Climb Every Mountain

What do you do to relax?  Me, I like to climb mountains!  It's called climbing, but it isn't really, it is  just walking but I am glad that I am still able to do it.  My husband is doing much better these days and we are trying to exercise as much as possible so we climbed Arabia Mountain today. I hope to be able to show you that walk soon but these photos are from our climb up Stone Mountain and these were taken in early March of this year on a breezy, cool day. 

This is our son walking up ahead of us and one must be very careful since these rocks can become very slick.  These are mostly pines that have grown there and they make some lovely shadows on the pathway, but the needles themselves can be slippery.

Whoo, boy, okay just when we get to this point, I always like to go right here, just behind that big pine tree and take some photos of the view.  To tell the truth,  I am struggling to catch my breath! But wait, look ahead there, can you see the steepest part is yet to come?

My husband went ahead of me and took this photo of me climbing and holding on the railing.  That handrail was installed a few years ago, and it makes me wonder if there were one too many falls there and that is why they did it.  Years ago, I didn't need it, but I am grateful for it now!

 Okay, here we are at the top. No, that isn't us.  You never know who you will see on top of the Stone Mountain. This was a man who obviously works as Santa Claus during the Christmas season with his actual Mrs., I presume.  On a very clear day, you can see for miles and miles and it is wonderful to be overlooking all that surrounds you.

 Oh my, someone had to chew gum, but at least someone else stomped it into the ground into a shape of a heart.  I am always seeing heart shapes so I will try not to show too many but it seems they are everywhere I look...  This does show the composition of the mountain which is granite.  It was quarried a good bit, I'm afraid, but not as much as the next mountain that will be in another post, Arabia Mountain.

This is the carving on the front of Stone Mountain.  I know it is an amazing thing, it is incredibly large and took years for them to complete it, but honestly, I wish they had left it in its natural state.  It just seems wrong to me to carve into something so magificently beautiful.  The big attraction at night at Stone Mountain is a laser show which is played upon that carving with amplified music.  My husband took this photo, he really liked the blue sky above the mountain with the little white cloud and cedar.

There, how about this photo of this nice young man on top of the mountain with the Atlanta skyline just behind him?  This has been described as looking as if you are on the moon.  Perhaps so but the air is better!  There is almost always a breeze blowing and sometimes it can be quite strong.   One can also get to the top by taking a skylift or cable car, as my husband calls it.  He reminds me that it played a large part in the filming of the movie "Fled" with Samuel Jackson and one of the Baldwin brothers.  Not one I've seen myself but perhaps I will just to see what parts in the background that I can recognize.  One can always tell which group of people have climbed up the mountain ... the windswept, sweaty ones are the climbers and the ones who look as if they are about to pose in a photography studio are the cable car riders!

There are other trails that we enjoy there.  The Cherokee Trail is about 5 miles long and it goes around the mountain underneath some beautiful hardwood trees and it even goes up one side of the mountain and crosses over the one mile walk up trail.  When the leaves turn in the Autumn, this trail is the one not to be missed.  Hopefully, we will be able to go back to Stone Mountain in a few weeks and maybe enjoy some of the Fall colors then.  Until then, you know I had to do it... 

Summer's Memory

The Sunflower Festival in Rutledge, Georgia is always held the weekend of the Fourth of July.  It is just a few miles from my Dad's house and the tractor/classic car parade goes past his house fairly early in the morning.  It is always very, very hot but this year, it clouded over just as we got to the Festival, and those wonderful clouds made it so much more bearable. Three photos of my Dad here, in the first one he is telling a joke to the ladies selling the homemade jams and the next one  is AFTER he has told the joke.  In the third one,  he is  posing for me with some of the sunflowers.   My Dad grows sunflowers himself, and sometimes, people will stop and ask if they can buy some sunflowers from him.  Here is his reply, "No, but you can have some.  But wait, let me get something to cut them down with...they're tough and you might cut yourself". That's my Dad!

KING JAMES BIBLE

This year, 2011, marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.  The Bible is not just a bestselling book but also, holy scripture and therefore, one wishes to honor this 400th anniversary but at the same time keep in mind the reverence that it is due.  The language of the King James Bible is so beautiful, that I defy anyone to find something that can surpass it.  There are other versions, of course,  but I find that when you are thinking of a verse from the bible, it is the King James version that readily comes to mind.  Do you remember the TV show "A Charlie Brown Christmas"?  Charles Schultz had to work very hard to get the television station to allow Linus to quote from the King James Bible.

