Our Daily Bread: Kansas Skies

Sunset on my way to a meeting in Stafford last evening, September 20, 2016

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. As a writer, I never seem to lack words and that quote has always stuck in my craw a bit, if truth is told. However, my former editors would likely say that I could be a little less effuse as they tried to pare down my words to fit under a headline.

However, while I don't often lack words, I sometimes lack time. Today, I'm sharing more pictures than words. I am blessed to witness many a sunrise and sunset from the County Line. I sometimes take the photos and don't end up sharing it via a blog or Facebook post.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson had it right:

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the sky is daily bread, it's a never-ending banquet filled with variety. So here are some recent sky favorites, along with some quotes from other people. 

When we look up, it widens our horizons. 

We see what a little speck we are in the universe, 

so insignificant, 

and we all take ourselves so seriously, 

but in the sky, 

there are no boundaries. 

No differences of caste or religion or race. 

~Julia Gregson

 
The sky is that beautiful old parchment 

in which the sun and the moon keep their diary. 

~Alfred Kreymborg

[Haze:]
Sun-dust. —Thoreau

  [Twilight:]
Reach of primrose sky
With heaven's pale candles stored. —Jean Ingelow

[Dawn:]
Light a little trembling in the gray,
Above the folded hills. —Mrs. Browning

[The Morning Moon:]
The stars burned out in the pale blue air,
And the thin, white moon lay withering there. —Shelley

 [Sunset:]
The level sun, like ruddy ore,
Lay sinking in the barren skies. —Jean Ingelow

[Evening:]
White moonlight comes
And takes the inert landscape by surprise. —Unknown
~Hannah R. Hudson, "Word-Painting," Poems, 1874 

We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise 

if we have waited in the darkness.

 ~Author Unknown

I thank you God for this most amazing day, 

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, 

and for the blue dream of sky 

and for everything which is natural,

 which is infinite, which is yes. 

~e.e. cummings 

There are no rules of architecture 

for a castle in the clouds.

- G.K. Chesterton

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, 

but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. 

~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther

To see the summer sky

Is poetry, though never in a book it lie.

True poems flee.

Emily Dickinson, c.1879

Observations: Yogi Illustrated by Kim

You can observe a lot just by watching.

Yogi Berra

These photos were taken Saturday, September 19, at the cottonwood tunnel (and just beyond) at Huntsville Station on 4th Street road, west of Hutchinson. We were on our way to the K-State football game. It was breathtakingly beautiful! 

I decided they could serve as a backdrop for some quotes by Yogi Berra, who passed away last week at the age of 90. Some have called him one of baseball’s greatest catchers and characters. He was a mainstay of 10 Yankees championship teams and, as a manager, led both the Yankees and the Mets to the World Series.

I'm not a baseball expert, but I do love quotations. And he was full of them, so many that his unusual brand of epigrams are known as Yogi-isms. I've seen several posts  since his passing September 22, listing "The Top 10" and "The Top 25" of his wittisms, some of which don't make a lot of sense but resonate anyway. On Tuesday, they'll celebrate the life of Yogi Berra at a memorial service. But I'm guessing his Yogi-isms will live on beyond his 90 years.

Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't come to yours.

Yogi Berra 

A lot of guys go, 'Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.' I tell 'em, 'I don't know any.' 

They want me to make one up. I don't make 'em up. 

I don't even know when I say it. They're the truth. And it is the truth. I don't know.

Yogi Berra

If you don't know where you are going, 

you might wind up someplace else.

Yogi Berra

When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.

Yogi Berra

It's not over 'til it's over.

Yogi Berra 

Morning Glory: Wordless Wednesday

As we drove toward Hutchinson, I was glad we were running ahead of schedule for an early-morning meeting.

My Farmer knows me well. As the sun lit up the sky, he looked over at me and said, "Just tell me where you'd like to stop." He knew I was itching to pull the camera from my purse and capture the new day's beautiful beginnings.

We were close to the Fairview United Methodist Church,  west of Hutchinson on 4th Street Road. It's a little country church and cemetery. It's on our most frequent route to the "big city" of Hutchinson.

I wish the photos did it justice. Maybe they do -- just a little bit.