Lent Photo-a-Day: Near


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Lent Photo-a-Day 2/26: Place

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"Evenglow" Sunset at Clingmans Dome  Great Smoky Mountains National Park © 2014 Kristina Plaas, All Rights Reserved Over the course of my life I have enjoyed an intimate relationship with special places -- places that have significant meaning and importance for me. As a phenomenologist I have explored the relationship of space, an infinite expanse, and place, a "center of significance or meaning that may be used as a guide" (Thomas & Pollio, 2002). A phenomenological geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan, talks about place as space "made into an object." We attach names to objects, we can describe the characteristics of objects, and often we are able to express our feelings about objects. We do all those things in describing our experience of special places, also. There are a number of places on this planet that are very special to me. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of those places. I have favorite locations in Cades Cove, along the Little River, an...
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Persistent

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Sharp-lobed hepatica (H. acutiloba) blooming along Cove Hardwood Nature Trail the first spring after devastating wildfires scorched the area in November, 2016. Great Smoky Mountains National Park © 2017 Kristina Plaas Persistent (adj): lasting or enduring tenaciously. Every year at the time I take my camera out to find wildflowers. I look for them everywhere, but I have specific locations where I know I will find the flowers. One of those locations, a nature trail through old growth forest, was one of those places affected by the Chimney tops 2 wildfire last fall. The fire, once small and well-contained, was whipped up by hurricane-force winds to wreak much devastation in the Smokies. All winter wildflower lovers asked themselves, "What ab out Cove Hardwood, what will happen to the wildflowers?" In my first foray up the trail after it's reopening this week, I found the flowers. They were small and many were a bit bruised and banged up from recent rains and storms, b...
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Pixie Memories

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A few years ago a lady from Oak Ridge, TN took inspiration from a childhood Christmas tradition in her home and co-authored the now famous "Elf on the Shelf" book. When I first heard about Carol Aebersold's elf book last year I chuckled at it's meteoric rise to fame. "It's not new," I thought, "I've had a red pixie in my Christmas Tree for most of my life." Now a bit battered from decades of affection, it's my most cherished Christmas ornament. Why? Because of what this little pixie represents. It was in December 50 some odd years ago that my sister, Stephanie, and I were hospitalized in Reno, Nevada to have pesky tonsils removed. Stephanie, the sensitive artist, and yours truly, the grounded realist, reacted to the experience quite differently. For years after my mother delightedly told the story of how her two daughters reacted to the imaginative tales told by the hospital priest. Stephanie was enchanted; I told him he was wrong ...
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