I can just imagine how much harder it would be to try and do something like that now.

There is a small church in Wiltshire, England called St. Lawrence Church.  Inside this church  there is  an old bible which had a small sign stating that it was an actual 1611 King James Bible.  Someone decided to research it, and lo and behold (another King James expression?) it WAS!  I will try to show you the sign itself...
One of the men who was in charge of getting this documented had this to say: "When we took it for evaluation to the curator of a Bible Museum, one of the first things he said was whatever you do, you MUST display this so that people can read the Word.  That stuck with me, you know, the fact that it's what it says rather than what it is."

There is an exhibit about the King James Bible which is called "Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible".  This exhibit will travel for two years across the USA and the very last stop will be at Nancy Guinn Memorial Library in Conyers, Georgia! (Mark your calendars now,  it will be in May of 2013.) It is an amazing thing for this to come here.  One of the reasons given for the honor was this: Rockdale County, being one of the smallest counties in Georgia, boasts nearly 300 churches, or roughly, two churches per square mile.

There is a project by You Tube so that the King James Bible will be read in its entirety.  I love the idea of many people from around the world reading these chapters from the King James Bible, all people from all walks of life.   Please watch and listen to this wonderful actress reading from the Book of John.  I find this to be extraordinarily moving.

                                           "PEACE BE UPON YOU"
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Cary Grant/Father Goose

There are so many things that I want to write about on this blog.  The list of topics might not interest everyone (or maybe hardly anyone) but they interest me, and that is why I want to write about them.

Today, I heard someone whistling and the few notes that I heard reminded me of a song, and of course, that made me have a look to see if it was on You Tube.   The song is called Pass Me By and it is from the movie  Father Goose and if you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?  I'm afraid that the only  segment I could find  is over 13 minutes long.   The song is just a few minutes at the beginning, but you should really see the whole movie.  Cary Grant is good in any movie but I really enjoy him in this one.   It is such a funny movie!  Trevor Howard and Leslie Caron...what wonderful casting.  You can tell that Cary Grant really likes children. I read that he kept in touch with the young girls for many years after this film was completed.  Now, I see that his only child has written a book about her Dad...

I've always loved Cary Grant.   As a child, I always wondered about his accent, not knowing that he was born in England, and his way of speaking is a unique mixture of English/American English combined.   Should you ever see them, you really should read the books about Hollywood by David Niven: The Moon Is A Balloon and Bring On The Empty Horses.  David Niven writes about Cary Grant and many other actors.  These books are not your typical tell-all kind of movie trivia type books, I think they are very well written and extremely funny.

There, extremely funny...it's nice to think of something that makes me laugh.  That is something that we could all use these days.  And all of this was brought on by just hearing a few random whistled notes!

Wild Beauty

Often, in my reading material, I will find something that I like so much that I will copy it down on a back of an envelope, or these days,  I might print it out on the computer and then, I take these pieces of paper and fold them carefully into my handbag.  There they sit and accumulate piece by piece until I have no room for more, and then I have to decide what must be thown out and recycled...So, the wonder of this blog is that I can take these pieces of paper and translate them into a post, and thereby save these bits of wonderful written material and also, save paper too.  I want to copy out here something that I found when I was researching some family history from Virginia.   This came from a description of Wise County near Big Stone Gap, written by Charles Dudley Warner in the late 19th century.  

The pass itself, which shows from a distance only a dent in the green foliage, surprised us by its wild beauty.  The stony road, rising little by little above the river, runs through a magnificent forest, gigantic trees growing in the midst of enormous boulders, and towering among rocks that take the form of walls and buttresses, square structures like the titantic ruins of castles; below, the river full and strong, rages over rocks and dashes down, filling the forest with its roar, which is echoed by the towering cliffs on either side.  The woods were fresh and glistening from recent rains, but what made the final charm of the way was the bloom of the rhododendron, which blazed along the road and illuminated the cool recesses of the forest.  The time for the blooming of the azalea and the kalmia was past, but the pink and white rhododendron was in full glory: masses of bloom, not small stalks lurking like underbrush but on bushes attaining the dignity of trees, and at least twenty-five feet high.  The splendor of the forest did not lessen as we turned to the left and  followed up Pigeon Creek to a high farming region, rough but fertile, at the base of Black Mountain.  Such a wealth of oak, beech, poplar, chestnut, and ash, and sprinkled in, the pretty cucumber magnolia in bloom!

