Covered Bridges (part 1)

 

A Red Wooden Bridge near Milton Janesville Wisconsin in Rock County -Photo by Matt Anderson via Flickr

This bridge had the same caption as the first, but they are obviously different bridges. So which one is where, I wonder.

Albany Covered Bridge- Manish Mamtani Photography.

Albany Covered Bridge, New Hampshire Thos Schoeller Photo

Unlabeled photo of probably the same bridge.

Amnicon Falls Bridge Missouri

Artist-'s Covered Bridge Nick Lambert Bethel, Maine

Autumn at the Bob White Covered Bridge - Adam Jewell

These are just the tip of the iceberg, as they say. The ones with A as their first letter in the labels I gave them. Unfortunately I've at least as many without any names at all...and I'm trying to see if they are photos of the other named photos. So this is all for now.

Sharing with Tom's Tuesday's Treasures. 

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About the writing life, Margaret Atwood says: “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.” 

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This advice is quite similar to the pursuit of the arts.

Let's be serious then let’s be creative

 

From Katharine Hayhoe's newsletter, "Talking Climate"

In late April, in the coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia, something remarkable happened. Representatives from 57 countries from across the globe gathered for the first-ever conference dedicated to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

 
After three decades of UN climate negotiations and still-rising emissions, many countries have had enough. As COP30 in Belem wrapped up last November, Colombia and the Netherlands announced they were co-hosting this new conference to provide a kind of practical reckoning: what does leaving fossil fuels behind actually look like, and how do we collectively get there? 
 
The conference was inspired by the Fossil Fuel Treaty, a concept developed by my fellow Canadian and lifetime climate advocate, Tzeporah Berman. She explains it here so perfectly, you’ll wonder why everyone doesn’t see it as a no-brainer!
 
“We decided not to resign ourselves to an economy built on the destruction of life. We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete, political and collective endeavour,” said Irene Vélez Torres, chair of the talks and Colombia’s environment minister. “When people look back on us from the future, they will remember whether or not we rose to the challenge of our time.”
 
The countries who showed up represent over half of global GDP, roughly one-third of energy demand, and about 20% of fossil fuel supply. They describe themselves as the “coalition of the willing” and all pledged to develop voluntary roadmaps for drawing down their fossil fuel use.

Next year’s conference will take place in Tuvalu co-hosted by Ireland, and participating countries have been asked to have drafted their roadmaps by then. 

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Tuvalu is an archipelagic country in the Polynesian sub-region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Australia. It lies east-northeast of the Santa Cruz Islands (which belong to Solomon Islands), northeast of Vanuatu, southeast of Nauru, south of Kiribati, west of Tokelau, northwest of Samoa and Wallis and Futuna, and north of Fiji.

Tuvalu is composed of three reef islands and six atolls spread out between the latitude of 5° and 10° south and between the longitude of 176° and 180°. They lie west of the International Date Line. The 2022 census determined that Tuvalu had a population of 10,643, making it the 194th most populous country, exceeding only Niue and the Vatican City in population. Tuvalu's total land area is 25.14 square kilometres (9.71 sq mi).

Today I'm sharing a far-off bit of environmental interest. Not exactly far-out as we hippies used to say.

In my own life I'm moving toward dependence upon the real people in my life, sorry blogger friends. Yes you are definitely important, but when I need a ride, or help deciding what to pack, or even packing, or definitely how to get from here to there...I need people who are walking around within my own region. Not Tuvalu-ans. Not bloggers who I know and love, but only interact with a few minutes a day. Sorry guys and gals.

So if I'm missing in making comments, just know I'm reading as many blogs as this defunct program posts...and if I don't even post daily, I'm still here! I now understand how and why so many bloggers have backed slowly away.

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My steadily improving health is somewhat remarkable. Before pneumonia I would at times be a bit light headed, and walked around holding onto furniture inside. Outside I'd get out of breath easily. I spoke to several doctors/nurses about this, and one prescribed an anti-nausea drug, which also can make one sleepy (Meclizine)

I've learned sleepy side effects mean this is a central nervous system depressant, which is not good for my breathing needs. So that's put away for now.

And after sitting around the first 4 weeks post hospitalization, I am now having consistent 93 pulse ox readings, no matter what I'm doing. I'm not using the oxygen for moving around any of the daytime.  I don't get out of breath walking across the parking lot to the mailboxes most days. There are still some ups and downs.

