chance in the dog race since Beau has passed him before he knows what has happened.
But the black dog’s bark alerts the rest of the dogs down the street, and then the real race is on.
The next dog in line is an Eskimo-looking dog with long hair, and he can run pretty good.
Across the street is a fat, short-legged bulldog. He always gets an ‘A’ for effort, but he is 'way out of his league. Those short, stubby legs move so fast you can hardly see them, but he is quickly left in the dust of the others.
At one time there was a great big St. Bernard living in the fourth house on the right. He would come charging out of his driveway with such power that he had trouble negotiating the turn onto the street.
He would swing ‘way across to the other side before he could straighten up and get in the race. Ole Beau, the Eskimo dog, and even the big black dog would all be past him before he got going good.
The St. Bernard got to where he would come charging out of his yard just as soon as he heard the first noise down the street in order to try to get ahead of them.
One day he heard a noise, charged headlong out into the street, and tangled with a pulpwood truck. Unfortunately, he was permanently eliminated from the race.
One fellow in Pittsview has four mixed-breed, long-legged dogs that follow his car everywhere he goes. When he comes through town with four yapping dogs alongside his car, it really does get exciting. You never heard such yelping, snarling, and barking at any dog race.
If they do get the dog track started over in Tuskegee, I’m thinking seriously about taking a truckload of these Pittsview dogs over there. Even if I didn’t win any money, I know it would be great fun for everybody concerned. Especially the dogs.

(written August 25, 1983 for the East Alabama section of the Ledger Enquirer newspaper in Columbus, GA)

Have a lovely Day!

-Mug

FOUR DOGS AND A WALK.....

A comment on yesterday's post prompted THIS post.

A reader wondered if I walked all of the dogs at the same time....in fact, she had "visions" of what it would be like...

All visions barred...here is a taste of REALITY!

You met all of our dogs in yesterday's post.....

We have

KATE, the Boykin spaniel,

HARRY, the Peek-a-Shu,

MAGGIE, the "drop-off",

and BUD, the son of Maggie...

(SAPP, the granddog, was not visiting at the time of this walk)

We begin at the side porch...

There are several variations of the same route, but the basic route includes around the house, down the path through the woods,

around the pond, and up the driveway, around the house, and down again....

3 times makes for a brisk 20 - 25 minute walk...

It would be IMPOSSIBLE to truly document a "Walk with the Dogs",

but here are a few photos of the walk we took yesterday evening..........

THE FUN BEGINS!

At the pond....This will be the last time you will see Maggie, but she is definitely with us. Something about my camera makes her shy away.....?

Awww, Bud, leave Kate alone!

Bud turns to look when I yell for him to stop...

Good Boy, Bud!

He comes when I call!

Such a good boy!

And Kate gets the stick!

Dirty Harry says, "Enough of this! Let's get this 'show on the road'!"

He's waiting.....

Bud is waiting....

Oops! Their attention is diverted....

O.K., Dirty Harry, I'm coming! You are so impatient!

All together again for the final lap...

Like any younger sibling, Bud is always watching his older brother & sister, and, of course, they ignore him......Poor Bud, he HAS to pester them so they will acknowledge his presence:(

Could it be a big fish?

HOME AGAIN!

One more time?.....

Have a Lovely Day!

-Mug

WHISTLE....While You Work....

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK.....La, La, La, La, La, La, La.....Doo, doo, doo, doo.......doo, doo, doo, doo,......doo, doo, doo, doo, doo!....

I love to whistle....especially while I'm working and focusing, but when I whistle outside the dogs come running from every direction....

BUD is usually the first....7 months old and the biggest of the lot!

Bud is always happy!

HARRY dislikes Bud immensely

because Bud pesters him terribly trying to get him to play.

KATE loves everyone and really loves ATTENTION.

(Harry doesn't care whether anyone pays attention to him or not.)

Kate doesn't really care for Bud, either. Poor Bud....he has no social skills.

Maggie is the dog someone "dropped off" near our house when she was pregnant. Bud is one of her puppies. Maggie likes attention, too, but for some reason truly shies away when I try to take her picture...A camera-shy dog?

And, then, sometimes we have Sapp, our granddog who is the father of Kate.

Have a Lovely Day!

-Mug

MODERN-DAY "YARD MULES" MAKE NICE GUYS MANIACS

......Another newspaper column from "The Mayor" of Pittsview. ENJOY!

