Aging beauty

Those swans are in the window of a closed business in a dying town in West Texas. The window has a reflection of me, taking the photo, and of the buildings across the street. I think they were probably beautiful when the window was first installed, and the store was fresh and filled with people and with the future.

I think the swans are even prettier now that they're the liveliest and most graceful things there. It might have been easy to miss seeing them in 1930, or whenever they first saw that street, because the new window below it would have been full of beautiful displays and the reflections of locals in their hats and suits and dresses.

The same camera has just taken photos in Portugal, and England, of odd little old things, of new and smiling people and of temporary tricks of light, ancient arches and statues and castles.

Look with your eyes and your heart at the beauty around you.


Today, the links are all from Just Add Light and Stir

Beauty
See beauty in...
Beauty in onions
An Abundance of Beauty (with readers' links, and you can add your own!)

photo by Sandra Dodd

Abundant beauty

Listen, feel, look. Something will be beautiful, even just for a moment, if you are present and open.

How much beauty would make a beautiful moment?

What could be set aside so that beauty could fill its place?

Turn your face toward beauty.
Turn your heart toward beauty.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Present and open

Listen, feel, look. Something will be beautiful, even just for a moment, if you are present and open.

How much beauty would make a beautiful moment?

What could be set aside so that beauty could fill its place?

Turn your face toward beauty.
Turn your heart toward beauty.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Impermanent beauty

The peaceful beauty of a sleeping child, a young woman, beautiful food, a flower, a building—nothing lasts forever. Beauty might only last a moment, a day, a year, and will change.

See what is lovely.

Love what is loveable, and remember to expect it to slip away.

photo by Karen James, of found art
and another, found by Lisa Jonick
(backup)

Now that I think of it, though, most photos are of found and fleeting art.
I'm grateful to all those who have let me share their photos here.

See beauty in...

It's easy to see beauty in nature.

It's good to learn to see beauty in tables, cloth, air, spoons, socks, switches, handles, doorknobs, words, sounds, air, clouds, breeze, and ideas.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd

Seeing beauty

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," they say. Sometimes it's intended to be a put-down, of the thing, or of the person who said "Beautiful."

"You're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses" is another sort of light insult.

Picture anything, though—a cloud, a teacup, a puppy—and think about people who would criticize or dismiss, comparing them to someone who would quietly admire and appreciate the thing.

I like to think of parents being the way they want their children to be. I try to remember to be the way I want to be remembered. Maybe seeing beauty is one of the most beautifying things in the world.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Ester Siroky

Clutter or beauty?

Clutter and beauty can coexist. Seeing what's interesting can remind you that clutter can be cleaned up later, but beauty should be seen whenever possible.

When children are older, clutter can subside. Find the good parts today.

SandraDodd.com/chores/joy
photo by Sandra Dodd

Adding beauty

Adding beauty where it was not required is the heart of artistry.

Perhaps art is never "required."
Maybe art is always a choice.

Discovering or creating beauty
photo by Lydia Koltai

Beauty and usefulness

The world isn't sorted into serious and funny, or beautiful and dull. Things are often quite mixed up, and changing with the moment, and the light, and the seasons. New things get old.

Some radio stations (which aren't as vital as they once were) play songs that are sixty years old, or more. A hundred years ago, 1920 provided the first public radio broadcasts of a news program (in Detroit, Michigan). A college radio station aired music, a sporting event and concerts (Schenectedy, New York). An opera was broadcast for the twenty radios that could receive it (August 2020, Buenos Aries, Argentina).

Our receipt of sound is more varied now, and we can bring in humor, debate, tragedy, and re-reuns of those things from earlier times. Text and images have been added. We have more choices than we have time to choose them, these days.

Look for beauty and usefulness. Choose joy and uplift, from the river of output that pours around us.

SandraDodd.com/emotion
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Liverpool one time

Stories of radio in 1920, which I looked up not knowing I really was writing this 100 years after initial public broadcasts, came from Wikipedia's History of Radio page. Good coincidence, for 2020. We are living in the flow of history.__

The learning and the beauty

"It's all about that mind shift isn't it? It applies to so much in how unschooling works or doesn't work. If you can't see the learning and the beauty, you will have a hard time unschooling. It seems to work best in all those small ways that add up to the bigger picture."

