Organic Light Pan

Nothing

Last evening the 29th day of Ramadan 1432 came to a close.  It being the 29th day of the lunar month meant it was time to go out and look for the new moon, marking the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Shawwal and of course Eid Al-Fitr (the festival of breaking fast).

Astronomically the new crescent moon was not going to be visible here in North America.  The moon was to set only 7 minutes after the sun and its elongation was below the Danjon Limt for being easily visible with naked eyes.  We were not going to see it, but maintaining the tradition is just as important as seeing the moon, so off we went.

Meanwhile down in South America, there was a good possibility that someone in Chile might see it and bring fasting to an end.  People in Chile were in contact with the CrescentWatch.org project and all were ready to convey and record the sighting report.  To our surprise the report came back as Negative – crescent not seen!

This seemed like the future had been sealed and fasting would continue for one more day.  But that would be too easy, right?  Suddenly, out of nowhere another independent sighting report appeared on one of the older moon sighting report websites, moonsighting.com indicating that someone in Chile had actually seen the moon.

The sleuthing began in search of that person so that the particulars could be ascertained.  Once found, it is discovered of course that our sighter in question only spoke Spanish, oh wait Farsi too.  Great, find a translator and then begin the dialogue.  After much discussion, and well into the night, a decision had been reached.  Only one solitary sighting under very favorable sighting conditions did not provide the certainty needed to declare the end of  Ramadan.

It was nerve racking carrying that kind of pressure knowing that the decision resting on your shoulders would effect so many people.

Contrast all this with our carefree 40 minute trip up the mountain, a leisurely 1/4 mile walk to the top of a hill overlooking the fog enshrouded canyons of the Santa Cruz Mountains and below all that the mighty Pacific Ocean.  Allow our eyes to feast on the ethereal afterglow of sunset and then enjoying a communal breaking of the day’s fast on the 29th day with good friends.  We stayed there for no more than 30 minutes when we were sure the ‘moon’ had set seeing nothing of it at all, and then turned around and came back home.  Our conclusion as we walked back to our cars, we have one more blessed day of fasting and then we would all celebrate on the following day.

In the end both endeavors yielded the exact same result - Ramadan would be a 30 day month.  Need I say which undertaking issued the greater return?

Peace to you All!

The earth is in pain.  We are hurting it.  We poison its water.  We choke its air. We cut it limbs and we slash into its flesh.  For all that we do to the Earth, it still takes care of us by the sky sending down its life giving rain, the fields still give their nourishing foods and trees still provide us with shade and the air we breath.  For some the earth is an inanimate object held in check by the laws of nature that govern how everything works.  For others, this author included, see the earth as a living and interactive organism that has a spirit and purpose.

There are a set of verses in the Qur’an, the text that Muslims believe was revealed by the Creator to guide humanity to what is ultimately their only success, that speaks of the Earth.  They mean as follows.

When the Earth is shaken with her final earthquake.

And the Earth yields up her burdens.

And man says “What is the matter with her?”

That day she will proclaim her tidings.

Because your Lord inspired her.

That day mankind will come forth in scattered groups to be shown their deeds.

And whoever has done a bit of good will see it then.

And whoever has done a bit of ill will see it then.

Its a weighty set of verses.  They frighten me.  But more than that they help me check myself with regards to what I do to and on the Earth.  I not only consider the Earth my home, but my companion in life and the physical source of what I need to stay alive.  It is my spiritual center and from which I learn many important things regarding how to live in peace with the Earth itself as well as with my fellow humans.  It is my teacher.  It has a persona that we all recognize, for do we not call her Mother Earth?

Everyone can learn from the Earth if we just open our eyes to what it has to teach. For millennial the Earth has taken care of us.  It saddens me that we do not reciprocate that care in kind today.  It seems that in past generations we, as humans, understood the necessity of mutual care between us and the Earth. That what was good for the Earth was ultimately good for us as well.  Today we seem to have lost our way in that respect.  We have become selfish, arrogant and blind that our actions, even though appearing self-serving, are in reality harmful to the Earth and to our own existence.

