This is a test

I'm back to testing free image hosting sites because Blogger is so anal about what they will link to. Plus they promised unlimited storage if you join google+ then cannibalize older photos they host to make room for new ones. WTF?!

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Street shrine hosted by photobucket

Plus, I hate google+. It's just facebook by another name and I already hate facebook. Flickr is best. They offer a free terabyte of storage! Basically they rock, but then they disabled direct linking. WTF?! Lame.

Chiang Mai, Thailand -  playground hosted by TinyPic

Photobucket and it's offshoot, Tinypic, are both still free. I posted these two photos there and yes. Blogger still accepts the links so good. You don't even need an account to post to TinyPic. You have to watch an ad to get the captcha, which is obnoxious, so I won't using it much, but it's worth keeping on the list. As for Imageshack? I logged in and found out it's no longer free. In the process, seems I activated their 30-day "free trial" countdown but I won't bother. They're out.

Sonny morning

Sonny was in fine form today though, at this point, his morning screen porch screed has burned down to a mumbling amid the trilling, twittering and whistling of the birds. Pops is out working in the yard. He is skinnier than ever and probably more fit. I think he's the one who put our mailbox door back in the box yesterday. It's been broken forever. I tried taping it last time we were here but it didn't stick. Maybe this year, I will actually spring for a new box, if they don't cost too much.

It's day three here along Alligator Creek, or at least I think it is. I've lost count. The only thing that's missing now is the squirrels. Frida's daughter did show up but hasn't checked today. She needs her own name, perhaps that of a Mexican poet. It will be a chance for me get acquainted with writers I don't know because, of course, this will require extensive research.

Literary road dogs and Alligator Creek

Sunday - last day - Georgia to Florida

Forget Kerouac and Cassady. Perhaps, they were never really all that anyway. For this five day drive from Portland, Oregon to Florida's gulf coast, Rilke, Odysseus Elytis, Roy DeG., Galway Kinnell and Billy Collins have been our literary traveling companions. I should say Billy McCollins because, for all his admittedly delightful surprise poetic twist endings, and being a former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy really is the Rod McKuen of the hour. Sorry Billy, but you know it's true. Anyway, their company has been, in turns, painful (Billy's same-ie sameness), lofty (Odysseus's romantic Greek modernism), electrifying (Rilke), heartbreaking (Galway) and delightful (Roy DeG.).

M. Lee, Roy DeG. & me in K.C.

When we got to Florida we turned off I-75 to gas up and found ourselves in an alternate Elmore Leonard universe and stopping at the Sarasota Trader Joe's we entered the alternate universe of "ageless" women sporting every implant known to modern and primitive man plus some double, perhaps triple, implants and lifts known only to aliens and Jersey surgeons before which we could only stand in jaw-dropped awe.

Monday - home - Alligator Creek

The old place looks good. Since we were here last, Frida Kahlo's pineapple palm was (finally) pruned. There was even a young squirrel in it this morning eating a nut! Surely, she is one of Frida's descendants. And, wonder upon wonder, Sonny Boy still lives with his parents across the street. He's been out in the screen porch all morning expounding to his mother about the fat epidemic, environment disasters, jail, death, work (which he does not) and a variety of other subjects as flocks of white ibises fly over the twittering, splashing mangroves on their way to the beach. In the last year, we've spent more time on Alligator Creek than "home" in Nevada. It's comforting to see that something of the world as it was still lives there.

Laramie tonight

Laramie, Wyoming home for the night. Expensive. $62 a night. But there is a vegetarian restaurant in Laramie and it's sunny so it's all good or is it? Looks like our room is in the basement.

posted from Bloggeroid

Tonight's home sweet home

Elko, Nevada and the sweet smell of desert sage after the rain. Elko is a friendly town. The billboard about 50 north of town welcomes visitors to . . . Elko Nevada, City of Paved Streets.  According to Yelp there are no decent restaurants in Elko, especially for vegetarians, so tonight it's dinner at Denny's to split a $2 stack of pancakes and a veggie burger... a delicious $8 dinner for two.

posted from Bloggeroid

The final climb

Before leaving Oregon, Hwy. 140 makes one last perilous climb then enters Nevada in the middle of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge. The last time we took this route we were swamped by a cattle drive. Today we zipped along, crossed the state line just after noon and were soon greeted by dark clouds, rain, hail and, to our dismay, discovered that the very excellent wild hot springs by Denio were cold and nearly dry. Damn. We were hoping for a quick dip.

