A Photo Says a Thousand Words

A Photo says a thousand words...
but it also gets the mind of a creative person FLOWING!

I ran across this site and had to share it on my blog..

some of the most interesting photography I have seen in quite some time!

Hope the holidays find you creating memories with your loved ones...
and that this week brings CREATIVITY to you ARTISTS!

Allison

Click here if the link above does not work to go to the site

TRAIN to New Orleans

This morning I woke up before my alarm. Lying with a warm glow of rising sun tapping at my frosty window, I heard the faint whistle of the Crescent, which usually goes unnoticed as she meanders through our city to make her way from New York to New Orleans as she has every day since….

Not long ago, I was on this train, at about this time, my children fast asleep at home, as they are right now in the bed beside me, oblivious to the activity that goes on down along the tracks.

Here it is quiet in the Tiny Kingdom. I grew up along the tracks and as my husband and I took a recent trip (our first together by train to New Orleans), we passed right across the tracks of Livingston where I, as a child, used to play. Without my mom’s knowledge of our whereabouts, my friends and I would place dull pennies beneath the nose of that great machine.

We’d slouch in bushes until she had snaked, rattled and rolled across each of them, spewing them out into the sharp, grey, oil soaked gravel, where the now open inner copper filling would reflect a sharp brown ray until we were able to come from cover to gather them.

My children have seen the train, maybe once, with disinterest, as we exited the Whistle Stop Café after a good after church meal in Irondale. Too eager to return home to an unfinished game of Runescape, they’d hurry us along as we tried to wait until she was ready to pull out of the station.

As I write, I look at a large black and white photo of a train on my study wall taken in 1911. It is black, dull, nothing like the Crescent, but a workhorse, owned by my great grandfather as he pioneered the transporting of deer and turkey into the state of Alabama and was the first to practice timber conservation. Black men cling proudly to the great machine, being careful to sit very still as the camera captures their images forever. Huge virgin timber lies stacked neatly behind on cars that disappear off the edge of the page.

I know, or at least suspect, that my children would have barely survived in those days. No air conditioning, no automobiles, even ice was a luxury.

And then all along the tracks, as I sat perched in my seat, with enough leg room to lay my Doberman and one of his friends, out the window I see homes not much more modern than those in the old pictures of my great grandfather’s lumber town.

Old black men sit on the porches, full of old trinkets, furniture and tires are strewn across the back lawn that is separated from me only by a line of trees and metal fence. In their eyes, as they watch the train, there is a similar disinterest to that of my children, not a care about the mystery that lies within the great train that rolls by them each day.

Me, I am different. When I see a train, I think of all of the people aboard. Who are they? Where did they come from? Where are they going? There is a story in every booth, on every aisle. In one box sits a hundred or so lives, people left behind, people being joined.

Most of those leaving with my husband and I on that early Thursday were headed to New Orleans to party. Many returned with us on the same 7 am train leaving New Orleans on that Sunday to return six hours later (not much later than it would have taken to drive I65, except that we spent our hours sleeping or dining and hanging out with our new friends from Gadsden in the diner car).

I have always wanted for my children to understand the world, to have their eyes opened and their hearts changed by experiences abroad, through missions trips in Mexico or maybe in Africa, and then right here, as I look into the barren living rooms of so many who were unable to make their way away from the tracks, I realize there is plenty for them to do, right here in our own back yards.

ARTWEAR

I have added ARTWEAR to my list of things to do.

Check it out!

A SMALL WORLD

This morning I went to a website with hundreds of incredible photographs,
of couples and children, weddings, and pets.

CLICK HERE

to take a tour.

I looked at one that looked so familiar (in Paris at the Louvre) and then another,
a zinnia with a bumble bee on it. It was not mine, but could have been.

I then flipped through more, faces I didn't recognize, but places and pets that could have been in anyone's photo album.

One of a woman of asian descent posing with Mickey Mouse made me think about just how many people venture even to that magical place to stand with Mickey Mouse and say "cheese".

I clicked on the link entitled "SOUTHERN", expecting photos of the Southern US and found photos from South Africa, the South of France. How naive to think that every site should be a reflection of the United States.

