So now I try to find my own story, and I do tell it sometimes.  When I am in the right company.  It is a long story at this point.  Once years ago a publisher told me I should write my story.  I have the photos to illustrate it.  I question if anybody would want to read my story.  True, I spent much of my youth with many of the legends of Country Music and Rock & Roll and with the legends of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  So I don't know.  If it would be of interest or not.  Married twice and divorced twice.  I keep thinking it is not over with yet.  But as I get older it is like the world doesn't want you anymore.  No matter how much I try to put myself out there.  It just doesn't work.  Yet I keep after it.  

At this point I am probably the only woman in Nashville who was published in Life Magazine.  Now that has meaning to older people but not younger folk.  My book has a little more meaning to younger, but I am one of two women that I know who have had books out of their work.  Still after it, whatever it is.  Life.

This year I did something different for the garden and found an organic fertilizer for tomatoes.  When planted it really has made a difference. I think having all this rain has helped but I had some very large tomatoes this year.  I got my first Black eyed peas today as well.  The calypso beans are almost ready to pick too.  So the garden is doing well for June.

Bet you thought I would be writing about photography.  It is after all what this website is about.  This digital world we live in has really down played the meaning of photography.  Not sure what the future holds for us all.  Especially us photographers.  I look at the web and what I see most is streaming.  They do use still images but streaming is where it is happening.  So am I doing video work?  No have no idea how to do it.  I love the still image and think it is very important to have.  How much longer will I attempt to make a living at this?  I don't know.  I just don't know.  

When I was younger and use to go to local Science Fiction conventions.  They were done for the love of it.  Some made profit some didn't.  They usually had a Saturday night costume contest.  Little kids and big would enter it.  On the local level it was usually cute and not professional.  At World Cons it use to be professional, much fancier outfits.  This past year I went to Chattacon and they had me take photos of the people who dressed up on Saturday night but that didn't do a costume contest.  That is the only local con, I've been too.  It seems that certain elements of the old SF cons are still alive and well in the hugh mega for profit cons. That being one of them.  

So in my play area of my website I have but the images that I shot of people in costume.  i sat up in the costume contest area and did I think everybody.  I think.  They all posed, in their characters.  Almost like actors putting on a character.  Makes me wonder if they all are actors of a special kind.  It was fun.  I enjoyed it.  I didn't pay to get in.  I just wandered around and took photos.  The second day, I did photos of the celebrites they had there.   Not so much fun.  I talked to the publicity person and ask him questions about how they put something like this on.  They do it in several cities.  As the buddhist say things change.  

So this blog isn't about photography today.  It's about my inner life in some ways.  Depression is the monkey on my back.  Somehow that is also I think tied in to sugar.  Yes sugar.  I don't know how but it is.  When I give up sugar and don't have it.  It's like my brain is not racing as much.  When I give up sugar as a result of that I also give up caffine.  Because I give up on tea as a general rule.  I love sweet tea.  It feels a void in me but it is bad for me. 

So my life needs a change and I hope to do it.  We'll see but I hope.  

I saw a video and decided that the woman in it was mythic.  She was very articulate, a musician, and brave, in ways that I never think of.  Not a big star but a person who walks her own road that's for sure.  I know her husband.  Which is why I have seen the video's of her on a TED talk and of her on stage doing a song in response to an article in the Daily Mail publication in the UK.  Her response to there saying that her breast had slipped out of her clothes.  Was to go complete naked.  I think I can savely say I know nobody who would get out on a stage naked and sing about it.  She is beyond what I know for sure.  Her husband knows what she is and loves her for it.  In ways they are a mythic couple but I know him, so to me he is not mythic.  I have never seen them together so I guess the couple can be mythic.  Since they've been married I've seen him twice but not her.  

I think I have lost a relationship with a man who i loved.  He completely quit communicating with me.  I have e-mailed, texted, and called, with no response.  It has hurt me badly but this isn't the first relationship I've lost.  I still have his DVD's, Clothes, and ukelele.  I drove up to his cabin this past week.  His car was there, another car I'd never seen before.  I knocked on the door and heard from the back of the room a small dog start yapping.  I knocked again, the dog yapped some more.  I knew where he kept the key outside his cabin.  So I got it and tried to open the door.  It wouldn't open. I know there is a bolt on the inside of the door, that can be thrown across the door and it will not open.  But you have to be inside to do it.  So I assume he was in there.  I left him a note that I had written before leaving the house. Then when I left I called his cellphone. It did ring and I left a message, telling him how confused and hurt I was.  He responded to none of it.  Does he have a new Girlfriend?  My sister thinks he does.  I know that what he as been through with throat cancer has been very hard.  Does he have a new woman in his life?  The other thing that I think could be why he wants none of his stuff back is that he found out he is terminal.  Which it is?  I have no clue.  The throat Cancer he had told me last time we talked that it was gone.  I don't know, I just don't know.  

