Back.

Maddox, Thanksgiving, undated


Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spiles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their positions by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.

He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout indeep, fast-moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven spiles of the bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking tohold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand, raised inspurts by the current.

Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew upthe stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow ashe came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back intothe stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge, where he tightened, facing up into the current.

Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.

He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff.

Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tumpline. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and then turned off around a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking uphill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.

- Ernest Hemingway, from The Big Two-Hearted River, Part 1

Head in the clouds.

Sunrise moon over Appleton.


clouds come from time to time --
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.

- Basho

Fight.

I hope that this brave student can keep her contraband library a secret from the authority figures at her school. The thrill of a “secret” library is surely driving her classmates to read the very books that their teachers and parents do not want them to have access to. Her violation of school policy is in the spirit of bigger and better things — literature, freedom and the eternal fight against censorship.

Read the rest at care2.

Place.

Sunrise over Appleton.


But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.

- Gary Snyder

Being.

Ringler, Moonrise over the River, undated


Being the stream ...

Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the
stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream,
so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.
Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally
into it.

- Gary Snyder

Arise.

Ah! Sunflower

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go.

- William Blake

Head in the clouds.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Scarlatti, Piano Sonata in B minor, L. 33

Vladimir Horowitz performs ...

Barn.

Sunrise.


Sunset.

Happy Birthday, Possum.

"The Living Legend," George Jones, was born on this date in 1931.

George Jones, "Tennessee Whiskey"

Lasso.

What is it you want, Mary? What do you want ... you, you want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey, that's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.

I'll take it. Then what?

Well then, you could swallow it, and it'd all dissolve, see? And the moon beams'd shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair ...

A great scene from a Wonderful movie ...



More moon at Laurent Lavader

Harvest.

In traditional skylore, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. In 2011, the autumnal equinox comes on September 23. The fullest moons for us in the U.S. will come the nights of September 11 and 12. That makes the September 11-12 full moon the Harvest Moon.

Read the rest at EarthSky.

Neil Young, "Harvest Moon" ... I have always loved this song.

Raise.

Go on; don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets, art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise men to the Divine.

- Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven String Quartet Op. 18 No. 6, Allegro con brio

Treasure.

In September 12, 1940, four boys and their dog set out on an adventure in Dordogne. The boys - Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and Simon Coencas – where intrigued by an old legend about a tunnel running under the Vezere River linking the old Castel of Montignac to the Manor of Lascaux. According to the legend, this tunnel would lead to a second tunnel and a treasure hidden deep in the woods of Montignac.

As they walked through the woods the little dog, Robot, ran ahead toward a deep depression in the ground covered with overgrowth and began sniffing the sunken hole. The depression had originally been created by an uprooted tree. The boys hurried to catch up with Robot. When they saw the deep hole, they immediately thought it might lead them to the legendary tunnel and the hidden treasure.

After trying to determine the depth of the hole by tossing rocks in the opening and listening for contact with the bottom, they decided to explore it. They enlarged the opening by removing a few stones around the edges with their penknives. Then, each one of the four boys slid through the hole in turn, along a semi-vertical shaft embedded with stalagmites down fifteen meters to a dark underground chamber. “The descent was terrifying,” recalled Jacques Marsal who was just fourteen years old at the time, the youngest of the four boys. Inside the chamber they used their oil lantern to look around shining it on the walls and ceiling.


Enter the cave at the Lascaux site.

Gratitude.

FDNY Engine 28 Firefighter Mike Kehoe headed up on September 11, 2011.

In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Liberty.

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

- Patrick Henry, delivered 23 March 1775 at Henrico Parrish Church, Richmond Virginia, Second Virginia Convention

Darrell Scott, "It's A Great Day To Be Alive"

Gregory Alan Isakov, "In Tall Bulidings"

Believing.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing.

- Bo Schembechler

Special.

van Gogh, Corner in the Garden of Saint Paul Hospital, 1889


Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

- St. Augustine of Hippo

Spiritual.