This week we learned just how small our world is, and how much we all have in common as our weak dollar trickled across the globe, bringing markets down across the world.

There was a soldier standing in a hotel lobby with a machine gun. How often I have seen that in Europe, but rarely here, except when at our hunting camp, with Frank and his arsenal.

We don't know what the future brings. Will we too have to arm ourselves to survive some depression-era revival of fear and turmoil? Will riots plague as they did in the seventies if food grows short?

Our country is in a time of transition, many of the photos that are posted, of places we all dream to go, are farther in the distance, with higher fuel costs, with necessity being placed higher on our priority lists of things to do.

I have been blessed to have traveled early, and still I have only experienced a fraction of the incredible things to see and do on this planet.

While we may not be able to venture far these days, we can take a visual tour through sites like Picasa, and we can plant our own zinnias and pumpkins and watch them bloom.

This morning I watched more than a dozen redbirds dodging a huge bluejay in my back yard just outside of my studio window.

Maybe with fewer places to go, I will find the time to capture them on canvas...or maybe even just on film.

What little slice of heaven do you have hidden in your backyard? Snap it and send it in, they welcome your photos!

Have a blessed day! Remember the small things, they are the things that matter!

Allison

Southern Girls Hunting

I have been asked, "Do Southern Girls Hunt?"
Well certainly, at least ONCE!

My sister once hunted, because her boyfriend broke up with her during Christmas vacation. She was the owner of a hunting camp.... a place where wild deer roam free, taking trees in their whim...

And so, she put on her chamo...put d.o. on as any civilized woman would do...and she zipped up her one=piece camo...and headed to a field...

it was boring..she told me...but she finally saw a tree move...she closed her eyes...she pulled the trigger...and BOOM....that tree feel...

That trophy buck fell (YES this is a TRUE story...) and the boyfriend cried...as he later married someone else...

and that was her last day in the woods...as a matter of fact..she should have won a boone and crockett award..but she was NOT LICENSED..AS noone believed she would have killed a thing...hers is the deer in center...mine to the right..my exes...to the left..God love him, he is never invited back..but as her boyfriend learned....
we LIVE AND LEARN...


There is something to be said about a heritage of hunting, farming and fishing.
As the country grows scared, I have no fear for my family.

We can fish, hunt and survive....no matter what the curcumstances....
we live in the city, but at the heart, we are country bred and will survive....

All of this will fade away...all that matters is eternal...

and there, we will all rest in peace.

LIFE IS GREAT

Tonight.....I realized something everyone wishes for their whole lives....

I walked down my steps...on the front of the porch,
originally searching for the moon, which my 3 year old daughter was searching for...

and stood in my yard...

watching a half moon glow to my left beyond the pines...
(for years it was right out my door on the ocean)
my daughter on the front porch, dimly lit with white lights hung
last Christmas, that NOW my mother will approve of (although we have lit them
all year) since it is nearing fall..and season for lighting and festivity...

and I thought...

how perfect my world...
not ostentacious...
not perfect....

but awesome nonetheless.....

I thank Jesus for every blessing..
for my husband who cooks dinner every night out of enjoyment..
for my dog, Sampson...who is such a delight..
and for my children who remind me each day of my purpose...

In an economy that wavers...

I am RICH in the love I have surrounding me..each and every day....

I praise you for recognizing the loves in YOUR life.


Allison

TEENS Driving

This month, my son gets his LEARNER'S PERMIT to DRIVE....

A WILD thought as I AM SO YOUNG :)

I heard this song today, from an Allstate commercial...


I remember my first time to drive, in a blue LTD up and down and up
and down and up and down the driveway at home...age 12?

And then on the REAL ROAD in the "Turkey Torino", a car my neighbor's dad
let us drive AT 13. I had my first wreck, coming home from school
at age 14~

But I had a "small town advantage".

I sometimes wish my children could begin now at 12 and 14, but in the city,
there is WAY too much risk...even as passengers with ME driving.

I look forward to taking them down for some FALL drives at the hunting camp
and letting them experience freedom on the roads that wind through the
backwoods, like I used to have.

For those of you with pre-teens...oh the things we have to look forward to...
and reflect on....hoping they will be MUCH WISER than I.