An exceptional trout

My "catch" at the Nature Center yesterday…

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I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
-Groucho Marx

Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout.
-Irish Proverb

Taking a walk

On a Saturday afternoon…

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People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it -- walk.
~ Ayn Rand

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
~ Jean de la Fontaine

Fun with the sun

A fun sun illuminated by sunlight…

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The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
~ Pablo Picasso

Tribute

A salute to Arthur C. Clarke, innovative thinker, inventor, and writer; the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey." He transcended into the greater cosmos this week at the age of 90.

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

--Arthur C. Clarke

Zesty weather

Zesty weather lately; wind, rain, sunshine. Storm clouds hovering in the background behind Camel’s Back. All of it, good for the soul…

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It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
~Charles Dickens

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.
~Mark Twain

Through a cat's eye

Double-take
double vision
but no Doppelgänger

just a reflection
through a cat’s eye

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
-Groucho Marx

In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats.
-English Proverb

Catching a rainbow

Dramatic weather today with rain showers, sleet, wind, and sunshine. And a rainbow…

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And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
~G.K. Chesterton

The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.
~Patricia Clafford

The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.
~Henry David Thoreau

Ready for spring

Ready for a new couple and their family. Ready for birdsong. Ready for spring.

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A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
-Chinese proverb

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
-Henry David Thoreau

The value of shadows

Another scene on a sunny afternoon…

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I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.
~Grandma Moses

If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.
~Rita Dove

Spring fever

Today is one of the warmest we’ve had so far. People are doing yard work, riding bikes, walking dogs, sitting outside in the sun. Starved for sunlight after an unusually snowy January and a cold, windy February. Crocus are blooming and spring fever has broken out in bird song.

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If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
~Anne Bradstreet

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
~Mark Twain

Little red wagon

We had a red wagon much larger than this one. But we didn’t dare-devil down hills with it. We used it to haul gardening supplies, like fertilizer, tools, and rust-red ceramic "tubes" to put over young tomato plants.

All work; no play.
And it eventually rusted away…

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Hitch your wagon to a star.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A person without mirth is like a wagon without springs.
-Proverb

Seeing what is invisible

Something to start the new week…

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When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
- Tuli Kupferberg

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
-Jonathan Swift

Ahoy, matey!

A curious window decoration - perhaps they are celebrating several holidays at once.

Or maybe they are pirates…

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If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
-George Bernard Shaw

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
-Mark Twain

Tangles

A week of tangles it has been, finally winding its way around to Friday.

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The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.
~ Remy de Gourmont

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
~ James A Michener

So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.
~ Gordon Allport

Surreal Monday

Between a screaming refrigerator, odd tech problems, and bizarre phone calls at work, it was a surreal Monday…

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Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.
-Dan Salomon

Shadowing pine

A view during a saffron sunset…

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I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets.
~ Hamlin Garland

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.
~ Denise Levertov

True West

Last night’s lunar adventure reminded me of a photo I took during a different phase of the moon, as seen over Camel’s Back. This photo is sooo West; I half expect a cowboy to ride over the crest of the hill.

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Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

~ An acting tip from John Wayne to fellow actor Michael Caine

Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
~ Groucho Marx

Eclipse

Out on the sidewalk after dinner, gazing into the eastern sky. The moon looked as though the lower left corner had crumbled. Dark, shadowy, hazy. Walked the sidewalk to keep warm while keeping an eye on the moon. Gradually more and more of it disappeared until it was only a sliver and a faint circular glow within shadow.

And that phased into total eclipse, and the moon became a dimly lit globe set in the sky, like a pearl tinged pale orange. As it became totally obscured, nearby stars and planets shone brightly.

Some neighbors stopped briefly during their evening errands to glance up before going inside. Others walked to the corner, looked upward, pointed it out to their children. A couple walking their dogs cracked jokes about "lun-a-cy".

Now, a sliver of silver has appeared on the right, continuing its journey across the sky, glowing brighter and brighter as each minute passes.

Tried to take photos, but too much city light, wrong location, and not the right camera equipment. This will have to be remembered in mind’s eye, and through the photos of others (one of which I borrowed from the website below, taken by Andy Steere).

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy/introduction/04.motion_moon/

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Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.
~ Victor Hugo

A colorful view

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
-Raymond Chandler

I don’t know if a bishop damaged this window, but we found it hanging on the side of a porch of a house in the neighborhood. And the light glowing through it was truly beautiful.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Three

To brighten a brown winter’s day…

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There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
-Leonardo da Vinci

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
-Tom Bodett

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.
-Henry James