Most of you know my husband, Paul, is an established artist.  He’s worked in most mediums throughout his career — Oil, chalk pastel, watercolor, acrylic.  He’s also an accomplished sculpter, having done his very first significant piece in granite when he was a Senior in high school.  Through his career, he was in the advertising business and created logos and marketing and branding strategies for various companies. He began his own business and it was successful for over twelve years.  Art has played a significant part in his life.

What you may not know about this remarkable man, is that he loves nature and the outdoors.  From early on, he’s been a natural explorer – learning all the elements of survival in the wilderness – how to start a fire – how to provide food from natural sources.  He worked as a naturalist for a few years in one of our county parks.

Paul also wears a lot of different hats when he’s working.  For that job, he wore his Indiana Jones hat.  As he led children on tours of the park and sighted various birds and signs of animals, the kids would keep their eyes more focused on that hat, than in what he was trying to teach them.

One child asked him if he was Indiana Jones’ father?  Another called him Louisiana Jones.  Yet another asked him if he was a paleontologist, to which Paul responded, “No, I’m just a dinosaur.”

Isn’t it funny how a hat can make a difference in how people look at us?  It also puzzles me how we can form opinions about people based on what they wear or how they look.  Looking at things at face value doesn’t give us a really clear picture of the entire situation or the people we meet.  We form opinions based on what we see rather than actually getting to know them.

In our world today, we’re given “facts” before they’ve been investigated.  A news flash comes across the screen and we naturally want to know what’s up.  We want all the details before they even become available and often we’re given those details – true or not.  But I digress.

Investigating and discovery are part of who we are.  We are naturally curious.  As a young girl, I thought it would be great to be an archaeologist, but I had no idea it would require digging and sifting through mounds of sand and dirt.  I would have to put myself in danger in order to find some little hint of another civilization.  Still I think we all have that inane desire to know what came before us.  What were previous cultures like?  How did they live, dress, play, educate themselves?  What was the government like and what kind of obstacles did they face that we can learn from?

Maybe all the hopes and dreams of the past weren’t really much different than they are today.  Politics haven’t really changed in the history of the world.  We sometimes think they’ve gotten worse, but there really isn’t anything new under the sun.

So, with all this silly rambling, I will leave you with this thought.  Don’t begin writing a blog post without a purpose.  Make sure you make a point. Which I didn’t do,  but it was fun getting outside the normal box of every day, for just a little while.