Hi all!
Lovely to see another month flit by in the speed of light, isn't it? No, not really. Are you like me wondering how time can go so fast and you never quite catch up with all the things you have to do?
So...when I was wondering what to share today, I found myself staring at a photograph. Not just any old photograph, but a very original sepia photograph taken in 1917 in Codforth, England, wherever that might be. It's part of an interactive activity at the State Library of Queensland's Distant Lines project.
Here we have a group of Aussie diggers, both young and old, who have survived Gallipoli and the Somme battles and are waiting for their next posting.
I couldn't help wondering--what dreams and aspirations did these soldiers have? According to the original text on the postcard, they were checking out this English village and exclaiming at the beauty of the churches. No doubt facing death gave churches an allure.
Australia was a young country, well, it still is, relatively speaking, and these soldiers would probably have been farmers, as most Australians were in the early 1900s. What hopes and dreams did they have for their return? Were they hoping the government would give them a larger selection to do their back-breaking farming work? Did they yearn to see their wives, their girlfriends, their parents? Whatever their dreams, I hope they achieved them.
So, peeps, keep on dreaming and working towards your dreams. Our future holds more promise than that which stretched before these soldiers. Let's take the future in both hands and aspire to dream!
Thanks for reading. Click here to go to more IWSG posts. Thanks so much to the hosts this week and to Alex J Cavanaugh, whose brainchild this meme is. And even though the month flies by too fast, I really love reading as many posts as I can.
Lovely to see another month flit by in the speed of light, isn't it? No, not really. Are you like me wondering how time can go so fast and you never quite catch up with all the things you have to do?So...when I was wondering what to share today, I found myself staring at a photograph. Not just any old photograph, but a very original sepia photograph taken in 1917 in Codforth, England, wherever that might be. It's part of an interactive activity at the State Library of Queensland's Distant Lines project.
Here we have a group of Aussie diggers, both young and old, who have survived Gallipoli and the Somme battles and are waiting for their next posting.
I couldn't help wondering--what dreams and aspirations did these soldiers have? According to the original text on the postcard, they were checking out this English village and exclaiming at the beauty of the churches. No doubt facing death gave churches an allure.
Australia was a young country, well, it still is, relatively speaking, and these soldiers would probably have been farmers, as most Australians were in the early 1900s. What hopes and dreams did they have for their return? Were they hoping the government would give them a larger selection to do their back-breaking farming work? Did they yearn to see their wives, their girlfriends, their parents? Whatever their dreams, I hope they achieved them.
So, peeps, keep on dreaming and working towards your dreams. Our future holds more promise than that which stretched before these soldiers. Let's take the future in both hands and aspire to dream!
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| More inspiring quotes here: dld.bz/dB9DQ |
Thanks for reading. Click here to go to more IWSG posts. Thanks so much to the hosts this week and to Alex J Cavanaugh, whose brainchild this meme is. And even though the month flies by too fast, I really love reading as many posts as I can.
- Do you believe in the power of dreams?
- Do you have reachable goals?
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| If your hopes and dreams include improving your writing, WEP has just the thing. Join our Settings challenge due to go live on August 19. |
52 comments:
Hi Denise,
Would we ever know if these men wanted more from their lives? What were their dreams? Interesting thought.
How many of them were able to return home alive...
People stop living and start existing when they forget how to dream.
Great picture, does make you wonder what they were thinking, and how many of them realized their dreams.
Goals are reachable, just have to put in the time, effort, and pay your dues with some failure along the way! Dreams are the lights that guide us.
Dreams are one side of the coin. The other side is the hard graft and perspiration needed to make them happen. The two have to go hand-in-hand to get anywhere.
I said a small prayer that they all returned home alive and quickly healed from the emotional trauma they'd endured. I hope they stayed in touch and became fast friends that grew old, exchanging tales that grew bolder with each telling. :-)
Seeing some of them were ridiculously young, I hope they returned and lived to a ripe old age.
Who wants to just exist, eh? I do hope they got out of there alive.
I believe like Yolanda says, goals are reachable, but I think it's our dreams that inform our goals. Yes, and there's hard work involved in reaching those goals, no question.
I like that Yolanda. 'Dreams are the lights that guide us' and I'd add, 'to our goals'. Love it.
My wish is that they returned home safely and lived long happy lives. Some did, some didn't, for sure.
Hi Denise - looks like it was near Salisbury, Wiltshire - which is where the main army bases are ... I'd expect that was the way it was in the WW1. I hope they got home safely ... and then had work ... The small village names will have changed or been absorbed into the city/town limits ... the churches will still be there ...
We all dream and we all aspire to succeed in our own small ways ... lovely photos ... and great resource to stimulate your own ideas ... cheers Hilary
I love looking at old pictures like this one, and thinking over what the story might be. :-)
I was hoping someone could tell me Hilary. I really hope there was a good ending for some/all of the soldiers.
Yes there's some great books written based on pictures like this.
I'm big on dreams and goal-setting. When we don't have something we are striving for in life, we're just drifting down a lazy river with no purpose.
If you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit it - is one of my favourite sayings.
