August moon

(Or maybe July...)

This was about to become a full moon, and I really had mood and sleep problems that I attributed to its force upon my "mostly water" being. A lot of friends reported the same.

Today's quote:
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

 -Terry Pratchett, novelist (Apr 28 1948-2015) 

Midsummer at the Center

 Hydrangeas by the entrance to the Lakeview Center.

This corner used to always get slammed with water pouring off the roof 2 stories above it...each time it rained. I hope this little evergreen can keep that from happening. It's been really a headache for the landscape efforts.

Today's quote:

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
-Joseph Addison, writer (1 May 1672-1719)

The Grove Park Inn in Asheville NC

The Grove Park Inn is depicted in a rare snowy scene on a post card which was mailed in 1914.  

(Note: I've switched back from new Blogger because my Mac won't open the page I've used for years to edit all my blogs. Didn't help. So I have a new bookmark for opening the editing page. Secondly the Labels place is waaay too slow to type into on the new Blogger. I hope they fix that, since they're saying that will be the only format soon. Maybe it's time to check out WordPress again. I've got a blog registered there, but it had some difficulties which I will have to go through again.)

And back to the Inn, which has red/orange shingles on its roof.

I've never stayed there! But I've gone visiting for several touristy things...it's such a beautiful place, and open to the public, mostly. There used to be free parking, but I've heard that's changed (a garage on the far side was built several years ago, to add to the parking lot that goes up the hill to the right behind this photographer.

Some more old photos of Asheville were on my blog More vintage photos of Asheville

One of the things tourists (and I) like to visit at the Grove Park Inn, is an area of arts and crafts cottages, including an antique car museum. I posted about them Antique cars anyone?

Eckerd College buddies from the early 2000s (Tai [on the left] graduated in 2001)

A weekend with my youngest son, before he moved on to new places, new friends, new activities, and did I mention, much further away?  Well, he could be going further I guess, but Colorado seems pretty far from North Carolina, to me at least! (This visit was in 2018)

Yes, we did the tourist thing at the Grovepark Inn.

A couple three or four (or five) Thanksgivings ago, my son, Russ and his family came down from OH to give me a family Thanksgiving, and I took them to see the Gingerbread Contest which is held at the Grove Park Inn.  I thought I posted a blog about it, but I'll see if I still have any of those photos in the cloud. Nope, they are probably on the external hard drive, and I wanted to just share the building, not my family. The girls enjoyed the Christmas decorations and some fancy glass mugs of hot chocolate.

The other side of the building with the additions (on the left is the parking structure below more rooms. This renewal happened about the time the Inn became an Omni Inn.

 I don't know the year, but the cars give a good hint.

I don't think there was snow for this...just a very light exposure. I don't know when they stopped doing horse drawn tours, but I don't think they do any more.

Today there's a little waterfall below all the terraces where you can enjoy a cocktail while watching the sun set over the golf course. There are many restaurants, very posh, all needing reservations. We had appetizers for lunch at one.

And did I mention there's a spa? It was also added recently, and its skylight is right by the waterfall outside. It is a bit pricey, but I did pick up a brochure when I walked through, thinking of how much I'd saved!

I'm sharing again with Sepia Saturday this week. I've shared about a hillside Inn, though I don't have any Tramways here. I hope you all have a great weekend. Come over to see what old photos might have been shared.

Today's Quote:

That's the terrible hypnotism of war, the brute mass-impulse, the pride and national spirit, the instinctive simplicity of men that makes them worship what is their own above everything else. I've thrilled and shouted with patriotic pride, like everyone else. Music and flags and men marching in step have bewitched me, as they do all of us. And then I've gone home and sworn to root this evil instinct out of my soul. God help -- let's love the world, love humanity -- not just our own country! -Christopher Morley, writer (5 May 1890-1957) 

The great blue ball

The Space Station captured the far side of the moon.

And then the 2 American astronauts came home in the Dragon capsule and landed in the Gulf of Mexico. I watched spellbound for several hours.

The capsule had been bobbing in the water about half an hour, then was hauled by cables onto the small vessel to take it to land. There had been a lot of interested smaller boats belonging to private citizens and maybe reporters, circling around and then sometimes zooming in closer. Apparently they were somehow managed to stay at a greater distance, but they still remained there.

I waited about half an hour more, hoping they'd be opening the door...but they kept finding some kind of gas fumes around the outside (that's what they said, with some letters like MBCDT though not those) to define what it was. Something to do with the booster rockets or the things that sent the various parachutes out to slow down the capsule before it hit the water.

I guess I reached my limit of sitting and watching a TV reality show. But I did like that it was "real time."

Today's quote:

Buckminster Fuller defines a Sphere as “a multiplicity of discrete events, approximately equidistant in all directions from a Nuclear Center.

Ever since we discovered that Earth is round and turns like a mad spinning top, we have understood that reality is not what it seems: every time we glimpse a new aspect of it, it is a deeply emotional experience. Another veil has fallen.

But the leap made by Einstein is unparalleled: spacetime is a field; the world is made only of fields and particles; space and time are not something else, something different from the rest of nature: they are just a field among the others.
—Carlo Rovelli Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
as posted in Love is a Place

Grateful Thursday

Some wind and rain at the beach...

Tuesday Aug 4, 8 am.
I just watched a drone level video of the area of the Outer Banks island that was the landfall for the center of Isaias early this morning...or maybe last night.

