One night this business was here, the next night there was no sign of it. (Insert Twilight Zone theme song here.)
Okay, maybe not the very next night. Maybe several months later. Anyway, the point is, when I took this picture, I didn’t notice the phrase underneath. Now I’m trying to see the ends from the middle.
What’s your guess?
The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is Letters.
You know that feeling after a car window shatters and deposits a bizillion bits of glass on the concrete, then you walk across the glass in your steel-soled shoes? Worse than fingernails on a blackboard, huh? Well, that is what these signs do to me.
The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Letters.
Near my house is a place called La Tuna Canyon that has nothing to do with fish. I’ve lived here for a decade but never wondered how that name arose, until I began this post. I want only the best for my readers so have now investigated. Turns out La Tuna is “Spanish for, among other things, prickly pear.” Such an intriguing definition.
Among other things. Where was I? Ah yes, La Tuna Canyon. Recently I took a hike there, and looked back down at my house:
View from the trail up La Tuna Canyon.
Actually my house, down in the valley, is probably around the bend out of view. It is hard to tell with all the trees. It surprises me that the valley’s trees came with the housing tracts. A century ago, the valley was all fields and brush:
The valley in 1927.
(I got this photo from a site that has many swell photos of long ago Los Angeles.)
I continue to digress. On my hike, I turned a dusty corner like this one:
And I came upon a mud puddle, drying rapidly:
There was not much water remaining, and on the surface, mud flecks floated:
The flecks were like floating islands, and in such interesting patterns and shapes, I had to snap some photos.
As I snapped, I noticed the flecks were moving! The water rippled in a light breeze, and that was enough to send the flecks into eddies and surges:
At first the motions of the flecks suggested plate tectonics. The flecks are an infinite variety of Hawaiian islands. Then I realized that in another few hours the water would be gone, the mud solidified, and now the flecks seemed like vacationers, desperate for a last bit of fun.
As I watch the video now, I remember when I was a kid, eating the last morsels of cereal swimming in a bowl of milk. I would pretend each Cocoa Krispie or Cheerio was a being and I was the royal monster, hunting it down. Among other things.
I’ve never seen mud flecks like this before. What do they look like to you?
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wants to see On Top.)
I love survey monuments (aka markers, aka marks). They get planted in the ground so that surveys can be done from exactly the same spot, at different times. If you measure from the same place over time, you can detect changes in ground position by comparing the surveys. If you don’t use the same place, you get bupkis*.
Walking the dog, I discovered that a neighbor has a monument on his property:
Wait – is that a survey monument?
Interesting! According to the inscription, at one time the City of Los Angeles held sway over this area. (No longer.) And I didn’t know they printed the elevation on the monuments back then. Fancy!
“Elevation above sea level 1716.15 feet”
I wonder if the neighbor got special instructions when he bought the house, forbidding him from messing with the monument. I wonder if that irritated him – gub’ment can’t tell me what to do! – or maybe he’s like me, and enjoys the connection with local history. Whoever first planted the monument is surely gone by now, the monument has been there for generations. Not all the monuments have led such sheltered lives. Monuments about a mile east got buried in a 1934 debris flow:
Photo from Mike Lawler, Crescenta Valley Historical Society
Admittedly, most surveys are done for boring reasons like defining property lines. But they can also reveal a region’s geology, its ground deformation – I love that term! – the movements related to earthquakes, subsidence, landslides. Given enough time, this monument will have quite a story to tell. After all, it’s because earthquakes are shoving the mountains skyward that I have a mountain view from my house:
Mountain view courtesy of earthquakes.
Obviously I am fascinated by these hazards but it would be fine with me if, during my years in this house, I experience no geologic drama.
* Looking up this spelling, I discovered that bupkis means goat droppings! One really can learn something new every single day!
A recent WP Weekly Photo Challenge wanted to see a monument.
I love reflections, the topic of the current WP Weekly Photo Challenge. I especially love the otherworldly reflections of puddles. On the edges of a puddle I can see the reflected image continuing – into a separate world, just beyond the edge of the puddle. I should be able to take a step and enter. But I haven’t taken the right step yet – and even the dog can tell me that when you step in a puddle, what happens next is wet paws, not entry to a new dimension.
Here is a dawntime reflection of a puddle I discovered during from my recent trip to Hawaii (travelog post coming soon), which confirmed that my yearning to visit the new dimension exists regardless of how nice the current dimension is:
Dawn in Waikiki, Honolulu, March 2014.
