cemetaries

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Grave Silence

Nothing is more silent than unfinished melodies….unexpressed thoughts…..broken dreams, dead or alive.  We all think we are going to live forever, especially when we are young.  We have all the time in the world.  Some adults tell young people this.  It is not true.  No one is guaranteed anything.  Not even tomorrow.

Make the most of today and what you have.  Don’t wait for things to change, get better or even “perfect,” whatever that is.  Don’t allow time and circumstances to make you complacent or worse to simply give up.  There is no “do-overs” in our lives.  I don’t subscribe to the “live for today” in a selfish manner of partying til you puke and having sex with anything that moves philosophy of the current mainstream media portrayal of our culture, which is really not at all accurate.  I do say that if there is something you have always wanted to do and it’s realistic, then you need to make it happen.  This does not mean you will succeed in your dream or plan but as long as it’s realistic and real effort is applied, there is hope that you will succeed.

I no longer condemn myself for my failures or shortcomings in my life.  There were times when I did “bite off more than I could chew” and was simply not ready for the extreme work and expertise required for what I wanted to achieve.  There were other times that I waited too long and my aspirations were no longer relevant to the time or even to me personally anymore.  You outgrow things, it happens.  Nothing in life is perfect but if you listen to all the experts paid to tell us our lives by the mainstream, as long as you do what they tell you to do “Nothing Can Go Wrong….”  One of the echoing sentiments from the movie “Westworld” if any of you are familiar with it.  They were wrong.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge & Daily Prompt: Ghoulish & Rounded

Both will pertain to the autumn and Halloween that some celebrate.

I love to decorate for fall adding a few old time Halloween touches throughout, as cheaply as possible of course.  I wait to get my pieces in sales, sometimes from clearance the year before.

We will start out with emphasis on curves such as the altered glass plate from Ikea I hang in front of the lighted trellis.  The roundness of pumpkins, gourds & squash prevalent this time of year and various decorative items.

Now we come to the “good stuff.” The ghoulish or macabre. Not my cup of tea but many like this stuff, especially around Halloween.

 

One of my sons LOVES Halloween and really goes all out each year.  This is him as the crow and that is his own hair, no wig.  The other videos are some of the special effects that he uses.  Enjoy this very “ghoulish” display if you dare!

Enjoy my PhotoDraw animated slide show for Halloween fun!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Monument

I never think of things like “monuments” which is probably due to the family I come from.  You can tell by the lack of almost all monuments in our family cemetery plots.  It’s not like our family has been destitute but most would rather drink away the money than “waste” it on a cemetery stone.

My Great Aunt Ruth, who didn’t drink, bought a stone for her husband after he passed and that was after he left everything to his brother.  My Aunt was one of the few righteous people I have ever met in my life.  Every so often I would travel the 30 miles or so to visit the family cemetery and see that lone gray stone in the midst of it.  On a visit in 2012 I was shocked to see two new large stones marking 4 graves.  Shocking since I was not aware of any living relatives on the Wagner side.  My Aunt and her husband were the last of the family I knew of and my Aunt passed in 1958.  It had to be a relative of her husbands because they replaced his stone with a double stone that included my Aunt and a double stone for his parents as well that both passed in 1928.  It states they brought their family over in 1900, I think from Germany.

MonumentCollageWagners