CATS ON WHEELS

 Natalia Grinchenco created a whimsical, propellar driven village for cats complete with some slightly weird looking potted shrubs or balloons. I'm not sure which really. They're either strings or somebody added something really weird to the watering cans.

Cats on the roofs. Cats on what I guess are sidewalks or something wide enough for a cat to sit on. Cats on the framework for the wheels that don't match. There's even a cat in the back peeking under the side. And one way up top getting ready to pounce or just waving its tail in the air. 

I'm currently going six ways from Sunday. Actually that also seems to be the number of books I'm reading. And I can keep it straight. Most of the time.

SPRING RAINBOW.

 

Photographer is Boyd Randy Miller. The rainbow is very faint but it is there. Just off Yquina Head north of Newport, Oregon. This was his title. Ocean is fairly peadeful in this shot.

OPEN YOUR EYES

 Image created by Wyoming Equity. Native Americans would probably really understand this image.

You will have to read carefully. No punctuaiton. Too many believe they know how Creation should work better than the Creator. Listen to the Song. Damce a little. Dance a lot. Marvel at the endless variety of colors, sounds, images. Open up. Sure it's scary; that's what makes it fun.

an open poem to a closed mind

******

when you hate

someone

because they are

different than you

then you are unknowingly hating on

the very Architect of Creation itself

to rage against a color

you have never seen before

because its exotic

tincture offends

your orthodox eyes

suggests that you believe

the Divine Artist is worried

about what you think

did the first burst of

cosmic energy care

about its critics when

it began to paint life

across the constantly

unfolding canvas of

the known universe?

hell no

it just wildly created

this delicate masterpiece

of endless fire, orchestrated chaos

and a trillion or so wobbling worlds

like a Michelangelo made out of an

army of swarming angels

every inch of everything

that exists is a unique piece

of abstract splatter art

so, if God was so

unrestrained when

it came to creating

the stretching forever

kingdom of stars

it makes sense

that God was even

more uninhibited when

it came to how we

were made

each of us are a wow sculpture of

unbridled never-seen-before genius

who are you

to decide how

The Everlasting Potter

molds their art?

get over your fear

of people who

look

live

pray

love

believe

differently than you do

because the more you hide

from what is foreign to you

the more you hide from

the miracle of this existence

you only get to ride this

skin and bone rollercoaster

for so long

quit closing your eyes

stare into the swirl

because that’s where God’s

most profound artwork is

hurry up

open your eyes

you’re missing it

open your eyes

hurry up

and once you do

you will see it

the relentless power

of creation

oh, and how you’ll gasp

when you finally see it

~ john roedel

YOU MIGHT BE LIVING IN OREGON

 Or know someone who does. Personal observations are in bold. 

From my old Street Atlas program. The blue roads are freeways, the red lines state roads. There are some light blue county roads. Most of are either closed during the winter or posted be damn careful. A lot of maps don't show the logging/forest service roads. It can be easy to get lost during bad weather. 

THIS IS WHAT JEFF FOXWORTHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT ‘LIVING IN OREGON’…….


If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you live in Oregon.

If you’ve worn shorts, sandals and a parka at the same time, you live in Oregon.

If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Oregon.

If you measure distance in hours, you live in Oregon. (It's not so bad in the valley. However miles doesn't always compute to time. The roads to and along the coast are curvy. The roads east of the Cascades are straighter but there are a lot of miles between where you've been and where you want to be. And if you have a touchy bladder, you will also know where all the rest stops are. Note: it's eighty miles from Boardman to the next rest area. Be sure to make a pit stop.)

If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Oregon.

If you switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ and back again in the same day, you live in Oregon.

If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both doors unlocked, you live in Oregon.

If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you live in Central, Southern or Eastern Oregon. (Also the same sections of Washington State.)

If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over 2 layers of clothes or under a raincoat, you live in Oregon.

If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow and ice, you live in Oregon.

If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction, you live in Oregon.

If you feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash, you live in Oregon.

If you know more than 10 ways to order coffee, you live in Oregon.

If you know more people who own boats than air conditioners, you live in Oregon.

If you stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal, you live in Oregon.

If you believe that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is not a real mountain, you live in Oregon. (the Rockies also have mountains with snow so yup, they're real.)

If you can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Dutch Bros., you live in Oregon. (That’s coffee, folks)

If you know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon, you live in Oregon. (Especially if you know that fish are being discussed without salmon added to the description)

If you know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Clatskanie, Issaquah, Oregon, Umpqua, Yakima and Willamette, you live in Oregon.

If you consider swimming an indoor sport, you live in Oregon.

If you know that Boring is a city and not just a feeling, you live in Oregon.

If you can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food, you live in Oregon.

If you never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho, you live in Oregon. (Actually after watching episodes of So You Think You'd Survive I'd say matches, poncho, whistle, compass, decent knife, water, ace bandage and a walking stick. Ok so  you'll need a small back pack. Best laid plans and all that.)

If you have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain, you live in Oregon.

If you think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists, you live in Oregon.

If you buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time, you live in Oregon.

If you actually understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends (Oregonians or otherwise), you live or have lived in Oregon.

 

MEMORIES

 

Daffodils and Easter eggs and no snow. It rained/snowed yesterday but it didn't stick around. 

Haven't thought about this in years. Our Easter eggs weren't fancy. There were little kits with color tablets and little wax crayon you could use to draw on the egg. 

We usually ended up using food coloring. The box came with directions. So many drops of red, so many drops of blue. We'd make our own green, our own purple. Sometimes I think more color got on my little sisters than got on the eggs. That was part of the fun. Easter baskets were do it yourself and ran to jelly beans and those foil covered Hershey chocolate eggs along with a chocolate Easter bunny for my sisters. And maybe some of those gold foil covered chocolate coins. Easter, Halloween and Christmas those were the candy times pretty much. 