Chatham, Nightfall in September, 1997


Chatham believes that as soulful creatures, people cannot fundamentally change what is inside them from the time they are children until reaching the ends of their lives. Rather, the struggle of honest introspection, learning more about our strengths and frailties, allows us to expand and flourish in ways we never see as young people, when ego wears the illusionary mask of immortality.

“I have come to believe that all great art no matter which of the forms it takes is fundamentally spiritual. Not biblically or scripturally so, but in ephemeral ways impossible to explain. Much of this has to do with the belief there is an enormous unseen force in the universe which can neither be understood nor explained, not by science, and not by the great religions," he has observed.

Read the rest at Wildlife Art Journal.

Dark Water

In the midnight Arctic Seas,
stained tropical rivers at dawn,
the Gulf Stream at noon,
where thin shafts of light
chisel down into blue black;
a small creek in the evening shade
beneath willows and sycamores;
in northern rivers,
where slamon lie
in deep viridian hollows.
It is always the dark water
which promises the most.

- Russell Chatham

Contender.

V Mart goes 4XL as the Tigers beat the Indians 8-6, sweeping the three-game series.

The Tigers have floored the accelerator the past two weeks, branding tire tracks on the backs of their closest divisional competitors.

But the irony of this surge is that it weakens the argument that Verlander should be the American League's most valuable player, while strengthening the argument that the Tigers should be a genuine World Series contender. They suddenly have a virulent offense and a contagious knack for making the right play at the right time. They have a nine-game lead on the second-place White Sox, 9 1/2 on the Indians.

Read the rest at The Freep.

Album.

One hopes that the album is not dying.

The album is NOT dead, nor does it sleep. It is alive and well at Cultural Offering.

Ancient.

Master calligrapher Paul Antonio demonstrating ancient skills with pens, ink and paper in his studio in Clapham, London.

Risks.

John Tierney writing in The New York Times on the risks of too much playground safety cites research suggesting that children approach potentially hazardous situations like climbing equipment gradually, and that protecting them even from minor injuries may have the unintended consequence of making them more fearful later in life.

Read the rest of Edward Tenner's (I love that guy!) article at The Atlantic.

Innovate.

Every new invention changes the world -- in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.



Chaos happens ... let's make better use of it!

Mistakes.

Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, has conducted groundbreaking research in this area. One of her experiments asked 400 5th graders in New York City schools to take an easy short test, on which almost all performed well. Half the children were praised for "being really smart." The other half was complimented "having worked really hard."

Then they were asked to take a second test and given the options of either choosing one that was pretty simple and they would do well on, or one that was more challenging, but they might make mistakes.

Of those students praised for effort, 90 percent chose the harder test. Of those praised for being smart, the majority chose the easy test. Dweck has conducted such experiments and studies in a variety of school districts -- low-income, high-income, homogenous and mixed- culture and races.

A cornerstone of Dweck's research is the concepts of fixed mindsets and growth mindsets. Those with fixed mindsets, as Professor Dweck says, believe people are good at something -- either good at math or music or baseball -- or they're not. For those with a fixed mindset, mistakes serve no purpose but to highlight failure.

Those with what Professor Dweck calls growth mindsets -- who believe that some people are better or worse in certain areas but we can all improve and develop our skills and abilities -- are much more likely to be able to accept mistakes because they know they're part of learning.

And studies in a secondary school have shown that when students are taught about growth mindsets and that the brain is malleable, their motivation to learn dramatically increases.

Read the rest at Edutopia.

Head in the clouds.

Labor Day Sunset.


What a day! Cool temperatures and a gentle breeze ...


September's Baccalaureate
A combination is Of Crickets -- Crows -- and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming --
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.

- Emily Dickinson


Bring on Autumn!

Time.

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Believed.

Rock climber Alex Honnold in his ascent of Half Dome, nearly 2,000 feet — without a rope.

Happy Birthday, Mercury.

Queen frontman Freddie Mercury was born on this date in 1946.



Rest in peace, Freddie.

Lifted.

Death is so sure of his victory that even gives you a lifetime advantage.

- Luigi Boccherini

As I write, I am preparing the popcorn which will accompany yet another viewing of the movie version of Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. Last night I was seredipitously reminded of the movie when Luigi Boccherini's uplifting La Musica Noturna della strade di Madrid showed up on the iPod ... you should've seen me dancing on the picnic table ... well, maybe not.

