Blog

We are two days away from Earth Day as I write this post. This year (2023) marks 53 years that this environmentally aware holiday has been celebrated.

Most articles cite one particular man for the founding of Earth Day but research shows that there were several people that led the environmental movement that eventually helped create Earth Day and several more persons who were instrumental in establishing the movement nationally as well as internationally.

The first official Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Because the movement was originally called Campus Teach-Ins, the date was chosen because it was between Spring Break and Final Exams for most colleges.

By 1990 Earth Day had gone global and was recognized in 141 countries. The year 2000 found Earth Day in the digital age of social media and saw 180 countries participating.

Fifty years of global environmental awareness was celebrated in 2020 with approximately 200 countries celebrating Earth Day.

There are some countries that celebrate Earth Day on the Spring Equinox and many countries have adopted an entire week of activities during Earth Week.

What events and activities are scheduled in your community?

Are there events taking place in a week long celebration?

Will you be involved in any clean-up projects in your town?

Please share your Earth Day activities in the comment section and inspire others to take action wherever and whenever they can to help sustain nature and our environment for generations to come.

Some of you who keep up with my blog posts will remember that earlier this year I embarked on a road trip to scout out possible retirement locations.

The last possible retirement city that my friend and I visited was St. Marys, Georgia (USA). When we were still in South Carolina, we met a lady who had moved to St. Marys and insisted that we check out that area.

Walking around the historic riverfront area we found friendly people, dog friendly establishments and many restored homes and inns.

Although I photographed several churches, my favorite was the First Presbyterian Church.

The church was built in 1808. It is the second oldest church in the state of Georgia and the state’s oldest building in continuous use as a church. The first pastor was ordained and installed in June 1822.

On December 20, 1828, the church was incorporated under the name of the Independent Presbyterian Church of St. Marys.

On December 5, 1832, The Independent Church was incorporated as the First Presbyterian Church of St. Marys in the Georgia Presbytery.

A photograph inside the building shows a flat front to the church with the stairs angled down to the left side. A plaque on the photograph states that the picture was taken prior to 1898. A little research found that the photograph was actually showing a back entrance to a gallery for the enslaved.

In December 1956, a fire destroyed the original east side entrance. The church was restored with wood as old as the original church and rededicated within a few months of the fire.

Today the First Presbyterian Church of St. Marys, Georgia is admired both for its architecture and its members’ determination and faith to preserve the building for future parishioners.

Interestingly, the lady who first insisted we check out St. Marys is a member of this church and I spoke with her briefly as she left service the Sunday morning that I was taking photographs of the church.

I look forward to a return trip to this charming city in the near future to introduce my husband to this city as a possible retirement location. We will be driving past this historic structure as we slowly cruise into town.

Be sure and leave a comment and/or suggestions if you have visited or lived in the St. Marys area.

Today’s post is similar to my Maundy Thursday post that I wrote and posted last year. The image however, is different and depicts the preparation for the Holy Day remembrance.

Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter Sunday. It is a remembrance of the Last Supper, the final Passover meal that Jesus ate with his disciples.

The word maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum, which means command or commandment.

Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment that evening. That was to love one another in the agape way of loving. Agape, a Greek word for a particular type of love, is a spiritual type of love, not love that comes from any emotion.

Two things that Jesus did that evening have become traditions on Maundy Thursday. The breaking of bread and drinking wine to remember his sacrifice for mankind is now practiced as Holy Communion and is a major activity in Maundy Thursday services.

Jesus also humbled himself and washed his disciples’ feet as an example of Agape. Foot washing is often another tradition that is practiced at Maundy Thursday services.

My hope is that this image will be a thought provoking scene for each of us that will result in Agape Love towards one another.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, participating in the Personal Art Challenge with a Reflection theme, I also did some reflecting about life.

One of the images that I created was a reflection of a tulip bloom. My desire was to create a water reflection of that bloom using photo software.

Well, that didn’t work out. Hours later I had not been successful in learning how to make a water reflection out of a non-water photograph. I did, however, learn how to create the illusion of that tulip bloom being reflected as if it was lying on a mirror.

How many times in life have we planned to do something in a certain way, or we planned to take a specific route and things just did not work out the way we had planned.

With a combination of hope and perseverance I was able to create a reflection image. It wasn’t the image that I had set out to create, but it was an acceptable image and I learned a few new software settings while trying to create my original planned image.

Wouldn’t you agree that we could compare that to other life challenges?

Often things don’t work out as we had planned but if we approach our challenges in life hoping for success (however success may look) and we persevere until we get an acceptable result, we may discover that we are successful even when success is defined differently than we thought it would be!

Here’s hoping that each of you reading this will tackle any challenge that appears on your path in life, with the most positive attitude to persevere and eventually find yourselves successful in whatever way matters most!

Comments and shared experiences are always welcome and encouraged.

This week the Personal Art Challenge on Fine Art America is all about reflections. The goal is to post new artwork each day and the art has to have a reflection showing in the image.

