Yum, wish I had some fruit

It was 200 miles round trip each summer to buy peaches along side the road where they grew best, near Brigham City, Utah. The trip was usually part of a trip to see extended family either in Malad or Salt Lake. At today's gas prices that trip would cost $40. I can remember seeing gas at 25 cents per gallon in one the early trips and that would probably have made the trip cost $2.50 to $3.00. Truth is to get a Fresh Bushel of peaches $40 would be worth it. Those were the best peaches I have ever eaten. A few bushels would come home and most of them would be bottled in quart jars. The bottling process was sort of festive and a lot of time relatives would come to help. I was always concerned about the pressure cooker that had the top sealed tight while the peaches in side in water were heated to a boil and the steam came out a very small hole in the lid. It just seemed like sooner or later some pot on some stove would not let the steam out fast enough and it would turn into a giant bomb.

Fresh peaches, peaches in quart and pint bottles, and "store bought" canned peaches all had a place in our home over the years. Canned and bottled are both good. The fresh peach is of course a whole different subject. Fresh Peaches and Raspberries are the perfect food. The perfect meal might be a steak, a bowl of peaches and a glass of Coke with ice.

Raspberries don't need to be part of a meal at all. They could just be lunch, before the "perfect dinner".

Store bought canned peaches, on the other hand, are a treat in a different way. When I think of canned fruit I think of breakfast. My dad probably had very few breakfasts in his life that did not include canned peaches.

I used to think that the "Sacramento Brand" canned peaches were the best. Today you can go to the store and buy S&W Brand bottled peaches and they really are better than the ones I remember being bottled in our kitchen. The problem with the "good old days peaches" was that they had way too much sugar put into the bottle with them.

I might mention that I have no peaches in my cupboard and have not had a fresh peach in a long long time and I am not proud of this confession. I also might admit that I would have much rather of sat down and had a bowl of peaches than to have written this all down.

Understanding what your getting.............

Wisdom , learning, knowledge, advice on fish, have all been recorded and can be found and learned. Maybe "understanding" is different than "knowledge"? Perhaps to gain understanding you have to add experience to knowledge.

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"With all thy "getting" get understanding"

Said Solomon Proverbs 4:7

no real stamp of approval here

On my shelf I have a daily journal and a binder full of stamps as well as a variety of books and other notebooks. The stamps in this binder are ones that I gathered over 50 years ago and then ongoing over those same years. I pulled some from old letters and in some cases kept the letters. I remember back along the way sometime hearing about this "upside down airplane misprinted stamp".

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Well I finally found it. On the other had anyone one reading this has also found what I found and that is a copy of this famous misprint. Not that this has anything to do with stamps, or airplanes or finding misprints but I recall some advice and this quest reminds me of it:

if you want to succeed

don't follow in the footprints of those that were successful

but instead to seek what they sought...........................

Good thing I have not really been searching for this upside down airplane stamp for 50 years since I really didn't find it.

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The book full of stamps reminds me of a lot of things when I look through it. About 38 years ago we lived in Millbrae, California. I recall that I could walk home from work for lunch. A favorite lunch was to stop by the Safeway store and buy some fresh hot French Bread and bring it home for lunch. Seems like a Coke often was part of this process. I few times I would stop by the post office and check a PO box I had and often I would buy a page of stamps. They are more interesting today than then.

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The courage to "be" and to do something about being....................

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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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It seems to me that serenity may better be realized if one was ever to really know what things he could change? Not knowing the difference between what one can change or just needs to accept is certainly not serenity. .....................Accepting, and perhaps knowing what to accept,still leaves the things that can be changed possibly unfinished or ignored.

What matters is knowing which things matter................?

Does making "changes" matter more than "accepting things as unchanged"?

truly wise thoughts, I suppose

Thinking about not thinking about this blog for a while.

Seems like all the thoughts have been thought of.........................................................

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

is this guy boring or "what", course that is the question, "what".

Where am I and what do I do next? Why is the sky so blue? How come this roof isn't flat? How did I get up here anyway? What does it all mean?

The good news is we know where we are, see above. The other news that is needed is "what to do with this news". Are we "Charlie Brown" in this life event or are we the "other folks"?

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"The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason,

but they are always immediately subject to action."

~ William James

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I always thought "Charlie Brown" might just be more interesting if he reacted a little more emotionally. "Dog gone It"

Thinking about bones, blue sky,and self

Having read my blog yesterday I have to wonder what this guy is "thinking". As I recall when I first saw this scene in the movie 2000 Space Odyssey a lot of years ago I "thought" that this non human may have had a thought occur to him at this particular moment. It could have been expressed in a number of ways but it might have come down to "this bone makes a fine weapon".

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"We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

~ Aristotle

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"The soul, like the body, accepts by practice

whatever habit one wishes it to contact."

~ Socrates

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It may seem difficult to believe or even accept but you are where you are because of choices that you have made in the past. The logic that follows is that the path you are on now will take you where you will be in the future. If you do not like where you are now, some changes need to be made. How is this done? Form new habits -- not the same ones that led you where you are now -- but habits that will take you where you want to go. How do we know which habits to form?

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"Know thyself"... or give yourself some thought

Thought is agency, and it never stops

Our minds attend to one thing at a time. If you put on a pair of glasses with one lens red and the other green you will not see a "fusion of color" when you look around but you will see a "flashing of red and green". One moment everything will be red then the next it will be green. First you will see something in red then something else or even the first object, depending on a mental choice in green. Actually the ear works the same way, it makes a choice as to the particular sounds that it hears in a particular instant. You hold thousands of instantaneous impressions in suspension just long enough to............make a choice.

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The mind chooses to focus on one object to the exclusion of all others.

