Musings

The azaleas are coming! The azaleas are coming!

[cheers, and another wave of cheers]

Posted at 9:45 PM | Comments Off on Nothing earthshaking

Rainy now, but earlier it wasn’t raining and a crew put a fence up on the edge of our backyard…the neighbors’ project. I’m glad to have the fence; they won’t be looking in our windows any more…yay!

Posted at 8:09 PM | Comments Off on Change

?!x&@# parking garages…and the people who don’t know how to negotiate them. Note: I’m fine now.

Posted at 8:38 PM | Comments Off on Blood pressure now normal

We early voted and I got freebies! Of course, I got my peach, but our voting location is in the back of our library, and the path dumps you in the library after you put your vote in the machine. Last time I was vote 523. This time I was 526. Weird. Anyway, if I told the librarian at the help station your “favorite” Dune 2 character, I got a free tote bag. Wow! Anyway, that’s the “E” at the end of Dune on my new tote!

Posted at 8:46 PM | Comments Off on Uplifted by swag

Murky weather today. I was busy all day, yet all I can think that I accomplished is that I got the upstairs floor washed.

Posted at 9:01 PM | Comments Off on Four chairs, one table

I looked for a name for this, thinking it might be a labelled artwork. Apparently not. I might title it “broken circles.” On the other hand, it may well be a common form from a context I’m unfamiliar with.

Posted at 8:28 PM | Comments Off on Anthropological failure?

Looking through a window, there’s beyond the window and possibly a reflection in the glass. I was tempted to use “palimpsest,” but that’s not really the appropriate word. Here’s the warm light inside this morning, while the fog veiled the outdoors.

Posted at 9:26 PM | Comments Off on Layers and levels

In today’s search for enlightenment (since reading about southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement patterns and material culture didn’t work out), I discovered that five years ago on this day Atlanta was, like today, overcast and rather dreary.

That title sounds…ominous, or perhaps worried. What I meant was, the rain and clouds do move on. Patience is…saintly. Or have I made it worse?

Posted at 8:44 PM | Comments Off on We will survive

See this magnolia? It’s actually two adjacent trees on the bank of a former railroad ROW (to the right). Now the ROW is the BeltLine, a pedestrian and bicycle corridor, with landscaping by Trees Atlanta. To the left is a shopping center with a Whole Foods and a Staples (guess which one gets more traffic 🤣). Delivery trucks are the most common traffic along this route behind the stores (and us when the “front” is clogged).

Here’s a ca. 1950 photo from Georgia State’s archives of the Ponce de Leon Ballpark. The info that follows is from 2020 article by Adam C. Johnson (here). In 1890, there was a lake where the field is, and the magnolia was already there. The ballfield was first built in 1907. The photo shows the version built in 1923. If you were sitting behind home plate, you were looking straight at the magnolias. Johnson writes:

If a baseball hit the magnolia tree and bounced back into the field, then the ball was in play because, per the rules, it had to pass through or remain in the tree to be a home run. To this day, the Spiller Magnolia Tree is the only tree in baseball that has been in play, and [Babe] Ruth and Eddie Matthews are the only confirmed players to have hit home runs into it.

Recently, Trees Atlanta has cloned the magnolias, and planted the new trees along the BeltLine.

End of baseball trivia.

BTW, that big building to the far right facing the ballfield was a huge multi-story Sears that had a side track from the RR for deliveries. The building recently was redeveloped and is now Ponce City Market.

Posted at 8:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Did you leap today? I did. A little leap, very safe.

Posted at 9:03 PM | Comments Off on 29th