Wild beauty, indeed. 

Starfish In The Sea

Recently, on the blog by Sciptor Senex at www.scriptorsenex.blogspot.com , there was a post with beautiful photos of starfish.  It instantly reminded me of a hit record from the 60's called Red Rubber Ball.  "You're not the only starfish in the sea" was the line that reminded me of the song.  After some research, I was surprised and pleased to find that Paul Simon wrote the song with Bruce Woodley of the Seekers.  Paul Simon wrote it while he was living and working in England.   This song was by the band The Cyrkle and they were discovered and managed by Brian Epstein.  Also, The Cyrkle opened for the Beatles when they did their U.S. Tour.  John Lennon even gave them the unique spelling of the band's name which was after the circular roundabout in the band's Pennsylvania hometown. 

Red Rubber Ball sold over one million records.  My sister bought one of those and we happily danced and sang along with the music.  It amazes me how music and lyrics can go together in such a way that makes it into a hit song.   Listen to this. It still sounds good today and I just know that you will be singing it all day too! The lead singers later went on to become professional jingle writers and I was pleased to know that one wrote "Plop Plop Fizz Fizz" the Alka Seltzer ad and the other wrote "7Up, the Uncola".  I have always appreciated a good tune, no matter if it was on the radio or on TV.

Here's a story that I like... A storm washed a lot of starfish upon the beach.  To save them, a woman starts to throw the starfish back into the sea and her husband says,  "What are you doing? There are hundreds of these, you can't possibly make a difference!"  She then picks one up, throws it into the sea, looks at him and says, "I made a difference to that one!"

Stay Curious!

How many times is your curiosity aroused by either reading something or viewing something on TV?
Are you interested enough to question and research what has piqued your interest?  It is much easier now with the internet.  You can type whatever word or phrase you like into a search engine, and presto...there it is , right at your fingertips.  I would like to tell you a true story that you may or may not know about...

This story starts out with a man watching the movie "Jaws" on TV with his eleven year old son,  Hunter Scott.  Remember the scene where the Captain is describing the ship that sank and the men in the water being eaten by sharks?   Hunter Scott turned to his Dad and asked him if this story was true.  When his Dad told him that indeed it was a true story, this young boy took it upon himself to write to the survivors of the USS Indianapolis.  I believe that this was about 1996 or so.  These veterans wrote back to Hunter Scott and described in great detail the tragedy of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and how the sinking itself was the greatest loss of life in the history of the U.S. Navy and also, how the survivors were left for five days in the ocean with sharks taking most of the men.  (There are several good books written on this, I have read "In Harm's Way" by Doug Stanton and "Fatal Voyage" by Dan Kurzman.  Both are good and I highly recommend them.)

The final horror for the survivors was this: the Captain of their ship, Captain B. McVay,  was court-martialed and was so driven to despair that he committed suicide.  These men from the USS Indianapolis never gave up trying to get justice for him.  All of this was explained to Hunter Scott and here is the amazing part... he, along with the veterans, although this took years, was able to get the Navy to REVERSE their decision, in the year 2000.    This was truly astounding  since the Navy had never done that before or since...

Now, here is a book that I want to read: "Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice for  the USS
Indianapolis" by Hunter Scott and Pete Nelson.   Even though this is considered a "Young Adult" book , I have never let that stop me from reading about something I have a great interest in! I have also read that it is being developed for a movie, so keep an eye out for it!
I have a great many books about World War II that I would like to write about here.  I worked as a travel agent for almost twenty years and I was lucky enough to speak with a great many veterans making plans to go to their reunions.  We've lost a great many of those men, but I was very fortunate to meet some of them and talk with them about their experiences.  This contact with these men made me feel much more CURIOUS about the war and what they went through.  Other people that I worked with met these same men, but they were not as interested as I was (and still am).

 

What have you been curious about lately?  Done anything grand like getting the Navy to reverse a court-martial like young Hunter Scott?  What are you waiting for?