As a small business person (VERY small…sole proprietor and only person) I joined the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce when I moved to Bigfork in late 2002. The Chamber is active in many community functions and organizes most of them. Decoration Day at Christmas time is one of the many. Coming up are “Clean our Fork” which is a turn out for spring litter pick up – we meet at one of the local members’ for a pancake breakfast, are assigned areas to pick up and off we go. Just like Decoration Day, enough turn out that we “git er done” in short order and then we meet again for lunch… All activities include food and drink – we don’t do anything hungry or thirsty!

It is a fun group! The nature of Bigfork’s topography is such that there is very little “town” housing. Most of us live rurally in the surrounding area. Chamber functions as well as town functions are always well attended.

Once a month, the Chamber has a “Sundowner”. A Chamber business hosts an open house with food and drink, naturally. Starting at 5 p.m. we gather, eat, sip and talk, share announcements about new or expanding services, promotions, upcoming events and finish with a small raffle for prizes donated by the host.

Yesterday evening was this month’s Sundowner, hosted by the Bigfork branch of Rocky Mountain Bank.

The bank is right next to the Chamber office and those poor people in the bank look towards the lake all day while they are working…you can see a bit of the lake past the Dairy Queen sign in the first photo. The Diary Queen gets a bit of the view also as do a number of businesses, including another bank that “step” down the grade along Montana Highway 35.

And that temperature of 26??? It made us all giddy with relief after the last several days of arctic cold. And 26 was at just after 6 p.m. – sunset is 7:40ish right now. We were all smiles and “hey, it is almost Spring” as we gathered.

Although Karl did not come in for the festivities, he did ride along in the Jeep. We arrived home, passing our UPS guy on the way and found he had been to our house…

And he didn’t forget Karl!

Small Town doin’s – I love it all!

There is a link in my twitter (Snippets of Life) to my entry in a kind of photography contest. The contest is called Name Your Dream Assignment.

The idea is to pitch your dream photo shoot and then get people to vote for you. The top 20 popular vote ideas will go before a panel of judges. The panel will decide the ultimate winner.

I’m sitting at 103 as I write this… My Entry

Oh, there is a $50,000 prize to enable the dream shoot. The winner has to agree to share photos, but retains the ownership and copyright.

You have to sign in to vote which takes a minute or so. The reason for the sign in is to allow them to make sure you don’t vote more than once for an entry. You CAN vote for as many entries as you’d like. They say they will not use sign-in info for marketing. This is a Microsoft/Lenovo jointly sponsored contest. I believe them. I am a registered user of many Microsoft products as well as in the pool of professional technical people and I don’t get anything other than what I’ve asked for as far as communication from Microsoft.

Naturally, I’d love your vote and from any of your friends and family and even people you can wrangle in the street!

But mostly, what I’d like you to do is think about your dream – your dream of something you’d like to do, to see, to accomplish, where and how you’d like to live if it is not where and how you are doing it now. And write it down. Don’t worry about the words or grammar or spelling – just start and see where it goes.

Writing down a vision for anything is powerful. Writing down the dream, clarifies what is really important to you. Once written, the words have a way of honing your daily decisions – keeping you on track towards that thing that is important enough to you that you wrote it down. The words help you say no to some of those requests for your time that don’t help you along the way – I don’t mean things like laundry, feeding your kids, going to work – and I’m talking “some”…you will think before automatically saying yes. And you will be happier for it!

It is funny how things happen. A post from a blogging friend about the current state of affairs in the United States and concern about the direction things are going got me thinking. There are a couple of young women – self employed making various items – their blogs share how things are going with them. One thought she might need to take a “real” job, but her online shop continues to expand. There is a lot of cheering going on in her comment section as well as the others. They are doing well – on their own, doing what they love.

I got thinking about the many positive things that could come out of this time. Perspective. A need to move in with family, while possibly horrifying to contemplate initially, might turn into an opportunity to be closer. A loss of job might be the opportunity to change careers, thinking about what you really want to do. The need for a simpler existence with less stuff, less going out, might evolve into a long term way of living – more joy, less stress – simple, real values – what we all say we want.

Back to dreaming… Even if you don’t want to sign in and vote, I encourage you to go to the contest site and read some of the dream assignment entries. Many are interesting and some are inspirational. And then go write down your own dream…and see what happens.

Name Your Dream Assignment.

My Entry

Go! – and Write! It is a new day – Dream big!

Edited 3/14/2009. Although I absolutely believe in being clear on our dreams and hopes, I withdrew from this contest. Not many voted for one thing and I am not willing to mount a serious “campaign for votes”. The project is something I’m capable of doing on my own, something I really have been doing although not with much focus on other’s stories. I’ll continue.

Carole Davis, my friend and a fellow rvr passed from this life to the next yesterday afternoon. From her daughter:

It is with both sadness and joy that I write to you today. My mother, Carole Davis, passed away this afternoon at 1:30 after struggling this last year with a terminal illness, ALS. She went in for a tracheotomy about 2 weeks ago to help with her breathing and, while there, found that she also had an advanced form of lung cancer. She held on until she was transported to a beautiful, warm nursing home at which time she took her last breath and died peacefully.

Please join me in rejoicing in her life and in all the wonderful ways in which she touched us all.

I had the privilege and fun of meeting Carole a little over a year ago at an rv gathering. We had “met” in our group chat room and via bulletin board posts prior. Carole was as much fun in person as she was through her posts. After the gathering we remained in touch via email. She was a strong and honest encourager of my photography, writing and my life in Montana. She also shared the difficulty of this last year as her health deteriorated. I am thankful that her passing was peaceful and thankful for the ways she touched my life.

Truly, in joyful remembrance.

***The main photo was taken in Rockport, Texas, from the dock at the RV Park where we gathered. The superimposed photo of Carole was taken one night when we were all together for dinner. January, 2008.

It is not always pretty from the front porch…

It has been above freezing for several days and nights. The snow is melting and shrinking but what is left is a slushy, puddly, icy mess. The snow is covered with pine needles and sticks. It is not pretty.

Bob ventured out to see what he could see. He didn’t notice his reflection. He was too busy looking for bubbles. (Bob and Bubbles)

When the outside view is not at its best, I look for something pretty inside.

On my kitchen window sill: the single red rose and lilies I bought almost 2 weeks ago and what is left of the live basil after making pesto last weekend. The lilies are in a vase that was hand painted by my grandmother Ruth. And I had a little Photoshop fun with a watercolor filter.