The Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have arrived once again in Tulsa. They are on their annual migration south to Mexico for the winter.
I discovered these in Tulsa’s River Parks this morning. They were reluctant to pose for photos, intent on the nectar found on these wildflowers (goldenrod?).
Buen viaje a Mexico! Nos vemos en la primavera!
I’ve been vacationing in New Mexico this week, in the areas of Santa Fe, Taos, and Abiquiu. I was born in New Mexico and next to Oklahoma, it’s my favorite state.
This was the perfect place to try this week’s photo challenge from the folks over at The Daily Post @ WordPress.com. This week the challenge is “An Unusual POV“, (point of view, that is):
Challenge yourself to rethink your ideas about what subjects are appropriate, and then challenge yourself again to find an unusual perspective on your subject.
Go out and take photos and share a shot that reveals a new and different POV.
Part of my time was spent in Santa Fe, thanks to a free place to stay courtesy of my good friends Matthew and Tracy Pepper. A free place here is not an insignificant thing, especially since my visit coincided with Las Fiestas, a 300+ year old annual event that celebrates the peaceful return of the Spanish after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. I’ll write about that in another post, but let’s just say that it added to the iconic opportunities to take photos for this challenge.
I also spent a few days at Christ in the Desert Monastery, deep in a canyon near Abiquiu. The area, famous as the home of painter Georgia O’Keefe, is absolutely stunning in its natural beauty, solitude, and spirituality.
I took a lot of photos during my week here, trying to keep an eye out for “unusual points of view.” The photos you’ll see on this post are the best that I could come up with. I have to say that this really did challenge me. What I saw in my head was in many cases not realized by the photo. I still have much to learn.
The one that I think is the best is the one at the top of this post. I gave it the title “Take My Hand.” You can also see it in the gallery below. It is the statue of St. Francis of Assisi that stands just outside the Cathedral Basilica, just off the main plaza in Santa Fe.
The shots in the gallery below are some of my other attempts at unusual points of view. I encourage you to pick your favorite as the “runner up” by leaving a comment on this post. Be sure to let me know what in particular you like about it. I think it will help me improve my technique for these types of shots.
I’m a newbie to the Weekly Photo Challenge, thanks to my friend Maria who clued me into the idea. You can see her posts here. This week’s challenge:
Sea. What kind of emotions does the sea or ocean make you feel? Do you remember the first time you went in the water? Had a wave crash on you? Felt the sand burn your feet? Do you feel more peaceful around water? Do you hate the beach? What’s the most interesting thing about the sea for you?
I took this theme as a challenge to go out and shoot some new shots that reflect “sea”. Being far from the ocean here in Oklahoma, our “seas” are the wide open plains and grasslands. I call this shot “Haybergs,” hopefully suggesting a little bit of the feeling of openness and solitude one feels when standing on a secluded beach.
Yeah, that’s a bit of stretch for any real ocean/beach lovers who might be reading this. Work with me folks!
As you may know, I just returned from eight months of living/teaching on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The ocean was literally less than 75 yards from my room at the school. However, I have to confess that the ocean has never touched me the way it does others. It’s too lonely for me, although there are times when a sense of solitude and oblivion can only be had when standing on a beach with the waves rolling in.
I much prefer the mountains which always seem full of life, full of potential, and the awesome touch of God. I like being able to totally immerse myself in it. Without always getting wet, that is! I do like taking photos of the ocean, though.
Here’s a montage of some of my shots from Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.
My sister pointed me to this documentary and I thought I’d share it. She’s right, my love of basketball began as a student at Hobbs High School. There was nothing better than watching the Eagles play under Coach Tasker.
Watching a 176-49 drubbing of Roswell is something I’ll never forget. Hobbs lives and breathes basketball.
[youtube http://youtu.be/BqxxGpbaj3g]
I’ve lived in Oklahoma for the majority of my life. In other years, I lived in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas, areas that are environmentally very similar to the western parts of Oklahoma. The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s has always been talked about, but I don’t think I truly appreciated what happened, until now. It’s a very blunt lesson of what can happen when a lack of respect for the environment and ecology comes face to face with human greed and ignorance.
“The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936. The phenomenon was caused by severe drought combined with farming methods that did not include crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques such as soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion.[1] Extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains in the preceding decade had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. Rapid mechanization of farm implements, especially small gasoline tractors and widespread use of the harvester-combine were significant in the decisions to convert grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland.
During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away with the prevailing winds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds. These immense dust storms—given names such as “black blizzards” and “black rollers”—often reduced visibility to a few feet (a meter) or less. The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.[2]
Millions of acres of farmland were damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as “Okies“, since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck later wrote The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Of Mice and Men, about such people.”
Many years later, these devastating years in our young state, bookended on one end by the years of the Great Depression and on the other by World War II, still have an impact on the psyche of our state. There’s an independent streak in our people, a determination to be self-reliant, and a thin skin when it comes to anything that disparages the image of what it means to be an Oklahoman. For many, the term “Okie” continues to be a serious deprecation and insult.
So why am I writing about this? The master documentarian and storyteller, Ken Burns, has come out with a new project, entitled “The Dust Bowl.” It aired on PBS stations the last two nights and it was a real eye-opener for me. This masterpiece captures in a new way the sheer immensity of this man-made disaster and how it impacted so many lives. The storms themselves were such incredible acts of nature that it’s impossible to put them into any reasonable perspective. But the storms are only part of the story. Following on the heels of the storms were plagues, illnesses, psychological destruction, economic collapse, and one of the largest migrations of Americans from one area of the country to another.
