Saturday Morning Musings

Looking forward to a heavenly revival with Grandmother White one of these days. No rush. She was about as sophisticated as a bullwhip -- which she knew how to use. Once drove a wagon train. Half Choctaw. (Makes me an eighth.) Tough as they come! And I absolutely loved her. And she loved me. Our idea of a fancy dessert was eating in her kitchen having white rice with sugar sprinkled over it. White sugar. Yum yum!

Re-uniting with our now-dead spouses in heaven. Jesus said (quoting from Luke 20) that there wouldn't be any marriage in heaven. "...in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage." So where does that leave, you know, uh, intimacy? Way beyond my poor mind's ability to encompass it all.

Gasoline prices have dropped here in Tennessee by $1.25 a gallon in the past month. How come we don't scream and act a fool with the same fervor as when the price goes up? Grandmother White used to say, "He'd kick if he was playin' football!"

Had an eye exam yesterday. Bloody spot in my right eye. Scary-looking but harmless. Just a little break in the conjunctiva. Told me to use some lubricating drops. But she says I have a little cataract development in each eye. Nothing serious right now. Explains why I'm having a hard time reading the captions in the comic strip "Get Fuzzy" in the ever-shrinking Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean. They've just shaved off two inches of width. Great business model; taking away the very thing their core readers need: larger type. But maybe they're trying to run us off so there'll be more for younger readers. Waitwait! There ARE no younger readers. Oh sure. So just run off the only readers you do have. Makes sense.

Maxim Magazine is moving part of its operation to the Nashville area. Pondered what its presence in Middle Tennessee might offer to those of us in the creative community. Looked at the magazine carefully. Not exactly a walk with Jesus. Don't think I'd want to breathe the same air with them for any period of time.

All the more convinced that there's a future for me in stock photography and travel writing. I put together a 20-image portfolio, enabled me to look at my work from a perspective apart from time, and saw some good, marketable images. For sure good. Not sure about marketable. Thus a seminar in February at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Been wanting to do that for almost 10 years. Finally able to afford it.

My plan is to earn a living from stock photography and writing travel articles. Travel for a month, back home in Nashville for two, out again for a month. And so on. The two months home would be used to re-establish contact with my church family, to write articles based on my research overseas, and to get images out to the stock agencies. Lofty goal. But stranger things have happened. Like becoming a TV news anchor when I was 50 with no prior experience.

Economy worries. Dave Ramsey has an interesting take on what for some has become a source of huge angst: "...you’re going to fix the economy because your personal economy is up to you. It's not Washington's job to fix what's going on with you. If you are waiting on Washington to change something, you've got a long wait! You’re going to give yourself money as a result of your hard work and persistence. Waiting for money to be taken from others and given to you is a spirit of envy, and it's wrong."

I'm keeping that in mind as I watch the news.