Faith and belief are sensitive topics, I know, but what if the Earth truly does have a memory.  A memory so sharp that it will tell all about what we individually have done on her back.  That it will stand as witness against us on that final day and bear a testimony that no matter what we do we cannot deny.  Which group do you wish to be among - those who have done good or those who have done ill?

I wonder if the Earth ‘looks’ at us and is saddened by what it must do to us to rectify its unbalanced state and return to equilibrium.  I think it will rid us, or most of us in the process.  I think it knows that and I wonder if it is crying black tears over it?

Black Tear

Just some food for the mind to chew on.

Peace.

The Gathering

Last month I ventured out with my four photo assistants to one of our local beaches to beat the heat brought on by a strange early summer heat wave.  When we arrived at the beach we found the typical summer northern California coast pattern of fog due to the upwelling that takes place along the coast this time of year.  We came donning summertime attire expecting sun and fun…oh well.  However the temperature at the coast was well into the 70′s and a bit humid due to all the fog, so even though we did not see the sun we were not worse for the wear.

This particular beach is situated about a half mile from the highway and the walk takes us across a wonderful coastal plain.  I think because of this walk, very few people make the walk out to the beach as we rarely find anyone there, this afternoon was no different, and we had the beach to ourselves.  The overcast light and foggy sky left much to be desired in the way of seascape photography and I decided to not even take my camera out.  I just walked along soaking in the full bouquet of the ocean air and reveling in the light sea spray the kissed my face.

Then one of my assistants rushed up to me gleefully and urgently trying to show me the amazing stone that they had found.  And the idea was sparked…This would make a great photo.  I instructed my assistants to find as many unusually colored, marbled, or shaped rocks as they could find.  Soon we all were wading in the surf watching for the glimmer of a hidden “gem” to make its way to the surface of all the small stones that riddled the beach.  After about two hours of searching and arranging I finally pulled out the camera and composed this photo.

It was a memorable day.  But in hindsight it was much more than that.  Many things need to come together for something great to take place.  We sometimes try to rush greatness into existence before all the necessary ingredients are present and instead we find mediocrity or worse, failure.  We also never know when an opportunity for greatness will emerge and how we need to coax it along in its emergence.  However it appears, we need to be aware of it and grab hold of the reins and lead it on to its full fruition.  If we allow it to pass us by we may never get a second chance to make it happen.  I guess this rings of the notion of carpe diem - seizing the day or living in the present.  If we can live in the moment, seizing it and living it to its fullest, then later in the future we can look back at the past and feel no regrets, no remorse, and no sorrow for not capturing, if nothing else, a memory in our heart that will be a story that lives on forever.

The Gathering, for me, was the coming together of five hearts enamored by the marvel that is our world where Earth meets Water and the special interaction that takes place between those two elements.  It was the coming together of love, wonder, effort, toil, and hope in the hearts of five individuals that gathered together on one intention of showing the world the marvel of our Mother.  In that I found a great thing.

Peace.

Oh, P.S. Which is your favorite stone?

I recently exhibited my photographs at the La Jolla Festival of the Arts in beautiful La Jolla California.  It was a pleasant show and the quality of the work of other artists was top notch.  At such venues where the show is not held on the street, the environment is more relaxed and I like to set up my 4×5 wooden field camera as part of my show display.  It really is a conversation starter and the visitors to my booth are mesmerized by the camera and then even perplexed that I actually use such an old camera.  I don’t know what shocks them more, the fact that I use it or the fact that the camera is only about 6 years old while it looks 150 years old.

The funny thing is that they think because it is an old styled camera that I photograph using wet glass plates!  I have never touched a glass plates in my life.  When I tell them I use film I get this perplexed look.  I then explain to them how the camera works.  I take off the lens attached to its lens board and show them that there is nothing inside the bellows and that a camera is nothing more than a black box with a light focusing element on one end, the lens, and a light capturing medium on the other end, the film or digital sensor.  I explain how the camera is focused by moving the lens closer or farther from the film, how the tilts and swings help in choosing the plane to focus on and how the shifts help in correcting distortions.

