Sunday Inspiration: Serving Others

“Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone)…

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Sunday Inspiration: How to make good decisions

“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped,” wrote Tony Robbins. But making good decisions can be one of the hardest tasks in life. And in these last few pandemic years it seems that there are so many more decisions to make, and they are so much more complicated and difficult.…

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2022: A Year of Peaks and Valleys

Both 2021 and 2022 have been filled with peaks and valleys, haven’t they? And now I have more for you. Meet Peaks and Valleys, A Shenandoah Album Collection.  Peaks and Valleys was published at the beginning of this month, and is now available as both an ebook and a paperback. Click on the cover to…

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Sunday Inspiration: Mr. Rogers

With his wisdom and humor and creativity, Mr. Rogers helped many of us raise our children into mature adults. In his gentle and unimposing way he supported and encouraged children to become the best versions of themselves. These are a few of my favorite quotes of his, but you can find more here. Thank you…

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2021: A Great Year for Books? Tell Us Your Favorites.

Did you notice I’ve been missing? Or that Sunday Inspiration posts are the only ones on Southern Exposure since early fall? Okay, so you didn’t notice, and frankly neither did I. In fact, when I began to think about this, I couldn’t remember when my new aversion to deadlines began to infect my blogging, too.…

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Sunday Inspiration: I hope you make mistakes

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something. — Neil Gaiman

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Spam: Take Two

My apologies to everyone who receives this blog in their email. For some reason the video is just fine online at my website or you can find it on YouTube here. Unfortunately for some undetermined reason it doesn’t show up in the email version. Nor did my old “spam poem” have the correct link. Here’s…

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Pulling Weeds (The House Guests)

A month ago I recounted my attempts to find Big Lake, which we knew from maps was somewhere in the state park near our Florida home. Despite a hiking map and determination, the first time my husband and I tried to find it, we were unsuccessful. The second time we still weren’t sure we were…

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Sunday Inspiration: What am I looking for?

“If you are looking for verses in the Bible with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses…

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