27 years and counting (my blessings)

Twenty seven years ago today on Halloween night I was planning on staying home. Living on the fringe of the Castro district in San Francisco, it was an unprecedentedly crazy night to be out and about. A last minute invitation that afternoon changed my mind and my life. It was 1982, hope I did the math correctly, and I headed to my favorite thriftshop in the Mission for a costume.
Charlies Angels and Farrah Fawcett were everywhere including across the front of my outfit that night. Red boots and a leopard coat completed the look and I stepped out on a hot date starting out on my favorite barstool up the street. I was the party animal those days, youth and stupidity went hand in hand in my life back then. There was nothing I liked more than dancing the night away to the BeeGees or Donna Summers and I have fond if not blurry memories of those San Francisco nights.
I had been at the bar for less than an hour when someone taped me on the shoulder and said, 'your house is on fire'.
The exterior of the apartment building was being painted and apparently the painters had left cans of oil based paint in the cellar around the furnace that ignited and roared up the air shafts. It being Halloween night there were no parking places for blocks including in front of the fire hydrants. A ladder went up from one of the 5 trucks to one of the windows to rescue an old man who had stayed in for the evening and as they carried him down the ladder he had a heart attack and died. I stood in the street, watching the flames leaping out my windows for about 15 minutes before we decided to head to another neighborhood bar over in Noe Valley. I cleaned up on sympathy drinks that night and the pain of losing everything but the costume I was wearing wore off as the night wore on.
The next day the tenants were allowed back into what was left of our apartments. What wasn't scorched was soaked and I gathered a few things with a little help from my friends. Life went on, in a different neighborhood and I gradually rebuilt my life although it took many years to get over the trauma and drama.
Looking back I realize that I was in a state of shock for weeks, but it could have been so much worse had I not decided to go out that night. There were definetly some angels watching over me and I don't think it was the one on the front of my wacky costume.

Point, shoot, uhhh decide

A is for ANGEL
I'm starting the alphabet photographic challenge, forwarding across the pond todays photo of something that starts with the letter A. Seems like a creative and crafty framework for shooting a photograph. Good thing I just checked on the time zone difference because it appears that at 11PM there, its 3Pm here. That means that those of us on the west coast need to shoot off our submissions for tommorrow before 4PM today. Click here for the current post of submissions from everyone posted on his blog.
Since the funkadelic weather coupled with my achy breaky toothache has me mainly indoors these days, and and theres plenty of material around the ranch, I decided to just shoot what I got around here. In fact between the house and my barn theres prolly enough material for three or four rounds of this. I really have difficulty at times with making decisions. Acorns or angels, staged or simple. Scheesh, at the very least it will pull me through the month of February, and be so interesting to see the various submissions. One or three of my friends have signed on too, fun fun fun.
I'll use my blog here to post each days snaps, question my submission decisions, try to add some relevant dialogue and not get too carried away.
The angel above was hand carved and purchased from an artisan in Sante Fe, New Mexico about 7 years ago.
I remember he had a pillow case filled with these beauties, and I paid him 10 dollars for it. I love the way he left her skirt uncarved. I collect angel stuff and these are two of the three that hang over my bed.

In the MOOD

I must confess, doing Christmas art in September is putting me in the holiday spirit. Its been years since I've managed to get even a few Christmas cards out the darn door, I'm thinking maybe its all about starting in the Fall. Fast forward thru carving pumpkins, raking leaves and lets mooove on to the real deal. Thankfully the election and all the insane hoopla will be over, and we can get down to baking and decorating.
Today I was back to working on "Faith Clip", and today it was a Madonna, an Angel Word art piece and three Shepard's in a field.
I'm ready, bring it on.... I'm breaking out those Christmas cards!
Today is also the anniversary of 9/11, a life changing day 7 years ago that like the day JFK died will be forever etched in my mind. Julie still lived here, and it was the year she introduced me to Dave.
Thanks Julie, another awesome life changing day.