If you have an interest in American history, I encourage you to watch this two part series (about 4 hours in length) from Ken Burns. The full episodes are currently available for free at pbs.org.
I am a sucker for any good book, movie, museum exhibit, national park, or monument whose subject matter is American history. I’ve been this way from my youngest days when I would have my mom sew flags for me from scraps of cloth. (I still have a Confederate flag that she made for me, before I knew better.)
Perhaps it’s telling, what with the national elections coming up six weeks from tomorrow, that I just finished watching the splendid, splendid, HBO series “John Adams.”
If you are at all a student of American history, or if you need something to cure the voter apathy that you may be feeling in the weeks leading up to November 6th, I highly encourage you to find this 7-part series and watch it.
Although I’m sure some liberties were taken with the minutiae of the historical details, I think it does give a good overview of the struggles of the Revolution and the way our country was knitted together when independence came.
We need to be reminded of how difficult it was for our nation to survive its early years and how personal honor and compromise were needed. The relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is particularly interesting.
I’ve included a few links to Youtube videos that will give you a taste of just how good this series is. I hope you’ll find them as inspiring as I do.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvpZxMfKaU]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A38mW2Il48k]
Today I’m reflecting on the Battle of Antietam which took place 150 years ago today. Also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, it remains the deadliest day of combat in American history. Approximately 23,000 Americans, North and South died that day .
The armies of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and Union general George McClellan engaged more than 38,000 troops that day in a battle that could only be regarded as a strategic victory for the Union.
Calling it a victory, President Lincoln used the occasion to issue the momentous Emancipation Proclamation.
Confederate dead at Antietam
Such a terrible battle, but only a part of a much more terrible war. As a student of history it bothers me that our nation takes so little notice of these important days of our history. Those who fought there deserve to be remembered.
As our nation seems to be fraying again, I wonder if we are headed toward creating new terrible memories amongst our own people. What a shame if the lessons learned from those who battled at places like Antietam are lost on the current and future generations.
Here are a link to one report on the observances taking place at the Antietam Battlefield today.
Update:
My friend William Newton told me about this NPR piece about modern day photos of the Antietam Battlefield, using the same type of equipment that Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner used. It’s pretty fascinating …
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/17/161167847/re-tracing-the-steps-of-a-civil-war-photographer
Today we once again commemorate the terrible and once unimaginable terrorist attacks on my country on September 11, 2001. We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the attacks. You, like me, will think about how our world has changed since that shocking day.
Like today, it was a beautiful Tuesday morning. That beautiful day was forever changed in our memories by the events unfolding in New York City, Washington DC, and in rural Pennsylvania. We’ve all seen and remember the terrible images from that day. I could post some of them here, but must I when they are indelibly seared into our memories?
What I remember most, from my outpost here in Oklahoma, is the look on the faces of the students I worked with on that day. As a campus minister, I was accustomed to seeing bright, cheerful, energetic and idealistic young faces each Tuesday as we welcomed the campus into the Newman Center for a free lunch.
This day was different. As word of the attacks spread across the campus, thoughts of class were replaced by thoughts of home, family and country. Students, most far from home, gathered together for prayer and camaraderie in the face of many great unknowns that day.
The weight of the day marked the students with faces of fear, disbelief, and shaken senses of security. It was palpable in the silence. It was palpable in the furtive glances as eyes met eyes, wondering if others felt the same interior struggle to keep their composure and the same desire to ask “Why?”
We can recount all the ways that our country, our world, and our personal lives have changed since 9/11. We all look at the world differently. Terrorism wasn’t new in the world. Many countries had faced it before and continue to face it, sometimes on a daily basis. Oklahomans had tasted it first-hand in the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City. New Yorkers had faced it in the first World Trade Center attack, and our military had certainly faced it several times before. But this day, changed everything, everyone in uncountable ways.
We’ve become accustomed to this new reality. Accustomed to the surrendering of personal liberty in exchange for increased security. Accustomed to the sense of risk that we undertake whenever we board a plane or leave our country.
Our reality now includes new bureaucracies like the TSA and the Homeland Security Administration. Old challenges, such as immigration and border security now include concerns of terrorist infiltrations, dirty bombs, and further erosions of liberty.
I think we all also feel a sense of fatigue as we face seemingly unsolvable problems and give in to the feeling that “the government” can and should take over and tell us how to lead our lives and make our decisions for us.
There’s a shout, sometimes becoming a scream, inside my head that our country is forgetting itself. I worry that my people are not learning the lessons of our history and see the world only by what they can take from it or how someone else can make their life better without working for it themselves.
I’m too young to know what I would have thought of President John F. Kennedy, but I take hope from the words of his Inaugural Address that we can still find leaders that are dedicated to the American Experiment. Here are a few excerpts, written with the Cold War in mind, but applicable to these times as well.
“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
“So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
“The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.“
“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
Our country was founded by patriots who were willing to sacrifice their lives and personal circumstances for the ideals of our country. Our history is full of similar patriots who made the same sacrifices. We must fight the desire of some today to sacrifice the ideals of our country just to better their own personal circumstances. The future generations deserve better from us.
We must remember who we are meant to be.