Apologies

This has not been a month for keeping my resolution to post at least 10 items. You'd think that would be easy right? Especially with a blog that seems to do little more than post photographs. So for this lapse in content, I apologize.

Can we be honest here? For awhile now I have had the thought of giving up the blog. I believe that when it comes to Disney content, there are a lot of great sites. Sites that are providing readers with a wide variety of content; old and new, nostalgic and forward looking. I have often thought would this little endeavor be missed? My answer has usually been, "probably not."

This month has provided a great deal of distractions; some important, others not. There are things around the house that need tending to, other goals in life that need to be fleshed out and addressed and then, there are times when you simply come home from a busy day at work and not want to do anything. And I have had a few of those lately.

But you know, as these days of May have progressed I have decided that I really don't want to give up the blog. Although my output is minimal, not cutting edge and tends not to shed light on new and exciting things, it does, from time to time amuse. A photograph may take you away for just a moment from whatever your day is and cause you to smile. It may ask you to stop and think that there is not a whole lot on this earth that is more important than family and the time we have with them and give to them. That are blogs that I read that challenge me to dream; to ask myself, "What is my dream?" Perhaps The Disney Obsession has caused you to dream - to look beyond today.

I realize that I repeat myself at times and I know I have mentioned this previously. But, as I continue with The Disney Obsession you may find me writing about other things from time to time. I don't feel that I can stop posting (deep down I'd come to miss it) but I know that to continue means a change here and there. It is all part of the search for that dream that moves me forward. The blog may more closely resemble its tagline, "celebrating the love of life with a little obsession behavior towards disney thrown in." It may become more of a personal blog, but still contain that Disney passion that perhaps prompted 82 of you to follow the blog. For you, and for me, I promise there will still a great deal of Disney. But as my days continue I know I have so much more to explore.

We all are on a journey and we often encounter twists and turns on the paths we have taken. There is the occasional fork that prompts us to choose one direction over another. And all the while, we constantly need to look at where we have been and think of where we may be headed. We have to ask, "What it is the next thing?" I have a few ideas.

It is an often overused cliche, but it remains true, "keep moving forward".

A Blast From the Past: The Adventurer's Club

Every now and then I take a notion to plug in the flatbed scanner and scan old photographs from the pre-digital age. This is often a very slow process for me because it affords me many opportunities to reflect on days gone by. As it relates to Disney, I had one of those opportunities recently.

My first trip to Walt Disney World was in March of 1972. I was in the ninth grade. From that time several years passed before I would find myself back in the World. I wrote about that first return trip on October 13, 2007. Since then I have made more trips than I can accurately count, but there were some of those early trips that were taken with my friends Bill and Leigh Ann Staley. These were great trips! I was exploring a whole new world. Somehow we managed to find our way to the Adventurer's Club almost nightly during these holidays.

Every now and then The Disney Obsession will share some old photographs with you; some of my Blast from the Past. It will not always be Disney oriented, but it will be meaningful to some extent. At least it gives me a moment to pause and look back on what got me to where I am and share a bit of that with you. But for now, here are three scans of some early days in The Adventurer's Club. Kungaloosh!

... with Marcel

... with Pamelia Perkins, Club President

... with The Maid

A fun time was had by all!

More to follow...

5 Days in October

For five days in October, I didn't go to work. I didn't go to the beach. I didn't take my wife on a weekend getaway to an old grand hotel somewhere. I didn't go to Walt Disney World. And I must confess that I very glad I didn't do any of those things.

I had heard about how people will take time off from work and do nothing but stay home. It was foreign concept to me. I believe it is called a staycation. I have long held that time away from work was time that must be spent going somewhere or doing something. To take vacation from work and stay home seemed, somehow, wrong. We work so that we can do. At least that is how it has been for me these past few years; work hard, save money, and then go.

For these 5 day is October, I am on staycation! Merriam-Webster defines staycation as "a vacation spent at home or nearby" and Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) has a rather nice article including etymology of the word along with some of the benefits and risks of a staycation.

Yes, I am on staycation and I am learning that it is okay to take time off just for yourself. It is okay to take time to be sleep in, to be lazy, to read for the fun of it, to listen to music, and to catch up on movies. To not keep to a schedule has been my schedule these 5 days in October. I started by thinking there were some things I'd take care, things like fixing the back gate, straightening up the garage, organizing some video, try some new recipes, and so forth. But as these days have come and gone, these things seemed less important to me than they were this time last week. I have been content to simply look out the window and enjoy a beautiful Fall afternoon, or to take a nap on the sofa with the dog.

These 5 days in October will come to an end this evening and I am happy to say that I have only thought of not being in Walt Disney World once. And when that thought occurred, I congratulated myself for not having any regrets for not having gone. It is the same with the beach. Yes, I could have been just as lazy watching the surf roll in, but being lazy at home doesn't carry an extra cost.

