A New Fantastic Point of View

My first thought at first light this morning was Lindsay. I don't know why. Maybe because it's the last day of September and October 10th is once again just around the corner. Here's to you sweet girl, and thanks for waking me up this morning.


When God gave this life abundant,
He never said
how long it would last.
He didn't say either
that we'd ever understand
why someone would go so soon,
leaving us in her past.
So you take those wings girl
and soar like never before
along with my thank you
for the times we had and more.
Barbara Botch

There's No Place Like Home

Top Ten Reasons for Loving Your Life

You have someone in your life that brings out the best in you, who will forever be at your side and on your side, come what may.

Knowing that you and your family, no matter where they live can be together in just a matter of a few hours.

At the top of your prayer list is “Thank you God for my good health.”

You’re sitting in your seat and the plane takes off and you have to refrain from yelling “Yes!”

You’re on your way to Ireland.

You can think back on the choices you’ve made over the years and are happy where you are in life right now.

You have a friend who will let you talk on forever and told you that your best trait is you are a good listener.

You’re on the second page of your list of goals and dreams for the New Year and you still have three months to go.

When you answer the phone there’s a little voice on the other end saying “I love you Grandma.”

When you walk through your front door you can say
“There’s no place like Home.”

What Makes You Feel Rich?

"The world was made to be free in."
David Whyte

With everything I know and everything I feel and everything I can imagine, what more could a woman want? Barbara Botch

FALL... in Love !

Looking forward to fall...


The Beautiful Notre Dame Campus
South Bend, Indiana


and remembering spring...


St. Stephen's Green
Dublin, Ireland

On Success and Survival

I came across this on a bookmark, while browsing the books on my shelf. I was so moved. I can't remember ever seeing it before or maybe like a lot of times, something doesn't resonate until we're ready. Enjoy!

The best thing for being sad, replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.

You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then- to learn.

Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.

Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn- pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six.

And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology, and medicine and geography and history and economics- why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that, you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.

From The Once and Future King

By T.H. White

After reading more about The Once and Future King on the Internet, I agree with a comment written within an essay about it that said. "The world of Arthur and the world of today may seem to be completely and solidly different, but if you read between the lines, they are clearly based on the same principles and have the same structure for success and survival"

The Blessings That Come With Water

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
Anais Nin

Just one of Killarney's Greatest Gifts

"Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." William Butler Yeats