Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything.
It was 43 years ago, May 18, 1980 that Mount St. Helens blew its side out and killed at least 57 people. Dick Lasher was not one of them. If he had rounded the ridge not far ahead of him, he would have been caught in a wave of heat and ash and died. Thinking he was going to die, he took this photo of his red hatchback Pinto and motorcycle. It is an iconic shot. Lasher then turned around and drove, blinded most of the time by ash until he escaped the blast. Ironically he went back a few times trying to get more photos until he was arrested and jailed to protect him from harm. I imagine an event like this is overwhelming and really addictive. Robert Landsburg, a freelance photographer from Portland who often took photos of the volcano, was not so lucky. When he realized he was going to die, he rolled his film back up, put it in its case, then backpack, and finally on the backseat of his car where he laid on top of it to protect the photos he had taken of the blast. Seventeen days later, Landsburg was found in his car. He had died instantly in the pyroclastic cloud that engulfed the car and him. His film survived and has been published. David Johnston, a volcanologist, also died that May morning, after sending this message,"Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!"
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” — Theodore Roethke
"Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness."
— Albert Camus
Ballerina rose, April 30, 2023
The last day of a very wet and cool April.
(Note: The sunlight was perfect for the camera. I didn't have to do anything to this photo. I love pink and green)
“When you live through the mind-made self comprised of thought and emotion that is the ego, the basis for your identity is precarious because thought and emotion are by their very nature ephemeral, fleeting. So every ego is continuously struggling for survival, trying to protect and enlarge itself. To uphold the I-thought, it needs the opposite thought of "the other." The conceptual "I" cannot survive without the conceptual "other." The others are most other when I see them as my enemies. At one end of the scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" At the other end of the scale, there is physical violence between individuals and warfare between nations. In the Bible, Jesus' question remains unanswered, but the answer is, of course: Because when I criticize or condemn another, it makes me feel bigger, superior.”
―
I named my WIP today. It's final. And I am smiling. I never had a proper name for it all these years. I just borrowed names occasionally for saving the files or to keep myself going. Once I thought I had one, but it was too weird. Naming a novel is important for an author. It can be changed by the publisher, but at some point, the author as to see it as "the title." It's a milestone for me. I just need Time. It's going to be finished if I have Time. I see it. All of it. The entire story. Grinning from ear to ear here. These moments are rare in big projects. 5 words. Each three letters.
Haylee and I have been laughing at other suggested titles. Haylee is the BFF. John would have called this "My Wife every single morning. Step back."
For all of our youth We have craved them Their beauty and their truth So we name them And somehow they pull us through We have craved them For all of our youth
— from the song, Loud Like Love written by Brian Molko of Placebo
Ernest H Shepard
Daffodowndilly’
She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour
“Winter is dead.”
— A.A.Milne
Concrete, Plastic, ammonia, and steel are all fossil fuel things. Every road, every bridge, every building, every single garden that uses fertilizer, every hospital and nearly everything in that hospital, every car of any kind, gas or electric, every utensil in the kitchen, pots and pans, your kitchen mop, FOOD, guitars, every single piece of furniture, every sewer and sewage system, your driveway, the road to the grocery store and pharmacy, and the list is almost countless. All fossil fuel based. 1/3 of all vegetables and fruits feeding every European nation is made from one gigantic collection of greenhouses in Spain which uses fossil fuel to produce those foods in more than a dozen ways. My computer, your computer, your phone case, my lamps, my stapler, the picture frames that hold my grandchildren's photos, FOOD, my glasses, your glasses, your camera cases, sewing machines, flash drives, albums, CDs, many paints, FOOD, parts of airplanes and their fuels, your favorite gel pen, lots of jewelry, all that is made with fossil fuels and yes, the list is practically countless. The four pillars of civilization is concrete, plastic, ammonia, and steel, says every engineer who has lived since WWI and let's not even talk about the space industry and the military.
Lastly ENERGY, that thing you cannot see but it gives you warmth in the winter, cools the summers, fuels the cars, and makes light. It does so much more. One can hardly imagine what it does.
When they say getting rid of fossil fuels is "gigantic" and "unprecedented," THEY MEAN IT. And it will change the world. And yes, It will not be our world. Not all fossil fuels will go at one time. We need them.
But sooner or later all nonessential fossil fuel things will disappear.
Because none of the above is sustainable as it is. Someone right this very moment is worried about those chips in your phones.
And that is our dilemma that hardworking people are trying to resolve. The projected world population on Jan. 1, 2023, 7,942,645,086.
