Friday, 20 July 2007
Rain.
Train.
East line westbound into Atlanta. Main tracks.
Containers, every flatcar. Many double-deckers. No empties.
Many from China, a few from Hamburg Sud. One from Linea Mexico. Some miscellaneous that I couldn’t decode.
In a still car, watching the train pass: took me back to my childhood.
Evie: a huge thanks.
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Thunder-boomers rolling through. Maybe they’ll produce enough precip to soften the soil (sigh) to make weeding easier.
Friday, 6 July 2007
Where have all the cisterns gone?
Am I the only one that has the DoubleClick opt-out cookie, so that less data can be collected about me (or someone using my browser)?
[Here’s the opt-out link, and you can read about it here, or a bit about the company in Wikipedia.]
I comb my cookies regularly, and delete all but essentials. I guess I deceive myself, however, that I’m doing much to defeat the data-collectors.
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Gorgeous night for fireworks-watching. Cool. Low humidity.
Oooooooh! Aaaaaaaaaah!
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
I requested Sheridan Hays’ “The Secret of Lost Things” from the library based on a review (I think this one from the NYT), and I just started it yesterday—finally, it’s due at the end of the week. [I haven’t gotten to the mystery part of the plot yet.]
And it’s a gem. Lyrical writing. Interesting characters, albeit oddball, every one. But maybe that’s just mirroring reality?
The main character, Rosemary, takes to walking the streets of NY in the evenings after work. We don’t know the date, but perhaps in the 1970s or 80s.
One hot July evening, I ran down an empty street as the peppery smell of city rain rose up from where the rain fell, spotting the pavement. The sharp scent set me sneezing. Seconds later huge heavy drops began to pelt my head and back. I took shelter beneath an awning and watched the storm through an amnion of water. Ten minutes later the rain ceased, as abruptly as it had started. The temperature dropped a few degrees, and I felt the materiality of weather, impervious to the great constructed landscape. Manhattan was at once sealed, and as I watched filthy rainwater disappear into subway grates and down street drains, as permeable as anything in nature. [p. 62-63]
Although it may not sound like it, the story does click along. I think I’m recommending it.
Monday, 2 July 2007
Last night’s rain beaded up better than this on the new buggy! Love the magnification!
The good of the many vs the interests of the few: how many of the debates in this country revolve around this? In autocratic or oligarchic nations, the few just make their decisions and everybody gets to live with them, so the scenario is clearer, but the outcome usually is not so good (or just plain lousy) for the masses.
If we can’t make decisions (e.g., immigration), how much better off are we?
And isn’t the banter of the many TV and radio talk shows an outcome of our more democratic/republican approach?
Sunday, 24 June 2007
A year ago we spotted this boat in our neighborhood, passing through, I guess. Nothing so impressive as the freighters at the Soo.
BTW, the low levels of Lake Superior made the network TV news last week. Sadly, to avoid scraping bottom (or worse), they aren’t filling the freighters at the loading docks, which means less efficiency and increased shipping costs. Less green, too. Both kinds.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Last evening and overnight we got real rain, enough to give some people a bad day. Not here, though. The Guru and I return from a quick morning walk just before eight, and the temp hadn’t yet reached seventy. So unusual—especially this year. Our rainfall deficit must have dropped dramatically.
It’s hard to take photos that convey the complex sky that signals a coming storm. This is a southwest view during the summer rainy season, in Oaxaca one afternoon, from up on El Mirador (well, near the overview).
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
Backlighting is a powerful visual effect.
Backlighting plus dew: a handful of trump cards!
Every once in a while a cosmic alignment occurs and the steep-angle light post-dawn makes the dew into strings of clear gems, here on an overgrown asparagus, also decorated with a few berries. Festooned with spider webs, the effect is magical.
Know that my feet were bare, drippy wet from the dew on the lawn, and cold, ’cause mornings are almost always cool in the UP, even in August.
Know that my arms were warmed by the sun.
After I took almost a hundred images, I went inside to be warmed by coffee and a laptop review of the images I’d just taken.
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
Is this the year of the turtle somewhere? This is the second one I’ve seen in a month of not being in high-turtlehood places….
Weather update: more rain last night (I slept through it), and thunderboomers periodically this afternoon and even right now.