posted from Bloggeroid

Launch minus 10

I thought we were leaving today (Tuesday) but, being so uprooted these days, it's easy to lose track. Yesterday we were in Portland. It was a splendid visit. We got to do a little bit of everything, the Children's Museum with Thea (five next Sunday) and Leo (four in August), swim class with Frank (two in August), toss balls for the goofus dogs, Nevada and Owen, watch baby birds in the old apple tree, have time out of time sunny afternoon chats vetting names for the new baby coming in the fall as the kids played in the yard, do a birthday shopping spree with Thea Bella, watch this year's crop of sunflowers rise up out of the ground and enjoy a big noisy family Sunday barbecue on our last night in town. Already I miss everyone terribly but tomorrow we begin our trek across the country. This will be the third time we've driven to Florida. We'll be on the road five 650 mi/10 hour days, the high point being a meet-up on Friday with Roy in Kansas City. That will be fun. We have never met in person but go back to the good ol' misc.writing days on the usenet and M. Lee and I both really enjoy his blog.

posted from Bloggeroid

Notes along the way and a great link

In the last month or so I have started and abandoned many posts. I could not settle on the words. I seem to be changing. How, I don't know. Motivation, patience, medium? Something is different. Maybe I'm just restless but I think it's more fundamental. I just don't know yet.

Generally, for my future self, I like to make note of at least the basic changes, events and circumstances in my life but they are slipping by unnoted. So...here's a recap. We were home for about a month, now we are back on the road. It was good. It was different. It was centering. I regretted leaving but also don't feel like I can hold on to anything anymore. And last week our neighbor Dwayne died. His cat Suki still lives next door, now with his son, but he neglects her, won't let her in the house, so she spends a lot of time in the Bird Park. It is safe and quiet there but, of course, her presence keeps the birds away. While we were there, I fed her anyway because she was hungry and for Dwayne because took her in when she showed up in his back yard a couple of years ago, hungry and lonely. Now she sits on that chair on my porch waiting for me and I am not there. That makes me sad.

And while we were home, I didn't contact any of my writer friends. I told them I would would when I got home but I didn't. I am always reluctant. I don't know why. I'm a freak. And it seemed there was never time enough. Now, we'll be gone till fall. This week we will be with the family in Portland. We're really looking forward to it. After that, we'll drive across the country to Florida and, along the way, we're get to meet Roy. Woo-hoo!

Ps. If you're a writer, painter, reader, thinker and/or conscious person Matt Ashby's article "David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture" is a must read.

My mother's diary

April 29, 1939  Friday - Andy and I talked again to-nite of marriage - religion - breaking up. What's the right thing to do? I think we really love each other - - And I think it's up to me to break it up.

The entry is done in pencil and the years have nearly completed their job of erasing it.


Lucky for me, she didn't break up with Andy after all. He's my dad.

The Ballad of Cliven Bundy

Cliven Bundy. This guy is an embarrassment to the great state of Nevada. I live in Nevada and, contrary to what FOX News would you believe, we are not all racist idiot squatter hicks like Cliven.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

We've spent a lot of time in the Nevada interior where guys like Bundy "run" their cattle. Trust me. It's animal abuse to abandon them to the desert. In their effort to survive in this harsh environment, the poor cows chew vital, shade-giving willows to the ground turning our precious few rivers into stinking fields of shit and muck. Boneheads like Bundy joke about how this threatens already endangered species. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner Bundy and his dim-wit brethren die off, the better.

Check-in

Little A'Le'Inn - Rachel, NV bordering Area 51
I feel like a sailor in port, neither here nor there. For the next few weeks we're home but we've mostly been living out of our suitcases for the last year and the months ahead will be the same. Home. The word sounds odd but when I look around, yes, it's home. My stuff is here, what little there is, and I get into my own routine here. That's nice. And I have friends here that go back awhile. That's comforting. But, if our med checks turn out ok, we're leaving. I'm not complaining. I just need to acknowledge everything, write about it, photograph it, keep some account. Otherwise, I lose my bearings. The Language Barrier is one of my few constants. I need to come here otherwise, in a way, it's like I don't exist at all.

How to create a better password

This post is filed under the label "notes to self" so, if you're not interested in reading about creating better, stronger passwords.That is all.

Heartbleed Hit List

What is Heartbleed bug?

Hey! If the site has already done it's security fix and you haven't then changed your passwords on these sites, do it now!

Man

I haven't seen this one before, or maybe I have but managed to repress it but, oh man, this little beauty by Steve Cutts is IT and totally depressing. Fuck. In real life, the best hope planet earth has is if the aliens come before that final scene.




