Three Pots of Tulips by Claude Monet

Three Pots of Tulips by Claude Monet

43 Years Ago on this Day, Mount St. Helens erupted.

 

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!"

Flowers are so beautiful. Learn their history. Learn a lot.

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” — Theodore Roethke

Flower and Fruits by Paul Cezanne

Flower and Fruits

Paul Cezanne

May 1st is sunny.

"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

 

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)

For Complainers

“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.”

                  ― Eckhart Tolle

P.S. I just wish people would quit complaining all the time.

Finally a Title

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.

Surviving......

You are like an undulating billow warmed by the sun."

               — Thomas Hardy

(And I am)

Hope

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”

― Emily Dickinson

The UnSelfie titled Jane Reading her Social Media Feeds on Friday while still in her pajamas.

 

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."

Loud Like Love by Placebo

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

Happy Easter

 

EASTER is about HOPE.

Happy Easter from Jane

Six gregorian chants for Easter night

Vexilla Regis (Hymnus)
Exsultet (Praeconium Paschale)
Haec Dies (Alleluia - Antiphona)
Victimae Paschali Laudes (Sequentia)
Exsultemus et Laetemur (Cantus Responsorialis)
Benedicamus Domino, Alleluia (Ad Dimittendum Populum)

Seeing the world from another view outside your own is essential for the lover, artist, politican.

“You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist, or a good politician without this capacity …” 

                                 — Julian Barnes

SPRING 2023

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

Why fossil fuels are hanging around.

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.

I've only fallen in love a few times in my life.

“The mind I love must have wild places.” 

                                ― Katherine Mansfield

(Not likely to find this again. I found it once and lost it, mourned it, let it go. But I would like it again, at least believe it could happen. I tend to live in possibilities. Even if they are small. Must be able to make me laugh.)

Never has anything been more true now in our 21st century culture than these words.

“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full." —Thomas Merton

March 2023

Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell—

              — Emily Dickinson