Musings

I give this seasonal decoration the Most Likely to be Homemade of everything I saw, but I suspect that it isn’t. Traditions do mutate, but I never would have guessed Halloween would have gone from the pagan All Hallows‘ Eve (meaning Saints‘ Eve) to this, the holiday of plastic yard ornaments and gewgaws, now including giant black spiders with fur in their joints.

Also, here’s a gorgeous flower, a camellia, surely both real and not the least bit scary, eerie, or witchy.

Posted at 8:43 PM | Comments Off on See any Saints?

Earlier it was college football time (in this half of the continent), and of all unexpected results to see: MSU beat Mich. Go Green. We didn’t watch; the score just flipped by.

Also, Georgia beat Florida (bound to happen).

Now, it’s baseball time. Third inning, with the other team in the lead 1–0. Nowhere near the end of the game. Or the series.

Posted at 9:12 PM | 1 Comment »

The election is Tuesday, and today is the last day, according to the city website, to drop your absentee ballot in the box. Interestingly, the ballot envelope indicated we could do that on election day. We chose to believe today at 7pm was the real deadline, thank you Republicans.

We looked at the list of drop-off locations. For the whole of Atlanta, and this is a sprawly city, there were about eight. The Guru chose the nearest location, up in Buckhead perhaps six miles away. Again, thank you, Republicans.

So we slogged through rain and traffic, past construction areas occupying a lane here and there to further obstruct the flow of vehicles, and avoided the latest out-of-service bridge from a vandal’s fire beneath (as I recall). And now we are once again good citizens.

Posted at 6:57 PM | Comments Off on We voted

I’ve been watching these camellia blooms, thinking I should snap a few pictures, then, today, with the raindrop-gems, I was compelled to.

Posted at 8:11 PM | Comments Off on Dragooned by beauty

I have been noticing the daylight becoming shorter. Also, I found backlighting beauty.

Posted at 9:31 PM | Comments Off on Pulchritudinous thorns

I think I’ve noticed this before. Still, in this light and with all the bright green growth from this season, the corner 2-and-3 frames look fantastic.

Made a run to Little A-Town to see the Gray Sisters and their people. Lots of laughs and good times. En route home, we heard the first half hour of Game 1 of the World Series. Braves did darned well in the first inning.

Posted at 9:18 PM | 2 Comments »

I’m guessing this is a Stereum species. They prefer deadwood, and this is on a decomposing stump. They prefer oaks, and the stump is oak-wood.

Autocorrect wants it to be sternum. Not the same at all. However, since I’m guessing, can I criticize autocorrect for guessing?

Posted at 5:02 PM | 1 Comment »

The slip-sliding potential is high these days, what with all the mast and mast-husk frags on the sidewalks and streets. Here: acorns.

Confession: I glanced at these and my brain popped up the phrase “five chinese brothers.” [It’s the round-headed comparison. I’m guessing public libraries and schools have purged that book as too racist and damaging for the kiddies.]

Posted at 7:05 PM | Comments Off on Tread carefully

From northern Ohio, we pushed south, beginning while it was still full dark. Here’s a maple tree we found in Kentucky.

And its samaras.

Eventually we made it to ATL, with traffic problems here and there necessitating a creative route home. The Guru is stupendously good at serendipitous routing. I am unaccustomed to this view of downtown and some of midtown.

Posted at 10:06 PM | Comments Off on Southbound, continued

We visited the Detroit Institute of Arts this afternoon with friends. Starting with the Diego Rivera murals (1932) is an obvious choice. One section is of workers on an automotive assembly line. I thought this fellow has a modern hairstyle, or maybe I don’t know 30s hairstyles.

The first special exhibit we saw was Ofrendas, shrines for the Day of the Dead. They were multicultural rather than just the iconic cempazuchitls, or marigolds. BTW, the zuchitl or suchitl or xochitl suffix means flower.

Our main goal was “Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City, 1950–2020.” While there were lovely concept cars, there were more drawings, the kind you never see, that are only in offices and workrooms away from the public eye. A fun nostalgia trip.

Elsewhere, I was enamored of these three lovelies when I spotted them from across the room on a large ceramic vase.

I may be wrong, but I thought the title of this was “Three Tigers.” The eyes have it.

Posted at 8:48 PM | Comments Off on DIA visit