What's blooming

Strawberry bush, a.k.a. Hearts a burstin' (Euonymus americanus). My mother sometimes calls this plant Wahoo, but the internet says that's the name of a similar, more purplish-blooming plant. That kind of spoils my fun, since I liked to yell wahoo! whenever I found one.

I think this one is Grass-leafed Golden-Aster (Heterotheca graminifolia or Pityopsis graminifolia, I'm not sure which name is the more current.)

This one shows the grass-like leaves.

Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica).

I was about to call this one White snakeroot (Eupatorium rugosum), until I realized that the leaves are wrong for that. It's actually Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum altissimum). (Thanks Ontario Wanderer for that correction! I didn't realize there were different types of Boneset.)

Same thing, whole plant.

The Ironweed (Vernonia altissima) is still hanging in there. I saw five Monarch butterflies on it at the same time - very nice since we don't see near the numbers that we used to.

White Crownbeard, a.k.a. Frostweed (Verbesina virginica).

A yellow composite that I've yet to figure out the name of.

Some asters I'm not going to get specific about.
The pics aren't as spiffy as I'd like... I set the camera to a tiny spot-meter and kind of forgot. So most of them were too dark, and were grainy and had to be manipulated.
The goldenrod and the ragweed are blooming too, but I didn't get pics of those.

A Yearn for Ireland

I just finished reading Oh Come Ye Back to Ireland by Niall Williams and Christine Breen.  They were a couple living in Manhattan who got tired of the rat race.  They moved to her grandfather's cottage in Kiltuper, Ireland and settled themselves into rural life.  They cut peat from their own bog for fires, grew a garden, and eventually owned cattle.  They went and stayed.
They talk about the old, traditional ways of Ireland  and how they're slowly being done away with.  This was a fascinating book to me since I've recently learned that several of my ancestors came from the Emerald Isle.  Fortunately, there are four books in this series about their lives in Ireland.  
Yesterday I ordered the other three from half.com.  I'm in an Irish phase right now.  It started with a hammered dulcimer concert two weeks ago.  That got me in the mood for reading about Ireland.  I guess the next thing is to actually go there!

Here we go again

For some reason (which I haven't quite figured out yet), the home page whenever I access the Internet from work seems to be that ninemsn page, which is usually a complete waste of pixels on any monitor anywhere in the world. However, the big headline they were running there today which I saw for the second or two it took to upload the next page I visited was another whine about fuel prices. They seem to be claiming it's going to hit $1.30/litre. Given that I'm not likely to have any reason to verify this, I suppose I'll have to take their word for it, even if the source is somewhat questionable.
What I want to know is why all the whining? Well, we all know the answer to that one I suppose (i.e. the media just whines about what everyone else is whining about so they can sell newspapers). However, this doesn't explain the obvious contradiction here. I don't need to read their article to know that at least somewhere on the page, someone is going to be calling for government intervention to peg the price increases. Now this is where I have a problem.
Virtually from the time we're born these days, we're constantly being told that capitalism is wonderful, and communism is inherently "bad". I don't seek to take any position on that particular argument here, it's just what we're told. After all, market forces are supposed to take care of everything, supposed to determine the equilibrium price that will provide the greatest benefit to society, those who can't afford it will just have to work harder, which will in turn benefit society, right? Either that, or they'll just have to go without, which means more for everyone else, which also benefits society, right?
So why then, are so many people whining about this? Essentially all that is happening is that market forces (i.e. supply and demand) are simply having a global effect on the world price of crude oil, which is in turn pushing up the price of petrol. We've known it was coming ever since the US started selling it's industrial revolution to countries like China. This, ladies and gentlemen, is just capitalism doing what capitalism does. So basically, the message is this: quit whining. Either start looking for alternatives (something strangely absent from these media whines most of the time), or just pay the costs, and long live capitalism!

An 8 Year Old's View

We gave the camera to Sam to take with him on a recent school field trip.
Digital technology is so great. I remember my parents getting pretty pissy about me wasting film whenever I took a gazillion pictures of my friends making faces or of my dogs and rabbits dressed up in baby clothes.

But now, who really cares what they're of...