The whole object of these challenges is to stretch our creativity, discipline and skill. Last year’s 365 Challenge stretched my creativity and discipline to produce and post new work every single day of the year. I’m using these shorter challenges to stretch my creativity and skill.

Photographers are allowed to use photographs that were taken at an earlier time as long as all of the processing work is done on the challenge day. In past challenges I have used a combination of older photographs that I had never processed (straight out of the camera, not cropped, not cloned to clean up dust, etc.) and some new photographs that were taken specifically for the challenge.

For the Reflection Challenge this week I decided to that I would be taking new photographs each day showing some type of reflection. Because of the poor lighting in the apartment that we live in, getting good results has been the challenge for me.

So far I have taken hundreds of pictures to get three “good” ones. I have taken pictures looking into a mirror, laying jewelry on top of a mirror and propping up a small mirror with my subject in front of it.

I’ve used all types of lighting available to me including the flash on the camera, overhead lighting and placing my subjects directly in front of north facing windows, the largest and most accessible ones here.

During these last three days I have not only been taking, processing and posting images with physical reflections but I have also been “reflecting” on life challenges that I have and am facing.

As I am writing and posting this week’s blog I face two more days to complete this present art challenge. Who knows how many more days I face to complete all the life challenges before me.

Reflecting on past victories over life’s challenges, I am sure to meet new ones, in my artwork and life in general.

However, it is time to stop reflecting and meet life’s challenges head-on!

You are encouraged to share your thoughts on any challenges you may be facing. Your comments are always welcomed.

Today’s blog post is going to be about one of my recent images that was created for a Personal Art Challenge on Fine Art America (Theme: Kitchen). Some of you may have already seen this image and read the description. For those of you who haven't the description is below and a full size version of the image can be viewed by clicking on the More Information tab.


A red eye flight is an airplane trip that leaves at night and arrives in the morning. These night time flights are named because many passengers who cannot sleep on a plane arrive at their destinations with dry, red eyes.

The Red Eye is also known as eyes can appear red when camera flashes are used and pointed directly at the person’s face.

However, neither of these definitions pertain to this image. The title to this image is a play on words.

The photograph was taken of a stove eye as it was heated to it’s highest temperature. When heating stove eyes to high temperatures their normally black coils glow red, much like red glowing embers from a campfire.

You can also see that this stove has a black metal top and the eye is surrounded by a silver looking metal. There is a metal pan under the coiled eye to catch any spills from pots that may boil over.

In the middle of the metal pan under the coiled eye is a circular opening. In the case of this particular eye that open circle allows excess heat to escape when the oven is turned on.



That image was the final one of that particular challenge. Stay tuned next week as I participate in yet another Art Challenge with a new theme (Reflections).

Your comments are always welcome and encouraged.

There is a five day personal art challenge on Fine Art America this week with a Kitchen Theme. In the past I participated in a similar challenge but that one was for Macro images from the kitchen. This week’s challenge did not have to be close up images.

Going through my external hard drive and old CDs I found several photographs of outdoor kitchens that we have designed and used in the past. I have been working on cleaning up those old files for this week’s challenge.

At present we are living in an apartment and our outdoor kitchen consists of a long fold up table (similar to those old school cafeteria tables) and a gas grill set up on a concrete patio. A very simple space. Food is prepared inside then taken out to the grill.

That’s a far cry from any of our previous outside food prep and cooking stations. We have had fully plumbed sinks with attached drain boards for food prep and cleanup in all of the outdoor kitchens at homes that we owned. We had a gas fired smoker, as well as a grill in one of those kitchens. And a table or counter was a must to facilitate meal prep.

As I work on the art challenge this week, I am also churning ideas around in my head for our next home and how we might design and build an outdoor kitchen for that location. The design phase is always the most fun part of any building project that we undertake.

Do you have an outdoor space for preparing and cooking food?

How elaborate is or was your outdoor kitchen?

Have you used a porch, patio or deck as the location for your outside meal prep station?

Be sure and use the comment space to share descriptions of your outdoor kitchen spaces that are real or imagined.

Last week’s post described the famous Pineapple Fountain in the Joe Riley Waterfront Park in Charleston, South Carolina (USA). This week I’ll describe and show you the Jet Fountain.

The multi-spray jet fountain in Joe Riley Park is located at the waterfront end of Vendue Range (Street) and is at the entrance to Joe Riley Waterfront Park.

Seven steps above street level, this fountain sprays water out of 15 individual, evenly spaced jet spouts arranged in a circle.

Multi-hued tiles surround the middle circular trough where excess water from the jet sprays overflows onto the tiles.

The result of the water’s action provides for a cool, splash pad as relief from the summer heat.

It was getting dark on a cool evening when I was there, but I could imagine that the fountain would be full of children joyfully running in and out of the fountain during a hot and humid summer day.

Please comment if you have been to this fountain and let us know if it was full of children, or maybe even adults, finding relief from the summer’s heat.

