One of my favorite online newsletters was A Pause for Beauty. I say was just because it appears to have stopped being published about a year ago. This moment I had with the grass, in the midst of a hectic, head-to-the-grindstone day, was my pause for beauty. Even though I was still on the phone I went inside to get my camera and took this picture.

Such a simple thing, seeing beauty in nature, but the one moment of my day  looking at the grass drifted into all those hours at the computer and made them easy and insignificant in comparison.

While the flood waters had receded, I was astonished at how much mud was churned up. The water was a churning reddish brown and full up onto the banks.

Flash floods are something I have never had experience with, gratefully, and had never understood how water could just rise so fast without people knowing it was rising. During Hurricane Irene I understood. After 8″ of rain even a stream near my house that is usually, in August, flowing at barely a trickle , was suddenly roaring whitewater. The stream exploded and it seemed it happened out of nowhere.

Imagine a river like the Sawkill with every little stream tributary like mine feeding it. Yes, it suddenly exploded, taking homes and livelihoods.

During Hurricane Irene, during such torrential downpours and flooding rivers, everything was surely very wet. It is hard to imagine the drought in Texas when so inundated. We are just at the mercy of dramatic weather, whatever type we have. We can’t share it. We had more than enough to go around, I wish we could have.

– Anonymous

- Tune Spinner

– Anonymous

Here is the start of the text for this song. The video was found by Mattie on blanktv.com:

And the warblers sing: deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-­deet-deet-deet-deet!

And the sparrows sing: deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-­deet-deet-deet-deet!

Through the wheels, through the wheels on the interstate,

And hear no refrain.

And the beetles creep (deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-deet­-deet-deet-deet-deet!)

On the crippled trees, (deet-deet-deet-deet-deet-deet­-deet-deet-deet-deet!)

And they look down to where the soil must have been, wondering.

And no, youre not alone. No, my cousins, youre not alone.

You’re in our talons now, and were never letting go.

If you say north and south are opposites, you then have to recognize there’s a whole range in between. Therefore you have to tremendously enrich the field . . . If you hold these opposites together, then you suspend thought and your mind must move to a new level. The suspension of thought allows an intelligence beyond thought to act. Then you can create a new form.

- Physicist, David Bohm

Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing… one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.

Learn more about the Indigo LE Print on Herondance.org

Learn more about A Pause for Beauty newsletter and Heron Dance, by By Rod MacIver (www.herondance.org).