Upside Ann

  You may remember, I have sort-of-a-thing for  panoramic  photos on my phone.  If that is news to you, here are two reasons why.  These are so much cooler than any of my standard photographs.  They have just so much more there there.  I really appreciate the way both the near field and far field are in focus.   I did not expect much from the Badlands.  A friend of mine had been very unimpressed and this had colored my view.  If they had not been so very convenient off I-90 or not had such a do-able drive, I might have skipped them.  I am so glad I did not.  If nothing else, marvel at that blue sky!  I even managed to earn my Junior Ranger Badge for the park. I would have preferred to not include the edge of the keep-behind-the visitor fence on the first photo and the quarter car on the second.  Not include as in I wish there wasn't a car parked or a fence.  I considered cropping the photo, but felt editing ...

  I believe the first location is called  Firehenge .  OK.  Yes.  I know it is because I just looked it up.  Firehege has great billboards along the highway featuring that green alien you see perched atop a  red ladder truck.  We pulled over.  Bought gas- but ultimately did not pay the entrance fee for admission.  We still believed that Wall Drug was important.  (We meaning Kevin.)  Absolutely, I would recommend Firehenage over Wall Drug - unless you are really in need of chep coffee or a place to lose your son's cardboard Mjolnir. The latter two images are of "Dignity of Earth and Sky".  A quick break from the highway.  Easy on.  Easy off.  Educational Ranger Center.  A pause to consider the American people who first called South Dakota - and every other state- home.

We could NOT miss the Corn Palace, The Word's Only Corn Palace.  It isn't build of corn - which I was hoping for - but, rather, it sports several very large murals contructed from ears of variably colored corn.  The murals change each year and these masterpieces of vegetable art have been on display in Mitchell since 1892 - long before the concept of a pixelated image was coined. It is no surprise that this year the images are patriotic in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.   It is hard to get a great photo of the palace: trees, traffic, scaffolding.   If you are finding yourself in Mitchell and considering the Corn Palace, you do want to go inside.  You, unlike me, might be a person interested in the gymnasium full of flea-market like souvenier vendors.  More importantly, the murals continue inside AND there are photos of previous years work.  This week I celebrate the artists who design these exercises in edible poi...

 If your response was "new washing machine".......winner, winner chicken dinner!

This should have been a summer picture.  I planted an entire envelope of cosmos this spring and each time a seedling broke the 3 inch mark, a rabbit consumed it.  Finally, I have one.  ONE cosmos.  I think it is a volunteer from plants I grew a couple years ago. It isn't where I planted this spring.   I don't know why the rabbits let this one get past.  She stands about 24 inches tall.  Spindly.  With only 3 flowers/buds.  Still - cosmos always makes me smile.  Welcome.

They are supposed to take down the crab apple today.  Our last picture together.  A cloudy fall afternoon.  Misty rain in the air.  A tear in my eye.  I let her know I loved her.  Her beauty in the spring.  Her gnarled branches.  Her favorite hawk perch.  There aren't many leafed branches anymore.  Part of that is the season.  She never held her leaves all summer and through fall.  But the marjority are dead.  Rest friend.  

I thought that Purple Cane Road was the first book of Burke's that I read - probably 25 years ago.  In my mind I've carried the image of a man crucified on the wall of an old shed.  Turns out, that is an image from Sunset Limited .  A haunting image.  Lush description. Complex characters. Mood.  Mood.  Mood.  (And not in a sunshine and unicorns’ way.) As with all the Robicheaux novels, the plate is full of characters.  One movie producer, one director, one photographer, a shoe-shine man turned farmer of zinnias and chrysanthemums , his son who has one of the all-time best names (Cool Breeze Broussard), prostitutes, mafia mobsters, multiple killers/assassins, 2 sherriffs, good, bad, and ugly cops, two FBI agents - not to mention the aforementioned crucified man and Clete.   Finding words to share with you from this novel was an exercise in restraint.  You can see in the photo I posted with this essay my list of ideas from THE FI...

 Yes, I'm late getting these posted.  Beautiful fall day.  Color.

