Even I React To One Of my Mission Statements Points.

Well, several years ago when I was working on my mission statement, I wanted something that was short, simple but also that down hill drop of a roller coaster to wake people up. So, I settled on the mission statement that I continue to use and see no need to change it in any way. It simply says: To enhance the mind, stir the emotions and quench a thirsty soul.

Enhance the mind can be done through education, exposure to new experiences. To stir the emotions needs to get a bit deeper under the skin and cause a bit of a squirm or uncomfortableness in general, and to quench a thirsty soul needs to send a bit of goosebumps racing up and down your spine. These things do not always have to work as a triptych panel although sometimes for various people they do indeed. When that happens and they write to me, I enjoy a very good day.

Never-the-less, there are times that I outsmart myself and forget about how powerful an image can be. Then, like today, when I take an hour or two and start at the beginning of last year and go though my entire file of images, pausing now and then when I remember something really special about an image and can recall almost every detail about that shoot. Then, there pops up an image and I stop and just sit back in my desk chair and shiver from the goose bumps that it has caused---a through quenching of a thirsty soul. What does that mean, you say. It is a deep satisfaction that there is more to life than  people walking around with their heads buried in an iPhone and that I am so thankful that I can shock myself back into the reality of caring once again, hoping that it has that same shock value to others that let them know  they are alright, or at least better than they thought there were.

Yesterday, I drove past the Bomb Factory, a music venue for concerts in Deep Ellum. I though about all the places in Detroit that once held such concerts like the groups that tour nationwide and have changed today like Deep Ellum venues. This morning, the first thing I see in the headlines is about Chris Cornell, the frontman of Soundgarden and Audioslave as well as the organizer of the  grunge movement in music. Chris was due to be at the Bomb Factory, one spot that I try to cover from the outside as people of all ages line up to get tickets or to get inside. There are forces working in the universe.

 It was not by accident that I happened to come down Commerce from Trinity Groves yesterday. Usually, I take the middle tunnel, which is Main Street. Those are the tunnels at Dealey Plaza that come out of the rail road bridge and fan out over Elm, Main and Commerce Streets in downtown Dallas. It's just a force of nature that causes one to react and not know why until the answer falls into place. I had been wondering how I could be in three places at once on Sunday, which I could not have been anyway, but  it's the last Byron Nelson at Cottonwood Four Seasons. The Dragonboat and Kite Festival is that same weekend in May annually and the Bomb Factory was something that I was thinking I could maybe hit late but now, it's not in the storyboards at all.

My blog continues to grow but I do work at it. If it ever got profitable, I'd have to make a decision that might change the mission statement. There isn't much chance of that because  I've seen things grow and grow and change the whole character of what once was a great ideal in the beginning. I always want that great ideal in the beginning---even at the end.

The Musuem Tower financed by the pension funds of Dallas Police and Fire Fighters

The restored Texas Theater in Oak Cliff

A Riderless Horse in a Procession

See if you can pick out the three mission points that goes with the three images. Remember it's the goose bump factor that determines the winner.

Four Seasons Resort and Club at Cottonwood

The Main Entrance to The Four Seansons Resort and Club

The south entrance for shuttle bus drop offs and pick ups

The Pro Am entrance and Registration. That's Williams Square you see over the fence in the business
district of Las Colinas.

The Four Seasons Resort and Club has had some tough times over the past ten years or so. One of the outstanding features of her reign has been the class that she has shown through it all. Class always has a shimmer to it that ordinary just doesn't have.

 In the last several years, there has been a "steal-a-way" going on. I've never liked that, but that's how life works. The American Railroad Museum stole away the trains from Fair Park taking them to Frisco. Arlington, stole the Cowboys from Irving which stole them from Dallas. Dallas has just stolen the Byron Nelson from Irving beginning in 2019 or sooner with the newly planned Trinity River Course in south Dallas.

So, with the second 90-degree day in over eight months, it was a day to go to Las Colinas and take in a little of the glamor of the old girl that lines MacArthur with her beautiful red roses growing on the fence work. The tents, shuttle buses,crowds,parking attendants, ticket sellers and buyers just breaths a living presence into the old lady.

This evening I was able to submit a few images to the live news feed and the server should pick them up in the wee hours of the night. There aren't that many to share until the original feed is published, but I do have a few to check out here.