I then explain how I scan the films and prepare them to be printed digitally and suddenly this somehow seems incredulous to them.  I then point out that with scanning film at even moderate scan resolution I end up with raw image files that hover around 500MB and that even the highest resolution digital cameras available still only produce files that are about 240MB.  We then walk over to a large 20×25 inch photo hanging in the booth and I point out all the fine detail that is retained and then they start to see the light.

They start to understand that making a photograph is serious business and not as easy as it is made to seem with todays automatic cameras.  They comment to me that I must really be invested in a scene to haul out and use such a big camera.  They are correct of course.  They comment on how I must know a lot about light and camera operation, not to mention processing and printing techniques and again they are correct.  Even though I use an old camera, I employ many new techniques to maximize the amount of information in my photographs so that the finished image on paper is as close to how I experienced it and hopefully so that they can experience that moment as well.

When making a photograph I use a top-down / bottom-up workflow.  It starts with seeing something that moves my heart.  That is the peak of it all, the scene has to move the heart somehow for some reason sometimes beyond our understanding at the time it is seen.  From there artistic decisions about perspective, composition and lighting come into play followed by technical decisions about focusing and focal planes, apertures, light levels and shutter speed.  Only then can the shutter be tripped to capture that light.  The process does not end there however.  The latent image on the film, or RAW sensor data, then has to be developed and then printed on to paper using a myriad of techniques in either a wet darkroom or a digital darkroom on the computer.

Over the years cameras have steadily become more sophisticated while becoming easier to use and taking over many of the decisions that a photographer has to make in the photographic process.  Starting out with built-in light meters and moving to auto exposure and auto focusing.   The sophistication continued into the digital era as well and now photography is instantaneousness.  Modern technology has taken a difficult time-intensive process and has rendered it to as simple as pushing one button.  Gone are the technical decisions about how much light is available, what aperture-shutter combination to use, and to some extent where or what to focus on.  Focus, even though taken care of automatically, still only focuses exactly at only one distance from the camera, and without a proper aperture setting, important elements in the composition are rendered out of focus and hence the photo is considered “bad”.  Focusing and aperture selection were the last technical decisions that photographers still had to make as the camera had no idea what the photographer was aiming at.  So even though the modern camera was loaded with auto-everything, good technique was still important.

Enter the latest contender to simplify photography.  The Lytro camera was recently announced with the ability to capture an image and choose what to focus on afterwards entirely in software.  In other words that camera  has eliminated the need to focus or choose an aperture entirely.  Photographic technique has now been laid to rest and operating a camera has now been completely rendered to pushing a single button.  Don’t get me wrong, the technical sophistication that goes on in the background is truly amazing and the science behind it is even more fascinating, but where does that leave us as photographers?  The ability to make images is now so ubiquitous with “cameras” on almost every device imagined that the demarcation lines have been blurred between the photographer and everyone else.  Today’s cameras require no technique at all.  Just point and press a button – you can focus later, set exposure later, and mimic whatever aperture desired later.

Photography, writing with light, requires technical proficiency in understanding and working with light.  Yet the majority of  today’s “photographers” have no clue about light the very medium they work with.  They don’t need to as they have a machine that does everything for them.  I wonder what authors would think if there was a device, perhaps called a Scribbler, that produced novels at the press of a button.  Would they be as accepting as photographers are about the technique-less camera?

Fallen

Hone your photographic technique and be that writer of light that moves the hearts of those who take the time to see what you saw and feel what you felt.  The camera cannot do that for you.

Peace.

We live in a world that moves so fast.  Everything is measured in mili.. no, microseconds, and nothing is ever fast enough.  Its nice to slow down, really slow down and just live at the speed of time.  It is amazing when we can slow down long enough to take a walk on a beach, watch the sun sink slowly on the western horizon, listening to the crashing waves and breathing the fresh salty air.

