Smokies Light

Theres a love thats divine
And its yours and its mine
And it shines like the sun
At the end of the day we will give thanks
And pray to the one

Have I told you lately that I love you
Have I told you theres no one above you
Fill my heart with gladness
Take away my sadness
Ease my troubles, thats what you do
--Van Morrison

Taken at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park last weekend. It's nice to chase butterflies in February.

Fact: The fruit Adam and Eve partook of was an orange, not an apple.

I only ate one.
Photo tip of the day: Discovered by accident, orange juice makes an excellent lens cleaner.

Heaven forbid the Great Smoky Mountains National Park be designated a wilderness area. It would be the end of life as we know it.

This spot looks like a big mud puddle but is actually part of a marshy creek in Anastasia State Park. I went back a few hours later and this mound was completely under water. After thinking about it for a second I had a doh! moment. It's the tide dummy.

A bill is introduced in the Georgia state legislature to "force" Tennessee to cede a good portion of Chattanooga to Georgia. Of course what they are really after is the billions of gold that flow through the region, that gold being in the form of water in the Tennessee River. This can be scoffed or laughed at perhaps, but the general idea is a serious one. If Atlanta experiences another drought like last year, things are going to get really ugly. There are billions to be made, with all the players getting in on the action. The only losers will be the environment and the average Tennessean.
By way of SGML.

Update: Apparently Georgia doesn't want the Chattanooga part, but just the Marion County part where the river runs thru it. We will have to put a crimp in the 35th parallel to make this work.

The stretch of A1A between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach is populated with all kinds of mom and pop motels and restaurants, several with the word "shack" in the business name. It's like a taking a road trip back in time to the 60s before corporate fast food and motels became the norm. Maybe the grass is always greener on the other side, but selling hot dogs by the seashore seems to be an idyllic life.

Listening to internet radio is about the only way to hear new music and musicians these days in most areas of the country. I came across a hauntingly beautiful voice owned by Eva Cassidy from the DC area. Her rendition of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock is the best I've ever heard, even over Joni herself. I promptly bought her cd "Time after Time" and was equally impressed with every song on the cd. I began to research just who Eva was, and why she wasn't already famous. I was deeply saddened to learn that she passed away in 1996 at the young age of 33 from melanoma.

Another sailing outing last weekend... this time we had an escort. A pod of dolphins were leaping for joy all the way out of the water about 1/4 mile in front of us, but as they joined the bow of the boat, they wouldn't jump for the camera. The Bridge of Lions is in the background. I'll post a couple more pics this afternoon.

Priscilla Gulliver runs a boat and breakfast out of St. Augustine. One way to get free sailboat rides when you don't have your own boat is to swab the bird poop off the deck of someone else's boat. A nasty job but worth it to play with dolphins. Just noticed my shadow in the lower right corner of the pic below right before posting. Oops.

The location of the St. Augustine lighthouse had always baffled me. It's not near the inlet, and a large bay called the Salt Run and a peninsula called Conch Island is between the lighthouse and the ocean. From the Lighthouse website, I learned that the coastline was so rapidly changing that in 1940, a new inlet was dredged leaving the lighthouse location out of place. Conch Island didn't even exist 100 years ago and what is now Salt Run Bay used to be the ocean. Click on the 'play' button on the interactive map to see how the coastline has changed, especially since 1874. What will the coastline look like 100 years from now?

Another day ends on the Salt Run. Short on pics this week. I'm hoping for a nice sunset or sunrise, or maybe a leprechaun dancing on the tennis courts.

Yes, more bird pics. These birds are friendly with people so it's easy to get close for a decent pic. The friendliness stems from people and birds fishing together in the same locations for generations. Fishing together over many years always creates close bonds it seems.

By way of Tennviews I learned that my congressman David Davis (R-TN 1st) is announcing he will seek re-election. I will be opposing Rep. Davis as a write-in candidate, officially announced in the comments at Tennviews. My announcement is reproduced here:

I announce here in this comment that I am opposing Rep. Davis in this election as a write-in candidate. I have a residence in the district and live there sometimes. I will stand for pro-choice, our right to be atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Mormons, and even dare I say it, Scientologists. I'm a loner, a slacker, a midnight toker, I play my music in the sun. Please vote for me if you live in the 1st district. Thank you.