Hi Denise
It's important to have goals. Mine kept me alive.
Nancy
As a writer I put many dreams down to use later in some story or other. I like to tap into things like that and say what if. I've come up with some pretty good shorts doing the old dreaming routine. :-)
Anna from Elements of Writing
I've always said you build your own reality. If you dream hard enough and work toward it, you will eventually succeed.
I'm always thinking about the future. When I look at old photos, I wonder about accomplishments of those pictured. They paved the way for others.
As Cinderella said, "a dream is a wish your heart makes."
I love old photographs like this one. They’re stories in themselves, capturing a moment in time. We’ve lost much of this with the advent of digital photography. Hope these young men returned home safe and that their dreams, whatever they may have been, were realized.
VR Barkowski
Lovely connection between that photo and hopes and dreams. I'll never forget Gallipoli. The trenches, the hundreds of cemeteries--Turk, Aussie, Brits, Yanks, French, Russian and more! All those dreams gone.
A very poignant, beautiful, and thoughtful post.
I certainly believe in hopes and dreams .... you know that. Plus I never give up... LOL.
So happy to have signed up for the new WEP Challenge!
Sometimes it feels like a battle to get a story down and perfected. Then the query trenches . . .
Excellent metaphor there Dx. Awesome picture. I love old photos, especially when they have writing on the back. So often they were sent in place of letters.
Hope you are enjoying being back home.
I am. Missing the French patisseries though. Glad you liked the metaphor.
So happy to see you signed up Michael. I know you have a lot going on. Any house yet?
When I tour historic homes, I always wonder how I would have lived in those days without a computer! I surely would have still felt driven to write...but it was a lot harder for women in earlier eras. Even in the 50s and 60s, female writers still struggled to be taken seriously. Someone posted something to my Facebook wall earlier this week from the 60s where women authors were advised to pose glamorously on a bed in order to sell their books!
I agree--time is going by way too quickly, and it's difficult to fit everything I need to do into my days. I always wonder about people's lives when I look at old photos, and think how fleeting life is. Their lives, reduced down to a handful of photos. Makes ya think!
I like to wonder those things too when I look at old photos. 100 years was not that long ago and yet it was.
Lol Stephanie. Now I know the inside goss I will make the best seller list!
Can't help thinking about it...
Life goes by in a flash for sure.
Ooh... 1917 was close to the time the Spanish Flu became an epidemic. Soldiers from European battle fields inadvertently brought it home when they returned. It killed 50-100 million around the world. Creepy to think one of those soldiers in the pic might have been carrying it.
Yes, let's all take the future into our hands! :D
It's always fascinating to look at old pictures and wonder about the people's lives, thoughts, and dreams.
Yes, let's all take the future into our hands! :D
It's always fascinating to look at old pictures and wonder about the people's lives, thoughts, and dreams.
Hi,
Thank you so much for these very encouraging words. I love your quote from Annie Dillard. Give it. Give it all. Give it now! Great.
Shalom,
Pat Garcia
Very creepy thought. So many died of the flu after surviving the horrors of war.
Yes Chrys. It certainly got me dreaming.
Shalom to you Pat. Glad you enjoyed my post.
What a cool photo! When I see things like that I wonder the same sorts of things. I am definitely a dreamer and a goal setter. I have big dreams, so I have to set goals to get there :)
Thank you for posting that...I am happy when people post anything about WW1. So long ago and yet it had a monumental impact on the world. The photos, the memories of all of those brave soldiers must be passed down to the new generations.
Well, enough of my preaching. :)
I took a long vacation from writing; so long, in fact, that I questioned whether I wanted to return to it. But I have, with a few less goals but a whole lot more peace of mind!
The cat sure keeps dreaming away and working day by day
Dreams and goals. So important.
Li, you have so many stories to tell. I hope you don't stop telling them.
He must or he wouldn't have so much to say.
Ah, wouldn't it be lovely to know what thoughts they had. Their dreams, fears, and hopes. Such a great photo.
I love those sepia photos.... so atmospheric...
To be quite honest, for me, the 'writing dream' (and I'm still figuring out exactly what mine is all about), is a fairly new one... and I would never have come this far if it wasn't for the IWSG.
Onward and upward, Denise!
It certainly would!
We'll work it out Michelle. Don't you worry! IWSG is so good. I'd love to have the time to read every post. Yes, onward and upward!
Let me explain further.
Poetry is my first love. I'm a flash fiction junkie. Yet I have a secret desire to write and publish a mystery/suspense/thriller story one day in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future... and I've recently discovered that I MAY want to dabble in some literary fiction...
Strange?
Go figure.
Got that off my chest... at least...
Thanks Denise.
Not strange. Many of us write in multiple genres. Otherwise why the pen names for Nora Roberts who also writes detective stories as Robb while her bread and butter is very sweet romance, then she also writes paranormal under her name. I have 5 novels on the go...all different styles. I have written literary fiction in flash fiction. I love it!!
Now I want us to encourage each other to get going on this. I'd be happy to read for you anytime.
Denise x
Awesome find,Denise. I love looking at faces in old photographs and imagining stories about them.
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