When a tree isn't a tree

 

...it's a cell tower.

I may hate these strange looking things. But I do love having cellular communication available 24/7. When I moved here (2007) I couldn't get service for my phone in my bedroom. The mountains were not friendly for cell service. Now when my son calls while driving between his home and Durango, there's a known "dead spot." We just wait till he passes through that area. His newer car than mine has built-in wi-fi. I just have a speaker button on my phone.

This is just a small portion of the cemetery at Gashes Creek Baptist Church, which is on the way to my new primary doctor's office in Asheville. The tower is also on that road.

They have 1595 memorial records there (according to "Find a Grave"). But I don't know if all those people are buried on this hill. And I don't know how old the church is...trying to see if there's a quick answer to that. Not really.

The back cover of my recently purchased book "Traversal" by Maria Popova, editor of "The Marginalian" newsletter. I'm so very interested in seeing what and how she weaves thoughts from diverse literature into this tome of 570+ pages. I like especially that there will be some mentions of my recently revived interest in plate tectonics, i.e. continental drift theory. Here's a page of the bibliography. It will take a while before I get to the pages that are indexed which mention this synchronicity.

When I was about to get back in the car across from my local bookstore, I noticed these...and had to pause to capture their beauty.

I've noticed by the photos that we get this garish pinkish red.  They just don't look right to me.

I took this photo several weeks earlier near my home. Same problem. Having had my cataracts removed several years ago, I'm really aware of colors. In real life they may have the same hue, but the leave are just as bright, so the roses don't look so artificial as they seem to do here.

Choosing to have joy is not naively thinking everything will be easy. It is courageously believing that there is still hope, even when things get hard.

MORGAN HARPER NICHOLS

It's Saturday

 Muffin on her 12th birthday, and my 67th - she was born on my birthday so it was easy to remember! This was quite a few years ago...

Yep, I love cats! Prefer the in person cuddly purring kind but photos are good reminders.

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I don't play tennis, and didn't understand the joke, but the play on words is still funny.

Sharing with Sepia Saturday and Saturday's Critters!

You cannot buy the revolution.

You cannot make the revolution.

You can only be the revolution.

It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

PS,  just saw this on FB

Springing flowers

 

This Venus Flytrap may have caught a less than real fly...but it's a new enjoyment of one of my daughters-in-law!

I love honeysuckle, though it can certainly take over a place. My favorite summertime thing to do with it was to pick a nice white flower (the yellows are older) and pull out the stamen from the bottom, and then lick the drop of nectar from it. Sorry bees, I would take maybe 4-5 drops.

A favorite caterpillar...that of the Monarch Butterfly.

Bleeding Hearts, I've never grown.

Sharing with Floral Friday Fotos

It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. - Miyamoto Musashi

Wisdom from the net

 While I celebrate (from a distance) the birthday of my oldest son, Marty, here are some musings...

There is no lake in the distance, rather fog caught in a low place. Once the sun comes over the mountains, it will dissapate. 

And finally from Facebook:

As long as I’m alive, I will continue to try to understand more because the work of the heart is never done.

MUHAMMAD ALI -------------------- Marty can fix lots of things...here in the 90s one of my computers. I've been so lucky to have super skilled loving sons. Marty has helped me with everything imaginable. It's hard to believe he's going to be a grandfather this year!

Looking for the Tipping Point

"What we pay attention to grows, so I'm thinking  about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point." adrienne maree brown

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This is quoted quite early in the library book I'm reading. "All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis." edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson. Published by One World, Random House, 2020.

I'm reading a digital version from Libby, the library's on-line free edition. It's full of wonderful organization, and focuses on female voices. But I can't cut and paste, as I just tried to with the quote from Ms. brown. So I will just absorb what I can.

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 Would this be part of a tipping point?

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But I also want to learn through reading this book, what exactly would the new world order look like beyond that tipping point? When climate crisis has either dumped our culture on its ears, or there are actually armies of people working to change the wrongs humanity is doing to our planet. 

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 Just wanted to recommend this video, which was available through Prime. Another way of looking at our dear blue planet.

“What is needed to launch our societies along the humanistic path is some sort of evolutionary compass. Some way of guiding our efforts so that they are in tune with, aligned with, the general evolutionary processes of which we are a part… So rather than seek to dominate the planet, the quest becomes one of dynamic harmonization, of evolutionary consonance, in short, of syntony. The evolutionary compass, then, would be one that points our way toward syntonious pathways for future creation.”

Alexander Laszlo

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Syntony: the state of being normally responsive to and in harmony with the environment

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“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Covered Bridges (part 2)

I was interested in finding out some history of covered bridges after posting my first blog in this series. Wikepedia shares this... 

The oldest surviving truss bridge in the world is the Kapellbrücke in Switzerland, first built in the 1300s. Modern-style timber truss bridges were pioneered in Switzerland in the mid-1700s.^[9] Germany has 70 surviving historic wooden covered bridges.^[10]

Spreuer Bridge in Lucerne

• The Holzbrücke Bad Säckingen spans the river Rhine from Bad Säckingen, Germany, to Stein, Switzerland. It was first built before 1272, and has been destroyed and rebuilt many times.
• Switzerland has many timber covered bridges,^[11] including Kapellbrücke, Spreuer Bridge, and Neubrügg.
• The Ponte Coperto in Pavia is a stone and brick arch bridge over the Ticino River in Pavia, Italy. The previous bridge, dating from 1354 (itself a replacement for a Roman construction), was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1945. A debate on whether to fix or replace it ended when the bridge partially collapsed in 1947, requiring new construction, which began in 1949.

About 14,000 covered bridges have been built in the United States,^[13] mostly in the years 1825 to 1875.^[2] The first documented was the Permanent Bridge, completed in 1805 to span the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.^[14][15] However, most other early examples of covered bridges do not appear until the 1820s. Extant bridges from that decade include New York's Hyde Hall Bridge and Pennsylvania's Hassenplug Bridge, both built in 1825, and the Haverhill–Bath Covered Bridge and the Roberts Covered Bridge, in New Hampshire and Ohio respectively, both built in 1829.^[5]

The vast majority of America's remaining covered bridges can be found in the eastern states with the notable exception of Oregon, which possesses a collection of around fifty.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covered_bridge

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Baltimore

Bartram-Goshen Covered Bridge

The following are taken from the two directions of this covering over a roadway, named Blue Ridge, Georgia. I don't see any indication that it is really a bridge, nor goes over a waterway of any kind. Can it be considered a covered bridge?

Bridge of Dreams - Brinkhaven, Ohio

Someone is thinking along more modern lines for this bridge.

Brinkhaven, Ohio

It seems someone else liked that name...

Another view for Brinkhaven, Ohio

Bridge On The Kal-Haven Trail by Michael Kucinski

Unknown red wooden bridge. I tried to increase contrast and darken the photo...can you read whatever the sign says?

That's all the bridges labeled with "B" or one without a label. There are a few more in my folder...

Being single or being in a relationship are both valid options for living life and one is not better than the other.

Auguste Rodin, sculptor said, “I invent nothing, I rediscover,” and “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”

Sharing with Tom's Tuesday Treasures