Shenandoah National Park, Virginia"The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed." -- Dante
- "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."
- -- John Muir, Our National Parks , 1901
Image © 2009 Michael Pancier Photography, All Rights Reserved
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.T.S. Eliot - East Coker
Today would have been my mom's birthday. This is the first year I celebrate it without her. Many miss her music, and her joyfulness, and her laughter and humor. I do too. But I can't tell you how much I miss talking to her and hearing her words and her motherly advice and wisdom that she gave me until the end.
Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation.- GEORGE WASHINGTON
© 2009 Michael Pancier Photography
"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country - to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.
* * *
Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see."
Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis, satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.
"Shall I tell it again how we started as friends
Who would run into one another now and again
At the yippee cai o or the mesa dupree
Or a dozen different everyday places to be
I was loping along living alone
We were ever so brave on the telephone
Would you care to come down for fireworks time
We could each just reach
We step out of line
And the smell of the smoke and the lay of the land
And the feeling of finding ones heart in ones hand
And the tiny tin voice of the radio band singing
Love must stand
Love forever and ever must stand
Unbelievable you, impossible me
The fool who fell out of the family tree
The fellow that found the philosophers stone
Deep underground like a dinosaur bone
Who fell into you at a quarter to two
With a tear in your eye for the fourth of july
For the patriots and the minutemen
And the things you believe they believed in then
Such as freedom, and freedoms land
And the kingdom of God and the rights of man
With the tiny tin voice of the radio band
Singing love must stand
Love forever and ever must stand
And forever must stand
Oh the smell of the smoke as we lay on the land
And the feeling of finding my heart in my hand
With the tiny tin voice of the radio band
Singing love must stand
Love forever and ever must stand
All on the fourth of July
On the fourth of July"
-- James Taylor
A nine minute video montage of my video and stills from Death Valley National Park.
Enjoy ......
Since Arizona is in the Superbowl Today, here's some images from one of the most beautiful states in the Country.
It's been a month since my mom left the planet towards the heavens. Haven't posted much. But I figure it's time. Here's a shot I took last Sunday of the Dania Beach Pier.Slide show of my mother, Olga Diaz Parlade de Pancier playing the Danza Allegre by the great Cuban composer Rene Touzet.
Shot last night at the Bank Atlantic Center in Fort Lauderdale
On my way into work through the not so nice part of town, a Rainbow was there to greet me. Here it is.
Shot with new Canon EOS 5d Mark II - Handheld - ISO 2000
South American Jaguar part of Miami Metrozoo's New Amazon Exhibit which opens to the public on 12/6/08.