PS. I found this at Blogorahmah. Thanks a lot, Roy.

Local news at 10:58 PM

Lately I can barely stand to come here. I drop by to use my newspaper links and see if any of my blog buddies have posted anything new then dash away. I should just change the top post and then everything would be okay again but it always seems like so much work because by the time I get the time to drop by it's too late to start anything new so nothing changes and days turn into weeks. You know how the story goes.

But I do have a little news. Our work is done here, for now. K. has recovered from her surgery, the drains are out and we return home on Thursday. It's been a long haul, seven weeks. We're all so glad to have that phase behind us. She starts radiation next but doesn't need us here to do it.

Oh, and I finally settled on what will be my next travel camera, the Sony HX50V. It has a 30x optical zoom which I'm pretty stoked about. It doesn't shoot in raw. That's kind of disappointing. It's something I want to learn more about but M. Lee found a great price through photographyblog, $238 down from the original price of $450, so what the hell?

Checking in

Still in Medford. If I'd known we were going to be here so long I'd.....I don't know. At least the weather's been good. We've been biking a lot. That goes a way toward preserving sanity. Otherwise, haven't been doing much. Playing Dominion. I'm in limbo. It's my own fault. That isn't exactly good or bad but...it's bad. It's a lack of imagination.

Limbo by follower of Hieronymus Bosch via Wikipedia

When I was a kid in Catholic school, the nuns taught us that limbo was where babies went who died before they were baptized. Unlike everyone else in limbo, they didn't get tortured. They just didn't ever, for all "eternity", get to see god. For the grown-ups, limbo, or purgatory as the nuns called it, was the same as hell except that it lasted one second less than forever. Kids are expected to believe grownups, especially ones in long black robes but come on! One second less than forever? WTF?!

I just looked up limbo at Wikipedia. The "official" definition is more of the same patriarchal, hair-splitting, legalese bullshit. My gods religion sucks. It's fantasy at it's very worst. Yuck.

Happy Spring Equinox 2014

The exact moment has passed. Depending on where you live it happened at 16:57 UTC. In case you're wondering what time that was, there's a good converter here. In any case, it's Spring. That's a good thing.

Yellow Shoes

I posted a new poem at AnnaSadhorse the other day. Well, it's not new. I wrote it in 1988 for Lawson Inada, Oregon's poet laureate from 2006 to 2010. I was taking a writing for publication class from him at the time. One day I was wearing yellow shoes, ankle boots actually, and had my feet up on the chair in front of me. Lawson was talking, walking back and forth in front of the blackboard, when suddenly he grabbed one of my feet, held it up and told me to write a poem about yellow shoes and bring it to class the next day. So I did and here it is.

Beijing Alley Dame NOIR

Beijing Alley Dame

As per Roy's suggestion (thank you very much) I give you Beijing Alley Dame NOIR! The question is, dare I post it in The Film Noir Mood? Yes, I did take the photo of the alley but I shopped her in and that part is rather corny. They take their noir pretty seriously over there.

Alleys at night

Dusty old Beijing alley at night
from last autumn

It's nearly 2 am. I can't sleep. I've been skimming the news. Had some peanut butter. Sometimes that helps. It didn't. Now I'm in the front room. When I look through the sliding glass door to my right I can see the amber lights of the town through the bare branches of the trees. I can hear the cheap clock ticking from the kitchen and the ringing in my right ear. When I look directly up from the screen I stare into pure black. I can't detach. Can't drift into sleep. Now my eyes are adjusting a little to the room. Light reflecting off the glass of a picture hanging on the wall opposite me emerges from the blackness. I can see the outline of the dark ceiling above the white walls. I'm restless inside. Unused. Disconnected. The I Ching tells me I must endure this eclipse.

Oregon update

Post-surgery is a drag. For all the medical advances, cutting the body open, poking around, pulling stuff out and sewing flesh back together is crude. No way around it. But, in spite of all that, Kathy was home the next day and is doing really well. I was under the impression that after the surgery we'd have the complete picture of what we're dealing with but no. We're waiting for the results of the most recent biopsy and still don't have a prognosis. They didn't get all the cancer but that's what radiation, hormones and chemo is for so on we go. That's the news. Not the best. Not the worst.

I lived in this valley for over 20 years so I know a lot of people. We both do. That makes things much easier. Plus we've been spending most evenings playing Dominion with the game group. It's not just us. People get obsessed over this game. M. Lee sent me a link to a discussion at Board Game Geek in which some guy announced he was planning to play though the entire collection of cards alphabetically. Not too likely. Someone else replied: "So, if you play a game every 10 minutes, 24/7, you  can play though all possible combinations in only 549,518,481,835 years!"

