Broken down mini-motor home in a quasi junk yard just off the BWI bike trail.

My beautiful friend Emily was patiently enduring me as I asked her to pose here and there throughout our walk through the arboretum. Here she is cuddling with a tree. I suppose a flower would have been better, but the light was really nice by that tree! It was all impulse, anyway.

It’s been so long since I had anyone beside my kids to take pictures of, I was a bit trigger-happy. Besides, when you only take pictures when you’re out with three kids, any photos taken are usually obtained by “drive-by-shooting”, rather than actual planned or anticipated shots. One takes what one can get, I suppose!

Amazing colors this year! I’m glad I had the chance to catch some.

A beautiful day at Cylburn Mansion with some friends. I wanted to catch the colors before everything turned to gray.

Very nice to get out of the house, and very nice to go out to eat! The kids were great, too, which always helps.

Warning: shameless product plug.

I have to admit, its been bugging me for a while. Our clothes stink, even fresh out of the washer/dryer. Laura doesn’t notice so much, but my nose is quite a bit larger than hers. Our towels smell burnt, like they’d been in the dryer too long, too many times. My favorite shirt, with [something]-technology that helps it breathe (or whatever) always smells weird, etc. Even the washer —the thing that cleans other things— smells funky. I figured that the towels are actually charred, my shirt is made of weird smelling material and the washer is just old.

Then I stumbled upon this post by Doc Och: You’re Probably Glowing with Toxins.

Apparently it is common knowledge among the green cleaning community that those of us who use “conventional” laundry soaps have ultraviolet altering toxins sticking to our clothes and our skin like glue. My wife just explained this to me this week, and I found it disturbing. Our laundry soaps do not clean so much as they chemically alter color and leave glue toxins, which covers dirt and kills germs not so much by actual cleaning but by toxicity.

If what he posted, and what the folks at Charlie’s Soap said was true, then perhaps the reason our clothes stink is because… they aren’t really CLEAN! I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Why clean something when you can just make it look better and cover it in flowers? I’m sure there’s profit to made by covering rather than cleaning.

At any rate, being the anti-establishment type I decided to give Charlie’s Soap a whirl. Our little bag of laundry soap arrived yesterday and the first thing I did was raid the bathroom closet for every and any towel I could find. I proceeded to wash all of them. Twice, of course, as the CS people mentioned. Then I did all my whites, and then a few other loads of various items. Lo and behold, the unthinkable happened: when I smelled the towels after drying, they smelled like…

Nothing!

How wonderful!

No smell at all, except for that odd ‘clean’ smell that’s devoid of perfumes and softeners. Wow… years of burnt smelling towels, gone in two wash cycles. Now they just smell clean (you can imagine the effect this will have on one’s undergarments!). I haven’t gotten to my favorite shirt yet, but I did wipe up all the old detergent and softener that was caked on the inside of the washer, and after a few loads with Charlie’s Soap detergent the washer doesn’t stink, either. 

So, dump the corporate types and their chemicals that aren’t really cleaning your clothes anyway. Go buy Charlie’s Soap. You’ll be glad you did.

One last note: the side of the little detergent bag says,

All natural washing soda, sodium silicate, and coconut oil based detergents. Leaves nothing but the good old-fashioned small of clean. If you want flowers, go pick some.

My kind of people!

This is what life is like at the moment.

Here is a recent photo of my spiritual parents, Father Gregory and Khouria Frederica. It was taken at a 15th anniversary banquet, and the original photo had a speaker stand growing out of Khouria’s head. Hooray for Photoshop!

I actually expected Fr. G to make some kind of retirement speech at the banquet. But, as Providence would have it, the Bishop told everyone that we all (120+) should have regular face-time with Fr. G, and he even offered to give us all Fr. G’s cellphone number! That might prove problematic… *if* Father ever turned his cellphone on. :)

If it weren’t for Khouria’s earlier books and Fr. G’s receptivity some five years ago, we would not be Orthodox. In fact, I don’t know where or what we’d be without them.

This is Fr. Nicodemus, a monk who gave us a tour of the monastery church, it’s history, the icons and relics, etc. He also gave us a tour of the ancient icon house and the monastery museum. I don’t recall him looking any of us in the eye, out of humility I presume. Last time I saw him he was either recovering from or about to have knee surgery. Walking looked to be quite painful for him.

It was on this last trip that the car my godson and I had rented broke down, about 15 miles from the monastery. We left before everyone else, thank God. We somehow managed to get a cellphone signal and called the monastery for a ride. The closest rental facility was about four hours away, and although we spent a good part of the afternoon at a gas station in BFN (pardon me) Pennsylvania, eventually some friends showed up with room enough for two. My poor godson… I did not handle that situation very well.

My second trip to St. Tikhon’s Monastery & Seminary happened in 2006. My first trip saw me bring a Canon point-&-shoot; for this trip I had just purchased a Canon Digital Rebel and was armed with several books on photography under my belt. How helpful they were I don’t know, but I do know that I was very inspired.

Early each morning I’d creep out of the dorm where our men’s group was staying and run around taking photos of anything I could find. It was bitter cold, but very quiet and I was happy for the time alone, with no particular schedule, aside from the 8am Liturgy I hoped to attend.

This image shows the top of a little gazebo overlooking a lake close to the monastery church. I don’t think there was a direction toward which one could look without seeing an icon, or cross, or ‘something’ that lifted the mind. It was wonderful. Unfortunately for us, our last men’s trip to St. Tikhon’s saw us staying in a hotel some 13 miles away. The seminary dorms were full of seminarians!

While using iTunes 8 new “Genius” feature, which suggested songs I might like but don’t have based on the song I had chosen in my library, I came across an artist I had never heard of: Ashley Chambliss. Her 2005 album nakedsongs immediately found it’s way from the iTunes Store into my library. The style of piano playing she employs is similar to the style I used when I was an aspiring (and terribly naïve) singer/songwriter.

It’s nice to hear someone really nail that style, and also to be reminded of the hours upon hours I spent “in concert” in my parents conservatory saving the world and myself with my little music. Sometimes I envy that guy, the one in the conservatory playing late into the night. Perhaps there’s something to be said for naivety…

Check out the album.

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About the photo: Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, fell in love with Theseus of Athens. According to the Greek myth, she accompanied Theseus when he left Crete but was later abandoned by him on the island of Naxos.