I did just that today.  With my kids in tow, we headed to the beach today.  It was beautiful.  I sat there doing nothing as my kids played in the surf taunting the waves and then running up-beach as the waves came crashing at them.  My youngest son stood on a small bluff of sand on the beach, partially silhouetted by the sun, and appeared to be a conductor of a symphony, and it looked like he was commanding the waves to do his bidding raising his hands as wave after wave came in.   All the while the others jumped and stomped in the foamy water as it approached and when a real big wave came in they ran for dear life!  It was simply amazing.

Photos you ask?  I thought about as I sat in the sand higher up and away from the water, but it was as if my bottom had been glued to the sand.  Everything was to perfect to spoil with the mechanized memory device known as a camera.  It came with us, but I just left it behind in the car.

In retrospect I think it would have  been nice to have captured the glee and momentary horror on children’s faces as they played, but at the time all I could muster myself to do was to say “Thank You God”.

Do something beautiful in the near future.

Something Beautiful

P.S. This above photo was taken exactly one month ago on a different beach.  I did not know it at the time, but it was taken for today’s post.  Funny how things fall in place.

Peace.

Each year as winter approaches the world prepares itself to go dormant and fall asleep.  Trees lose their leaves and become only skeletons of what they were.  The land dry and hard awaits the rains that will make it supple once more and fertile for the seeds of the summer to finally take root.  In the winter, everything goes to sleep.

So too should we take a lesson from it and learn how to look inwards and take stock, find a respite, and let go of those things that drive us so that we can rejuvenate ourselves.

However, this past winter I did not see it in that light.  This past winter had to have been one of the least productive times I have ever had as a photographer. Had it not been for the new moon each month I do not think I would have even ventured out with the camera at all.   All the while I questioned my worth as a photographer as no matter what I looked at I could not see anything in such a way that appealed to me to make a photo of it.

Yet when I allowed my auto-pilot to take control, I found that great photos were still coming from me even if I could or would not see it.  ‘Washed’ was the only fruit that was harvested all winter.

Washed

I guess what I did not see happening was exactly what I needed.  I too had gone dormant for the winter.  I needed to take a creative time out to allow for new growth to emerge.

Spring entered and something sprung inside of me.  In early April, still thinking I was in my slump I geared up to go out to photograph the Moon of Jamad Al-Awwal.  Then just as I was about to leave, an emotional train wreck occurred that derailed my outing completely.  Without the time left in the day to make it to my quite place in the mountains to see and photograph the moon in peace, as I normally do, I had only enough time to walk down my street to an opening amongst the trees to see and make a record of my celestial friend the Moon.

Cradled

When I saw the moon just nestled there amongst those branches appearing safe and protected, something inside of me suddenly opened.  My heart saw everything anew and I felt that Spring had finally sprung in me.

The flowers were soon to be blooming and I could barely contain the excitement in me to be out there once again finding light and bringing it back for others to see as well.  The time had come and I made my trek in search of the wildflowers.  I visited all my old haunts to find that even though my spring had sprung this year, for the flowers they decided to take a year off.  I suppose they deserve time off as well.  With just under 1000 miles of driving this year in search of those elusive gems of color, I found only one patch that conveyed my sense of coming to life again.

I Can See For Miles

Standing there in Carrizo Plain I could see for miles.  The elation and disappointment coupled to move me in such a way as to not let the absence of flowers keep me from enjoying Spring and I gave up on the preconceived notion of finding wildflowers and I just went wild.  Photographing things for the shear joy of it.  My creative juices were flowing with such fervor that I did not know when to stop.

I returned home to lead a private workshop and I took my client to all my familiar spots in the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the San Mateo Coast.  I had no preconceived ideas of what I would find and I expected to just stand around most of the time directing my client at all the things that I had photographed more times than I can count without having the desire to do the same again.

The funny thing was that everything looked fresh and new, as if I had never seen them before.  I took more photos in that one day than I had in possibly the last six months!  I was seeing light in a very new way and I liked it.

