Random Stuff

Teddy and I headed out to the Big Empty yesterday. Still a lot of people here looking at cranes. Teddy and I dealt with probably 20 cars even though it wasn’t an especially nice day. I put a good face on it, but a few of them are pretty inconsiderate and treat that holy place and its avatars like commodities. I don’t really understand them, but there they are. A guy with a huge lifted Dodge truck parked and left the driver door open blocking the way. He had a huge lens on his camera and it was all about the photograph for him. I guess it’s not for me to judge. Still, I couldn’t help but think that the cranes might have liked the spring of 2021 more than this spring. I know I saw much more of them that year and, while it might not be true, it seemed that the cranes were more relaxed. I can’t imagine they like all the traffic, either.

But Teddy was a good boy and, as far as we were concerned, a good time was had by both. A few cranes flew high above us, and many, many Canada geese. There is a pair of geese who’ve taken up occupancy on top of a muskrat house and right now, they are my favorites. They are always together and every time I see them, one is curled up with its head tucked in its feathers and the other is standing tall, the lord of all he/she surveys from about 18 inches above the water. The road is showing wear and tear from the recent traffic and where it was once a nice, smooth gravel road, it’s gone washboard.

“The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s back yard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred. To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous. ~ Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences

I think maybe the past few years might have turned me into a bit of a misanthrope…

I did something yesterday I have not done since I moved here and “decorated.” I took down a painting and hung a new one. I’ve painted a lot in the past several years, but nothing I wanted to hang, even though I love most of the work I’ve done. A couple paintings hang in the spare room, but that’s essentially storage. The snow painting is on the living room wall now where I can see it. I picked the frame because it is the color of the other plants growing out there, greasewood. The design cut into the white is evocative of greasewood in snow. There is no greasewood (Chico) in my painting, but it was there. I’d like to hang the big crane painting but someone would need to drill some holes and sink some mollies for that to happen. The Big Crane Painting is on my paintings page. 🙂

https://marthakennedy.wordpress.com/paintings-drawings-and/#jp-carousel-71739

Otherwise, I’ve caught a cold — the first one in years. I don’t feel like a sturdy oak tree, and the timing couldn’t be worse, well, probably it could be worse, but this is pretty bad. OH well…

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/03/18/rdp-saturday-oak/