Bronchiectasis may not go away, and I still will continue to encourage the healthy coughing to clear my lungs with various devices and drugs. Yet having days with minimal coughing means my energy can be used in other pursuits!

The other day I dusted my bedside table and lampshade. Whew, did they need it. Since I don't have a regular cleaner, I am doing what I can when I can. Baby steps.

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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

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What if, when we write we are participating in Earth’s generativity—the same exact process that creates trees and insects, clouds and flowers—creativity itself?

To some writers, words seem to come from above. When Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, was asked about how he began writing a new work, he said: “I don’t understand the process of imagination—though I know that I am very much at its mercy. I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon.” Similarly, the novelist Henry Miller thought artists were people who had antennas attached to their heads that were hooked up “to the currents which are in the atmosphere, in the cosmos,” and that all the elements that go into a great novel or poem “are already in the air” just waiting for us to give them voice.

For me, writing is a gesture of the body, a gesture of creativity, a working from the inside out,” wrote Gloria Anzaldúa in Light in the Dark / Luz en lo Oscuro. “The material body is center, and central. The body is the ground of thought. The body is a text. Writing is not about being in your head; it’s about being in your body.”

Of course, what happens beneath our skin and inside our skulls is connected to everything else. Our bodies need water and the energy from glucose to function, glucose that ultimately comes from photosynthesis: the miracle of plants pulling sugar out of sunlight in the sky.

IT’S TEMPTING TO ASSUME, especially when we use misleading terms like “the cloud” to describe digital storage, that ChatGPT generates words out of thin air. But AI is just as industrial as car manufacturing and mechanizes the written word to the point of absurdity. Like our human bodies, ChatGPT requires water, earth, minerals, and electricity. Once, I asked my students to spend five minutes writing about the internet as a place. None of them described, or even imagined, data centers.

From:

IN DEFENSE OF GENERATION(S)

by Stephanie Krzywonos

Emergence Magazine

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers...as well as all women who have been creative through other avenues, like poets, painters, potters, musicians, planters, and pet owners!

Bathing a newborn - unknown photographer 

My name is Barbara Booth

the daughter of

Mataley Mozelle,

the daughter of

Mozelle Booth,

the daughter of

Eugenia Almeda,

the daughter of

Eugenia Almeda, (yes there were 2!)

daughter of

Susan Elizabeth,

daughter of

Elizabeth...

This is my lineage of mothers. To their spirits I send wishes for Happy Mothers Day.

My grandmother Mozelle Booth and myself (maybe age 3). Grandmommy was a single mother most of her life, and supported herself as a seamstress, working mainly on society women's beautiful gowns for dances and weddings and other events in San Antonio TX. She made the coat, leggings and hat outfit for myself. It was tan wool with a brown velvet collar.

My Great Grandmother, after whom I was named. A cousin had been given her first name as her middle name, so when I came along, I was told, I received her maiden name. Later I noted that my grandmother had also had Booth as a middle name, so I didn't mind quite as much. Living in Texas until I was 8, I never knew a thing about John Wilkes Booth until moving to St. Louis and learning that he killed Lincoln, who had actually been pretty unpopular with the south. I have copies of letters from ancestors at the time he had been elected just before the Civil War...those Texans sure didn't like him. However, as an adult I've traced my Booth family lineage and find no direct connection to the Booths of theatrical fame, nor to the assassin, John Wilkes.

"Gummy" my grandmother (visiting from Houston TX), my father (her son), and my mother. This was our first owned house in St. Louis. My mother worked full time at the private school, Principia. My father did also. Gummy was a Christian Science practitioner, and greatly influenced my parents to bring my sister and myself to Principia, the Christian Science school grades K-12 and college in Elsah IL. It was a dedication which they gave us, and we never appreciated it as much as they hoped, both of us leaving the religion shortly after quitting college in our 3rd years.

"Dear Nan" Zulieka, my great grandmother on my fathers side, holding my father's sister who died young.

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Yearbook picture of my mother

Studio type photo with same hairdo of my mother

Two good friends who share day trips and conversations over coffee often, where our children, grandchildren and books are often the topics discussed.

My grandson Michael and Amanda who will be having their baby this October, my first great grandchild! So Amanda is also wished a happy almost Mother's Day.

And again, to offer wishes that all creative mothering energies are appreciated! Nurturing and creativity are not at all passive feminine acts. 