A friend has recently inspired me to think about how and why music moves me. The spirit is lifted in many sublime ways, but music is transcendental. Being outdoors, enjoying art, reading, cooking, eating, and many other glorious endeavors are all enhanced when music is present.

But, it's in the moment -- now -- when music most assuredly makes the moment. Like a dervish, unaware, I'm lifted as I can not, alone, lift myself.

Living.

Last night Boccherini lifted me.

Boccherini, "La Musica Notturna Delle Strade di Madrid," no. 6, op. 30 ... a great dance song

Jets.

Some of the most mind-bending news from last week came from an international team of astronomers from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The team combined two decades of Hubble images to produce short movies of the jets released during star birth.

Here’s one of the movies. Before you start thinking it’s not very exciting, remember two things. First, these jets are 10 times the width of our solar system. Second … we’ve never actually seen jets from celestial bodies in motion before now.



Read the rest at EarthSky.

Calm.

Getchasum.

Books.

This poster was created for the Illinois Statewide Library Project. It shows a boy holding a book in his raised hand: "September. Back to work. Back to school. Back to books." Illustrated between 1936 and 1940 by the WPA Art Project in Chicago.

Thanks, Vintagraph.

Gone.

Miggy goes big fly to cap off an amazing comeback ...



Chicago's seven-run lead at midgame had shrunk to two runs as the ninth began. In came right-handed closer Sergio Santos, who hadn't allowed a run on the road all year.

Raburn delivered his no-doubt blow to left with one out after Austin Jackson tripled. Cabrera unloaded his no-doubter to left with two outs on the first pitch he saw.

This 9-8 win didn't clinch anything, but it increased the Tigers' lead on second-place Cleveland to 6 1/2 games with time beginning to run out. And it pushed the White Sox 7 1/2 back.

More at The Freep.

THIS is what CLUTCH looks like ...

Into.

Wyeth, Her Room, 1969


The fact is that very few things have so much effect on the feeling inside a room as the sun shining into it.

- Christopher Alexander

More Alexander here. Don't miss A Pattern Language.

Supernova.

Grab your binoculars and glimpse a cosmic explosion – a supernova – from 21 million light-years away! It’ll be visible from around September 3-10, 2011.

Ten tips for seeing the supernova are at EarthSky.

Are.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

-Anais Nin

21.

Right-hander Justin Verlander (21-5) won his ninth straight start and became the first Tigers pitcher to win 21 games since Jack Morris in 1986.

Read the rest at The Freep.

Six and a half up on Chicago ... Bless You, Boys!

GO BLUE!

Eat or die.

Route 62 Barbeque.


I'm still thinking of last weekend's treat. Thanks, Frazier!

Memory.

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.

- Edward de Bono

Explore the Memory Warehouse.

Eat or die.

Big Poppi has gone to Portland (WA) in search of sustenance ...


1st stop, Brunchbox for a burger done right. 2 beef patties, 4 slices of thick cut bacon, 1 fried egg and grilled onions.

The Brunchbox is here.

Thanks for the report, Frazier, keep 'em comin'!

Ghosts.

Paris ... then and now.


I love when How To Be A Retronaut does these.

Grass.

It's that time of year.

Cool nights.

Warm days.

Warm days that gently bake the grass.

September.

Do yourself a favor today. Go outside around midafternoon, find a large patch of turf, stand still, close your eyes, look up, and "be the ball ...", no wait, that's something else ... just inhale deeply through the nose, filling your chest with nature's seasonal perfume.

James Taylor, "September Grass"

Randolfo.

French, Crows and Shed, 2010



A painter, a poet, a keen eye ... Randolfo is back.

Eternity.

... sweet, salty, funky, melty, gooey bliss.


Peace, love and epoisses at Wanderations.

Happy Birthday, Morrison.

Van Morrison was born on this date in 1945.


Van Morrison, "Coney Island"

The Gourds, "Country Love"

Cook up some sweet potatoes and tomorrow night
We’ll watch the stars dancing with the satellite