Mother Gertrude, I have always adored you and am ever delighted to sing your praises!! You suffered the loss of your husband and one of your four sons during my own first early years. And then, in 1993, just after your 80^th birthday, we suffered the infinite loss of you. I was rolling up to Virginia in a gas-guzzling tank of a car for Auto Drive Away the night you died, and at one point an old country tune we used to hear was on the radio, �Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.� Somewhere beyond �South of the Border,� I called up the hospital and the nurse said, �Your mama died this morning.� After reassuring them that I was OK, I hung up the phone and just sobbed away into the empty air, reminding myself to breathe deep and to move slow.  Between the service station and the highway, a patch of yellow wildflowers caught my eye, and I wandered over there, remembering how always yellow were the blooms around your house in Spring and how love never ends. � Bill Joyner

The days when one works are the best days.  On the other days one is hurrying through the other things one imagines one has to do to keep one�s life going � hurrying through these things with a certain amount of aggravation so that you can get at the painting again, because that is the high spot. � One works, I suppose, because it is the most interesting thing one knows to do. �Georgia O�Keefe

A R T

Genuine human reunion is salvation, sanctification, and perfection.  �BJ

Let these be your desires: to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness, to be wounded by your own understanding of love;      and to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake a dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.  � Kahil Gibran

Everything is about to disappear. You�ve got to hurry up, if you still want to see things. �Cezanne

The whole point is to do some writing, some guitar playing, and something physical every day, no matter what. That is the only way to live, and to get your work done.   �James Dickey

P. O. Box 3411 / Sarasota, Florida 34230

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Some kind of confinement, or shall we say �discipline,� is required for the achievement of any task.  Self-confinement can be a practical means of salvation from immersion in the world �out there� and it�s incessant demands.  As Corita said, give in so that you can give out.  �Know thyself� is very possibly the best piece of advice ever. Self-knowledge leads to self-actualization, and that�s a benefit to everyone.  The better we know ourselves the more likely it is that we will understand and appreciate one another. � BJ