Fall Colors at Gunflint Narrows

Flashing back a little bit here to late September at Gunflint Lake on the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota. The vibrant leaf colors made for a stark contrast to the fire-scarred Canadian shoreline of Gunflint Lake. I wanted to share this one with you after shooting it, but it got lost in the shuffle and I forgot about it until now!

Symposium - Day 1

The American Trails Symposium opened yesterday afternoon. Rode my bike to the afternoon session.
The afternoon was visiting at the exhibitor booths. Several booths had not been set up yet. A couple were not manned. Anyway, checked out the exhibit hall. Picked up some information.
In the evening there was the Opening reception. Thanks to Lewis & Clark Outfitters for the food!
During this session, I talked with Scott Linnenburger of IMBA. I had met Scott in Rapid City for Black Hill Fat Tire Festival. We talked about THOR plans, and desires. Later, I met Mary Hanson from National Parks (out of Omaha) Did some networking there.
Ended the evening with a drive to the Big Dam Bridge to take photos. Got some good shots. (Sure was raw out up on the bridge.)

Sunsets

One of the surprising aspects of the wet start to the year has been the number of spectacular sunsets that have appeared. In truth, I've missed most of them by virtue of not having a camera handy at the time, but those I have captured reveal an often ignored side of this type of climate.
In other news, I have to admit that my inspiration for writing blog posts wanes a little at this point. The ride reports will continue of course, but the other things don't seem to hold the same interest. It's almost as if just about every aspect of cycling has been argued, discussed and analysed so many times over that there really seems little left to argue about. I'm sure the inspiration will return when something manages to annoy me, but right now, it just isn't there.

It was the start of a life-long love affair ...

...and it's not over yet. I am still madly, passionately, deeply, in love with them. I don't mind whether they are tall, short, fat or thin, young or old, tell the truth, or fiction. Books, books, books.





I grew up in a family that loved reading; we always had access to books.We were not poor, but neither was there a lot of money to spare for buying a constant supply of books. I can remember the day I was enrolled at the public lending library, which was a mere four or five minutes walk away from home, even for my chubby little six year old legs.

Back in the late 50's, my mother decided that I could read well enough to qualify to become a reader at the local library. It felt like such a privilege, an important step in becoming more like my very bookish, very bright, older brother, Steve. (Owl Wood wasn't around in those days).





The library was one large, quiet, gloomy room with very high shelving, lots of dark wood, and oh, so many books. Aladin's cave doesn't even begin to describe that place. I loved it.





The librarian was a woman and she commanded great respect from one and all, silence was the rule. Any necessary conversation with her was carried out in very hushed tones.





I wanted to be a librarian. It seemed like the most wonderful job in the world. The lending system was based on little cards and tickets. I think we were issued with two little ticket holders, which we had to hand in whenever we borrowed books. They were just little buff-coloured card corners with our name and the name of the library.

(I borrowed this image from www.1900s.org.uk.)





After browsing the children's books and making our selection we would take them over to the librarian and hand over our books and our tickets. She would then take the little card out of the pocket in the book, slip that into our ticket, and then stamp the book with the return date.





Our ticket was then filed - and oh how I ached to be able to do what she did as she neatly filed them all away alphabetically. It looked the greatest fun - more fun than the stamping of the date, in my opinion!!





I soon progressed from reading books about marmalade cats called Marmaduke (how I love those words which begin with mar... I don't know why!) to books about Milly Molly Mandy, stories about elves and pixies, etc. Anything and everything.





Somewhere along the line Ian (Owl Wood)was born, but that didn't stop Steve

and I from taking regular walks along to the library. By the way, Ian doesn't have a wart on his cheek, it's a mark on the photograph.





I progressed on to the Enid Blyton books, so frowned upon at one time, but such a delight to me. I adored the adventures of Mr Pink Whistle, then discovered the Secret Seven Adventures and lived their exciting lives with them.





Not long after Ian was born we moved to Hong Kong for a few years. I attended the army school at Victoria Barracks, but that is for another post. Back to the subject of libraries and books.





We joined the army wives library (even though my father was a civilian who worked for the RAF) and that was a whole new library experience. Much smaller, lighter, far less formal, children and parents could choose books and chat. Once books were selected we could go across the room and a waiter would serve us with drinks which Mother would pay for with a book of vouchers. All very different!