I am learning a lot about women's energies from "Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World" by Tyson Yunkaporta. The following is a quote from this book, from "Kelly Menzel, an Aboriginal woman from the Adelaide Hills (Australia) and keeper of ancestral Indigenous Knowledge. She is a nurse by Trade and a healer by vocation who is completing her PhD and working as a university lecturer." The question is whether to reverse the domesticated state as evident in our present society's way of defining women's and men's relationships.

This mother gifted herself with a fresh haircut for Her Day!

A different sort of collection

 

Rosey Faced Lovebirds - from the internet

Thanks to an artist Facebook friend, Maureen Killoran!

Thanks to Robert Sijka

St. John’s Cathedral in ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.

By Susan Seddon Boulet

And in case you missed the butterfly caterpillars, here's that post from last Thursday. 

(Incidentally the first butterfly emerged that afternoon, according to the person in charge of them!)

Sharing with Saturday's Critters

This and that

 This week my post for Sepia Saturday is early...since last week I didn't post till Sunday!

by Hazel Larsen Archer, Black Mountain College Studies Building, c. late 1940s. Black Mountain NC campus. Vintage gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Erika Archer Zarow.⁠

This building is among my 2008 photos on my blog about Lake Eden, also on that campus site.

Albert (no other information known, until you go to Sepia Saturday.)

My paternal grandmother "Gummy" with my cousins, her older three granddaughters, Claudette standing on right of photo. and Sandra standing on the left. Gummy was holding myself, Barbara, age 11 months. So glad she dated this. Gummy would have been 57, Claudette 3 years and 10 months, and Sandra was just 2 years and 7 months. They were about 14 months apart but I could never keep up with my cousins.

“The aim of human life is to know thyself,” says Timothy Leary.

 “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Will Rogers 

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Check out my continuing rambles over on Inner Workings. It's allowed me to let my hair down (figuratively) while focusing on beauty, peace and love over here on this blog. I also have begun a new series started this month "Living till Dying."

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Photo from Google maps...the upscale condos are right next to where these new homes will be built (currently a horse pasture)

A new land trust will be building low and moderate income homes near where I now live. It is presently a horse pasture. My road, Blue Ridge Rd. is soon (whenever the funding comes through) to have an exit from I-40. It will be around 1/2 mile from the new homes. The little road will definitely need to be widened and revamped. Civilization is coming into the country. Here's the article in The Valley Echo.

Transformations

 

Blue False Indigo at Lake Tomahawk

Storm damage on Blue Ridge Parkway waiting for damage to be cleared

By Mandy Gallimore, Caney Fork Overlook from Blue Ridge Parkway (not the same area as former photo)

By Shelley Hale, Hawksbill in Linville Gorge Wilderness

Sharing with Floral Friday Fotos and Thankful Thursday

I made a wall pillow (suitable to hang outside) with milkweed and a Monarch. I gave it to my son who might or might not hang it up somewhere.

The UU Congregation in Black Mountain (UUCSV) had a great project for the religious education classes. (I recently said I wish I'd been able to attend a religious education program like the Unitarian Universalists have.)

In Religious Education this month we've been learning about pollinators and how incredibly important they are to ecosystem. We had the chance to observe some mature caterpillars last Sunday as they began the process of transforming into their chrysalis phase (pupation), and now those chrysalis are hardening. 

 

Day 1 - this is what the caterpillars looked like when they arrived April 16th. Notice how tiny they are!

There is just a little webbing in the cup, and the food substance* (at the bottom) is smooth.

*This paste provides all the necessary nutrients for rapid growth, including carbohydrates (sugars), proteins (such as soybean meal, casein, or yeast extract), lipids (vegetable oils), vitamins, and minerals.

Day 6 - This is what the caterpillars looked like just 5 days after they arrived! You can see they've more than doubled in size (and grown-ups say human kids grow quickly)! There's a bit more webbing in the cup, the food has been disturbed, and you can see evidence of waste & molted skin.

Day 13 - April 28th. Our caterpillars (Painted Lady variety) have now all formed their silk pads to attached to the lid, made their "J" shape and shed for a fifth time creating a chrysalis (or pupa). The chrysalises (or chrysalides) quickly begin to dry and harden after this final molting.

For more videos of this process (by a Monarch group) see this site:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CRLV8yNo9/?mibextid=wwXIfr

There's a Facebook video (reel) of the chrysalises being transferred to the butterfly habitat...I hope it works to see this next step.  https://www.facebook.com/reel/2559825441143110

Adult Painted Lady Butterfly from the internet.