A prayer for our times by the late Billy Graham

'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics.. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'One nation under God..'

New Gregory Bratton CD, and a New Irene McKinney Book. I Have the Privilege of Doing the Cover Art for Both.

Two West Virginia Artists

This is a new CD by West Virginia native Gregory Bratton to be released soon, and it's a good one. That CD art is a picture that I shot from Corridor H, near the top of Branch Mountain last winter. I processed the photo with Corel Painter and a Wacom Tablet to get it to glow like I wanted. This was taken with a high-end Sony point-and-shoot rather than my Canon 40D DSLR. The original photo is located here: Valley of Fire in West Virginia. You can hear the CD here for free: Gregory Bratton Web Site

This picture is the one that Red Hen Press is going to use for the cover art for West Virgina native Irene McKinney's new book of poetry, "Unthinkable: Selected Poetry by Irene McKinney" which is due for release on February 15, 2009:

This Picture was shot with a Canon 40D and 17-85 IS lens.
More on West Virginia Poet Laureate Irene McKinney in this video:

So, how did I get together with these folks? How was my work chosen? Did I solicit this work? No, fate and Flickr had more to do with it.

From Greg's Web site:

I knew I wanted something that looked like a timeless farm. I also knew I wanted something with hills and mountains in it. I simply did a google search and found Dixon Marshall's Flickr Page.
It had the exact flavor of what I was looking for. When I saw the photo I knew right away it was the one. After a couple emails the guy was incredibly nice and gave me permission to use this photo and another one for the back.
After I fell in love with his work I found out he was also a West Virginian! So, I figured I had some cover art that tied in to at least two songs on the album! Can't ask for better than that. Check out his stuff, it's pretty cool!

From Red Hen Press:

Most authors come to us with an image in mind. If that images doesn't seem to work or they don't have an image in mind we start hunting for an image. Because of our budgetary constraints, places like flickr.com are often a good place for us to start. Irene had said she wasn't sure what exactly she wanted for an image but that she wanted her book to look like a companion piece to an earlier collection http://www.amazon.com/Vivid-Companion-Poems-Irene-McKinney/dp/0937058920/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222723880&sr=8-1. With that in mind, we did a search for West Virginia images and found yours!

As for me, most of my more recent photographs are located here: My Flickr Site

About Me?

About Me?

Whenever we start a new blog, or register at a photo-sharing site, one of the first items in the form asks for a synopsis of your life, as you see it. I tend to cringe at this, because when you’ve been on this earth for over 50 years like me, this always seems a tall order to fill. The answers tend to change depending on the date, but here is that synopsis, a view of “me” by “me,” that I will use as a template from now on. Or at least, until I change it.

I live way outside the Beltway and over a few mountains to the northwest of DC. That hot breeze from Washington still manages to scale the peaks most of the time. I'm a conservative Republican amongst gaggles of bleeding-heart Democrats, most of whom I'm proud to call friends. I’m a small-town boy who lived in the city, and a city boy who moved to the small town.

I'm a husband, and a father of five. I love my wife, and she loves me. I'm a frustrated artist among a sea of frustrated blue-collars. I'm an underpaid design engineer. I'm a hillbilly, but I'm metropolitan. I'm a photographer with outrageously expensive equipment. I'm usually broke.

I'm a vegan at heart, but not in practice. I've bought the best food for my dog, with only enough money left for a box of cereal for myself. I have four cats and a large dog. I talk to the animals, and the animals love me back. I believe in hunting as sport for those who like it, but I don't hunt. I can't bring myself to kill anything.

I love our national traditions, yet I embrace change. I am stubborn as a mule, yet yielding as a sheep. I love our kids enough to dole out discipline, but not corporal discipline. I'm not touchy-feely, but my emotions run deep. I'm a geek. I'm a redneck. I'm a thinker when I don't feel like being shallow.

I’m a very private man who makes most of his thoughts public. I am a very public man who yearns for privacy. I am technically oriented, but yearn to get back to the basics.

I'm a sinner. I'm a forgiver. I am fascinated by Jewish history. My ancestors, however, were Celts. I am a man of contradictions and convictions—and maybe sometimes apathy. I talk to God, and I thank Jesus for saving me. I will meet him one day to thank him in person.

What does all this make me? It makes me human. Just like the rest of you.

--Dixon Marshall, October 2008

Please check out my pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/brokenlens

Known Issues List on Blogger Site

Some blogs have been mistakenly marked as spam. Affected users are not able to post to their blog and received an email indicating Blogger classified their blog as spam. We are actively working to correct the issue. Update, Aug 2: All blogs mistakenly marked as spam due to this bug have been restored. If you are still unable to post to your blog, click Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard. — latest update on Friday, August 01, 2008

This Blog Identified as Spam?

I guess the filters aren't perfect. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by Google's filters blocking my blog. I seems to have been incorrectly identified as spam, along with 4 other blogs that I'm just starting.

We Have a Big Dog – Part Three of Three

Continued from earlier today.

To see more of my photos on Flickr, click on the title.

