Soles United - Time to Walk Again!

We're at it again.

Soles United has started up - that's the name of our NO/AIDS Walk team, a group of friends and co-workers from around the New Orleans area who've walked together since 2006. We've done well in our efforts, landing in the top 5 teams for the last couple years. Not bad for 6 or 7 of us.

The NO/AIDS Walk helps raise funds for the NO/AIDS Task Force - and 2009 is the 20th Anniversary of the NO/AIDS Walk! The event helps support the programs and services of NO/AIDS Task Force, the oldest AIDS service organization in the Gulf South. NO/AIDS has been serving the greater New Orleans area for 25 years. In addition, through the Walk Share grant program, donations also benefit other agencies across Louisiana.

In honor of this 20th Anniversary, I've created a set of 20 of my favorite photos that I've posted for sale. All proceeds from the sale of these photos will go directly to our Walk Team, Soles United.

So, stop on by my SmugMug site, Ambassador Images and check out the pics - if you see something you like, know that your purchase will go directly to helping the NO/AIDS Task Force. (Also, the copyright watermark only appears online and won't be on any photos you order.)

Nine weeks from today, we'll be taking to the streets again - if you'd like to sponsor me directly, you can visit my page at the 2009 Walk site. Even better than that, you can start your own team and join us on Sunday, September 20 - hope to see you out there!

Thank you for being part of this event!!

Heart on my Sleeve

I am an emotional person.

It's not always a bad thing. It's not always a good thing either.

I've written here about favorite songs of mine, about signature songs...ones I love to sing and speak most deeply to me.

I remember the first time I ever heard Bernadette Peters sing this song...I thought it was so powerful, so moving...so wrenching.

I watch this video and it chills me...of course, she's a great actress, but there are some things you cannot act. I recognize the temerity that goes hand in hand with the need to let something out. Some feeling are too big, too awful to let out and show the world...and yet, too big and too awful to keep in.

When her eyes dart about and she seems unsure whether she can or should go on, a little of me aches for her. I know this place. It is one of the most important places I have ever had the privilege of reaching.

Oh, how it aches. And I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.

I really wish more people could express themselves as beautifully as the sublime Bernadette Peters.

What makes you cry out like this?

South Carolina Time Warps

There are occasions when time seems to slow to a crawl.

Recently, in Charleston, time broadened and deepened to all SMID and I the opportunity just to be.

It felt as though the universe was allowing us all the time in the world to go here, see that, take thousand photographs (literally) and still have the luxury of sitting in a swank lounge, sipping Mint Juleps.

There were very few things on our must-do list that we didn't get to, plus many others we weren't planning on. At times, when we needed something - like the right place to have a bite to eat when we had planned that exactingly - it simply appeared. Like the fabulous rooftop bar at the Market Pavillion Hotel on our first night in town.

We spent what seemed like half a day in the Unitarian Universalist Cemetery...only to walk out and discover, much like leaving Narnia, that no time had passed at all. Seemingly.

Sadly, now that we are back in the real world, time has sped back up - and in some ways, it seems to be going even fast than before SC, in the sole attempt to make up for those blessed few days.

Please, let's do the Time Warp again.