About 10 days ago, I lost my blue, hard-shell camera bag with my name in black letters on the front. The last time I remember seeing it was in my car just before I headed east down U.S. 78 while stopping in at various places to shoot photographs. I reached my destination and found my camera but no bag. It had three or four three SD cards in it that are holding in suspension several cherished photographs.

I am upset with myself for not having had them developed. Now I am missing what would have been some great hard-copy remembrances of the wonderful times I had with family members and friends. Well, at least the memories are suspended in my mind, and, perhaps there is something to be said for this natural way of remembering good times and great people.

The modern way of enjoying memories is to place them on social networks so as to share them with a wider audience, which is not quite being in suspension but neither is it the definition of what I have come to think of as a photograph – that is a hard-copy version.

Of course, the worst way of suspending past memories is the way I have stored thousands of family photographs – jumbled and stacked in plastic boxes in the closet.

My haphazard treatment of photographs is similar to the way I treat the plethora of creative ideas I have from time to time that never seem to go anywhere. They all hang in suspension like the photographs on my SD cards.

There is frustration in suspense, but there is also hope. Anything that is suspended needs resolution. What must be realized is that all suspended “things” need process, which usually leads to resolution. This idea helps me relax my expectations for achievement.

It is easy to see process and resolution in Oxford. Like most of you, my hopes for shopping at Publix grocery store have hung suspended for several months. On the other hand, just this week, I saw the progress at the renovation of the Oxford Civic Center, and the Performing Arts Center is going up at a rapid pace. The best part of these latter two projects is that they are moving ahead rapidly and will not require the same patience that we all have had to develop while waiting for Publix. (I have heard, by the way, that construction at the Oxford Commons, where Public is being built, is moving ahead now.)

Patience is the frustrating part of experiencing suspended ideas, projects, goals, dreams, etc. Patience is also the best part of experiencing suspense, as it leads to resolution.

So, the quality of patience incorporates both frustration and hope. Therefore, I choose hope over frustration. I will find that camera bag. I will have the time someday to follow through on my creative ideas, and I will do something useful with disorganized photographs – or leave the last item for my kids to do after I am gone. If the cost of gasoline keeps going up, that may be their only inheritance.

Also, we will get to use the great new facilities that will be open for use before we know it.

Call Sherry at 256-235-3533 or email to skughn@oxfordsun.com.