A Fireworks of A Celebration

              Celebrating Each Saturday with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build.  What a great day to share. Happy Independence Day everyone.                     Tweet at #CelebrateLu

               I posted my first post on March 1st, 2011. Ruth Ayres, Mary Helen Gensch, Tara Smith, Tam and Elizabeth E. (anyone remember?) all commented. In the next days, Elsie and two of my colleagues who did the first SOLC challenge with me commented. One of those colleagues is now close to publishing a novel! It started with a blog and our writing group! Very soon, Ruth Chandler Ferris commented (Storykeeper). We are still in touch. Often, there were bloggers named Bree and Diana(LitCoach). They were around for a few years, but finally stopped. I wonder where they are now? By the middle of March, Deb Day, Christy Rush and Carol Wilcox had commented. Isn't it wonder-filled that so many of us are still writing, that many of us have met and plan to meet again? I celebrate those with whom I connect through blogging, and other media, those I'm come to admire for their grit and craft, to know because they share their lives, and listen when I share mine. Many of your names are not listed above because I hadn't met you yet, but through the different groups, there are others of you I've come to know and love hearing what you have to write. I've met some of you, too, and am hopeful others of us will meet in person someday.
              Why am I writing those words above? Because today I celebrate my one thousandth post! Last year Christy Rush Levine made laminated quotes from some of Ruth's wise words. I hung it up in my house last summer, took it to my office in the autumn, and moved it to my classroom in November. Now it's back home, on the wall by my computer where I do much of my writing.

       AND - I am also celebrating this past week when I had my granddaughters Ingrid and Imogene every afternoon Monday through Thursday. We went to the library, the park, the sprinkling fountains near my home, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (mostly mythical creatures), and stayed home to play and draw and read books, lots of books! It was a lovely week!

On a hot, hot day, good to get shivery cold!

A manatee (Ingrid's unit of study this year!)
They were thought to be mermaids in ancient times.

Oh, such fun to pretend! Imi had on a green dress, thus the picture bleeds through.

The 'other' favorite animal!

Infrared experimenting.

Saying goodbye to their friend outside!

        One more thing for today especially. It's a favorite quote from a favorite book, the Anthology for the Earth, Judy Allen, ed. 

         These words are inspiring to me. I hope they speak to you as well.

The adoption of the Radical Change Scenario, which is the only one that can possibly save our planet, means that each one of us has to take total responsibility for all our actions, without even asking ourselves whether our own tiny contribution will make any difference or not. We are not responsible for what other people do, and, except by example and persuasion, we cannot influence them. But we are responsible for what we do... we must believe (because we all know it in our hearts, which is really the only way we can know anything) that Nature, or God, or the Life Force--but something, call it what you will--has fitted each one of us with a thing we call a conscience... We make our own Heaven or Hell.

-John Seymour, Living As Though the World Mattered, as excerpted from Anthology for the Earth, Judy Allen, copyright 1997