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;

The Town of Shenandoah Virginia

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We rode up the Shenandoah valley hugging the eastern side northward from Afton and Waynesboro, when we came upon an old railroad stopover town that was pretty much deserted. The town is just south of Luray and it's called "Shenandoah". The town was a layover town on the railroad line that went up and down the valley and the engineers and many workers of the trains would stop in here for there nighttime rest spot. Since the trains no longer spend time on an overnight layover here the small town has died out. It's deserted and lay barren but some trains do hang out on the tracks which still run between it's "First St." and the river nearby. It's got a nice feel to it, it's got a wide not so long lay of the land, and it's gott'n a grant that improved the streets and facades of it's remaining buildings. It just doesn't have any people save a few holdouts. We ran into one man who had simply bought ...
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Was That A Spring Day this week or What?

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Bike Rides always perk me up, two days ago I got out and I am still thinking about how nice of a ride it was for me. Heading out on the Rivana Trail down at the river was truly a delightful time. The air was cool. The river was flowing well, and the light was that special type of winter's light that comes in so low and yellow from the horizon at dusk. I brought my camera and stopped a couple of times to take photos. That ride took me out from the gym and back into reality of how beautiful it is around here if only you go out looking for it. What fun huh? I'll tell you I enjoyed my ride. I even saw a friend running in the other direction from the way I was headed. It wasn't such a bad thing to have a warm day in the beginning of March to break that indoor feeling of being cramped up and drying out to being full of life's warmth again.
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Walking Along W. Main St.

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I found the scene along West Main is soon to change into an newer style cityscape of brick and glass with less ornamentation to its buildings. With this in mind I photographed some West Main Street buildings in the hopes of finding interesting scenes to paint. The signage is all a part of West Main and in that thought I painted this one with its graphic street crossing signage featured prominently in the picture plane. I highlighted the bricks in intense reds and developed the windows in a bizarre abstract display for each one of them. Each featuring one color being themed inside its frame as if each window display had its own abstract painting going on inside its area. Its all for the fun of it, I play with what is being viable to the view when I can. Nothing ventured nothing gained. It was nice how this one came together piece by piece with each painting session. Intense color came about as I developed its' scene on the sidewalk windows. I was going to bring in...
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Imaginary Landscapes

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In as much as spring has come to us here in these foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, its nice to have a cool day once in a while to remind us of what season we are leaving behind. It was a very cold winter for some of us. A little bit to the north of us it was a very wet snowy winter but thankfully we missed most of the white stuff here in Charlottesville, Va. I have been working on my art during this past month and I have one painting which I will be sharing with you on this edition of my blog. It is an imaginary landscape and it was done to entertain myself while I spent some afternoons indoors here in my apartment. I have been inspired by trees lately, it seems to be a bit of an obsession for me this past winter. I painted a good number of small landscapes featuring a few trees in there various states, some where dead and others were bear while some others were full with leaves. Many were done with a yellow, orange and deep red sky in the background so that ...
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Philly vs the Va. Countryside

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Reading a blogger in Philadelphia Pa I am filled with thankfullness for the peace of biking in the countryside around here, I am thinking we aren't very full of congestion everywhere we turn as I was in Philadelphia riding my bike. The blog I read was a sorry comment upon the hopelessness of fighting a gallant fight but with little hope of winning the war of bikes against automotive transportation in the big cities. Here in this small town in Central Virginia we are blessed with a rush hours that last about an hour and a half. We can get around most problems in our town, we also have a good number of committed people who bike to get to work or who take a bike instead of driving a belching car. Hurrah for our small town's efforts to be helpful for us to ride instead of drive. I've never looked back since leaving Philly, but in many ways it shows up that I made the right decision to come to Central Virginia. I've never been sorry to have been spending my time ...
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