This is Brute, our Staffy Terrier

Another Dog with Heart

A week or so after Ike's demise, I got a telephone call. It was a relative who wanted to tell me that a lady had a big, friendly dog that she needed to find a home for because she could no longer keep it. Her ex-boyfriend had acquired the dog behind her back and left it there, even though he already had some health problems. She already had other dogs she has taken good care of, and didn't want them to suffer because of this one that she hadn't asked for. I said that I wasn't interested in another dog, but she persuaded me to at least have a look. You can guess what happened next—on this particular Friday eve we were now owned by a very good-natured American Staffordshire terrier. The problem was, this very lively boy who his previous owner called Bruno was twenty pounds underweight, and had what we (along with the previous owner) thought was a nasty-looking barbed wire injury on the top of his wrinkly snout. We found out that he had an obsessive fondness for Coca-Cola on the way home in the Jeep, because he drank his fill out of my wife Andrea's McDonald's cup before we could get it away from him. I also decided to shorten his name to Brute at the time. For some reason, I don't like the name Bruno, and Brute seemed more than fitting for this big, happy, muscular fellow.

He devoured the top-quality dog food we provided, and seemed to gain quite a bit of weight over the weekend--but the open wound on his snout was not healing, despite a good cleaning and very liberal applications of Neosporin. When Monday rolled around, we got him to the vet sometime late in the afternoon. We took him to Dr. Morris Homan in Moorefield, who is the best all-around veterinarian that I know of. Dr. Homan also takes care of the animals on most of the farms here in Hardy County.

The news was not good. Dr. Homan said that Brute was a "great dog, with a really good personality," but added that the open wound on his snout was caused by dermadectic mange, which is fatal and incurable in most cases. This was not the more common sarcoptic mange, which is contagious and curable. He gave me the option of euthanizing Brute, because he said that even though he may be able to cure this condition, it would be very expensive to do so.

There is no way I can kill a dog if there is a chance that it can be cured, just no way. So, I agreed to the treatments. The treatments consisted of a very powerful bovine antiparasitic (Like I said, Dr. Homan has had a lot of experience with farm animals) that is intended to be injected into cows. You see, dermadectic mange is caused by a very hardy parasite that is transferred from the pup's mother at his birth. The parasites will only cause a problem if the dog has experience extreme stress, such as the profound malnutrition that Brute had suffered. The catch was, if it didn't help Brute, the medicine would kill him. On the other hand, Brute's chance to live was zero percent without the treatment.

Being a dog, and not a cow, we had to give the nasty-smelling mess to Brute orally. Apparently, it tasted as bad as it smelled, because we found it nearly impossible to give to the poor guy, and when we finally got it down his throat, his eyes would water and strings of drool would reach the floor. Then, I came up with what I thought was a very clever idea—inject the medicine into hard boiled eggs, then feed the eggs to Brute. And this actually worked, because the dog really liked eggs. But there were consequences. Think "silent but deadly." Very deadly. Even though it was early winter in the Appalachians, we regularly opened our windows to evacuate the sickening air. This also created one very memorable sixty mile car-ride episode, which still gets regular mention by our kids.

Brute is a very healthy dog today, thanks to Dr. Homan and his radical ideas for treatment. He is very much an "inside" dog, for two reasons: he has allergies to insects which has cause severe folliculitis (another near-death experience for him; thanks again for saving his life, Dr. Homan), and he has negligible pigment in his skin below his sparse coat, so he can sunburn quickly and dramatically in a short period of time. He is actually my wife's "bed-buddy," and regularly tries to push me out of the bed. He is quite a sizeable bed mate at eighty-seven pounds. But he is a member of the family, a big, clumsy, always-happy bundle of joy, and that's what it's all about, isn't it?

We Have a Big Dog – Part Two of Three

Continued from Monday, September 29, 2008

The Heartbreak

From time to time, we would hear a commotion in the front yard when Ike was out there. Usually, it was because he had spotted a cat across the street; when this happened, he would bark and growl loudly, and lurch against the chain trying to break it. It was a very strong twenty-foot chain, hooked to a steel stake driven deeply into the ground. He had never managed to free himself—until one day when the steel ring on his collar gave out.

It happened quickly. He apparently spied a cat on the other side of the road, and we were both in the house when we heard a loud "rattle." I lived in the country, and I had heard that sound before—it was the same sound that the metal sideboards on a livestock truck make when the truck hits a pothole.

This time, it was not a pothole. I looked out the front door, and saw Ike's motionless body in the middle of the road. Whatever vehicle had struck him had gone. Cringing, I went out to the road, knelt down, and Ike was still barely conscious. Conscious enough that he looked directly at my face, then gave me a goodbye lick on the hand, just before he took his last breath. He had massive internal injuries from the wheels of a large vehicle.

Ike has been gone for nearly three years, but he is still alive in our memories. The kids still speak of his antics, such as the fact that we never had to get his leash to take him outside, because he would always bring it to us when he wanted to go to the bathroom or get some air. Or the fact that a stranger could not get near any of us when Ike was near, without being subjected to large, scary fangs and threatening growls. That is, until we told Ike that this person was okay. Then he was fine.

With the help of a neighbor, I buried Ike in our back yard. We had to dig a large hole, and the ground there is very rocky and hard. I wanted to get it done before the kids got home from school, though. I had just finished the job when the school bus pulled up.

The kids were very upset, of course, and Josh (who was twelve years old at the time) decided to make him a special monument. He built a cross, and affixed a picture of Ike to it. It was really a very touching and reverent monument, very fitting for this prince of a dog.

We never intended to "replace" Ike, for he would be a tough act to follow. But fate had other things in mind.