Ladder of Light

Then the day came to a close and my elation was given a good stiff clocking to the jaw.  On a beach that I have worked on for years, among hard stone sculpted over the millennia I saw what Mother Earth wanted me to see.  Even though it was a spectacular day, with a slight sea breeze blowing, seagulls calling, the sound of crashing surf, the scent of the redwoods and the sounds of a babbling creek still fresh in my mind from earlier that morning, here was Mother Earth shedding one black tear.  A stark reminder that she is in pain.

Black Tear

Even though my creativity and vision came back to me this spring, Mother Earth did not let me forget why I make portraits of her: to remind others of just how fragile she is.  She also reminded me that she goes through cycles for a reason – so that growth can continue.  Down time, rebirth, growth, vigor and waning are all part of a precious cycle that we must adhere to as well if we are to grow.  We also must take heed in understanding that we do not make our own fate as that is in the hands of the Divine.  We cannot produce whatever it is that we preconceive in our minds and that sometimes we just need to be grateful for what is given and appreciate it as much if not more than what we originally wanted.  In the end, we will find that what we do come away with was much more valuable.

Enjoy the rest of Spring, it will be gone before we know it.

Peace.

It has been difficult for me in the last several weeks.  The new moon came and went, and even though I photographed it and made a beautiful composition of it I found it difficult to post anything about it.  I have been thinking quite a bit as well, and unfortunately returned to listening to the radio news and talk shows.  I really must learn to leave that nonsense, however I sometimes need to know what is happening in our world.  Let me tell you… what you hear is very depressing, so much so that it pushes me closer to being a cynic, which is never a good thing.

From the earthquake in Japan and the resulting nuclear catastrophe to the charlatans setting up fake aid organizations duping sincere folks wanting to help to the impending world contamination with radioactive iodine and cesium, the whole thing is infuriating.  We really can’t find better ways to boil water to turn turbines to spin generators to make electricity…really?

Then there is the unfolding war in Libya that is so unfortunate.   It is very frustrating.  But hey, call it support for the freedom fighters and everyone is on board.  Never mind that the citizens of Libya had free housing and free education and health care for everyone!  Now lets drop depleted uranium munitions there as well.  Argh!  We don’t have enough deformed war babies being born in the world.

But wait there’s more.

Let’s tax the poor and give the rich a tax-free pass so that we can turn our nation in to a dysfunctional third world country governed by an oligarchy rather than a democracy.  I could not believe this when I heard it. The top 1% of the U.S. population control 42% of the financial wealth! Huh?

And lets abolish Medicare and Medicaid so that our elders and children who can’t afford health care just vanish so we don’t have to worry about them anymore. And don’t even get me started on education.

Now I could go on and on venting about all that is wrong in the world but that would be wrong in and of itself because it does not do anything to constructively fix any of it.

So instead, in my longing for peace in our world, I asked myself what do we need to do so that we humans can be at peace with ourselves as well as with the world.

I think we need to foster 7 things in ourselves to see change take place in our world: Truth, Repentance, Resolve, Gratitude, Mortality, and Remembrance.

I expressed my thoughts with this short video.  I hope it will make a difference.

If you like it, please share it with your network of friends.  Maybe, just maybe it can affect a change.

Enjoy and as always, Peace!

We live in the age of information. Ask any question and the answer is literally at your finger tips no more than a few clicks away with any Google search. Not sure how to upgrade computer hardware? No problem someone out there in the virtual world has probably posted something somewhere that explains it. Need to learn how to cook sticky lemon chicken? Google those words and a list of various recipes along with the instructional video pops up ready for you to digest that information.  Can’t figure out why the check engine light is on in your car?  No problem, it is simple enough today to buy a computerized device that will probe your car’s computer and report to you with a code number that practically tells you the problem.  Don’t know how to fix that?  Just a click away and you will find the answer among the many discussion boards on car repair. Need an illustrated step-by-step procedure on how to do that?  Its available online as well.