Update: I feel like Stephen Colbert. Write-in votes don't count unless a form is filed in each county in the district. Being a slacker, that's too much trouble. You can still vote for me to make a statement to the establishment however. I will be grooming myself and getting the forms in order for an official run in 2010.

Update: Been working on some campaign slogans...

Fletch - the anti-Davis

Vote for fletch, a successful entrepeneur in the global economy, however he needs a government job with benefits and a pension to have any hope of retirement. -- perhaps a little wordy.

Vote for fletch, or al-Qaeda will blow up Gatlinburg. -- fear mongering perhaps, but it worked for the Republicans in 2004.

Fletch. True American, True Heterosexual -- now I don't like this one really. It implies that Davis is gay, and there's nothing wrong with being gay. It's really gay bashing. It's just pandering to the constituency.

I like Ike -- I know, my name is not Ike, but neither was Dwight's and it worked for him.

Might add some more later. Feel free to contribute in the comments.

Taken Sunday morning at Washington Oaks Garden State Park. I had the entire park to myself.

Taken this evening. Not much of a subject to focus on here, but since I was there and took a few pics might as well post one so it can have its moment in the sun, before being relegated to a cd never to be seen again.

A few retired gents are on the beach every morning fishing in the same spot. I'm ready to join them.

This evening a total eclipse of the moon will start at 10pm and last about an hour. I'll try to get a pic. Read more about it at NASA.

Update: Mostly solid cloud cover broke for a few seconds for me to get this pic. It's really poor when cropped up close. I didn't have time to get the focus and exposure set right before it disappeared again. I believe the dot in the upper right is Saturn.

Well my pics have been rather dull this week and I'm starting to repeat scenes. I don't discuss my personal life on the blog because personal lives are like opinions. Everybody has one and I don't find mine to be particularly interesting to myself, much less to the rest of the world. I've been putting in 60 hour work weeks nonstop with no end in sight, and it takes it toll in every nook and cranny of my existence, including taking pics. The good thing about my current job is it doesn't conflict with my political outlook and world view, and in some small way contributes to the common good. It just happens to pay very well also, but the hours and stress are more than I can bear. I've got a good lead on a job in Austin, which is about the only major city I could see myself living in or nearby. As much as I love Austin, for me it's hard to pursue a landscape photography hobby there. It's sort of lacking in that regard. I would really just like to take a year off, take pics and bark at the moon, and I might do just that. If you happen to be reading this post and be my current employer, take this job and shove it.

In a time of recession, millions losing their homes, inflation, and general uncertainty in the world, I quit my job with benefits, good pay, and security. Looks like taking pics and barking at the moon are my only career options now.

If I told you what it takes
To reach the highest high,
You'd laugh and say nothings that simple
But you've been told many times before
Messiahs pointed to the door
And no one had the guts to leave the temple!
Im free,
And freedom tastes of reality.
--The Who

I posted on my old blog that I got tired of identifying wildflowers. It's name calling really, and the labelling and categorization that the human mind likes to do can cause you to miss what's really there, whether it's a flower, a tree, a bird, or another person. I don't know if this bird is what other minds have agreed to label as a duck or loon or some other four letter word, including the word bird. It just is and I prefer it that way.

It just is, pictured here in something we like to call water. What do you first see when you look at this image?

Do you see your monitor, the contrast and brightness settings, the pixel resolution?

Do you guess the f-stop, shutter speed, focus, focal length, and composition, evaluating each as good or bad?

Do you try to identify the bird by common name, or scientific name?

Do you see the beauty and the grace of a healthy living creature at peace in its home?

Do you see the water, which is a reflection of the sky, and by gazing at the water you can look deep into outer space?

What you see is a reflection of who and what you are. You are looking at a self portrait.