Monthly Archives: March 2017

Weekly Photo Challenge: Who You Callin’ Dense?

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I appreciate the beauty found in the thick of things, like a solid mass of redwood roots…

…or lush undergrowth…

…or tangled hunks of kelp…

…or billowy cumulus clouds.

I like my environment filled in, robust, varied and fecund.  A sparse monoculture is not my aesthetic ideal. 

There is great wisdom in diversity, and intelligence in supporting it. 

Dense

Weekly Photo Challenge: Green is Easy on My Eyes

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I work for a Conservation Foundation. We try very hard to be green! Protecting watersheds and wildlife habitat while preventing the development of natural lands into human-dominated environments is a labor of passion and commitment for me. Green is not just my favorite color and the highlight in my eyes, it is my preferred world view! Here’s my green gallery:


It IS Easy Being Green!

Science in Culture, Religion and Politics

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This month’s theme at the Be Zine is “Science in Culture, Religion and Politics”. To see the entire issue, click HERE. 

Science, the scientific method, and related modes of logic and thought are wondrous tools. Like any tool, they are beneficial when applied wisely, and they are detrimental when applied unwisely.  The ‘If’ and ‘When’ and ‘How’ and the results of their applications to culture, religion and politics are so varied and storied and possibly ambiguous that I decided not to write an essay for my submission this time. There is just too much to discuss. So, although I am the least of all the poets here, I put my thoughts into a poem.

Ages of Thought,
whether Dark or Enlightened,
attempt to encompass the world.
Is it magic and mystical,
hypothetical, physical?
Can our rigorous study
render clear from the muddy?
Will our critical thinking
keep the spaceship from sinking?
Systematic inventions,
clever social intentions —
are they matters of preference,
coercion or deference?
Does “control and predict”
do us good, or constrict?
Can brain work help to consecrate
Humility and celebrate
such Human traits
as Wonder? Appreciation?
Morality? Cooperation?
When bullet points kill conversation,
and no one takes your word,
Do you trust experience, experiment, story or definition —
And whose?

 

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Atop

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Mountaintop experiences give you a spiritual perspective. The sky is bigger; the minutiae of the earth is even smaller.  

Humility and awe meet you at the top of your climb. 

The view (and the climb!) is breathtaking.

And the opportunity to stay atop a while and ponder your place on the crust of Earth is a special reward. 

Seek higher ground. It’s good for your soul.

 

 
Atop

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Road Taken

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These photo challenge subjects so often coincide with an experience I just had! I’ve just driven a rather harrowing 5.5 miles from my office back home in a white-out blizzard of Wisconsin spring snow. The county road goes up a steep incline of glacial terrain, and the snowplows hadn’t gotten to it when I and 4 others began the ascent. I was slipping sideways and barely able to get to the top in first gear with my 11-year old Honda Accord with front wheel drive. Needless to say, I wasn’t taking any photos during this journey!

Now that I’m safely home at my laptop, I’m thinking back to another wild road experience. I was so excited to travel through the Jemez mountains in New Mexico in October…the bright yellow of the cottonwood leaves, the blue sky and the red rock were absolutely stunning! The next day, we traveled the same route and were caught in a hailstorm that almost stranded us at the summit under two inches of icy pellets. Of course, I don’t have photos of that part of the trip, only the sunny splendor of the initial journey. 

street

scilla in NM
The Road Taken