Berni’s Neighborhood

Seeing Helga at the Museum (still in progress, but revised)

Lucy
43 minutes ago
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A Pilgrimage to the Altar of Saint Helga

(for Andrew Wyeth)

But First Lunch

This room is a valley of flickering
firefly tumbleweed lights
between tall buildings

Lusty Lady – All Clothing 100% Off

winks the sign across the street

My son has found

a numerical pattern in the blinks

We are here to see Wyeth's Lady

clothed and unclothed

Helga in her incarnations

but first lunch

The waiter looks like Groucho Marx

Hear the sound of over fifty spoons and forks

the chatter of the crowd

my children's voices

Seeing Helga

We see Helga floating on velvet crush

her nighttime lake

Little trout of light swim

her body tide-pools

We see her in her Austrian coat

standing for hours in the snow

with great discipline

We see her with her braids

the nape of her neck naked

where spine joins brain

a white triangle exposed

holy peephole

We see her smile creases

her blue eyes

slips of horizon over wild grass

and her hair

you can feel it

the soft order in those braids

We go home in dark and rain

the autumn trees light our path

every leaf

a flame

in a lantern

Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 10/15/2009

Another new rural scene

DoctorD
Yesterday
5 comments

Windmills

Here's another thing I saw sprouting in the cornfields (in addition to housing developments). Wind farms, they are called.

Some farmers had signs in their lawn protesting, but others obviously have sold land for this purpose. Apparently each windmill takes 1-3 acres. I saw dozens in southern DeKalb County (IL), but none in adjacent Lee County, on the roads I followed.

The company involved is apparently based in Florida. One woman I spoke with said that they would rather have their wind-farms in Wyoming, but there is some problem apparently with transmission over that great a distance. (Which doesn't sound right to me, but that is what she said).

In principle, wind power (and solar power) sound ecologically fine. In practice, it sure is ugly! But, when it is on a ridge line in the eastern mountains, and visible in every direction for many miles, it is even worse!

And in some places there have been problems from killing birds.

On the other hand, I guess farmers are having trouble making a living with crops alone.

I do wish our new house had a solar panel on the roof. Really, I think it should be required.

But on the other hand, I am glad there are no wind turbines nearby. Having a high former landfill is bad enough! And traffic, traffic is pretty bad, too.

Veteran's Day reminder

Obama's memorial tribute to the fallen troops at Fort Hood (video)

Flag at half staff

Family Photo Shoot

Sunshine
Yesterday
1 comment

The Milner's

Waiting for Eli

This weekend my best friend Veronique took our family photo's and they are stunning! She is an amazing photographer and I have been abundantly blessed to have her as my friend. We spent the late afternoon taking photo's in her orchard, filled with old farm houses and beautiful trees. I am so happy we were able to take some maternity photo's as well, Veronique has an amazing talent to bring out the beauty in everything. And made me feel beautiful as well, which is hard this days. After our photo shoot, we enjoyed dinner with Veronique and her family. It was a great way to spend a Saturday night! I loved every minute of my time there, and only wish we did this more often! I love each and every photo and i hope you enjoy them as well. If you are interested in Veronique's work check out her website: www.streetpoet.org.

Love

Can't wait to meet him

I could sit and look at these photo's for forever. I love my family and looking at these you can really see how much we love each other. Growing up i longed for a family like this, to love and be loved completely. To have children and watch them grow, and now as i look at these pictures i am reminded that the Lord answers all prayers. I praise the Lord for the true and wonderful gift of a loving husband, a beautiful daughter and a soon a bouncing baby boy. Remember to take photo's of your family, they are tangible memories that you will cherish for the rest of your life. I know i will.

Thank you Veronique for doing such a great job. You are WONDERFUL!

Barbara Ehrenreich, my new hero

Fiona
Yesterday
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Bright sided

"Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil: please read this relentlessly sensible book. It’s never too late to begin thinking clearly."
—Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays

Jon Stewart interviews Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show
(click interviews to watch video)

and the best one of all ....

Bright Sided: Barbara Ehrenreich ForaTV

OpenJDK

OpenJDK is the place to collaborate on an open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition, and related projects.

