Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Is this the beginning, or is it tomorrow

Hello All!

Welcome to the first day of my blog, the very first words, and thoughts.......I wanted to quote Pablo Picasso because this thought is remarkable.

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

Pablo Picasso
1881-1973, Artist

You should be aware of this thought, because we always can put things off till tomorrow, and yet we never know if tomorrow will arrive for us. Tomorrow will always be there, it just may not involve us. Remember this when you do your tasks, greet your friends, love your family, go to bed at night. Tomorrow is a few hours away.

My goals for this blog is to provide a place to let thoughts have a place to escape, to provide information for those who seek it, to posssibly help others while I help myself move forward to tomorrow.

Join me on my adventure, lets see where it leads. What does the name mean? Shawangunk?
It is a place where I grew up, it is a Mountain Range in the Mid- Hudson Valley, near New Paltz NY.
A great place to climb and test yourself, and to be in awe of it's beauty.

Here is something from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawangunk_Ridge

The name is a Dutch transliteration of the indigenous Munsee [Lenape] "Scha-WAN-gunk" (/ʃɑˈwɑŋˌgʌŋk/). The Lenape linguist Raymond Whritenour reports that, "Schawan" is an inanimate intransitive verb meaning "it is smoky air" or "there is smoky air." Its noun-like participle is "schawank," meaning "that which is smoky air." Adding the locative suffix gives us "schawangunk" ("in that which is smoky air" or, more simply, "in the smoky air").
Whritenour suggests the name derives from the burning of a Munsee fort by the Dutch at the eastern base of the ridge in 1663 (a massacre ending the Second Esopus War), where it spread quickly across the basin on land deeds and patents after the war. Historian Marc B. Fried speculates that it was derived from atmospheric conditions (a foggy, smoky morning) during the sale of the first parcel in January, 1682, though he also notes that its swift spread along the basin on subsequent deeds suggests it was in use as a proper name before the first purchase. By the early 18th century, Shawangunk became associated with the ridge. European colonists began to truncate Shawangunk into "SHONG-gum," (/ˈʃɑŋgʌm/) a pronunciation still favored by some locals and frequently misrepresented as the original indigenous name.

I guess it's time to disappear into the smoky air. Come back and visit often

Thank you for your time