photography.poetry.paintings.music
k r i s s t a l o r e
December 2025
are you a
homing pigeon ?
did you fly the nest ?
the HOME edition
this must be
the home page .......
NASA/JPL Caltech
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of it. The Human Future in Space," in which he wrote:
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us."
matt's muse.ings
poetry by Matt Turley
The mud holds the poles that support the old deck
Where they spend all their time when not sleeping
The cross on the string hangs around the boy’s neck
As a prayer for the shanty's safekeeping
The music is made by the frogs and the bugs
In the hour the swamp swallows the sun
The girl, wanting food, on her mom's t-shirt tugs
But tonight, as before, there is none
Tchotchkes in the trailer are covered in dust
And the gnomes in the fake garden fade
A broken antenna paints red streaks of rust
On the awning that still provides shade
The sunken man sits and for his beloved broods
Though its been three years since she has passed
On the table before him sits uneaten food
And an ashtray too small for its task
The view from her flat looks out over the park
And she wishes her parents could see
How far she has come from the years that were dark
When she lost touch with her family
Her dog snores while splayed on the rug in the den
As she finishes her second beer
She's grateful, content, thinking of her new friends
While her quivering eye yields a tear
Wheelchairs and walkers are parked in the hall
Near the dining room where they all eat
Some of them smile as they fondly recall
The last time they gathered to meet
The children, whose chorus will soon entertain
As always when holidays come
Laughter and joy will this old crowd sustain
The rapport that makes them less lonesome
-by Matt Turley November 2025
Origin story /My friend suggested the theme of “Home” as a prompt.
HOME
HOME quotes
“Home is the nicest word there is.” ― Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Home and I are such good friends.” ― L.M. Montgomery,
“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.” ― N.K.Jemisin
“Home is where your books are.” ― Kerstin Gier
“There's no place like home...” ― L. Frank Baum
“Your true home is in the here and the now.”― Thich Nhat Hanh,
“You are your home” ― Orion Carloto
“The only way to learn who you are is to leave home.” ― Sana Krasikov
“A house turns into a home only when you put your soul in it!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
“It is not the truth which has to be sought, it is you who have to be brought home.” ― Osho
“I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories. " ― Mitch Albom
“We’re all like that. You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is” ― Tove Jansson
“I mean the kind of roots that happen privately between you & a certain place. Like you come to a place, & instead of planting a flag & saying mine, the place plants something in you. The place claims you, it knows your name & the crooked corners of your heart, & you've pledged yourself to it before you've even realized what's happening.”
― Sierra Simone“I regarded home as a place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“Every house has a story to tell.” ― Riley Sager
“I don't know why anyone has a living room when they could have a library instead.” ― Megan Lindholm,
“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark ... In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.”
― Germaine Greer
“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home--they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space." ― Jeanette Winterson
“Sometimes the most perfect home is made out of the space between two hands.” ― Jomny Sun
“Home is the canvas upon which we paint the colors of our lives, creating a masterpiece of memories, we find solace, comfort, and the freedom to be who we are.” ― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua
“Every place you go becomes a part of you. But none more so than home.” ― Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
“My soul is calling me back home to myself.” - Kris Strell.
“If poetry is an escape into the woods, then music is the journey back home.”― Akash Mandal
“How many times do your feet have to press down on a path before they make an imprint, before pieces of soul start sticking?” ― Fiona Wood,
“She's always thought of home as a physical destination but perhaps... home, like the moon will follow wherever she goes.”
― Chloe Benjamin
“Kick off your shoes. Unburden yourself with song. Tell each other tales. Dance around the table. Leave the cleaning up for the morning. Then go outside and look at the stars.” ― Noble Smith
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” ― Carl Sagan
To Carry Your Home on Your Back
photo from The Guardian
Gramma, a 141 year old Galapagos tortoise, died on November 20
at the San Diego Zoo.
When she was born in 1884 Chester Arthur was President, also ;
* July 4th the Statue of Liberty presented to the United States in Paris.
* The Washington Monument was completed. An aluminum capstone is set
atop it making it the tallest man-made structure in the world.
* Construction begins on Chicago’s first skyscraper - 10 stories.
* Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
* Susan B. Anthony addresses Congress arguing for an amendment
to the Us Constitution granting women the right to vote.
* International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC. adopts Greenwich
Mean Time worldwide & creates 24 international time zones.
* First long distance phone call Boston to New York.
* Alaska becomes a US territory.
* Ringling Brothers Circus premiers in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
* Society of Independent Artists is founded in Paris by Albert
Dubois- Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac.
* First known photo of tornado is taken in South Dakota.
* George Eastman patents paper strip photographic film.
* Architect Henry Hardenberghs Dakota Apt. complex opens In NYC.
Gramma also lived through all these presidents : * Cleveland, * Harrison, * McKinley,
* Teddy Roosevelt, * Taft, * Wilson, * Harding, * Coolidge, * Hoover, * Franklin Roosevelt,
* Truman, * Eisenhower, * Kennedy, * Johnson, * Nixon, * Ford, * Carter, * Bush sr.,
* Clinton, * Bush jr., * * Obama, the 45th one, & * Biden.
Her care specialists affectionately called her “the Queen of the Zoo.” She was suffering from bone
conditions related to her old age that progressed recently before she was euthanized, the zoo said.
Many visitors commented on about getting to first visit Gramma when they were young, and being
able to come back years later with their own kids.
Galapagos tortoises can live for over 100 years in the wild, and close to double that in captivity.
The oldest known Galapagos tortoise was named Harriet, who lived at the Australia Zoo until the age of 175. Concerted efforts have been made to breed these tortoises in captivity over the past several decades, with more than 10,000 juveniles released to the wild since 1965, according to the Galapagos Conservancy. Some subspecies have been brought back from the brink of extinction.
Bravo Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother Gramma.
Ok All Our Gang, Ok Hoodies, Ok Homeys, I know I know … I have recommended so many many songs, videos, movies, books, films, & sunflower growing tips your way. Listen up on this one : Hear Ye ! Hear Ye ! This is the one recommendation that cannot be overlooked.
6 part (2 hr each) documentary about the beginning of the
United States of America.
Incredible story. Incredible story. Epic.
If you thought for one iota that you knew something, anything, about the beginnings of how the United States of America was formed, this doc will completely blow your mind apart. All the risks, chances, & gambles of ordinary beings that rose to the occasion & pulled off miracles, all the major strife, all the heartache, all the heroism & bravery, & esp. all the intelligence..How the principles of truths were formed about what we stood for & what we stood against & how they were slowly developed. And what happened here for the first time in the world - The American Revolution was the first war ever fought proclaiming the unalienable rights of all people. & the United States of America was the first ever nation formed around those principles. The director has included an over abundance of famous well known actors that voice quotes throughout. Well done. Well done. If the ratings only went as high as ten stars, this would be a 100 stars.
very actively moving still lifes
acrylic paintings by Kris Strell
“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and ‘love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—
back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” ― Thomas Wolfe
“Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the ear ― Maya Angelou
“We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves
and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”
― Maya Angelou.