Deliberate choices.

The reality is that humans can only focus on one thing at a time. Of course this gets a little complicated when you add the fact that we can't stop thinking. We are always thinking. Thing about something and the choice it represents is one way to understand what our agency is. The reality that we have to constantly chose what we think about is agency. In fact the ongoing process of making choices about our thoughts "creates our individual world". In each choice we express a preference and the process builds up a world that we really do prefer and even love. We judge ourselves in the process. Each moment and thought provides a foolproof test of our character.

Aristotle pointed out long ago that a shortage of knowledge is an intolerable state and so the mind will do anything to escape it even to the point of inventing knowledge if it has to. Good reason to search for knowledge. Good reason for the search to be ceaseless. A good answer to the question, "what do I think about", since in fact we have to make that decision. The best choices are good things. Truth. Knowledge are good items for thoughts...................................

Just stepped out of this room........................

Emerson suggested that there is one mind, common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is, or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

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Maybe this is too "out there", to put by a picture of a "favorite room", imagined of course, but it sort of follows some thoughts on "why we might read" anyway.............." to see with others eyes and be more than we are". (Night time for better or worse is often time to ponder. )

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There is no great and no small

To the Soul that maketh all:

And where it cometh, all things are;

And it cometh everywhere

Mike's the Man

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"Michael"........... Given Name
Pronunciation /maɪkəl/
Gender Male
Meaning "Who is like God"
Origin Hebrew: מִיכָאֵל / מיכאל‎ (mee-KHA-el)
Nicknames Mike, Mick, Mikey, Mickey, Mickie, Mic, Mischka
Michael or Micha'el is a given name that comes from Hebrew: מִיכָאֵל / מיכאל‎ (mee-KHA-el), meaning "Who is like God" .[1]There are various forms of the name: Arabic: ميخائيل / ميكال‎‎; Latin: Michael; Septuagint Greek: Μιχαηλ (Mikhaēl); Portuguese or Spanish: Miguel; Turkish: Mikail; Irish Micheál; Russian: Михаил (Mikha'il); Hebrew: מיכאל (Mikha'el); Gaelic: Michiel; Italian: Michele; Dutch: Michiel; Armenian: Միքայել (Mikayel); Catalan: Miquel; French: Michel; Polish: Michał; Macedonian: Михаил (Mihail).
The name first appears in the Bible, Numbers 13 verse 13, where Sethur the son of Michael is one of twelve spies sent into the Land of Canaan. The Archangel Michael, referred to later in the Bible (Daniel 12 verse 1), is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. 29 September is the feast day of the three archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. "Saint Michael" can also refer to Michael HyDinh-Ho and Michael My Huy Nguyen, two of the Vietnamese Martyrs.
In English it is sometimes shortened to Mike or, especially in Ireland, Mick. Female forms of Michael include Michelle, Michaela, Mechelle, Micheline, and Michaelle, although there are women with the name Michael, such as Michael Learned.
Surnames that come from Michael include Carmichael, Dimichele, MacMichael, McMichael, Micallef, Michaelson, Mikhaylov and Mitchell.

Being

"Pondering" a question of what it is that happens if we are to "be more than we are". Can we find within ourselves something that makes us better? Is that something already their or is it a gift that magically transforms us into more,like the glass slipper that reveals all that really is with in or is it a spirit that settles upon us making us more that we were? C.S. Lewis said, in referring to "literature" that:
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The good of literature is that

we want to be more than ourselves

We want to see with other eyes to imagine

with other imaginations,

to feel with other hearts,

as well as with our own.

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In the book "Standing for Something" by Gordon B. Hinckley chapter 5 is about "Learning", suggesting "With all thy getting get Understanding". This might also imply that we become more than we are now by finding within the capacity learn and then learning more...............

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"With all thy getting

get understanding"

Proverbs 4:7

Rust is a favorite color........................

This door reminds me of Kathy, Santa Fe, Malad, Cherry Creek, A friend, Doug S., who had a most interesting yard, and also of one of my favorite books, "As I lay Dying". It may mostly be the "faded partially bare wood" as much as the door. Kathy seems to like to take pictures of doors and gates. I also remember a chicken coop, and much of the farmyard for that matter, on my grandparents farm. The book is a look at a different time and place. When I read it I see and hear those times. The book presents the sounds of the time in language and as you visualize the different individuals in the story a door like this might be a part of the scene. From the very first he first words of this most interesting book your "in the story".

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Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.

Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from

the cottonhouse can see Jewel's frayed and broken straw hat

a full head above my own.

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This books beginning just "jumps into action". No fancy painted surface hiding the real story but just from word one the reality of what the message is. My friend Doug once told me that his favorite color was "rust". He then took me on a tour of the many different types of metal often sitting on or by some interesting and of course old piece of wood. He saw the character of the metal in the "rust".
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But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,

and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

Matthew 6:20

Memories may be the reflection of what was sought for,

I spent some moments reaching to my books hoping to find some of those full of underlines................It is easy to go back and read what was found before "of interest". It takes more time to find new thoughts of interest than to go back to what was already of interest. Like the memories from the song "we smile at the old days" and relax in what was interesting. When the dawn comes the night will be a memory too and a new day will begin.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps

of the wise. Seek what they sought."

~ Basho

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I do like the song "Memories". Seems like the words lend themselves to a slow look through past experiences, books and even a small journal, tonight. Soon it will be morning......Daylight, waiting for the sunlight.

Thinking of a new life when the dawn comes,

then the night will be a memory too,

and a new day will begin...........................

The picture of the cherry tree was sent by a friend who works in Japan. It reminds me of Washington DC and of Southern Korea and brings back some memories far different than those connected to this particular tree.