Of course, since then I have belonged to many different libraries and they have become computerised. The space allocated to books has been drastically reduced to allow for talking books, music, records, computers. Their opening hours are being reduced all the time and the number of books we can borrow at any one time is about 30, as though any of us could manage to carry 30 books around with us.





We live out in the countryside and there is a mobile library service which calls once a month. My husband and I are now the only people who use it from the village. To tell the truth, we use it because not using it would mean that we would lose it. Three elderly ladies from the village used to support it, but one has moved into Alford and uses the library there, and the other two appear at very irregular intervals.





It is one of those services which people can't be bothered with - but once the choice is not there they may feel differently. Grandson Harry has now been enrolled to help swell the numbers, he loves books.





I won't get into a gripe about the decline in library services, I really wanted to celebrate books and the large part that having access to books played in developing my love of them.





Apologies for going on so long, apologies for leaving so much out. I am trying to find a balance and I fear that this may turn into a multi-page post.

Something New

This evening I tried out a "new" (to me) location along the Lake Superior shoreline North of Grand Marais, MN. It turned out to be a wonderful spot and I had great fun spending the evening shooting here. I still can't believe I've never been down to this spot before! It is just a short walk from Highway 61, and is actually part of the Superior Hiking Trail. Many thanks to my friend Bryan Hansel (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanhansel/) for letting me know about this amazing little slice of Lake Superior's shore.

Most of the beach in this area consists of small pebbles, but there is also a small rocky outcrop that juts out into the lake. On the tip of this rocky outcrop is a small island that is only a few feet from shore. It just so happens that the moon was rising over this small island during my visit. Also along the rocky outcrop were several types of plants that were coated in ice from recent waves and spray coming off the lake. As many of you know, winter is a favorite time of mine for photography mostly because I loooooove photographing ice!

After shooting for about an hour and a half along the Lake Superior shore, I headed home for a bite to eat. As soon as my stomach was full I headed back out to do some more shooting. It was a beautiful moonlit night and I wasn't about to let that go to waste! So, I headed up along the Pigeon River and made some photos of Partridge Falls bathed in moonlight. What a great day for some early winter photography!

What is an inlet of the sea called anyway?

Last month while at work, in our old early 1900ish stone building that has no heat and use to be a meat packing plant in its early days and now houses a winery and us - during that week where it was 28 degrees in Berkeley, my coworker and I were working, in our down jackets and hats and scarves and wool attire, when I went downstairs to bare my ass to the frigidness to go pee.
And then I smelled smoke.

And as I was peeing I thought to myself, oh how nice, someone somewhere close by has started a nice little wood fire in this chilly weather and they're enjoying the warmth. And then I went back upstairs to sit on my personal space heater, while I processed payroll and wrote checks.

But as I was climbing back up the steps I realized that the smoke was getting stronger. And I could almost see it. And just as I rounded to corner to the final few stairs to tell my coworker that I smelled smoke, he said said something about not having any electricity on his side of the building.

And then we discovered it, just as we turned around to go back down to see where the smoke was coming from, there it was, a little electrical fire - with smoke and sparks and everything.
So we did the fire dance.

You know the one, where you circle around each other and say out loud while laughing nervously what should we do, what should we do, when you know full well what you should do. And then you realize your phone isn't on your person because, well after all, you were just going downstairs to go pee. But thankfully your coworker DID grab his phone, because he has an iPhone and iPhone people never go anywhere without their phone, even if it's just to put chili in the microwave. And so we did what we were supposed to do, and pressed the app to call 911. And then we went outside to wait.

And my coworker tried to make me guess what his rapper alias was by rapping about electrical fires and canned chili and pop chips and V8.

The fire people arrived within four minutes. And blocked off our street. With four hook and ladder trucks. And three smaller trucks. And four police cars. And axes and hammers and radios and chopping things and stuff like that. I felt a bit guilty. They'd sent so many resources for such a tiny fire. So many fire men. Such a little fire. And all of them running around, looking for something more. We were a disappointment.
They put our fire out. And told us not to plug so many space heaters into one socket. Because it overloads things. And turned off the electricity to the entire building. And then they left.