The music theme for today is the 1980 hit by Barry Manilow, I Made It Through the Rain.

Today is one of my best friends' birthday. I sent my celebratory wishes in a separate message to him. New situations and opportunities are coming his way after a long string of unfortunate circumstances. He's an example of a person who didn't lose focus of what was truly important in his life. I thank him for his 40-year plus friendship and dedicate this page to him. :-)

This date is likely to be important to other people, but it holds no direct importance to me. To be sure, there are other dates each year that are special to me. Some of them pertain to getting into the rain, that is remembering the events leading up to an unfortunate set of circumstances. Then other dates when I knew I had emerged from the storm and could start understanding the lessons to avoid such pitfalls again. Both sets of dates are important to me knowing I can deal with the rain and the sun equally.

Now in speaking of the being in the sun. In little more than a week, our daughter and her husband come for a visit. We are planning trips to the beach and racetrack. We celebrate my wife Sherry's birthday during the visit! We can't wait for them to arrive! Below are some pictures of what we recall from prior visits.

For this summer, I'm going to bring back a section (shown below) I used to regularly include on the home page over a year ago. Each selection I publish provides some background on the image spotlighted. My Image Insights as I refer to them, are part of the portfolio I'm building for my storytelling and presentation endeavors. It seems that people want to know more about how I come up with the impressions and interpretations of my life through art. The feedback I receive from them is always encouraging and appreciated.

The following insight was originally written on February 2, 2004.

Tumbling Myths (Image shown below created in September 2002)

Sometimes we don't want to face a certain reality because we've accepted false beliefs for a long time. Perhaps it is the realization that some people never reach the ability to forgive our past misgivings? Perhaps we just don't want to accept the fact that some people hurt us intentionally because that person couldn't directly hurt the one that hurt them? Or maybe someone close to us, real close, used us to get ahead in life at the time without regard to our feelings? We didn't see through the situation clearly because we were caught up in circumstances with them.

There are many reasons we can deny the truth to ourselves when the old illusion is so much more pleasant to retain. The myths will stay paramount until such time when the mind and heart gives up the lies we tell ourselves. Then the truth exerts its own sense of gravity over the floating myths we keep aloft, causing us to see that they can't stand on their own merit any longer. We welcome the new found freedom of true understanding. Using my own words, I quote a portion from that page's narration:

"What was thought to be true is discovered not to be so. It's always better to see the truth, no matter what that revelation brings."

Don