I remember being that driven.  That is why I am here now.  Because I had the drive when I was younger to do the photos.  I still have the drive but it is way different than it once was.  It only keeps me going while I doing photos at a show.  Afterwards I'm beat but I have to put images up.  So I do.  

We'll see what happens in my life.  

I also try to stay positive.  In this day and time it is important to be positive.  Even when my mind and gut are telling different.  I try to raise to the occasion and get positive.  

My life is a series of ups and downs and nothing is stable.  There are days when I think I should just give up my dreams and go back to work, doing whatever I can make a living at.  I keep dreaming that something better is going to happen.  So far I get crumbs and the occasional gig, but not enough to survive on.  So I don't know.  I just don't know.  

I love photography, I love music, and books.  Once I could live on these loves.  Now I don't know, I just don't know.  

I love New Orleans.  There isn't a city like it anywhere in the USA.  Walking in the French Quarter is like stepping back in time.  This is the first time I've been here since Katrina hit.  I was here back in the 80's and 90's.  The French Quarter doesn't look any worse for the experience.  Except there seems to be more vacant property about.  This is the first year that I've been here during the summer.  It is hot and humid, that is what keeps people inside during the day.  I try to get up early and wander about.  That is the only time it isn't so hot.  I just look in the store windows and marvel at the items in them.  Very diverse, and strange stores.  I image what it would be like to live here.  To be able to get up and walk to any of these stores.  I wonder what the rent is like or I assume that it is an expensive place to buy property in.  One of the things that draws me to the French Quarter is the ability to walk anywhere.  They had electric street cars that go in the downtown area but they aren't in the French Quarter.  

I also love World Horror.  It is so much to fun to see people I haven't seen in awhile.  I hope I"m making new friends as well.  I hope.

Photography use to be it was the truth. When it was film and it wasn't easily changed.  Now everything visual is not be trusted.  This week on top of my work, I begin a photoshop class.  How to make it better and probably less real.  

I think I've figured out what my next project will be for the Interest area of my website.  I was invited to an event at the old City Cemetery today.  I didn't have anything conflicting with it, so I went.  Wow!  They have done a beautiful job of fixing up the cemetery.   It is now an officially arboretum for trees.  I walked around and read all the new plagues that they had put up about the history of the place and looked at the trees.  It was  nice thing to do for a Sunday afternoon..

I like doing stuff for my interest section and my play section of this website.  Since the film festival is far from over, I expect this section will get more people and ice cream photos before the event is over.  

I'm working in my garden quite a bit.  Right now just weeding out the creeping grass that drives me nuts.  I only have lettuce, onions, and Squash in right now, because of the chilly nights lately.  I hope to put them in soon.  Then when it gets to where it is really warm the beans will go in.  I want to do sunflowers again.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm trying to grow them in little pots and transfer them into the ground sometime later.  So far only three have come up.  I might need to go buy more seed.

I've been using this time to get in shape as well as I can.  I work out at the Y and bike the greenway.  I think I'm losing some weight.  Trying to cut out sugar.  Yet I am drawn to it.  So I try to limit it.  Drink Water and survive, hopefully without going into too much debt.  I have shows I'm trying to do.  My rock & roll show of my work from the 1970's. My Shelby Park older structure's show.  

I keep telling myself I'll be ok.  That is my mediation much of the time, is that I will do alright.  How I will do that I don't know.  But I keep pushing forward and trying to make it happen.  

So hope is what I have and what push for.

In an hour a young woman can move in time with a doctor in a relationship that has no sex.  

I quess I want the amazing and some times I find it in my life.  Some times I don't.  

How do we make our life's amazing?  

Some days I think I've had an amazing life and I just don't want it to be over.  That is it.  I want to go forward and live as much as I can in the life I have left.  How much that is, I don't know.  But I am not finished yet.

wandering about.  Had some great old buildings.  I could tell the oil business had been good to this town.  I found a place and had an early diner before going to the Bus station and just waiting.  Riding the bus is interesting.  Most of the people who ride the bus are people of color of some sort.  Being white buts you in the minority.  I was lucky on this first bus ride to get a seat up front to myself.  It made stops in few towns where I just sat on the bus.  Then in St Louis I had to change buses.  My bus from Tulsa ran late and missed the connection.  They put me on the next bus out which meant I had to wait a couple of hours.  I got home in Nashville the next day.  