Modern-Day ‘Yard Mules' Make Nice Guys Maniacs

Lawnmowers can make grown men completely lose their cool. Big-hearted, gentle, easy-going men have been reduced to red-faced, cussing maniacs on Saturday mornings all over this country.
Lawnmowers have brought wives scurrying outside to remove children from the presence of their father.
One little boy who was allowed to hang around too long burned his grandmother’s ears one day. “When I get big enough to cut the grass,” he chirped, “I can use words like @#%$ and &*^! …That’s what my daddy says when he is trying to start the lawnmower.”
And remember the news story about the man who shot his lawnmower? The police called to investigate gunshots in a residential neighborhood, found nobody around at the address given. But in the middle of the driveway was a dead lawnmower, shot full of holes, oozing a puddle of oil onto the pavement.
In the house was a big, husky fellow all scrunched down in his chair. His eyes were glazed, but he was smiling. On the table was an empty pistol…a wisp of blue smoke rising from the barrel.
Like most Saturday morning grass cutters, he was a nice, normal, everyday guy. He had never been in trouble with the police and hardly ever raised his voice.
Lawnmowers are our modern-day mules. Many of us never plowed a mule, but we have heard about how stubborn, cranky, and unpredictable they are, just like some lawnmowers I have known – stubborn, cranky, and unpredictable.
Proprietors of lawnmower repair shops all seem to be happy-go-lucky, easy-going types. They must all be rich. Their shops are always jammed with broken-down lawnmowers.
You walk in and find the proprietor at a greasy desk, drinking a cold drink, talking to friends. The only person in the shop is a teen-aged boy with his hat on backwards. He is sitting on an overturned five-gallon can staring at a lawnmower. The radio is on, loud.
You walk back and untie the string holding your trunk lid down. You bruise your leg and get grass stains and grease all over your britches, not to mention a hernia, while getting the mower out of the trunk. THEN the proprietor comes out to wait on you.
“What seems to be the trouble?” he asks pleasantly. Then he reaches down and pulls ever so lightly on the starter cord.
In the last few days you have yanked the cord at least 397 times, and that sulking monster never even pooped. Now it not only starts with one pull; it purrs like a kitten. “Well, what’s wrong with it?” asks the mechanic.
The proprietor finally consents to “take a look at it”.
“Check back with us in two weeks,” he tells you.
TWO WEEKS! Your grass is too high to cut now! In two weeks Tarzan and the apes will have moved into your yard.

One fellow with an old riding lawnmower had no trouble starting it, but it would only run wide open. He found where a part was broken on the carburetor that made it either cut off completely or wind up to full throttle.
He fiddled with it for a while, but it revved up so fast the whole machine vibrated all over. By next Saturday, the grass would be impossible. He decided to give it a try, jumped on, and slammed it in forward gear. The front wheels came off the ground, the back wheels slung dirt and grass out the back, and man and mower took off with a roar.
His hat flew off as he came into the first turn, but he had no time to worry about that. He barely made the turn on two wheels and roared down the straightaway on the back side of his lawn. With a half smile on his face, he was zooming along in good shape now.
Up ahead was the morning newspaper. He was on it and over it quickly leaving a thousand bits of paper in his path.
Leaning into the next turn like a professional race car driver, he saw the rake ahead, half-hidden in the tall grass.
To late – BLAM, WHAM! The handle was in splinters. His wife’s new rosebush was mulched quickly and silently as he careened around another turn and into the straightaway again.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw his wife standing on the porch, eyes agog, mouth open. No time to think about her, either, with another turn coming up. His hat was chewed up that time.
Now his wife was running across the yard waving her arms. He reached under the seat to cut the switch off. “Something the matter?” he asked as he smoothed his hair and got off the mower.
“Have you gone completely crazy?” she asked. “You are going to kill yourself…and just look at the yard!”
He had a strange gleam in his eye as he explained the problem to her, stating that he was going to cut the grass. She stared at him for a long time, then threw up her hands and went back to the house.
Surveying his track as Joey Chitwood, the stunt driver, might do before a big event, he cranked her up and took off again. He was getting this grass cut in record time.
But the vibrations of the wildly racing machine began to take it toll. First the cover over the motor flew off. Then it was the air filter. As he zoomed around the yard he noticed more and more parts lying on the ground each time around. Finally, a bolt in the steering column sheared off just as he went into a turn.
Barely missing a tree, the mower plowed into the woodpile, covering the man and his machine with logs. The mower died then and there, never to run again. The man limped away without looking back, bruised but not beaten.
Lawnmowers – balky, stubborn, mule-headed contraptions. I hope they didn’t arrest the guy that shot his…they ought to give him a medal. We ought to take up a collection for him so he can have it stuffed and hang it over his mantelpiece.

(July 26, 1984, - the East Alabama Today section of the Ledger Enquirer)

Have a Lovely Day!

The Jazz Band by Chris Clark

I only have two pieces of art by Chris Clark. I could just "kick" myself for not holding on to more of his when I had my little folk art gallery several years ago. His work was (and still is) very popular among all types of art lovers. It's happy, colorful, and unique.
This one is painted on a 24" x 24" piece of old metal ceiling tile he salvaged from somewhere.

It is hanging in our home above an old upright piano that belonged to my grandparents. The top of the piano is filled (I know "less is more", but who could decide?!) with family photos, mementos, and more small pieces of art by family members.

The angel on yellow you see to the left of The Jazz Band is also by Chris. It is painted on a piece of wood. The face of the angel was created from a piece of old rusty tin...Wonderful, huh?!

Below is a profile on the artist, but I'm not sure how readable it is...I had to photograph it because the computer this is on is "on the blink", and I'm too lazy to re-type the whole thing.

