In this case, Climbing Pinkie.

In a field on a backroad between Madison and Milledgeville, Georgia, stones were discarded in a manner creating a stack.  There is something very appealing about the configuration, and it has an oddly sacred feel to it.  Notice the leaf falling in the air on the left. 

At a farmer's market in Chilton County, Alabama, a tattered flag waves.  It should have been destroyed, but I am glad it was left in place so I could take this shot of a fatigued flag that kept her red stripes, the symbol for blood, war, and courage.

Dante described the second step to pergatory as "a deeper hue than perse." According to E. G. Cuthbert and F. Atchley in "On English Liturgical Colours" contained in the 1904 Essays on Ceremonial, Dante's perse was a color mixed of purple and black, with black dominant.

"I have found malaise in the midst of plenty and stirring hope in circumstances that should have produced despair. I have found evil in the most unexpected places, and also God."

~Philip Yancey, Finding God In Unexpected Places

Concerning Sonia Sotomayer:

"How dare she be smart and aggressive? Wait, she’s a lawyer and a judge."

by alphafeminist at Feminist Philosophers blog

We just love to float flowers Down South, and a gardenia in a martini glass is the quintessential symbol of the beginning of Summer when fireflies and candles light up air filled with the heady scent of Summer. Cheers to true Southerners who savor Gardenia Martinis in June.

I enjoy experimenting with a work of art to find new ways of looking at it with minor adjustments.  This is my original watercolor scanned, shading worked in Photoshop using a regular brush with different levels of opacity, cropped, made into a duotone and a filter made of moss loaded.  I use the moss texture in many of my works because I just like the softpress board feel.

I do not know what to call this piece except mixed media.  Still I keep it in a digital painting category because it does involve actual painting with a mouse.

Yesterday I heard a poem entitled Rapture on NPR's The Writer's Almanac.  It amounted to conceptual rapture for me, worthy of serious meditation:

Rapture

by Richard Jones

In the desert, a traveler
returning to his family
is surprised
by a wild beast.

To save himself
from the fierce animal,
he leaps into a deep well
empty of water.

But at the bottom
is a dragon, waiting
with open mouth
to devour him.

The unhappy man,
not daring to go out
lest he should be
the prey of the beast,

not daring to jump
to the bottom
lest he should be
devoured by the dragon,

clings to the branch
of a bush growing
in the cracks of the well.
Hanging upon the bough,

he feels his hands
weaken, yet still
he clings, afraid
of his certain fate.

Then he sees two mice,
one white, the other black,
moving about the bush,
gnawing the roots.

The traveler sees this
and knows that he must
inevitably perish, that he will
never see his sons again.

But while thus hanging
he looks about and sees
on the leaves of the bush
some drops of honey.

These leaves
he reaches with his tongue
and licks the honey off,
with rapture.

"Rapture" by Richard Jones, from The Blessing: New and Selected Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2000.