Napoleon with his favorite black and white toothbrush

Today we've been kicking back. M. Lee is in one room on his laptop and I'm in another on mine. I've been posting photos to flickr groups since mid-afternoon with a short break for dinner. Then, about a half hour ago, I found the Film Noir Mood Pool. Naturally I joined but then couldn't find one photo in the thousand plus I've uploaded to flickr that fit that category. How could this be? I love noir. It was a shock to see how one-sided my focus has been for the last few years. I finally rooted out a couple of images that kind of work, after I removed the color but still, this will not do.

News at 10:33

Finally Minerva and her magpie companion dropped by the Bird Park today for some peanuts and kibble. It's the first I've seen of them this year. The place is incomplete without them. She was a little too big for the branch she's trying to perch in but that didn't stop her.

We are back in Nevada for a couple of days to pick up a few things. Kathy, M. Lee's mom, has her surgery next Friday and we need to be there to help her out afterwards. It's great to be home, if even for a bit. The sky is blue and everything is where it's supposed to be. Ah well. When we're here any length of time I get restless. It's the curse of the gypsy soul. And speaking of wandering, my ADHD-PI is really out of control today. It's such a drag.

Whatzup

OK. I have to roll this thing forward. That means get out, crank the crank and spit out a new top page. It's a very clunky process in the way that the first cars were very clunky. I don't feel up to writing anything but it has to be done. So, by way of a whatzup, for the last few weeks we've been helping M. Lee's mom navigate the rounds of tests and doctor's appointments. Mostly that has meant waiting and wondering. At least tomorrow we get the prognosis. And we'll go from there.

And since we're here anyway, we've had a couple of game nights. We have stacks of board games but are currently addicted to a card game, Dominion. It's all anyone wants to play, well except for M. Lee who recently decided we should get back to regular board games, at least for awhile. We all agree in theory but end up playing Dominion anyway.

Last night we played three games. The first was basically a contest between Shane and M. Lee. They both got their strategies going right from the start and it was impossible to catch them. Not only that, the gods were completely against me. I had good cards but they never came up in useful combinations. During the second game Michael, who's new to the group, was the first to gut everyone with the King's Court/Thief combination but, in the end, M. Lee managed to crush us anyway with a King's Court/Laboratory. I won the last game with a simple Big Money strategy. That irritated the hell out of everyone.

Bird Park update and other news

Gnocchi for breakfast. Doesn't sound all that good to me but the magpies and starlings loved it. It was very freezer burned but that didn't stop them from gobbling it up. Around 7 AM the Bird Park is busy as usual but after that the action really drops off. I'm thinking it's the weather. It is unseasonably warm but then what's a season anymore?


As for me, for awhile I was obsessed with increasing the view count of my photos at flickr. It's a simple formula, more groups = more views. My goal was to get a thousand plus views a day. It didn't happen everyday but, when it did, those views were spread over several photos. Then I posted one photo to reddit and blam! In one day there were a thousand plus views of one photo. Sure, it was an especially nice photo but zowie. The trick there is posting to the right subreddit. Photos posted to a catch-all group like /r/pics move down the front page pretty fast but, in more specific subreddits like /r/ArtPorn/ or /r/CityPorn/, photos tend to stay on top a little longer. Again, a simple formula, front page = more views. I'm on to other things now but I suppose I'll be back at it soon enough.

I'm also still fiddling with enlargements and framing a few pictures. Costco photo is cheap and easy as long as the dimensions are right but I've been having a hell of time with one that's slightly odd. The learning curve. It's a bitch.

Geo-tag: "Visitor from a mysterious place with no name"

And finally, and most importantly, we'll be spending the next several months helping M. Lee's mom who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Currently she's working her way through the tests but surgery, chemo and radiation are indicated. Fortunately, the five-year survival rate for women her age is 85% so we are very optimistic. Plus, she's a very vibrant person, interested in everything and always ready for another adventure so we're thinking she'll do just fine. This waiting period is the hard part. I think once treatment gets underway we'll all feel a little better. So winter in Oregon. 

Tonight

The days go by. We are in Nevada. It is night again. And cold outside. The snow has not melted. The shadows are aglow with it. More snow is predicted tonight but otherwise, the land is in drought. The worst in history. The ringing never stops in my ears although, most of the day I do not hear it. I am grateful for that. I always valued silence.