Let me wrap up by saying two things.

First, for all who think I my obsession has lapsed, fear not. I have a week planned following Christmas and I will celebrate the arrival of the New Year at Epcot! And... Mrs. Doc and I may just hop in the car and drive down, spend a Saturday at the International Food & Wine Festival, then drive home. So the obsession continues.

Second, I hope that from time to time I write something here that can be an encouragement. We all live busy lives. We have families. We have our work and perhaps, most importantly, we have our hopes and our dreams that drive us; sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I work harder and longer because I am pursuing a dream just as many of you are. But amid all this, let me encourage all of us to, from time to time, stop. Simply stop. Stop to enjoy the time you have in the world around you at this moment. We all work and hope for tomorrow, but sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy today.

So what have I learned during these 5 days in October? Work hard - rest well.

More to follow...

The Women In My Life

When I was a child going the movie theater was a big deal. I was seven years old in 1964 and there was a new Disney film out. My dad stayed home with my baby sister and my mom took me to the movie. The movie was Mary Poppins.

I wouldn’t say that I developed a boyhood crush for Mary Poppins, or for Julie Andrews. No, that honor was reserved for Vera Ellen. But the character of Mary Poppins was magical. What child would not want a nanny, or a babysitter, who could take you on adventures through a chalk pavement drawing, or serve tea from a tea setting floating near the ceiling. With her charming, but firm disposition, her practically perfect ways and a spoon full of sugar, she managed to transform the Banks children, the Banks household and finally, Mr. Banks himself.

As for Dame Andrews, Mary Poppins was the first in a long line of film successes. Walt Disney was so taken by her performance as Guinervere in the Lerner and Lowe production of Camelot, that he waited until after the birth of her daughter to begin filming. Her performance earned her the 1964 Academy Award for Best Actress. This was only the second time in Academy history that an actress was awarded for their first motion picture role. It happened previously with Shirley Booth in Come Back Little Sheba. It has occurred since with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl and Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Something else forever linked to the success of Mary Poppins, is the musical score. In the years since the film opened, two songs continue to hold a special place in my memory. Feed the Birds is quite simply one of the greatest songs ever written. The Sherman Brothers crafted a song with a simple, yet profound, message. With 146 words they expressed this truth: it doesn’t take much effort to be kind and to genuinely care for another person. Add to that the image of Jane Darwell sitting at the foot of the stairs of the majestic St. Paul’s Cathedral, spreading her love, mixed with a bit of seed, and you have a beautiful moment in film.

The other song is A Man Has Dreams. The opening two lines could very well serve as an anthem to every man who ever dared to dream.

“A man has dreams of walking with giants

To carve his niche in the edifice of time.”

What man hasn’t dreamt of becoming something more than they are. I have dreamed and continue to dream. But I do so with the understanding that it is matters not what I become, if along the way, I lose the one’s I care most about.

I aspired to greatness and found it. It is, for me, to be a good husband and son, a good father and grandfather, a good brother and uncle, a good man. I have had my whole life to understand that this is who I am and to become perfectly content in that understanding. But, looking back over all these years, I can look to a time when I was seven and an English nanny came into my life and taught me a few things about what it means to be good.

Thank you Mary Poppins.

Disney World After Dark: A Mountain

A long time ago when I was a child, I remember a story titled, "The Boy and The Moon." I don't remember much about the story, except that in it a little boy would set and cry at the moon, saying, "The moon, the moon, I want the moon." He would say this over and over, and would plead with his father to give him the moon. At the end of the story the father granted the child's wish and gave it to him and boy went and lived on the moon. The boy was so happy. But, of course, the father was sad. From then on the father would go out each night and look at the moon and visit with his son. Even though he was sad, he was happy too, because he knew that his son was happy.

That is the story as best as I can remember it. I have searched for a copy for years now. I knew it, not from a book, but from a 78 rpm record that played on our family console stereo. The record has long since dissappeared. Knowing that "Google is our friend" I have searched there. Nothing. I had hoped it may have been one of Aesop's Fables, but it is not. Not that I have found at any rate.

So, my search for the story continues.

This photo of the moon over Expedition Everest reminds me of this story and my memory of it. I hope it may inspire some memory from your childhood.

More to follow...

We've Gathered Here Tonight...

This will, I am sure, be the first of many posts that will in some way or another allude to my MouseFest experience. And it has taken me to this point to write the first word due to two reasons. First, the trip was filled with so much activity, occasions to be with friends and make new friends that it is hard to know exactly where to start. Second, and more to the point, is how quickly real life takes over once you leave home. All this and catching a severe cold this past Wednesday hasn’t helped matters.

