an objective view of the united states:

recently i drove across the united states, i made notes of the things i saw along the way.  at first i listed things according to which state i was in, but quickly the lines blur.

an objective view of the united states:

yellow pine
boiled peanuts
catfish houses

billboards for health care plans

high school football
yellowing tobacco
the smell of skunk

billboards for crop chemicals

mahogany sumac
bright orange monkey flower
fireworks fireworks fireworks

heat dried corn
velvet green cotton

homemade pies and hot plate lunches

red tail hawk
yellow-headed turtle
a dead armadillo

quarter horses and longhorn cattle

watermelons
red red rock
old pop tops

sunny yellow flowers
night hawks at dawn
hot air balloons

stellar jays
ravens
fry bread

freight trains
pinyon pines
elk

sunny yellow flowers

ocotillo
palos verde
a chipmunk

a fresh sweet breeze
and a vast new sea

HOW happy is th…

HOW happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And does n’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.
Part Two: Nature, XXXIII

hierarchical tagging (subclouds):

some interesting links,
hierarchical tagging (subclouds):

http://www.enricozini.org/2006/debtags/debtags-tagcloud/

http://blog.larkc.eu/?tag=linked-open-data

http://dailymoe.blogspot.com/2009/03/very-simple-method-for-automatic.html

http://advers.com/tag/graffiti

http://twubs.com/ (cross platform tagsearch)

small winter

2/15/12
so i am wintering well, so far, safe and sound, tucked in tight through this mildest of winters, which is so far very warm, and which so far has only produced one very small blizzard.

a bare dusting of snow on the ground and on the porches is whisking about with tiny swirlings and fearsome intent.

yet the wind has awoken with a wail, whipping its way through the walls with a wanton warble and a whistley whine.

and i winter by the woodstove, as we are lucky to have one, and lucky to have a home. we lost the family land. in a way it was inevitable, i suppose, after a certain point.

we take the loss, as a family, with a deep breath and a heavy heart and we move on, our ways now separate.

no one is surprised, here. it happens all the time.

i often think of our economy and of the desolate homes and devastate businesses and the erosion of hope and faith in the strength of our communities and of our selves.

some will recover.

my family, and many many others, will be altered forever.

it is a fitting adage, “neither a borrower nor a lender be”, although i must remark that there seems to be a distinct advantage in being both.

well anyway, the majority of my writings online were working towards a farm project that i believed would help save the family land, by integrating resource management with the local economy. the ideas are solid, yet for me no longer hold an immediate incentive, and quite frankly make me sad.

so i do not often feel like writing, so i am leaving it go, for now.

for now, i shall continue to quit smoking (yay) and do wintery things, such as making simple breads and complex soups and weathering out the very small blizzards by the woodstove.

beluga mariachi