Week 0003: There's no Place like Home

My current address is my twentieth. It took a long time to get to here and I hope we're settled for a bit. There may be one more move left in us,  but I'll not be looking forward to it. The packing, the boxes...you know how it is. But that's not happening anytime soon, thank goodness!
Just over fourteen years ago, my family moved cross-country from Cape Cod to Arizona. I don't know how the other three think about it, but I feel like I finally found my "home." And that doesn't have to do with this house, it has to do with a sense of place, a feeling of belonging, a centeredness, a certain calm.
And I found that when I crossed into Arizona.

I love that flag, it's beautiful, bright and colorful. The blue is for our blue skies, the thirteen stripes for the original American colonies, the yellow for sunshine and the copper star for the industry that made this state. "They" say that Arizona is about the five "Cs"--cattle, climate, cotton, copper and citrus--and we still have all of them in abundance.
Coming from back East, I was amused last year when Arizona celebrated it's centennial.Think Plymouth Rock,or St Augustine, which last week celebrated 450 years! While Arizona has been inhabited for millennia (and a discussion for a different week..), to acknowledge statehood of only 100 years seems preposterous!
Where do you feel most at home? Do you think it's where you are, someplace you've been before or an address yet to be named?

Week 0002: A Book to Read and Keep

No sooner did I get started on this journey and I had to get one of the books that compiles 1,000 different bits of poems and prose. What else to do with a couple bucks in my pocket? In terms of contemporary literature, it's not--it's years old and the material enclosed in the covers older yet.
But it still is enlightening and brightening.

I highly recommend this book for your library (found it on Amazon; it cost more to ship than to buy the volume. Perhaps something to add to a thrift shop or yard sale list?). For one thing, it has quite a bit of historical prose. This compilation is from 1947, long before the advent of technology as we know it. I was thoroughly taken by a heavy influence by and about Abraham Lincoln. And not just a little bit of it will require homework as there are mostly just excerpts of famous poems and stories; I'm lacking context to some degree.
Just the peaceful image on the cover makes me happy.

Week 0001: A Thousand Steps Start with just One

Mine is not a new thought, nor as I have found, very original.
Drop "A Thousand Beautiful Things," into a search engine and you get a few compilations of prose by different authors, a collection of sheet music and a song by Annie Lennox. I found the music video she created on a DVD from the Annie Lennox Collection.
There are also a few bloggers that have their own ideas on 1,000 beautiful things. I hope to somehow make mine different.

Daisies
Lowell Observatory
by Me

First, I hope to engender an attitude of graciousness and gratitude that will permeate this blog and this person. And in the process engage you, my reader, to empower yourself to do the same. I don't mean to burden you with another project, just to foster beauty in your own life.
Second, I hope to post a beautiful thing a week, which will be a humongous project that will span the better part of not one, but two decades.
Third, create jumping off points to other areas of interest and thus promote a full, creative life.
And I will begin where this began: a trip to the library. It's a regular part of my weekly routine. I peruse their collection of CDs for "stuff." This week Annie's drew my attention. (Along with Michael Jackson, Carole King and REM, an eclectic bunch, yes?).
After I got it home, I was bummed to see a sticker on one of the CDs that read that it didn't play. But it wasn't a CD after all, but a DVD of Annie's music videos. I clicked on "Walking on Broken Glass," an elaborate production which includes the likes of John Malkovich and Hugh Laurie.
Hugh, who you would probably know from "House," reprises his role, with rich expression, of the character Prince George from "Blackadder." Now, that's an interesting take on history, if you're not familiar, with Rowan Atkinson as the lead characters. Rowan also played a James Bond spy character in Johnny English to John's evil antagonist, but you wouldn't know it from John's Wikipedia page, as there is no mention of it. (I just find that interesting. Wikipedia is not the end-all for information, surely, nor do I fault Malkovich from distancing himself from that particular movie. If it weren't for young adults in my household, I surely wouldn't have seen it).
You following how all that fits together?
I know, it's a stretch.
I had never heard the track, "A Thousand Beautiful Things." It's a haunting tune and a lovely tribute to Annie finding the way out of a depression that had gripped her. Her music video is fine, but I found a beautiful YouTube version created with time-lapse imagery.
So join me on this incredible journey, gather together the things that you find to be beautiful in your life and share your thoughts....
Do you have a song that you rely on to make you happy? Is there a place you have visited that just sets your mind to rights?