Sunday Photos 8/7/11

Three selections from my recent trip to Minnesota.

Meanwhile, I was still thinking

I'm mulling over a much more substantial post, but in the mean time here are a couple photos.

New Jersey

(Thanks for reminding me of this one, Don.)

Kansas

In The Newspaper

Budget Package Stripped Of Pork, Cost Still Too Big To Calculate

Washington, DC - Senator Grant Hickeys (R-KS) emerged from a Capitol Hill conference today with bad news for his constituents.  “Dinner is most definitely not on us this year.  The provision to give every man, woman and child in America 8 pounds of bacon has been removed from the budget package.  We had the entire Congress working on the bill, adding up the costs, but when we ran out of fingers and toes, something had to give.”  Local reaction was mixed,  “Get the hell off my porch”, said Angie O’Plasty, a retiree in Belton.  Mr. Moo of Olathe believes “there is a bologna in my carburetor.”   A USDA spokesman reminded citizens that government cheese remains available in many areas, and should for some time, since it does not decompose naturally.

Buck Passed

Crawford, TX – Former President George W. Bush expressed his relief today at having “passed the buck” to his successor, Barack Obama.  “You know, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be”, opined the former Commander in Chief in a rare interview. “Two wars, recession, all that stuff.  It’s all his now.  I don’t know what Harry Truman was so afraid of.  It’s not like passing a kidney stone or something.”

Personals

Stinky - Hey, I got rid of the rash.  Bring your jar opener.  Misty

Main Street -  Get off my foot.

Jim – The smell from the storage locker is becoming intolerable.  Call the lodge with the lock combination PLEASE.

If I could fly I would already have your money.  The orangutan was a nice thought though.  Good luck! Crackers

Tall, green and handsome: we shared a malt at the NASA cafeteria, you dropped your laser.  Meet me at Lowes,

Lost dog – It’s been a while now so I don’t really remember what he looks like.  Write to Box 88.

Denise – We dance every day.  We move together in ways I don’t understand, even when distance separates us.  I lead, you lead, step, look, leap, swirl, rest.  Together.  Always together. Sometimes I think I am alone in the darkness, but then you touch me, remind me that we are partners, and that all I am seeing is my own shadow.  Clear or cloudy, warm or cold, fast or slow, we dance.  Reach, touch, breathe, stride, you lead, I lead.  Together.  Always together.

Love, Tim

Sunday Photos on Monday

Been a while, I know.   I've been working in New Jersey, which has given me some photo opportunities not normally available in Kansas.

As always, the best shots are on my website.  The link is over there on the right side of the page.  And since we're talking links, be sure to check out the excellent work at WWVB.

Memorial Day 2011

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Life and Death

Air. Water. Warmth. They make life possible.
But they are also the food of the monsters that come down from the thunder and stride the earth without mercy.

These images were taken today outside Piedmont, Oklahoma.  But no photograph or video can capture the feeling of fearful wonder at the power evidenced by the broken landscape.

Stately trees and fields of ripening wheat are stripped of leaf and grain, leaving only spindly stalks that point like accusing fingers toward the source of their doom.

PS - I found it an interesting coincidence that a town called Piedmont is also a key site in The Andromeda Strain, a novel about a form of life that transforms energy directly into matter.

Doubleheader

More pretty pictures to make up for missing last Sunday.