Saturday, June 27, 2009

More John Muir


When I walked, more than a hundred flowers touched my feet, at every step closing above them, as if wading in water. Go where I would, east or west, north or south, I still plashed and rippled in flower-gems; and at night I lay between two skies of silver and gold, spanned by a milky-way, and nestling deep in a goldy-way of vegetable suns. But all this beauty of life is fading year by year, - fading like the glow of a sunset, - foundering in the grossness of modern refinement. As larks are gathered in sackfuls, ruffled and blood-stained, to toy morbid appetite in barbarous towns, so is flower-gold gathered to slaughter-pens in misbegotten carcasses of oxen and sheep. So always perish the plant peoples of temperate regions, - feeble, unarmed, unconfederate, they are easily overthrown, leaving their lands to man and his few enslavable beasts and grasses.

—John Muir, from here. Image by Arnold Genthe from the Library of Congress.

Friday, June 19, 2009

history



Library of Congress again. Discovering Arnold Genthe, a fellow photographic archivist. I admit I never heard about him in Photo History class. There are a bevy of mysterious dancers, none of them digitized (If anyone has a spare $120 they can buy a fiber print (and if they have extra $240 buy me one, too!)). Click on wiki link to scroll for a beautiful photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009


Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.
—John Muir

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
—John Burroughs

Photograph from the Library of Congress, one of my favorite resources.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Lotte

I know I started tonight from This where the animations are only available to Brits, but the link (with stills) is originally from F.A.B. Then there's youtube.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

When the sun rises

I go to work
When the sun goes down, I take my rest
I dig the well from which I drink
I farm the soil that yields my food
I share creation, kings can do no more

Dannal in motion



Dannal Aramburu, archeologist, studies the guts of a pre-Incan terrace. This image was doctored a little in FCP Motion (can you tell? should I add more?).

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Interactive Gardeners


Gardeners Index to look for answers to your gardening questions... A repository for all the info you could ever want about las plantas. It seems to be just starting up (the earliest comments are from mid April). Check out all the groups (my favorites are container gardening and compost... there are groups by zone, by plant...). It's no Twitter or Facebook but I could see it coming in handy if you had a specific Q.