Before and after

 
Yes, an art photographer I learned about in my Art History classes. Edward Steichen is known as a photographer along with husband of Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Steiglitz.

This tryptic doesn't look like a photograph, so I probably got the labels confused. Now I want to know if Steichen actually did it. I did look to see if it was done by Zelda Fitzgerald, as a nearby patron had said, and couldn't find that connection. But it does seem more her style actually, just I don't know that she ever painted.

BEFORE: several (maybe 5) months of my hair fuzziness.

After - we have trouble with hats and hair over ears still...but will work it out!

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Serious things must not be ignored (unless it's because we can't sleep at night!)

A friend quoted herself in talking to another friend. She asked, "Do you feel safe?" 

And the friend answered her back, "Do you?"

These are not the tents with cages for prisoners...but FEMA trailers probably for workers. This is not Alcatraz but Auschwitz! 

Japanese-Americans at an internment camp in the Pacific Northwest, the early 1940s.

And the horrors for prisoners don't even mention how our Everglades will be impacted by this horrible place and the many people both incarcerated and working there.  Florida leaders have forgotten how if you change some part of a delicate ecosystem, there are repercussions that you didn't imagine. 

The incredible before and after of this man-made disaster are how Marjorie Stoneman Douglas wrote about the Everglades in the very beginning of environmentalism while the prison smacks in the face of today's environmentalism. Her book, 

The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring (1962)

Source: Wikipedia 

Aerial image of the Everglades site before any construction shows a “before” comparison with the newly paved area to the west of the runway. Friends of the Everglades

A July 3 article in the Miami Herald gave these excerpts:

"Environmental groups filed a lawsuit last week to stop the facility on the grounds that it completely bypassed the federal rules for assessing environmental harm, the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. Paul Schwiep of Coffey Burlington, lead attorney for the case, said he has found no exception that applies to allow the federal government to skip this step. “In the rush to get this done, the federal government and state have totally thumbed their nose at NEPA,” he said on a Tuesday press call. “Why? Because they say there’s no environmental impact.” That, the environmental groups argue, isn’t true.

Eve Samples, head of Friends of the Everglades, is leading the charge on the lawsuit. The group was initially formed decades ago by Marjory Stoneman Douglas specifically to fight the development of a jetport on this exact plot of land, which she called “one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of Florida, arguably the United States.”

“To put any kind of development in the middle of this haven is really a death knell,” Bennett said. Spill risk One of the biggest environmental concerns that worries advocates: Potential spills of fuel, sewage of other damaging chemicals of material. Year-long court battles have been waged over exactly how clean the water in the Everglades has to be without fouling up the whole system. The answer? Pretty darn clean. Everglades advocates say that the portable bathrooms, diesel fuel for generators and potentially jet fuel for deportation flights all represent toxins that could harm the nearby waters if they spilled.

Organizer Betty Osceola speaks to protesters outside of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport during the “Stop Alligator Alcatraz” protest in opposition to the construction of a massive detention facility for undocumented immigrants on the site, which is in the middle of the Florida Everglades, in Ochopee, Florida, on Saturday June 28, 2025

by Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com

SOURCE: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article309845970.html

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Jay Kuo wrote yesterday about the Alligator Atrocity on the Status Kuo.

A good article, with photos, and encouragement to contact your congressional representatives to have oversight!

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Here's a YouTube music channel (acoustic guitar) which I frequently listen to, which streams for hours, and makes a nice counter-point to the crows and traffic outside my window. I'm really grateful my closest neighbors are pretty quiet most of the time. Living in a hive-like community means being only partly aware of all the others around me. 

Thinking of the imprisoned inmates in the Everglades, I'm very unhappy. Perhaps some of them can make music to help their existence.

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Today's quote:

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people? -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat, author, and lecturer ( 1884-1962)

Old Photo:

Wonderful highschool photo with my son Marty wearing a headband directly to left of the electric pole in the background. 

Psychics are sending me a message

 I haven't figured it out yet.

But when a NOVA show about the brain leaves me with all this stuff that may be sleight of hand, but it definitely isn't answered...there are questions about who is running the show in my head, basically. These different parts of my dear brain have names, and duties to perform, and I suppose they communication with each other.

But this show left me wondering. How did they get the word the woman chose randomly in the book, and wrote on a post-it-note, and left in the room while the rest of the show was taped, but then that exact word was found printed on white paper inside the sealed envelope that she supposedly hid on her person during the whole show?

So the next thing to knock my door of perceptions was having a haircut. And Joe (who many of my friends also deppend upon for their styles) starts by telling me of a little town (Lilly Vale) near where he lived, and he says when he was younger (I'm imagining teenager) they would drive into a cemetery and start whispering. That was ok, because I'd just mentioned a cemetery that was also near his home town in western NY. 

But then I mentioned Edgar Casey. Neither of us ever said the word Cassadaga, which I knew about from the Florida community he (Casey) started. Joe knew about him from Virginia Beach VA.  So Joe started to tell me about Carol, who was his regular hair client. And she told him he had the "gift." 