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Chrissy Florence
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Temporary beauty

Be ready to discover temporary fragile beauty.

SandraDodd.com/pressure
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Simple beauty

If you can see the beauty in plain and simple things, the world will be more beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Beauty

The other day I saw some beautiful onions. People would buy them even if they hadn't been arranged so nicely, but the produce manager had set each onion down by hand, with thought, and there they were in a pattern I helped to dismantle by taking some of them home with me.

Some of what we have used to be elsewhere. Some of what is at our house will be other places someday. Patterns come and go like cloud pictures, and we ourselves are part of that changing swirl of life and beauty.

click to see others
The photo gallery works on the blog, but not in e-mail; sorry.

The beauty around you

"Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are."

—Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Sandra Dodd

Beauty

"Choose to look at the beauty around you and to see life and people through loving eyes."

—Alex Polikowsky

Sandra's addition: "... to see life and people" and fancy chickens, cupcakes, frost, sleeping puppies and your favorite mug as beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Helene McNeill

An Abundance of Beauty

Helping children discover and appreciate art can be difficult when the parents' idea of art has to do with galleries and oil paintings from other centuries. School creates a limited view of art, and culture reinforces that.

There is no topic or subject or pursuit that doesn't connect to or consist of art. Here's a linguistic example: "Artificial" once meant magnificently lifelike or cunningly wrought. It wasn't an insult until fairly recently (in linguistic time, which is slower than human time, but not as slow as geological time). I find beauty in the forms and histories of words.

For flat art, you can look at paintings, photographs and graphics at art.com (and buy prints or posters if you want). For things for children to play with (children, teens or adults), there are many links here: SandraDodd.com/art (interactive online, or physical fun at home).

I hope readers will contribute to a list of places to look for art, or things to see as art. I will name five and give links. Please leave a blog comment, if you wish, and name as many or as few as you like, with or without links. If you want to create a clickable link, directions are here: SandraDodd.com/hotlink. I wrote them myself, so don't be afraid. It's pretty easy.

My five:

the dashboards of cars

water

snacks

holiday adornment

game boards

(the image above is an art card made and given to me by Erika Davis-Pitre)
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Beauty and hope

Find beauty and hope wherever it can be found. Say and think sweet things about your children. If people can be positive and sweet, it doesn't matter so much where they do it. Being better is better.

Deposit the good stuff.
photo by Jo Isaac
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Bases and basics

"Base" means foundational—the heavy, bottom part of a structure. The basis of an idea is its underlying solidity. These ideas are literally basic.


Base your life in basic things. "Cover your bases." Don't let fantasy or "what if" pull you off base.

Accept and admire beauty if you can, instead of dismissing things as "just..." Just a stump. Just a dandelion. Can you see the beauty in the stump? It might be a safe place to stand after a rain. To a child you love, it might be a chair or a mountain. Dandelions are flowers that make puff-toys for children to blow on. They grow without our help. They might be the only colorful flower you'll see, some days. If a child loves them, can you follow?

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd, of unimportant things, in Tiguex Park
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Beauty in the moment

Parvine Shahid wrote:

Eyo and I were looking through photos and we came across a couple he had taken during our last flight from London.

I was reminded of that moment we were sitting on the plane, looking out of the window. He decided to take some pictures and said, "We are out of Earth—it looks like we could walk on the clouds!"

The world can look very different in each moment and that reminded me of the importance of slowing down to be able to see the beauty in each one.

—Parvine Shahid

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Eyo Shahid (click it, to enlarge)

Beauty in onions

The other day I saw some beautiful onions. People would buy them even if they hadn't been arranged so nicely, but the produce manager had set each onion down by hand, with thought, and there they were in a pattern I helped to dismantle by taking some of them home with me.

Some of what we have used to be elsewhere. Some of what is at our house will be other places someday. Patterns come and go like cloud pictures, and we ourselves are part of that changing swirl of life and beauty.

click to see others