in my gallery: field of poppies

Yesterday was shaped by the simple pleasure of being with my youngest daughter in a field of poppies. You’d be hard pressed to find any distinguishing marks that makes these poppies unique. But they do have their own distinctive footprints — if you look closely. What a gorgeous day!

purely a metrical unit

 

in my gallery: french blue pansy

It was a chilly winter day yesterday and this French blue pansy, chilled to its petals, had aged considerably overnight. It looks a bit like tissue paper with its deep wrinkles and alternating shades of light and dark colors. The wrinkles remind me of the rippled rows of my mother’s beloved mountains that spread out across the valley where she lives. But, no matter what it resembles, its colors are gorgeous. I live for those colors!

 

in my gallery: checking the woodpile

in my gallery: things best done alone

getting something out of nothing

This post is really about nothing. After 30 minutes of exhaustive writing about this or that, I’ve ended up with nothing to say except this: You have to write a lot of crap about nothing to get a good idea (and sometimes you may get nothing).

You’ll want to give up because it’ll seem like a waste of time. But the more cylinders your brain has the more power and smoother the engine will run to get you somewhere in the vicinity of a good idea.

in my gallery: ducks that think they’re dogs

 

in my gallery : luminous dreams

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Happiness is when my youngest child says “no, thank you” at the dinner table when our host passes the casserole to her.

the road to $10 million

“What would it take,” someone within an organization asked me the other day, “to raise $10 million by the year 2016 to treat 16,000 children with clubfoot in several developing countries?”It’d be tough as hell to achieve, I’m thinking, but it is possible (for this organization).

Even though the organization is young (2 years old), it’s good at making new friends. It has over 1000 donors. It’s good at setting goals. It has a development plan. It has the tools, materials and the skills. It has significant funds set aside to build and diversify its fundraising program. It also has the administrative leadership.

But what else will it take? It’ll take, for one, a bigger board to increase its capacity to raise that much money. It’ll take, for another, name recognition. The truth is there are no shortcuts to get to the $10 million. It’ll take introductions, time, money, determination, persistence, creativity to spark the imagination and the faith that it can be done  to get you there.