Do you recognize it? One of our lilacs performing a little do-over.  As a group they have mostly lost all their leaves but one brave soul is over-achieving with a semi-annual blossom.  I have not done any research to see if this is as strange as it seems to me.  I haven't seen it before- other than the crab apple which has rebloomed for a couple years.... those years being her swan song before, well, you know.  

  July 2026 Sioux Falls, SD I love this photo of Zupe.  He was being really cheeky and trying to get in the way of me taking a photo of the falls.  He is having fun and smiling naturally.

Sioux Falls in Soux Falls. Worth a stop.  I wish I had walked across to the other side of the falls.  I stayed on the "parking lot side" - probably because Zupe was uninterested in extending his time here.  (This should not serve as a caution about the intrinsic "lack of interestingness" in the falls.  Zupe didn't want to spend time viewing Yellowstone.  Couldn't get him to see a paint pot potting for all the tea in China.  I think it has to do with being 15.)  From the perspective I had, the view of the fall always included civilization - a train trestle, old buildings, skyscrapers, light poles... The other side would have had a background of trees, park, lots of people.  (Hmmmm.  Better?)   If the falls were more remote and more part of nature, I believe they would be more impressive.  They are not huge.  There is no dramatic drop of water - but a series of steps against the same pink quartzite we saw at Pipestone. If yo...

  I should have warned you to sit down first.  Sorry.  Sometimes, I amaze myself.  

 Remember how it took me weeeeeeks to re-read Burning Angel?  I polished off Cadillac Jukebox in 3 days.  OK, maybe 4.  But one of those days I was incapacited by dental anguish and benzodiazepines.  Mobsters. Murders. Politicians.  Old girlfriend.  While you might not make sense of this warning until after you're in the middle of the book, the following quotes contain spoilers.  Maybe I shouldn't tell you  Maybe you wouldn't be able to peek ahead in the narrative on the basis of these quotations if they just seemed like throw-away prose.  Sorry.  OK.  I'll edit a couple out.  (Done.  You are safe.) First - a description of one of the "button men"- Mingo Bloomberg.  I met him - maybe you did too? - in the last novel.  I don't think I met his eyes, however. I let my eyes wander over his face.  There were tiny back specks in the blueness of his eyes, like pieces of dead flies, like microscopic traes of ev...

 A short zombie story written in the apocolypse described originally by R. R. Haywood.  Two quotes.  One I thought was funny and one I take as a warning to myself...  You can decide which is which. "Where do we put her?" "Ditch?" "That's grim." "Got a better idea?" "....Hedge?" "Yeah.  Let's pretend that's less weird." "Not until the silence stopped sounding like safety and started sounding like loneliness."

A book of short stories.  Plenty of women.  Plenty of men having sex with women...sometimes with multiple women - though not at the same time.  I did not understand these stories.  I'd follow the plots - and was interested in a few of those - to reach the end to find a paragraph or two of philosophy that left me completely lost.  I'd like to think that if I learned Japanese and read the book in its native tongue, I'd "get it".  I know better.  My only hope was to read it as part of a literature class and be able to listen to a guided discussion of what I just read.  Obviously, I wouldn't be participating.  Please, if you read it- pick one story and help me through.  I will read it again.  I mean, look, I re-read a 350-page novel to learn who "Charlie" is.  In the meantime,.... "Yesterday is two days before tomorrow."   That is as deep as I go today.

 As you might expect in a book that presents a love story between gods of the Underworld (Hades and Thanatos) with goddesses of nature (Persephone and Asphodel), the interesting quotations center on love and death.  I have long known I am not a romantic person.  (I had romance in my youth.  It was glorious.  Today, I'm tired.)  And as far as romantic stories go, I am no judge.  I found this one weak.  I much preferred the romantic fantasies of Sarah Maas.  Maybe because her female characters are so bad-ass and Asphodel - eh - whiny?  Thanatos, as a character, felt limp.... though he had one great exchange.  "I am not a plaything.  I am a force of nature.  And I don't like ostentation.  I find it looks redundant on me." "Redundant," Del sneered.  "What does that even mean?" A cloud passed over the sun, swathing the cottage in shadow, and he locked his eyes on hers.  "Death need not prove it should be ...