There are two OpenJDK streams:

CentOS and OEL include a java-1.6.0-openjdk rpm in their yum repos and you can find java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin rpms for Fedora 9,10 & 11 at:

You can test your OpenJDK Java SE plugin is working by running the java jre jvm demo examples that can be found at:

http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.5.0/demos/plugin/applets.html

Closed Doors

Fiona
2 days ago
7 comments

Closed Doors

There is a door. I feel like I should write this poetically. A closed door poem.
A poem about walking up and down a hallway a dozen times a day, and studiously avoiding the closed door, the forbidden door, the door which if opened, "will only bring misery on thyself"

There is a door. There are no poems inside me for this door. Not today at any rate. The door is my daughter's and its been shut, more or less, since she left for a one month holiday, two months ago and never came back. No, she's not dead - she's just 'estranging'. I don't know why I am so devastated, shell shocked with grief and loss ... estranging is something my family excel at. I even saw it coming, not because we had problems in our relationship (we were quite close), not because she was lacking for something at home (we've got a pretty respectable life), not even because she had any big or horrible problem that most other 16 year old girls don't have. I saw it coming because its deja vu - patterns, converging. Hell, I even spoke to her about it before she left.

So there is a door. A month has come and gone and I still have not been able to walk through that door and clean up her room. I sit in tears even thinking about it. In fact, I cry, in the car, at work, in the kitchen, the shower and in bed. I've been to the doctor, refusing to take drugs that would numb me out, and stuff the hurt deeper. I've been trying to find my sea legs again. I remain awed by how deeply children can wound; how senselessly and how innocently they betray, how righteously they blame. I can't imagine what is going on for her at the moment. Our brief correspondence has been littered with ends, justifying means.

It doesn't mean things won't change, and we won't sort things out. Love is powerful, even more powerful than family patterns and history, or so I'd like to believe. But for today, there is a door and I cannot walk through it.

Let a thousand houses bloom?

DoctorD
2 days ago
3 comments

Subdivision

The area I drove through last weekend, in north-central Illinois, has a lot of housing construction going on what had until recently been farmland--and some of the best agricultural land in the world. In many cases, the buildings are at the edge of tiny rural communities, communities that now seem to be becoming (very distant!) suburbs.

Really, I was shocked to see it. All we are talking about is houses, fairly big ones, very close together: no parks, schools, shops, no public transportation. No trees. It isn't a town, it isn't a city, and it isn't what a suburb used to be either. What is it? What will it become in 40 or 50 years?

There are quite a lot of efforts at farmland preservation. But my most recent drives in the country suggest that, thus far, they are not accomplishing a great deal. A couple conversations I had indicated that farmers are having a tough time making a living--although an earlier one, out in western Nebraska, suggested that some had done very well because of the ethanol boom when the price of gas was so high.

I don't have much direct contact, although I do try to shop at farmers markets (now all closed up for the season in this area). That is a very small step, but one of the few I know how to take. I have contributed to Farm Aid; probably I ought to be donating more.

This photo was taken near Cortland IL, which had a population of about 2,066 in the 2000 census, but had grown to nearly 4,000 by 2007, when a special census was conducted. It was first incorporated in 1865, and is located fairly near an access point to the Illinois Tollway, which I assume explains its growing popularity.

Sold my blogging soul to the company store...

Artzy Lady
2 days ago

(And am happy about it!) The folks at Artbeads.com came across my creativity blog and offered me free stuff if I’d blog about their products. So I agreed, why the heck not?! They suggested I choose $35 worth of supplies so I did. (Score!!) They sent them and I opened them and LOVED them! I didn’t get around to doing anything with them for a while but then sat down one day a while back to make some earrings.

102_4371

2 comments

Crystal

I’ve made two pairs of ultra sparkling earrings now and worn them both to compliments, thank you very much! Today they sent me a card with a $20 gift certificate in it as a way of saying thanks for the blogging… which reminded me to uh... blog something. (Check out the blog post I wrote here) Plus, there is a little coupon code worth 10% off your purchase if you should decide to pick up a few beads at Artbeads.com. The code is: “SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424” and it is good through 12/31/09… so pop on over and pick up a few things for your Christmas projects.

QotD: Twister, Earthquake, Flood, Fire, Volanic Eruption, Landslide...

Katiebell
2 days ago
4 comments

Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?

oh crap no...

yes, i live in Florida, it's the Lightening capitol of the US. We also regularly have hurricanes.
I don't even have one working flashlight. No extra food....nothing...
But lucky for me hurricane season is pretty much almost over, some rain from Ida and then the dry season will come on full force.