Not so long ago this amount of information would have filled entire libraries and it would have taken someone trying to find the information I mention nearly a month’s time and maybe more.  Today it seems that anyone and everyone is his or her own teacher.  Everyone just relies on the “book knowledge” that they can find and they become their own Do-It-Yourself experts.  While there is nothing wrong with doing things for yourself, as I find great satisfaction in being self sufficient, learning through books alone is daunting and quite frustrating. New vocabulary and unfamiliar concepts can be quite confusing when first encountered in books.  Most books are not written for the ultra-novice and reading such books can bring more confusion to the subject than before opening the book.  In addition, most subjects rely on a foundation of many other subjects and knowledge of those is just as important to understanding what is being read. The notion that someone can become knowledgeable in a subject by simply reading a book borders on the absurd.

Teachers on the other hand are the keys that unlock what is written in books. Anyone can write a book that transmits the information that is contained within it. However there is no guarantee that what is written is correct or that it will even be understood the way the author had intended.  In all my years of education as a student I relied heavily on my teachers in spite of whatever textbook was used in the class.  The book was more of a reference or a place where additional notes taken from a teacher were placed such that the text made sense.  Their words, explanations, and examples were what formed my knowledge of a given subject, whether it was technical or spiritual in nature.

Learning through a teacher also imbues in a person gratitude for the knowledge that would have been very difficult to attain without a teacher and humility in the realization that no matter how much we learn, there are still many who know much more and that anything that was attained was only by the means of the ones who taught you.  An old Arabic proverb states that a man is founded upon his teachers.  And it was Sir Issac Newton who said If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Teachers facilitate the transmission of not just information but of knowledge. The difference between the two is that information is nothing more than a sequence of symbols that transmits a message while knowledge is expertise and skill that a person acquires through directed study, practice and experience.  The absence of knowledge, or ignorance, is a darkness that holds its possessor prisoner.  Not wealth, status or information can release the prisoner.  The only key that will allow a person to emerge from the darkness is knowledge obtained through a chain of transmitters each of which stood on the shoulders of greats before them and sat at their feet in the shade of their erudition.

Emergence

If you are a seeker of knowledge then find a teacher who can teach you what you want to learn and dispense with the folly of information for the wisdom afforded by true knowledge, even if you have to travel to the ends of the Earth to find it.

Peace.

The new moon is upon us once again.  As I write this post, it is about 6 hours before it will be visible in the western sky provided the sky is not cloudy.

Last month I photographed a new crescent moon that moved through the sky in varying light over a twenty minute period.  As elusive as the new crescent moon is in its own right, making it difficult to see,  some times the camera manges to pickup light that our eye just cannot perceive.

Pictured in the photo below is the new crescent moon of February 3rd, 2011 taken 10 minutes after the photo that was posted in the Rabi Al-Awwal Begins post.  It was a toss up for me as to which photo to actually post for that entry in the journal.  I chose the former due to its sharpness, as the photo below used a shutter speed that was a bit longer than I normally like to use and the moon blurred ever so slightly due its motion in the sky.

Ghost Moon

However, what fascinated me about this image was that after I had processed the RAW file, I could actually see the entire shadow of the moon in the sky.  There was just enough variation in the light from the moon to be recorded by the digital sensor.  Now this is not unique to digital cameras as I have recorded the shadowed moon on new moon nights before using film, however what is intriguing is the fact that my eyes could not see these subtle variations in the light.

Our eyes do not accumulate light the way a camera does.  As light enters our eyes the cones and rods on the retina become activated and immediately send their impulses down the optic nerve to our brain where in interpret what we “see”.

In contrast a camera opens its shutter to allow light to enter it.  The light hits a piece of film chemically treated to react to light, the longer the shutter is left open the more chemical grains on the surface of the film become activated and retain visual information.  The same is true with digital sensors however in this case the sensor is electrically active and starts to record light as charge build upset up when the photons of light cause current to flow through the micro-sized photo transistors on the digital chip.  The longer the shutter is left open the more charge is built up and interpreted as brighter light. In this manner the camera is able to “see” things in dim light that our eyes can never see.  As long as there is some visible light the camera can record it given enought time while the shutter is open.