In today’s blog post I will highlight one of two fountains found in Joe Riley Waterfront Park in Charleston, South Carolina (USA). Although these photographs were taken under less than ideal weather conditions, they will still give you an idea of the beauty and community asset that they fulfill.

The first fountain I saw and photographed was the famous Pineapple Fountain. This one has been publicly photographed thousands of times from every angle, mostly with the waterfront behind the fountain. That wasn’t working for me on this particular day. The white skies from a cloudy, humid day made the fountain look like a silhouette, even when adjusting my camera’s setting. I wanted to show the details on each level of the fountain and the best way to do that was to put the waterfront behind me and the City Gallery behind the fountain.

There are still white skies showing in the images but the details can be seen on the fountain at this angle.

As I described this fountain on my site:

The top of the fountain is in the shape of the leaves sprouting out of a pineapple. Shapes representing the outside of a ripe pineapple wrap around each level of the fountain.

On the inside of the lowest level are several steps. The sign next to the fountain informs visitors that it is permissible to cool off in the fountain as long as you stay only on the first two steps.

The pineapple is Charleston's symbol of hospitality, as it is in other areas of the southern United States.

It originally was a symbol of wealth since the fruit had to be imported from tropical climates of the world where it took a long time for the plant to produce fruit.

At first the fruit was used as a decoration and could even be rented.

As people became more affluent they would serve their guests the sweet, ripe fruit as a sign of hospitality.

There are numerous pineapple symbols strewn throughout Charleston, both on commercial buildings as well as residences.

Have you visited this historic city and wandered through the waterfront park? If so, please comment and let us know what you enjoyed about the location.

My recent adventure contained more good than bad and I can now look back and laugh at some of the events.

The Bad was the mistakes made and the uneasy, frustrating emotions churning in my spirit.

The Good was the Blessings of safe travel and the people that we met along the way.

The Humorous, as is true in much of life, was not so humorous at the time but happenings that we have laughed about since getting back to Alabama.

If you have been following my blog posts concerning this trip then you might remember that we experienced different hotel brands and conditions. The first hotel was a new brand for a major hotel chain. Neither of us had stayed at that particular brand before but I chose it because it was new (hopefully clean and up to date) and less expensive than the brand that I usually choose.

As I stepped into the lobby I noticed a very contemporary décor along with a pool table. The chairs and lighting were very different than any other hotel that I had seen.

The room did not have a closet. Hooks on the walls were provided for hanging clothes. There were no dressers for those who prefer to unpack, only a bench with a shelf underneath. There was a small dorm size refrigerator but no microwave or coffee maker. Those items were provided in the snack/breakfast area of the lobby.

USB and electrical plugs were at every chair, seating area and table. Those plugs were everywhere!

After explaining to me, in a negative tone of voice with accompanying facial gestures, that this new hotel brand was built and designed specifically for millennials, my travel buddy proceeded to fill each of the USB plugs in our room with her electronic devices! It will be a long time before she lives that down.

Something else that you may remember from a recent blog was the fact that I was going to try my best to “go with the flow”, especially by following the GPS on my travel buddy’s phone. No printed maps were to be used on this trip.

My friend sat patiently as I yelled, “NO, NO, NO!” more than once as the woman’s voice in her phone would say, “At the next traffic light turn right onto Jim Bob’s Lane” or some similar back, county road that I’m sure is not on any known printed map.

On our last travel day that voice wanted me to take yet another county road to get onto the main US highway I was seeking. This turn off was also at an intersection where I would be able to get onto the interstate for a few miles to get to that main road. I chose the interstate. After all, we would only have to drive on that busy, four lane interstate for a few miles and at this point in our journey I had seen enough of America’s back roads.

Well, I missed the right exit, took the next one and had trouble finding my way back to the main highway that I wanted to take. Pulling my old, well-worn atlas from the back seat I became oriented and found our way back to the point where I could reach the highway I was seeking.

After arriving at my original starting point in Florence, we went to dinner and got a good night’s sleep. The next day I decided that I would take my friend to a few tourist attractions around the area.

One of the attractions was only 14 miles from our apartment building and I had been to that attraction before. But I had driven there one way and returned a different way. So I checked the directions online but did not print them out. There were only two different roads that we would be taking. That amounted to only one turn before we would be arriving at the destination.

Yep, I missed that turn. Who can guess how we got back on track in the middle of the woods on narrow county roads?

The voice from my friend’s phone!

My recent adventure took me well beyond the range of my comfort zone and certainly contained The Good, the Bad and the Humorous.

I am very thankful that we can now laugh as we tell of our mishaps or mistakes.

Be sure and check out KeppenArt in the coming weeks for images of our adventure from Georgetown, South Carolina to St. Marys, Georgia as we scouted around for a possible retirement location. Choosing and then processing photographs to post will take some time as I settle back into my comfortable, hermit-like routine – until my next adventure!

Comments are always encouraged and very much welcomed.