My next driving assignment was to Knoxville.  Again, I had several hours to kill.  The bus station was within a few blocks of towndown.  So I wandered into a comic book store and they told me what direction to walk to get to the downtown. 

I want to start to take my camera with me but in ways I think I shouldn't.  Riding the bus I don't take a purse only a bag big enough to carry everything. A camera would be hard to carry and hide.  At least my camera's would be hard to hide.  

Yesterday I got a glimpse of Indianapolis.  The bus station was right downtown.  It was a fancy downtown.  I wanted to go visit the train station that was turned into a hotel, but all door were locked.  It was interesting.  Had an early dinner at a bar.  Riding the bus was no fun.  I had to take a late bus so I had to hang out at the bus station for a good while.  Then I had to sit in the back.  We had a lay over in Louisville but it was dark so I couldn't go walking.  Then the ride to Nashville getting in at 2:20am.  No fun getting that late.  

Since I was a brownie, I've had a thing for the thin mints.  They only come around once a year, and I try to limit the number I buy.  This year I was attempting to get away with out buying any at all.  So much for that plan.  So now the plan is to only buy one box.  Let's hope I can restrain myself.

Some day when I get a good scanner, I hope to put some of those images up here.  

I also dream about going back into acting.  Believe it or not I took lessons in acting when I was younger.  It was fun if nothing else.  So that is two of my secret dreams.  

I love music.  I can't play it but I can photograph it.  Music Moves me and it also touches my soul.

I love books and reading.  It can take me places that are not on this earth.  Again a good book and can touch my mind and my soul.

In ways this is what motives me to do things.  Why I do mostly music with my photograph and why I go to cons and do photography there.  It is combining my passions.  My loves.  In my website my favorite sections are play and interest.  There I feel like I can do whatever I want.  

Last night I went to a music show where the accomplished musician's do an album from a bygone era.  They have been doing this for awhile.  This was just my first.  They did Carol King's Tapestry last night.  I loved that album when I was a kid.  Long ago, far away.  I also knew many of the performers.  I thought they did it wonderful.  All of the people on stage looked like they were having fun.  I like that.  Fun is what we all want.  We'll see if i make another one of these shows. They are very expensive.  

I also got a new camera.  One that is a higher resolution than any I have had before.  Time to play.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I spent it at my sister's.  It was her oldest son's 50th Birthday.  I was 8 years old when he was born.  I don't remember it.  He was born in Shelbyville.  He told me cause I didn't remember where they lived but he did.  All of his children were there.  It was good to see them.  They grow so fast these days.  

I am the only one in my family with no children, and that is fine with me.  I've never felt the drive to have them that some people feel.  There are days when I wonder what it would be like to have them but being my age, I don't give it much thought.  I just try to keep going forward and keep my head above water.  So far so good.  This website I hope will help my business.  Once I figure out to get people to look at it.

Today I went up there for the first time in several years.  They had let the area grow up bushes and young trees but no old trees.  I pushed through the undergrowth and looked for the trees I knew.  I couldn't find them, and I assume they are gone.  I like old graffti.  Like from the late 1800's and early 1900's.  They had cut trails in the area but none that were close to the trails or very big.  So I walked over to the spring.  When I was kid I remember my father telling me they watered horses at that spring.  Not much of spring their now Eventually I'll put up images from my walk about.  

With this website, I want to have a section, where i put fun stuff. Stuff that I encounter that is just interesting in itself.  Last night on Broadway there were people everywhere and if I would have had the energy I would have just done photos for fun.  This is just how it goes.  But tonight at Blue Sky Riders, I will have a seat that I can rest in.  

Scanning older work is always a problem.  If you don't have a good scanner you don't get the detail you do with a good ones.  The problem I have run into is that the scanner I want in somewhere between two and three thousand dollars.  It is a good one and will copy what is on film into digital.

In today's world you can't get some of the films developed.  In my town at this time, only color negative is being processed.  All color slide film processing is gone. Kodachrome is gone from the nation.  Ektachrome is still processed here in the US but I don't know where.  B&W is still taught in schools.  So they keep the chemistry and the paper for that.  I keep watching a photographer I know who is doing large format, tin type kind of images.  They looks beautiful when he post them.  Very different than the work you see done digitally out there now.  

Digital is the way of the world and I don't think things are every going to back to what they were.  But I remember.  

So wish me luck on this new site.  I hope to have it up and running soon.  Then new business cards and promoting my website.