FLAMING SUNSET

 Not sure where this picture was taken. Some posters share the shot but not where it happened. Lightning strike at sunset. Truly fire in the sky. Don't see any skyscrapers for what it's worth. 

FIRE IN THE SKY

Picture  credit MaryBeth Kaczinsky for Astronomy Picture of the Day. When the going gets tough down here I go looking for the stars. 

The Milky Way above the Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Best theory is this is a magma intrusion that didn't make it to the surface to become a volcano. The Milky Way fires in the sky. Spectacular as hell.

TAKE TIME TO BREATH

 I think we could all use a bit of forest right now. If you really listen you can hear the trees breathing. And then we pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and keep putting one foot ahead of the other. 

APUN MY WORD

 A bit of a smile for this day. A cat dictionary

EPITAPH

As usual I went looking for one thing and found another. Now this is a poem but I couldn't match the formatting. Actually I want folks to have a party. Have fun, tell lies, and when it's time (and you can't get to the coast) wait for a strong east wind and send me west on it. 

 EPITAPH  by Merritt Malloy

When I die give what's left of me away to children and old men who wait to die.

And if you need to cry, cry for your brother walking the street beside you.and when you need me, put your arms around anyone and give them what you need to give to me. 

I want to leave you something, Something better than words or sounds.

Look for me in the people I've known or loved, and if you can't give me away, at least let me live on in your eyes and not your mind. 

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands, by letting bodies touch bodies, And by letting go of children who need to be free.

Love doesn't die, people do. So, when all that's left of me is love, give me away. 

SLEEPY BUMBLE

 While I'm trying to sort out what passes for my brains these days a sleepy bumble bee in a rhododendron blossom courtesy of Elizabeth McCallum over in Flora and Fauna of Oregon page on FB.  This is one of the reasons I stay. The rhodie blossoms are pretty cool too. 

YELLOW STRIPEY THINGS

 That's how the poster on Neil DeGrasse Tyson labeled the picture.

My dad, the logger, had a story about yellow jackets and young guys who were new to the woods and the job. It was summer in the woods and the yellow jackets were trying to hijack the guy's lunches. Newbie got tired of it and headed for the nest with an ax. Basically it was "if you are planning to do what we think you are planning to do let us get in the crew bus first. (crew bus usually known as a "crummy.") Actually I believe the sentence was a lot shorter and probably involved a damn fool and SOB. Didn't take the new guy long to figure out that kncking down the wasp's nest wasn't the best idea he'd had that morning. 

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.