I am gripped by melancholy but stay busy. I need to hurry but have nowhere to go. The I Ching has advised me, "Scurrying like a mouse. Such blind panic increases the danger." M. Lee sent me the link to the song I was looking for. He's good at reading the moment from the other room.

Lines Past Death

I sat with my Uncle all day the day he died. That was Saturday, February 1, 1992. These poems greeted me when I brought his ashes home to Southern Oregon a few days later. He had mailed them to me from Portland the day before he died, Friday, January 31. In the accompanying letter he  wrote, “All I need is a chance at a new peace”. He died the next evening with me sitting by his side, our faces touching, breathing together. I’ve taken the liberty of calling this collection, “LINES PAST DEATH”.

LINES PAST DEATH

The two were dressed in black, in what seemed like rented clothes.  They went to the man in the next stall, be still, is all I could do.  The man had died.  They took him away on a palette covered with a royal maroon cover and deposited him in a long station wagon.  So he passed his time, in a setting of principles.  No more to be seen.  Only the rented costume comes to mind as I write.  THAT was a fancy way to leave his guest.  Like a disappearance. 


#2

evergreen and birch trees and a small bed of roses…low evergreen shrubs and a lawn on either side of an entrance walk.  Crows scan the higher branches and frighten other birds.  The distance cold alerts one and the winter sun tries to subdue the body’s alarm.  Still, it is day, and we have the whole affect of nature to subdues us    and bring peace.


WINTER

A stalwart, winter day,
seen through the vibran
escapade of voices,
leaves me to wonder at the meaning left behind.
enlivening the shadow of this,
puts the mind at ease.
Where the January sun causes
steam to rise from the grass,
enfeebling cold fingers more.
To move is a mundane project
of prospects made whole
by the failing man seeking
to encase the situation
into something respective to itself.
Cold out, he said and felt in his pocket for the next phrase.
Only metal sounds and the body thrusts viably to taste the cold air
circulating on its tattered edge.


VARY AND VARIANCE

sit well – and sleep well,
‘til all these things stand still.
The existentialist needs somewhere to go.
incidental to the truth.  how depressing =
stay. and see if you like yourself.
cold are the winds of January.
grey, dull forces of winter, cleansing of the topical mind;
male and female appear to take away the body of summer.
You go – I’ll stay, adrift are crows, caw-ing in the twilight.


ONE BRIEF INSTANT OF GRACE

After some few weeks of silence, I long to show the contour of such meanings as could survive a hallway of elders and a nursing home; lunch.  The fittest apothegm means to be oneself elsewhere, and neglect to conclude what this does.

Leave the tray a while.

Why eat all the time


~John Chance, 1992

Note: The word "vibran" is Haitian creole for "stirring".
_____________________________________________

:))) Project Swami. :)))

Me & Swami in Beijing

Since he was stolen by a pickpocket disappeared at Angkor Wat, I am searching the world for just the right person, someone who can make another Swami. I hear there are people who are very adept at reconstructing legacy dolls etc. so I have compiled photos of him and have his dimensions for just that purpose. If you happen to know, or hear of such a person, I would be extremely grateful. Thank you in advance.

Here and gone

Lots of action in the Bird Park these days but now we have to leave again, though this time only for a week. I put out a bunch of apples for the interim. This batch wasn't very good but somebody will eat them.

Since we've been back, I've spent a good deal of my time fiddling around with matting photos. Cutting a mat is a simple formula but, as I'm just getting started, the entire process has turned out to be very time consuming. I've had to assemble the tools, deal with enlargements and touch-up, find suitable frames. I bought a pair of interesting 12 x 14 frames at a second hand store but, being new to all this, I didn't realize what a pain in the ass they'd turn out to be because that is a non-standard size. Anyway, it's a work in progress and now, once again, I've gotta go.

Monk on morning alms walk

But before I do, just to brighten up the page, I've included a photo from our time at Angkor Wat, well actually from the town of Siem Reap. That's where everyone stays when visiting Angkor Wat. The monks make their daily rounds. They stand in front of a shop for a few minutes and generally the shopkeeper comes out and gives them alms. It's a sweet deal both ways, a practice in humility for the monk and an opportunity to make a little good karma for the shopkeeper.

Squirrel Appreciation Day Eve

Hey! Buddy!

Tomorrow is Squirrel Appreciation Day! When you're at the grocery store tonight, pick up some special goodies will ya? Peanut butter sandwiches are great but, you know, so everyday. Come on. Sky's the limit. Go for it. Feed me.

Then and Now

The photo is from an album my mother wanted with her on her death bed. She is the girl sitting on the dock. I wrote this poem for her. Today is the 35th anniversary of her death.