Anniversary...a Touchstone of Recovery


15 yrs without mindaltering substances today...thankful for life today and all the people in it, even those with which I don't see eye to eye...only though a program of Recovery has it been possible.

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What Has Worked;

Hut for a Blue Tractor and a Red Grass-Cutter

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     Many of these farm structures that I live around out here in Central Virginia near Lovingston are made from wood that has been recycled from earlier farm buildings.   I am almost certain that a lot if it may just go back to the early days of European settlers locating here in Schuyler.   One can just take a quick look and even without carbon-dating one can see that the wood is old and weathered by the elements.   It is very heavy older hardwood that these folks used in making their farm structures.   One can also see how the buildings were shaped for the needs of the farm at a time and then torn down but not discarded but reused again for another purpose..   The sizes of the buildings are small.   They may house one farm implement or two but they are not like those northern Atlantic barns that have lofts and large areas for animals, these buildings are built to suite a single purpose and generally aren'...
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"1984" All Over The World

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Today is our last school day for this year of 07-08 and I'm looking forward to seeing all the students off for the summer and then going to a teacher unwinding party at the High School. One thing that seems to have been done lately is to put cameras into the High School as a way of cutting down the trouble they have in curbing the problem of violence and just "bad behavior".. It's been in place for a couple of years I it's done that, but in thinking about it, would you want yourself to be on camera at all points when you were out in public spaces? Would you feel ok about it? What if those cameras were being manned by a group of people who wanted to keep citizens from gathering in groups of three or more and exchanging ideas? I know, it's not that way right now, but what if society changed so that it was, their cameras and computers which watched those cameras for suspecious signs could be in place by the time they took power, then what would you d...
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The Barn on the Holland Farm

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    This building had been painted earlier, just not from this angle.   I took a top downward look in this composition in oil.    I liked the perspective of the fence running downhill and swooping around into the back of the barn.   I was thinking that I had made an error in judgement when I painted the one side of the barn in shadow, but after working moreso I saw that it seemed to work since the shade is marked with details of the wooden doors, and other details worked out in blues and dark browns.   As they say, getting some distance by letting it sit for a while without me looking at it allowed me to really see that what I had done was ok in fact it worked pretty well.       I feel that this canvas is successful, but its one that a person needs to take a good look at what one is seeing before deciding if it works as a work of art or not.   You don't want to just gloss over it with a quick ...
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A Nice Day and Meeting a Tech Graduate

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A nice peaceful day with a good dose of physical fitness at Gold's Gym, that's how today worked itself out as being: it just doesn't get any better, no amount of money could buy it and no one else could live it and enjoy themselves as much as I did today. I had time to read the book Chesapeake by Mitchener, and listen to music I love, and to be with a cat who's company I am enjoying and learning about at the same time. Her name is Oreo. I had time to pray and I took advantage of it and did just that. I also had time to talk to a young man at the gym, his name is Matt and he graduated from Va Tech last year. He knew the young Koren man who shot all those innocent students from classes he took at Tech last year. He talked about the way that man never acknowledged people who tried to talk to him or teachers who tried to involve him in class by asking him questions. Whenever he was asked a question he would look away or not verbalize any answer of any kind to his f...
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Heading Out For Camping

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I'm headed off to campout in the mountains this weekend with a friend from work. We're going to be on Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains and it should be a good dose of what fall is for all, since the leaves are changing and we are expected to have much cooler temperatures than we had been getting it should be very nice. My liking is for cooler autumn temps and hues in the foliage around us. This is such a great area of the country for this time of year with all the leaves changing into such wonderful variety of colors. I am looking forward to walking through it all and taking some really good photos which I will share with everyone once I return on Sunday. We will campout up on the mountains and there is talk about the black bears being so prevalent near where people frequent up on the trails so we might have some unexpected visitors on our campout up on the hills. I'm interested in getting some good photos so I will have a good number of them when I re...
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