Here is a majestic piney mountain world reflected in a puddle:
Muddy puddle in La Tuna Canyon, southern California, 2013.
Speaking of Hawaii, here are some other reflections I caught during my visit to Honolulu.
New day at the harbor, Honolulu.
Canal with buildings, Honolulu.
P.S. Thinking about reflected worlds was one of the inspirations for my upcoming fantasy detective series. There, the other worlds are called Frames, and I’m happy to say the first book in the FRAMES series is in final editing. Another coming soon (but not as soon as the travelog post).
P.P.S. I’ve got numerous photos of reflections in other posts. For example, in these posts about an optical illusion, a search for a deadly predator, and a spectacular view at the end of a hike. I will let you figure out which is which: here, here, and here.
Me at the beach as sunset approaches.
Me, beach, sunset
Careful, it’s alive!
Stop sign halo.
This palm tree at sunset is not, technically, a selfie.
My lap, occupied.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge asked to see “Selfies”.)
The former kittens Bo and Leo can often be found sleeping in a jumble.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wanted to see “juxtaposition”.)
At a family reunion in Punta Gorda, Florida, I saw a highway bridge that crosses the Peace River amidst docks and piers. I loved the symmetries and intricacy of the angles.
Here is a pier’s eye view of the bridge.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge wanted to see “juxtaposition”.)
My son and daughter have grown up. They are 20 now (yep, twins), and launched on their personal trajectories – to what heights and distances, none of us can yet say. I am in awe of the people they have become, so clever and kind, funny and wise. I love spending time with them, and am all too aware that I do so in an extended magic moment, before they settle into the careers and families that will take them farther from my own orbit.
My daughter’s university is a two hour drive away, and a couple times each term I drive up to spend the day with her. We’ve developed a routine: we go out for a meal, we share a long walk and talk on the beach, and then I buy her some groceries. Most recently, we saw this sunset together:
Sunset at East Beach, Santa Barbara, January, 2014.
My son – and daughter, when she is home – enjoy a lot of live music together. Their musical interests are broader and deeper than mine, but we have many overlaps and intersections, and have each shared great finds with the others.
Still can’t decide whether this is a good mom or bad mom anecdote: The first time I took them to a concert, they were 12 or 13, and we went to see one of my favorite bands from the old days, X. The band had recently reformed to do the occasional “oldies” show, and they were as good as ever.
Here is what X were like back when they were not much older than my kids are now.
In the old days, I hated the crowd at X shows – slamming, spitting, too much intrusion of personal space and sharing of bodily fluids for me! But at the new shows the mosh pit was small and friendly, and many of the attendees were clearly there with their kids – or grandkids. So I brought my kids to a show in Orange County. Well, apparently that is where all the nasty fans went to die, or beget new generations. The music was awesome but the room was filled with disgusting drunks (vomiting on themselves without realizing it, that kind of thing). Oops. My kids loved the music but my son still complains that I wouldn’t let him enter the mosh pit, and my daughter still gets grossed out by the smell of beer.
Here is what X looked like last week, when my son and I went to see them at a Whisky-a-Go-Go 50th anniversary celebration:
X at the Whisky on the Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, January, 2014.
We don’t usually attend “oldies” shows – we’d rather hear something new – but we’ll keep going to X shows as long as there are X shows. Don’t know how long that may be – serious health problems in the band – which adds bittersweet to each performance.
When my children were growing up, my most debilitating parental fear was that someday, they would spend time with their mother strictly to fulfill obligations. As is typical with all my free-floating worries, this one consumed much psychic energy for no good reason. At last I might be sort of, kind of, sometimes learning to cease all that worrying. Which leaves me more open to appreciate my moments with my kids right now.
(The WP Weekly Photo Challenge topic is family.)
Leo loves life and he makes the most of every moment. (Leo, teach me how!) When he wants to get petted, there is no ignoring him.
Pet me, please.
Oh yeah. That’s the spot.
I’m leaning my whole body into it.
I leaned too hard and I’m… slipping away. Oops. Don’t worry, I’ll come right back.
Here is a movie of the same session, with his mega-purr on the soundtrack. (More than one morning, he has awakened somebody in the household with that purr.) No need to watch the whole thing. Any ten second interval will give you the idea.
Years ago, a famous therapist pointed out that humans would be much healthier psychologically if we could ask for affection whenever we needed it – if we could mimic the cat who climbs into a lap as needed. I don’t remember the therapist’s name but I remember that observation whenever one of my cats shows up for a dose of affection.
(The WP Photo Challenge asked to see joy.)
Required Writing 