I'm glad I had a pill that helped me go to sleep last night, while thinking of how my son and his wife and children had driven from their home in Ohio to the Outer Banks of North Carolina this last weekend. Just in time for a hurricane.

I haven't spoken to them. I just saw a couple of posts on Facebook that that's where they went, at this particular time. It's a good thing I didn't speak with them, because I would have blown my top. As it was, my anxiety level was right off the roof.  And fortunately none of the roofs were blown off literally.

I remember how long it took to repair the one road which was the only route to towns around Orakoke...after another hurricane.

Here's the video, where you can see all the sand that was washed up with the storm surge at Oak Island. And the cars just swished any which way, as well as washing machines...moved by waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch

I hope the three grandchildren enjoyed the beach. I am so grateful that they were alright. I really don't know what I'll say to my son when I finally speak with him. It's going to take some alcohol probably to help me get through that conversation.

Then a friend of mine said she included this adventure on her bucket list, to go to the beach during a hurricane.  Oh dear. I'm a bit amazed that people would risk their lives for this kind of terrible thrill...or is it just seeking horror?  Thrill by the terrible destructive force of nature...geese, no thanks.

Sunday morning notes (a bit late)

The windows have been thrown open and the night air settles into the warmer rooms...But it's already past sunrise over the tree tops, so some brilliant light comes in the doorway that faces east (at 8:00.) The rest is all shady. For once I can see (through a small gap in the leaves) the ridge line across the valley, there's no fog. That means last evening and night had no rain to leave puddles to create "smoky mountains."

I see two neighbors doing their morning walks. I wonder where L. walks...I've seen him walking towards town, which is about a mile away. S. is just walking her dog, Skipper.

I hear a distant thrumble of trucks on the I-40, with a few swooshes of slower cars on Blue Ridge Rd....or even the ones at the light down the hill on US 70. There are still a few groups of motorcycles, who love to go up on the mountainous roads for scenic rides. I haven't heard a train at this time of day for weeks. And since my windows are closed during the daytime and night-time, I don't usually hear them. It may also mean I'm completely used to them. I used to love hearing the one around midnight.

I wanted to talk a bit about touch starvation. There this new term "food insufficiency" but I am pretty sure the level of touch missing in my life is starvation.

I'm single. I have no family in the area. I used to get lots of hugs from friends whenever we met...which has been severely curtailed. And I'd get even more at church on Sunday.

I'm also elderly. I prefer to say I'm an elder. Or that I'm a crone. I'll be 78 in a few weeks. Who cares what that's called.  I'm quite proud to have survived this long. As a teenager I thought it'd be great to live to 100. I'm not trying for that any more.

I no longer have a cat...mainly because of breathing difficulties from the litter...and I tried everything! When the last dear one died, I decided I didn't want to suffer the pain of loss again either.  But oh how I miss a warm body and another creature who had her own desires, idiosyncrasies, and sharing of space. She and I definitely had lots of touch shared too.

So at the rehab program the other day, I noticed how great it was to have my blood pressure taken by the various staff members. I was being touched. I even shared about it in "group."

Somehow it wasn't the same when I had an I.V. inserted for the C.T. scan that I had on Friday. Something about adding some pain to the mixture and I just didn't have a good feeling about it.

So I don't feel lonely. The internet, my phone, having texts as well as voice calls...lots of communication. And the support group in Rehab will give me psychological support. But I definitely would like to be treated like a pet granny. And just have my shoulders patted, or even rubbed. How about a foot rub? 

Answers? I'm thinking of saving some money to have a massage. I also need a haircut...which at least gives me head touch when being shampooed.

Today's Quote:

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun. -Katharine Hepburn, actress (12 May 1907-2003) 

It' gardenia time

The sweet little gardenia bush has a zillion buds. I pick a few of the early flowers, and share them with friends in the neighborhood...as well as have a few around the house.

As I put my nose deep into a blossom, I deeply inhale. And there, a bit of that sweet fragrance. I wish my nose still worked better, but there are moments when I enjoy the smell that has never been used in a perfume (that I know of.)

A dog's birthday party

This is Duke. aka The Duke, or John Wayne. 

The guest of honor was Skipper, who just became a teenager.

His owner, Erika, had a great smile for the camera.

This little darling is Molly.

There are at least twice this number of tiny dogs in our apartment complex. They are supposed to go to a dog park area for being dogs...which may happen. But if their owners want to walk them further, they may be going elsewhere throughout the grounds. The little ones tend to announce their presence, which I have almost gotten used to.

Dying trees and old buildings

At the very back of the Monte Vista Hotel, an old established (and refurbished) edifice of Black Mountain...stand these three majestic evergreen trees.  I wonder if they were standing when the hotel was built in 1937.

They are tall. They are sick. All across the woods in North Carolina, the wooly adelgid has been killing the hemlocks and spruces.  I wonder how long these trees will be standing.

The hemlock woolly adelgid (/əˈdɛl.dʒɪd/;^[1] Adelges tsugae), or HWA, is an insect of the order Hemiptera (true bugs) native to East Asia. It feeds by sucking sap from hemlock and spruce trees (Tsuga spp.; Picea spp.) ...In eastern North America it is a destructive pest that threatens the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and the Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana).  SOURCE: Wikipedia

Visiting Mt. Mitchell, I noted much the same sad state of many majestic trees...though the State Park says a lot of the damage is due to acid rain.

The Monte Vista today...with more of those wonderful tall evergreen trees around it.

Tucking this into Sepia Saturday...which shows a nice old grocery from way back when...1944.