We never made it to church that Sunday. The Methodist church in Oakridge was so "Protestant" that in my memory we didn't do Advent and we didn't do Lent. I was in college reading Rumer Goden's In This House of Brede before I even heard of liturgy. The liturgy: the great yearly retelling of atory from the Nativity to Easter. 

Nope, Easter was one of the times everyone got together at grandma and grandpa's. Everyone who lived within driving distance of Eugene anyway. One Sunday grandpa was bound and determined to use that electric knife to carve that ham. I seem to remember that mom handed him the carving knife with a "the food is still hot, let's go." He went. 

Funny I haven't remembered that in years. Also that we got together for family because, to be honest, grandma wasn't that great a cook. Perhaps it wasn't that she was a bad cook; she just had trouble getting everything done at the same time. I don't know how mom turned out cooking the way she did unless it was a born in the bone talent. 

Well, this entry certainly went in another direction. 

Gone With the Tide

Ephemeral as a sand painting or a sand mandala. I guess you could caall this a sand etching on the beach at Seal Rock on the Oregon coast. Orig.inal image is on Oregon Coast Photography on FB. I believe Karen Chalmers is the photographer

Seal Rock is basically a wide spot on the highway. The rock outcroppings extend about two miles north towards Newport. The owl carved into the sand is a soon to be gone with the tide example of Oregon Beach Sand Art. I've seen shots of dozens of labyriths but few as elaborate as this wise old owl. Here now. Gone with the high tide, only a memory with the low tide.

Darn the brain is not working smoothly today.  But how odd. When I opened this entry to check the results my eyes almost ignored the sand art and were pulled to the horizon. Not much to see. Just the  almost emdless sea.

SEASONS IN OREGON

Yeah, we're in third winter right now. Last week we had temps in the seventies. Might make it to sixty on Easter Sunday. We are even being threatened with snow showers tonight. Portland got buried this weekend. Whoever made this left out Construction Season. That season basically overlaps everything from third winter to the end of fall. If there is a chance it will be dry you will run into "one lane only for x number of miles." 

Could be worse. Could be living in Tornado Alley. Now that is a scary place to be right now. 

 

LEAVE THEM A FLOWER

 This song came out in the early seventies. Before the EPA was created. Back when the Cuyahogo river in Ohio caught fire every few years. The river was so polluted it was effectively dead.

A small reservoir near Springfield is has a sign that basically says "go ahead and catch the fish just don't eat them." Especially if you are a child or an expectant mother. The run off from a failed mine makes it to the lake and contaminates it with goodies like mercury. 

So at the very least Leave Them A Flower. And everything else you can. 

I speak on behalf of the next generation
our sons and our daughters, their children to come
What will you leave them for their recreation
An oil slick, a pylon, an industrial slum

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

You plunder and pillage, you tear and you tunnel
Trees lying toppled, roots finger the sky
Building a land for machines and computers
In the name of progress the farms have to die

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

Fish in the ocean polluted and poisoned
The sand on the beaches stinking and black
And you with your tankers, your banks and investments
Say, Never worry, the birds will come back

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

When the last flower has dropped its last petal
When the last concrete is finally laid
The moon will shine cold on a nightmarish landscape
Your gift to your children, this world that you made

        Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

Author Willie Whyton. version I know covered by Ed Ames

NO ROOM IN THE INN

 Well I can't make up my mind so here are some cats and dogs. Too bad there's no room for dad in the bed. And mom doesn't seem to mind. 

Been working on a book about the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl back in '86. Incredobly dense. And very, very scary. 

THE SINGER AND THE SONG

The sun is shining. The birds are singing. And I have all the ambition of a fire cracker dumped in a pail of water. So I went searching though some old entries and found this. 

This picture was posted on my FB page through a link with Spiritual Ecology's page. I like to think my Singer might look a little like this. This piece was loosely inspired by the hymn God of the Sparrow God of the Whale.* Very loosely. Because when I tried to rework it into prose this was the result. And I'm not entirely sure I was working alone. This happens sometimes and I've learned to just go with it when it happens. Actually it happens a lot. I've never been sure that I wrote some of my best (in my opinion) work all by myself. 

You are the Singer and all of Creation is the Song. When You sang the Song of Creation there was a part for twittering sparrows and for the songs of the great whales. There was a line for the apple trees and another for the dogwoods. Towering oaks can sing a duet with daylilies. Redwoods may provide harmony with the songs of spruce and pine. Rippling brooks provide the soprano to the bass of waves crashing against the basalt headlands of the Northwest. And oh, the songs of the stars. Those dancing stars are a symphony by themselves. As they should be since the elements that built the world were born in the hearts of blazing suns.

You sang a living world into being. But we are reminded that life means change and once power is unleashed we may not be able to stand against the storm. Rolling fields today may play hosts to earthquakes tomorrow. Skies that are peaceful and blue today may be filled with rain, sleet or snow next week. The spring breezes that filled the air with the whisper of pine branches yesterday may be replaced by a tempest that rips the branches from their trunks when winter blizzards howl. Protect us all, from sparrows to whales when the winds rage and the earth shakes.

Your Song has verses not only for the rich, but for the poor. For the hungry as well as for those who are filled. Help us to care for those who need it. Help us to be thankful for what we have. For a song filled with harmony, not discord.

Help us to see a neighbor in an enemy. Help us to see that swords can be plowshares and lances can be made into pruning hooks. Help us to realize that love must replace anger in our hearts before it consumes us and Peace is more than just a word we use when "we're not shooting, shouting or trying to put anyone down right now."

*Number 307 in the Episcopal Hymnbook BTW.