photo art by Patty Ann & Craig Smith
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Loch Lomond
"Click on the headline" and listen to our version of this hauntingly beautiful old Scottish song . The great guitar work is done by my husband, Guitarist Craig Smith.
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Music Can Carry a Message of Hope
Unfortunately, poverty and despair have not been unique at any time during World History. And, the song "Loch Lomond" was written over 250 years ago in "one of those times" in Scottish History that marked a war that was fought on Scotland's soil that left its' people defeated with thousands of lost lives, families destroyed, land and property taken and people plunged into poverty. Those who remained, appeared to face devastation. Not much different than people in many parts of the world today...including the United States. Yet, someone wrote a song 250 years ago that's still around today. And I wonder how many other unfortunate times in history since then, people sang that song or heard that song and it helped someone get through just one more day. Craig and I, through our music, can carry a message from Scottish ancestors in their time of struggle and despair and share in our time ~ the hope that's in this great song, "Loch Lomond".
You can listen to some more of our music by clicking on our "name" music links on the sidebar.
Enriching Lives With Art
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." ~ Henry Ward Beecher
"Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul." ~ Henri Matisse
Every person needs to have the opportunity to appreciate all forms of the arts and be able to choose to participate in the arts of their choice. Expressing ourselves creatively, through one medium or another, expands our awareness of life. Art is essential to our well being. A nation's arts are part of its cultural treasures.
WHEN IT COMES TO SCHOOLS, "A LITTLE ART IS NOT ENOUGH!" http://www.americansforthearts.org
Participation in the arts opens up children's worlds and minds, and right now there is "nowhere near" enough art in our schools or in our children's lives to help them be able:
to express themselves in a healthy creative way
to experience more tolerance and openness
to increase their self-confidence and improve their learning skills
to have an increasingly more positive attitude towards school and a greater interest in making better choices in their lives.
Establishing the place of the arts in our lives, empowers activities that carry over into other areas of life and study....enriching us all!
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way....things I had no words for." ~ Georgia O'Keeffe
Art As Spiritual Practice
"Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more." ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Art and nature have always been an integral part of man's spiritual experience. The thematic "Year of Spirit and Spirituality" begins this fall at Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C. http://www.guilford.edu . And, one of the scheduled guest speakers is Eleanor Heartney, curator of a traveling art exhibition entitled "Thresholds: Expressions of Art & Spiritual Life" http://www.state.sc.us/arts/thresholds which displays the artwork of several artists who have been inspired by various religious and spiritual beliefs. This exhibit began in Charleston, S.C. and is now in Charlotte, N.C. at the McColl Center For Visual Art. Ms Heartney is co-author of a book entitled "Art As Spiritual Practice" http://www.mitpress.mit.edu .
The Importance of Truthful Stories
Native American storytellers have always related ancient wisdom through their stories, and these treasured tales contain solutions to problems man encounters. Generation after generation, these stories have added to many individual's inner strength, well being and self worth.
"When we forget the truths that gave courage and strength to the Ancestors of all races and creeds, we have lost ourselves and our roots." ~ Jamie Sams
"Every one of us needs something that motivates us and gives us hope that there is something to look forward to." ~ Patty Ann Smith
"Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
In this world, that which binds us all is not our history...for, we all have come from different perspectives of that. What binds us is the land, and the sea and the air and the plants and the creatures that inhabit the surrounding areas wherever each of us live. They are so divinely connected and they take us along with them in any given direction. There are no real boundaries between the land and the sea or the plant and the animal. All are part of the greater whole, one cannot exist without the other.
"The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life"
Inspired by today's post at Dave Pollard's blog "How to Save the World" http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/ , I must post this beautiful piece I have long-loved from Thomas Moore's book, "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life".
"Starting from the premise that we can no longer live in a disenchanted world, it has been found that a profound, enchanted engagement with life is not a childish thing to be put away with adulthood, but a necessity for one's personal and collective survival."
If we want to have a healthier "self" and a healthier society, we need to reconnect and have "a genuine engagement with beauty, craft, nature and art in both public and private life".
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