Thanks for reading!

Have a lovely day!

-Mug

A "JUST BE" MORNING

I had planned on doing a post about folk art today, but the weather was so balmy this morning that I sat in the back yard to do my devotional....even the dogs were peaceful today. Anyway, it's not very often that I just, what I call, "be". But this morning was a "Just Be" morning. As a result, a poem flowed forth onto the pages of my devotional journal that I need to share. Now, don't get me wrong....I'm rarely this open and focused during my morning quiet times....usually my mind is darting to and fro, and I have to keep "dragging it back"....But, for some reason this morning was different....

Breezes gently flowing

rustling through the trees...

An orchestra of cicadas

of birds and buzzing bees...

Hummingbirds zoom to and fro

like little fighter planes.

Four dogs are lounging round-a-bout

while overhead God reigns.

Crepe myrtles stand guard silently,

all lushly pink and green...

A backdrop for the "fighter planes"

as I survey the scene.

The dogs begin to rouse a bit...

to nose about my chair.

But then they settle down again;

they see that I'm still there,

And so, Dear Lord, as I look about,

as I lounge before Your "chair"...

I'm awed anew by Your omniscience...

and Your Presence everywhere...

By the fact that You made me, Dear Lord...

You created all this I see...

You know my ups and downs, Dear Lord...

I should be on bended knee.

Please forgive me, Father,

help me to start anew...

Living my life and setting my sight

on You and ONLY You.

-In Jesus Name...

"DID YOU EVER STOP TO THINK....

.....and then forget to start again?"

-A. A. Milne

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Isn't this great?

I have this hanging on my refrigerator, and it never fails to make me stop and smile")....

Funny Man in the Mirror

My father wrote a "folksy" column called "The View from Pittsview" for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer newspaper during the 1980's and early 1990's. Daddy had always said he should compile all of his writings into a booklet, but he never did, so last summer, unbeknownst to him, I began this project and completed the first booklet for Father's Day 2008.

*Note* Last summer Daddy was very sick with lung cancer...

....he died at the end of August.

I only managed to finish the above 2 booklets before he passed away.

--------------

This column began the first booklet:

ENJOY!

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Funny Man in the Mirror: Oops, That’s Me!

I found out why people smile at me all the time. I mean total strangers. I thought they were just being friendly. They feel sorry for me.

I was in Opelika the week after Christmas and saw a sweater I liked on sale. I put it on and walked up to one of those three-way mirrors to see how it looked. I couldn’t look at the sweater for looking at myself.

The mirror was one of those that you can see the side view of yourself. You can even see the back of your head if you twist around and look out of the corner of your eye.

My hair is a lot grayer than I realized. I’ve got a weak chin, and my nose is sort of pointed. My posture is terrible in that mirror, but I stood up straight right quick and then I noticed that one shoulder is a lot lower than the other. I already knew that, but I always forget until I look in a strange mirror. And I hold my head over to one side, too.

Every time I get in front of one of those mirrors, I must look as though I have a big bug in my britches. I’m so intrigued that I’m twisting this way and that way trying to see myself better. I try to stand up straight, hold up my low shoulder, and then I’ll stick my chin out trying to make myself look better.

People in the store must think I’m crazy. I do get some funny looks.

I feel so badly about the way I look in those mirrors until I’m almost ashamed to walk out of the store. I sneak along and get to the door as quickly as I can.

Strangers do smile at me a lot. I like to think it is because I’m just a friendly-looking person. But after looking in one of those 3-way mirrors, I’m not so sure. Usually, though, within about 30 minutes or less, I get over my shame and go on about my business, forgetting what I look like.

I really think something must be wrong with those mirrors.

I couldn’t look like that.

(January 31, 1985, - the East Alabama Today section of the Ledger Enquirer)

Our Bridge Over Un-troubled Waters

Our Bridge Over Un-Troubled Waters....

My husband is so proud of his little arched bridge. This was his project-hobby for several months....

Creating beautiful things is such an outlet, is it not?

Husband and I spent quality time together this past weekend staining this particular creative thing. Of course, we ran out of stain and had to drive into town to Home Depot to get another gallon, but we just chalked it up to more quality time together (smile)....and to make this quality time more interesting, our dogs kept walking across what we had stained. We just decided to decide that this unexpected addition to our staining job gave it creative "flair" and made it even more uniquely our own!

....Just as the unexpected twists and turns that enter our lives add creative flair helping us to be what God has in mind for each of us...

Ahhh.....Notice Bud in the photo on the left...

He sees something on the edge of the bank!

Dogwood House by Jimmy Lee Sudduth

Yes...What to write about.... Aha!...I did mention in my profile that I was a collector of folk art. I absolutely love bright, happy, colorful folk art....art created by self-taught people who create from their hearts..... This is one of my latest acquisitions....

The Dogwood House

by Jimmy Lee Sudduth

We traded $ and some of my John Henry Toney drawings for this in North Carolina when we visited our daughter over the 4th of July weekend.