Plus. Well, the list of reasons could go on and on.

I do want to write something though just to begin the process of telling my MouseFest adventure. For this first retelling I wish to highlight the friendships celebrated. Yes, I know, I sound like a broken record, but it is true. And while MouseFest can mean many things to many people, it has come to mean friendship for me. In truth, that is a lot of what Disney has come to mean to me. So, this past weekend was an opportunity to be with friends; to laugh, to eat, to sing, to share, and on some occasions to experience.

For me a measure of true friendship can be found when you can spend time with a person without saying a word and feel that it is time well spent. I have known this depth of friendship on a few occasions in my life. I like to think that the friendships I have made and will continue to make will be of this caliber. While time and distance separate each of us physically, it does not separate our hearts from each other. In truth, I think the distance enhances the friendship as it causes us to work hard for something that is worth having.

Let’s be honest, it is easy to be friends at the happiest place on earth. The real test comes when we’re away from home, working at our jobs, raising our families, dreaming our dreams, and pulling together the money we need for the next trip. It is in these times that our posts, our emails, our text messages, our “writings on the wall”, and our phone calls move our friendships to a more appreciative level.

Though our times together increase the depth of our relationships, there are not many moments of silence when friends gather in The World. But, there are moments approaching silence, such as when a group of friends gathered “around the fire” on Saturday night in Epcot. We gathered to watch a show that many of us have seen more times than we can count. Yet, for me, this night was special. In those few moments It was enough to be present, to be silent and to experience the moment with your best friends.

That moment was my MouseFest. While I came away with many wonderful memories, none will compare to that.

“Good evening and welcome. We’ve gathered here tonight around the fire as people of all lands have gathered for thousands and thousands of years before us to share the light and to share the story; an amazing story as old as time itself but still being written. And though each of us has our own individual story to tell a true adventure emerges when we bring them all together as one. I hope you enjoy our story tonight, Reflections of Earth.”

I Remember

Today is one of those days that you look back on and know what you were doing when. It is like remembering where you were or what you were doing when you learned that Kennedy had been assasinated, or that the Challenger exploded, or that John Lennon has been killed. Today, most all of us can recall that Tuesday in September 2001 and all the emotions that went with it.

Today we will bring up those memories once again and we will pause in the hurried pace of our lives and think about the tragedy of that morning. For some it is a very personal tragedy whle for others we are a part of the national tragedy. But we all think back to that time if only for a moment.

For my wife and I, we were celebrating our 10th anniversary by giving ourselves a Caribbean cruise followed by a few days in the parks. That morning the ship's alarm bell sounded and the Captain came over the cabin speakers telling us what was happening. For us, and for most everyone else on that ship, the cruise was over. Yes, we were still at sea, but the things one associates with a cruise were over. Instead, a numbness settled on the ship as we all gathered around televisions, emailed loved ones for information and supported each through memorial services held on board.

The next day we were at sea headed back to Port Canaveral and by Thursday morning we were making our way, through the rain, to Walt Disney World.

There was a tropical storm parked just off the coast and it rained hard that night. The next morning we were going to Epcot, but not before being evacuated from Fort Wilderness Campground. The amount of rain brought the possibility of flooding. So after moving into Port Orleans Riverside, we made it into a nearly deserted park. We were in the World Showcase near the American Adventure when the entire park paused to remember those who were lost on Tuesday. That day, even the park was sad.

It is hard to quantify how much someone loses in events of this magnitude. Some people suffered the most profound forms of tragedy. Me, I was blessed in that I did not loose a family member or a friend that day. But I do feel that I lost a bit of my innocense, as I believe many of us did. We faced a harsh reality that morning and left a little of ourselves behind in the process.

The events of that week were some of the saddest I had ever experienced or wish to experience. All the magic in the world could not bring a smile or replace a compelling need to be with family and friends. So, my wife and I walked out of the park, got in our car and drove home to Tennessee.

I write these things simply to say, I remember.

Reflections of Earth

We know that our heroes, the Imagineers, delight in placing hidden treasures around the world. It’s a game. They hide them, we find them. The most popular is the Hidden Mickey. But there are others. The Hidden Baloo or the Hidden Jafar are just a few examples.

Now, how about a Hidden Spaceship Earth? How would you hide something that large? I don’t know. Is there such a thing as a Hidden SSE that I have missed? It is possible I suppose.

This isn’t a Hidden SSE, but it is a photo of the reflection of Spaceship Earth.

Um. It sounds as though I may have a project for my September trip; take reflective photos of Spaceship Earth. The things we can come up with to help us justify going to Walt Disney World. As if joining friends for dinner or celebrating the Final Hoopla are not enough.
If you have a photograph of a “Reflective SSE” or another reflective photo that you would like to share, send it along and become a part of The Obsession.