Darkness has always been symbolic of mystery, the unknown and all that these ideas bring with them, like fear, terror, evil and so on.  And while there is nothing out there in the dark that does not exist in the day, our inability to see in the dark conjures up fear of the unknown.  Today however, with modern digital camera technology night time photographs have never been easier to make.  And for those brave enough to venture out into the darkness of night to make such photos, we can all marvel and rest assured, there are no monsters in the dark and to know that what we can’t see won’t hurt us.

Peace.

In 1945 on this day in a small mountain village in Syria a little girl as born late at night. Little did anyone know that her soul would have repercussions almost half way around the world for longer than her life would even allow.

She was the second born of five siblings and her mother died when she was only 9 years old. Her mother left my mother to care for her younger brother, two youngest sisters and her father. That ended her ability to any education while she spent her days learning how to cook and maintain her family’s home. At about the same time a few villages away a young man prepares to leave for America. The son of an immigrant who first immigrated to the United States in the late 1800′s and worked for Ford Corporation on the Model T, the Columbus Cast Iron Stove Company and running his own shoe repair shop and becoming a naturalized citizen before finally returning to Syria to get married and have 9 of his own children. This young man came to America as on a U.S. Passport as he and all his siblings were registered as American citizens at birth by their father.

Ten years later he returns to Syria successful with his own landscaping business to find that little 9 year old girl is now a beautiful young woman and asks for her hand in marriage. They were married and he returns to the States to prepare for her arrival. A few months later she is on her way as well, not knowing how to read or write or speak any language other than Arabic. She boards a flight for Paris France that is delayed and so she misses her connecting flight for the U.S.. The airline puts her up for the night in a hotel but forgets to get her in the morning and so she has to wait another day. All the while she is frightened and does not know who to talk to nor could she even if she could. The next morning the airline representative that comes to get her just happened to be a Lebanese man who speaks to her and finds out she hasn’t eaten anything in two days. Before she boards the plane this gentleman takes her to the hotel restaurant and makes sure she gets a meal she would eat and finally puts her on her flight.

Once in the United States, my father gathers her up at LAX and they make their way to a small rented home in North Hollywood. A year later I was born.

She brought with her an old world tradition of cooking everything from scratch and growing your own food on your own land. My two parents did just that.

My Father, God rest his soul, passed away in a work related accident when I was 11 years old. My mother took his death very hard and almost did not make it but after a year my mother and two brothers were back on our own. She raised three boys single handed and through it all managed to keep us in line free from all the troubles that three boys could get into.

My mother was a generous soul and found solace in cooking and feeding people. Never did family or friends visit that they did not leave our home with either home grown fruit or vegetables or some home cooked food in their arms. She was most famous for her Syrian Bread. If we had the wherewithal we should have opened for her a bakery, but nonetheless, the legend of her hearty bread still lives on in my family. My mother, God rest her soul, passed away in 2003 after battling ovarian cancer for 3 years. Her passing broke our family’s heart. She was the healthiest living person we knew, it boggles our minds to this day how this evil disease found its way into her.

On this day, in honor of my mother’s birthday I pulled out her secrete bread recipe and did my best to replicate her famous bread. I was about 90% successful.  Although it tasted the same I think I was a little short on water as the dough did not have the same pliable texture that she showed me when she taught me how to make it.

My Hand at Mom's Bread

As the bread’s aroma filled the house my kids came streaming into the kitchen recalling their grandmother’s kitchen.  So for the love of my dear mother, who saved my soul in ways that I cannot even express, this post and the bread that I made today goes out to her.  I love you Mom!

To all my readers, honor your mother today, if she is still alive or has parted from this world, honor her.  She has done more for you than you can possibly imagine.

Peace.