Photo-Finish Friday --Play Ball

The ball court in the Mayan ruins at Copan, Honduras. It was an honour to play and an honour to win as the winner got to be killed.

A Toucan poses for the camera at a wild bird sanctuary in Honduras.

Wild parrots. Pretty, pretty birds.

Gone With The Rejection Lie

No. No. No. A thousand times no.
Not even 38 times no.
Gone with the Wind was never rejected.
Not even once.
In fact,  the publisher's representative in Atlanta all but begged Margaret Mitchell to submit. Editor Harold Latham had been sent by Macmillan Publishers to find stories to publish. A mutual acquaintance suggested Mitchell's manuscript.
She consistently refused until the evening the rep was catching a train out of town.
She caved, but not before rewriting the first chapter that same evening and then handing him the pages.

This famous rejection myth makes the rounds all the time. It irks me no end.
The real story is found in Road To Tara: the Life of Margaret Mitchell
by Anne Edwards. (Hardcover. Tickner & Fields, 1983)

Of course the point of the false repeated rejection story is to keep trying, and to not take multiple rejections for an answer.
This is true and right and correct. If we listened to rejection we'd never get anything done.
But there are plenty of real life examples of perserverance without have to resort to lies to make a point, and that's the irky bit for me.

This post won't stop this lying nonsense, but at least I won't be perpetuating it.

Gratitude Monday -- Life in Bloom

Nanking cherries full bloom

Life continues.
Spring is here and with it warm weather, sunshine, and the continuation of the flora and fauna of the world.
I am grateful that life is abundant and beautiful.

Photo-Finish Friday -- Morning in Egypt

Morning on Lake Nasser, Egypt.

Gratitude Monday -- I Think

I think, and I am grateful for it.

I don't always think and that has bitten me more times than I like to think about.  But most of the time I mull stuff over before saying anything or I research a topic before having an opinion.
Generally speaking I think before I speak. This makes people fearful. They don't know what to do with someone who isn't talking over their words.
It's the silence which gets to them most, I think.
So many conversations these days are more opinion contests than anything else. There's no room in them for the person who likes to consider what was said.

Also, I am quiet by nature.
This also scares people.

The down side of this is I say what I think. If I'm not saying anything then one may logically conclude I am not thinking anything either.

That's fine with me.

It gives me more time to think, and for that, and the desire and ability to do it in the first place,  I am grateful.

Photo-Finish Friday --A Moody Look at the Rockies

Peaks along the Icefields Parkway.
I found the blue sky most striking.

Gratitude Monday -- A Beautiful Day

Yesterday was a beautiful day.
It was warm, it was bright, and there was nothing unusual about it beyond the unseasonably high temperature.
I got some yard work done.
My husband fixed the roof over the deck.
It was just a day like another day in long line of days where nothing extraordinary happens.
Extraordinary has its place. I am all for it. It livens things up and brings perspective, but ordinary is good and hardly ever gets its due.
It was a sunny, warm, ordinary day yesterday and for it I am grateful.

Photo-Finish Friday -- Pileated Woodpeckers

A Pileated Woodpecker couple on a branch in Edmonton's river valley last weekend.

Here's the couple cropped and enlarged for a better,  if fuzzy,  look.