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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Gratitude Day 17: Knitting

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Snow Angel Knitted Lace Shawl with bead embellishment I was just a kid, 9 or 10 years old, when my mother taught me the basics of knitting. Having been raised in Germany and the Netherlands where almost all women  knit, my mother could whip out warm woolly things with stunning speed. I was OK at knitting but preferred crocheting because it was easier for me and I could produced finished items much faster with a crochet hook than with knitting needles. By the time I went to graduate school at Vanderbilt, I was firmly entrenched as a crocheter. That is until my dearest friend in school, a passionate knitter, made it her personal mission to convert me to the other side. She took me to my first real yarn store and helped me find a sweater pattern and suitable yarn to knit it. I knit my way through the stress of a Master's degree, producing several sweaters and other small items. I moved to Utah after graduate school and continued to knit and crochet, though my crocheting was far ...
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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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