So she enrolled him in some sessions, and he was able to do some "readings with people's personal possessions." They seemed satisfied. Then one evening some of the people who had the same training, who were blind, were also in the room, and one came up to Joe and said, "You look good in that red shirt Joe." This was a blind person, who accuratly picked up some kind of vibration and knew that indeed, Joe was wearing a red shirt.

All this was being told while Joe expertly cut my hair off exactly how I wanted it but hadn't asked for it...different than the last time.

Anyway, then Carol apparently was on Johnny Carson's show one night, and told him about the blind guy who said to an unknown man, that "he looked good in a red shirt." And of course the audience were impressed that a blind man had that ability to pick up whatever red gives off...and comment about it.

Joe got a kick out of being inadvertently mentioned in a story on Johnny Carson. Of course.

But the main thing was...to me at least...that this psychic stuff needs to be considered.

I didn't ask Joe for a reading, because he had another client waiting. But he did share that the way he gives people the haircuts they want is by putting his hands on their shoulders and kind of reading them. He had done it with me before the first cut. 

I came in and said I basically hated all the things about my hair. He asked if anything was good. I said I guess I'm grateful to have any hair.

I do like my very short summer trim! (But it will grow out, sigh!)

Today's quote:

Life unfolds as it will, and the universe will wait patiently as we make our way into the unknown.

Shorn again, like a sheep?

 

The "Before" photo...brush and go style! I don't remember the exact date of my last cut. I know I had one in Aug. last year, and perhaps another one ...the memory escapes me. And I didn't keep it in my calendar either (I checked!)

And now "After"...with Joe having done his magic scissor work! Easy to continue a brush and go style, which these days usually means just going from one room to another. 

Today's quote;

This world with all its beauty and all its vibrancy is just so because it is not fixed, because everything is contingent.

LAMA WILLA B. MILLER

The life I still have

On Nov 13, Wed...this happened to me:
I'm not sure I would have woken up this morning, when I was breathing with C-Pap which stopped working when the electricity went off.  When that's happened before I gradually have gone into a less conscious state, not exactly sleep because I'm not getting enough air while wearing the mask which usually pushes plenty of air pressure into my nose.

A text message on my phone from the electric company woke me up. It wasn't until I read it (hard without my glasses on) that I realized how hard it was to breathe.  I live in an apartment complex with many more seniors, all of whom were probably bundled in their beds at 6:30 am just like me.

I dressed and went to my car while it was 13 degrees outside. And the electricity apparently came back on around 10:15, just like they expected in their next text. But I was still elsewhere getting lots of warmth and air to breathe.

Lake Tomahawk on Nov 11

I waited in the car for the frost to melt...found driving to the parking spot where sun was shining helped. One neighbor walked by asking if my elec. was off also, she was going to drive to the interstate, she said.  I drove to one of the fast food chains and got a large coffee and a biscuit. Then fortunately I had scheduled doing some work at church, so I went there...it was still early.  I turned on the heat in the office and plugged my laptop in, and had breakfast. Of course I hadn't done any of my morning routines. So when I went home at 11 (the elec. was back on) I took my pills and used the nebulizer to help my breathing.  It proves I can postpone these routines for 4 hours and keep walking and driving around.

Frost on the picnic table

But every breath now is full of gratitude. I woke up agin.  I had choices that were able to be made.  I kept on going. And now I'm off to get a hair cut at Joe's.  All these things are part of a life I still have.

Well, having written that, I even packed a box of pottery to take to put on the shelves at Joe's...and waited for him to get back from lunch.  But he never came back, and when I checked the note on the door, it said he was sick. So no haircut today.  Everything is happening like this because Mercury is transiting the sun (so sayeth my astrology-wise friends.)

So now I can catch up a bit on household tasks.

Here are some photos of the Veterans Memorial at Lake Tomahawk. I forgot to post them on Monday Nov 11.

Later on I mentioned my anxiety to the suppliers (Linncare Home Health) who sent me my C-Pap, that I was wishing something would wake me if the electricity went off.  They told me there wasn't any alarm system available, that most people just wake up when they notice that the C-Pap isn't working.

Then another friend said there are some C-Paps that have a backup battery. Well, that would certainly be nice! I'll be talking with my pulmonologist today (or at least the nurse) to see what they recommend.

Got a haircut

Well, not everyone goes 6 months between haircuts!

But I remembered I had had fun having a braid, so this was the result of letting it grow since last January.  OK, that's more than 6 months.  And I'd run into my dear friendly cosmetologist, Joe, every other month, because I sell some of my pots in his shop.

For the first few months my hair held curl pretty well, and that looked nice.  Then there was the summer, without bangs on my face and all my hair pulled tight behind to a scrunchy which also broke the hairs.  I had straggles all the time and way too much face!

I had fun with the "after" selfie...as in the header above.