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Something New

  Queen Anne’s lace blooms appeared this week in “Our Woods.” Just a few; it’s early yet 🙂

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I always like this flower. It tells me that we are getting closer to my favourite season – autumn. And Apollo was brilliantly shining low in the sky just after 7 A.M.

Things like this remind me of why I still care.

Vienna, May 17 – Sisi and So Much More

Sisi:

Sisi: star attraction of the Imperial Apartments; this advert scanned from the free Vienna city map

Sisi Memorabilia available everywhere

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O’er thee, like thine own sea birds

I’ll circle without rest

For me earth holds no corner

To build a lasting nest.

Sisi

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The Sisi Museum is a decade or so old, but still a huge attraction in Vienna. Publicity and souvenir shops are everywhere. No photos were permitted in the Sisi Museum, so the above two offerings are all I returned home with. But the good news: read further on in this post for beautiful photos the other museums we visited on the 17th let us take : treasures, weapons, art… But Sisi was fascinating, so I start with her…

As royal celebrity goes, long before our modern love affair with Lady Di, there was the very different, complicated Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known affectionately (to some) as Sisi. Sisi was a beautiful, brunette, Bavarian, royal teenager with long, long, long hair. The teenage Elizabeth’s china doll radiance swept  Emperor Franz Josef I off his feet, causing Franz to defy his mother, Sophie, for perhaps the only time. Sophie had selected Elizabeth’s sister. Both were Sophie’s nieces.

Franz stood firm for Sisi.

At Peace

This mourning dove flew into our kitchen patio door on Tuesday and quickly died.

Wind must have moved her tail feathers, creating a ghostly effect.

See my Birds ‘n Stuff page…

Thanksgiving Song

Magnificent ceiling of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Church designed by Antoni Gaudí

I have just posted one of my songs in movie format to YouTube.

It is a thanksgiving song called Thank You, Lord.

The link is also in my My Songs page.

While, personally, my religious beliefs have changed greatly, I believe that the longing that is at the root of this music is a part of a universal and genuine human condition.

Hope you like it. Please let me know.