Mountains and aquired holidays

So I'm going to start posting a photo of something beautiful to start off each post for a while!

 It's Cinco de Mayo today. Ole' ! I'm meeting friends at Ole' Guacamoles for lunch - and I imagine there will be Margaritas on special.  My other blog "Open Yesterday's Pages" gives the real reason for the holiday.

Dr. Douglas was an early environmentalist, especially in saving the Everglades. No, she wasn't one of my friends meeting for lunch...though that would have been great!

You can tell I like maps.

When I recently was in southwest Colorado, an hour's drive from Durango, we carefully considered where we would go to see various sites. Chaco Canyon was just a bit far for a day trip. Four Corners, where the 4 states meet is just a symbol in the ground, not much interest there. But it's good for me to see the La Plata and San Juan Mountains on the map. I saw them in the distance as we traveled from Cortez to Durango several times.

Going to Durango

I'm not sure which mountains we saw going to Telluride, but probably part of the San Juans.

And going to Arches National Park in Utah we saw the La Sal Mountains.

But I didn't have a map with me, so I may be naming them wrong completely! I think these may be the La Sal Mountains (it means salt in Spanish.)

I love the soft older mountains of the Appalachians where I live in North Carolina. But those Rocky Mountains, and others that give their spine that goes from Alaska to Chile, are simply awesome.

On April 23, after rain  there's a white fog rising from the valley.

Two days later, I'm seeing no more traffic on I-40 through the leaves, and within weeks I won't be able to see the mountain ridge of Big Windy either until fall.

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Current events:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  - the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America

Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter on May 3 reiterated a speech given by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on May 2 at an event for judges, jurists, and lawyers,

... Judge Jackson began her remarks yesterday by saying she wanted to address “the elephant in the room”: the attacks on our legal system. Such attacks are not just on individuals, she said, but undermine the system itself. “Attacks on judicial independence is how countries that are not free, not fair, and not rule of law oriented, operate,” she said, and she told her colleagues: “I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service.” According to Laura N. Pérez Sánchez of the New York Times, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

Yesterday, [May 2] about 1,500 lawyers and their allies packed the plaza outside Manhattan’s federal courthouse to defend the rule of law. According to Santul Nerkar of the New York Times, they held up pocket Constitutions, reaffirmed their oath to support and defend the Constitution, and chanted: “The rule of law protects us all. Without it we will surely fall.”

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From The Contrarian and The New Republic in their recent "A 100 Days of Resistance Conference" -

Max Stier gave an incisive snapshot of the turmoil and dysfunction initiated by the president and Elon Musk’s DOGE thus far. 

“It seems to have escaped those in power that they are renters, not owners, of our government that belongs to the American people.”

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Today's quote:

The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes. 

-Mary Renault, novelist (1905-1983)

And a piece of my pottery for today:

Thrown and slab pieces altered vase with turquoise glaze and sponged treatments.