I don’t know about you but I encourage and support inquisitiveness. Little children are particularly good at probing further when answers to their questions just don’t seem to make all that much sense to them. Somewhere in the growth cycle we begin to shy away from verbalizing curiosity opting to go along in order to get along as we try to find our place, gain likability, avoid conflict, get chosen, be part of. There are those who break out of that stage, yet too many are content to either say yes without a second thought or keep their mouths shut when doubt arises. In my opinion, those who fail to ask not only why but also who, what, when, where and how are doomed to follow not lead and we know what happens when folks blindly or in many instances enthusiastically follow with little thought to challenging the status quo.
Even when I am creating something, I find my head dropping slightly to the right as I ponder. For example, I took an 8-week ceramics class many moons ago. I listened, followed directions, attempted to shape a vase like everyone else; it didn’t feel right to me. So after learning what the instructor had to offer, I began to experiment developing skills that helped me create pieces that appealed to me and eventually to the more seasoned in the studio. I am equally as quizzical when I find a recipe I want to try; it just did not make any sense to me when I read one for sweet potato bread that did not have even ONE seasoning in the list of ingredients! So I sprinkled, liberally, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and a couple of other things into the flour to jazz it up, made the bread my own. Yes, it is delicious.
I was prompted to write this after downloading and reviewing hundreds of photographs taken on an exceptional day with the camera. When I get home, I go through all of my shots, immediately identifying those I want to print, playing around with editing on others. Never one to keep them all to myself because I get so excited about the images, I watermark and sign my favorite pictures to send out or post and these two were in that category.
Very different pictures taken hours apart at very different locations, I found them to have an uncanny resemblance; the Y’s of nature, one molded by a single twisted branch the other shaped by the wings of a butterfly caught at just that moment got me to thinking about the word why which then led to when do we stop asking questions and so forth and now I leave you with this…being a maverick is not always popular however, I’ll take that any day over being mediocre. So as my Grandmother used to say, put that in your pipe and smoke it and…
keep your peepers open! ®
I spent this past weekend with family and for the first time in quite some time, was back in the kitchen for hours preparing various dishes. As much as I enjoy cooking, I really haven’t done much since I began drinking smoothies and even when I do, cooking for one is much different than cooking for several but like a duck to water I was immediately in my element. My niece had picked blueberries that she carried all the way from Virginia; nobody felt like making a cobbler or pie however, I remembered seeing a recipe for a galette which, once made revealed itself to be such an easy and quick pastry to make if you go to the refrigerator section of your grocery store and get a Pillsbury pie crust! Trust me, their prepared dough is just fine and when family gathers, nobody will really care that it’s not made from scratch…taste and togetherness is all that matters. 
On my extended due day, I arrived at my desk early dispensing with several to do's with swift efficiency in order to clear space in more ways than one. I opened the presentation, stared at the words and re-asked myself about my message. Blankness answered me. I then began to look at pictures, my own and clip art until there before me was an image that lit the spark. I toyed with it re-creating my title page, realized there are choices for backgrounds that I somehow had missed, found a perfect template with the right colors and fonts, understood immediately that the new title page I just put together didn't work in that opening spot rather it was a closer, and then it just all took shape.
