Oh Happy Day: Go with it;Flow with it JHM©11

"I want to be lean and clean for the future, dust off my wings. I know for sure that doing so will make it easier to fly."~  Oprah

"Stash's Sunset" photography by JHM©08

I am just in a good place right now and I am simply going to enjoy it...Circumstances around me have not altered to any great degree.  I'm just very happy.

Happy is as happy does and what I am going to do is flow with it, go with it.   I don't have to work to prolong it,simply enjoy the feeling. 

I have sunlight streaming through all my front windows, listening to my favorite show CBS' Sunday Morning, preparing to read my Sunday paper and have a healthy breakfast.

I joined several groups recently who have similar interests.  Maybe it is the shared interests that suits my sensibilities is contributing to my feeling of continual happiness, I don't know. 

I am simply going to go with it; flow with it.

Maybe it was going through some of my photography and remembering the pleasure in shooting them helped.

"Betty's Table" photography by JHM©10

Don't matter;I am simly going to enjoy it.

Could have been my finishing up a project that I've procrastinated for weeks, sticking with it and knowing it is done and I don't have to do it again contributed...

Don't matter; I'm going to enjoy it anyway.

Or it could have been dreaming about decorating a new loft space with wonderful floor to ceiling windows in a new space, relishing the challenge of shaping it into what will work for me now, where I am now having said to myself it is just doggone fine to now format my space for who I am today.  Feeling my adventuresome self, seeing the world with childlike wonder and old school experience could be fueling this.

Don't matter; I am going to go with it;flow with it...

Or is it seeing images of veggies and flowers who have long since returned back to the soil to replenish and re nourish?

"Arty-chokey" phtographyJHM©08

Or seeing a picture of my eldest daughter with 2 of my grandbabies (her niece & nephew) sound asleep. She was on her off day from work and helping her sister out so she could get to work.  It makes me feel good that my children do indeed have a sense of community.

Or the trust my grandbaby, Tassandra age 11months,secured in sleep that all is right in the world, even if the world is not acting right, that Mom & Dad, Auntie and Grammy will make it alright with all they got.

And big brother Tevin almost 3yrs can camp for the camera:

Maybe it contributes. Don't matter; I am just going to go with it; flow with it

Could it be possible that shutting down a situation that was an exercise in futility; of releasing someone to go where they need to go as long as it is not near me be a contributing factor?

Don't matter,I am simply going to go with it; flow with it.

I had been so stagnant in trying to get the mojo working keeping it going which is almost near impossible to do with so many things working in opposition to what was need.  I had thrown my hands in the air as I could not push what was not there.  For those who can, more power to you!  I applaud that ability; it is  a skill I do not have or acquire and don't see the likelihood that I will.

I've always known in the later years of my life that there is always a way out of no way if as my good friend would say "if I could smooth myself out of the way".  I am what I am, a work in progress & as I figure it out, things get done.

And done well, I do tell...

Has this acquired knowledge contributed to feeling happy?

I am simply going to go with it; flow with it.

"The foolish (wo)man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his/her feet".~- James Oppenheim

"Standing out in a Crowd" PhotographyJHM©08

All rights reservedJHM©11

Where I Once Wuz...

Once upon a time I used to live in this house. It was then and still now one of the most favorite places I lived in. In the early 1900 during segregation, it was a Jewish Tennis Club. And still have very good bones.

En route to the library I made a point to stop in and introduce myself to the most recent owners who are in process of remodeling it. It is even now a lovely place and evokes many fond memories. I promised the owners to return with pictures of what it used to look like before the storm when I had tons of murals in all the rooms.

I even stopped in to see many of my neighbors who had return and living on the block since Katrina. Across the street half the block burned down from a gas leak, but Ms Virgil now 80 sat on her porch this morning and told me how the houses was in the 1940's having been a school up until the 1960's. Ms. Virgil funny sharp and smart as a whip filled me in on a lot of the history not only of that time but of her own childhood one of 18 children in St. Landry Parish. I did indeed promised her I would come back to see her and the other elderly sisters-friends who stand guard over another time since I live almost shotgun from them on another street.

That time I will be smart enough to record them since I am working on a project for the New Orleans African American Museum in Treme. Another place and another time needs recording and their lives kept.

One day it will be me that someone will record, so I besta get to practing now...

The daisies I photograph on my way home. Its a good Monday...

Bayou Couquille~ Westbank

As I meander around...

In the Neighborhood Uptown New Orleans...

It's Been Awhile...

My computor has been down, soI will have awhile before I can catch up...These are shots fro Bayou Couquille 30 minutes outside of New Orleans

Brought it on Home...

Bienvenue!

I came back home to New Orleans after a 5 years absence. I had been craving to go home for over two years but time & circumstances would not allow it to happen before this fall.

I've created the Burnt Toast blog to document my experiences especially in this 1st year through my photography, muses & whatever suits me. In part, I want to experience being part of the never to be repeated, I pray, revitalizing & reinvention of New Orleans. It will be my own eyes & how I see the fits & starts, hills & valleys as I see this quirky, magnificent, perplexing, never a moment of boredom, resilient city glow as it never has before.

My family's stamp is all over the city & goes back a century or more.My maternal grandmother in the early 1900's worked at Two Sisters where she passe blanc(passed for white) in order to support her only daughter who was too brown to pass off.

In the 1940's my parents met & fell in love right on 600 block Burgundy in the French Quarters where my father, a handsome, striking musician home after the war (WWII) moved next door. My mother was living with my Uncle Ellis a French speaking Creole who own a very successful bar & restaurant at that time called the Golden Pumpkin. According to family lore, it was the hangout for the Zulus during Mardi Gras. My mother worked there.

Shortly, before I was born my parents moved to Gert Town on Fig Street (I was a Charity baby) but before I was 5 months old bought a house in the Lower Ninth Ward which became my childhood home.

In my teens my mother moved us to Southern Cali only for me to return to N.O in my early 20's then back to Cali for another 22 years returning in 1997 living in both the Marigny & Uptown until I left in 2004 for work.

I only escape being in Katrina narrowly by the job offering me an additional year otherwise I would have been here in Katrina, other family members were not as fortunate.

But like a boomerang I would always return to New Orleans as I did this year.Whatever it is that pulls me back I cannot get voice to that yet. I just want to see what will flow this time around. So welcome to this thyme...