Geese and clouds at the farm

 Thousands of geese were flying over when I was walking at the farm on Sunday, January 15, but that's not unusual this time of year. The clouds and the diffuse remnants of jet contrails were unusual. Looking at the video after I took it, it seems like it could have been filmed from above--from low orbit in space, where the curvature of the earth is noticable. It was a very windy day, so I cupped my hand over the microphone to block noise from the wind, which also blocked the noise from the geese. The geese seemed to be having trouble with the wind as well.

U. S. Army: WARNING Weapons Prohibited

 

A door on the south side of the United States Military Entrance Processing Command building on Riverfront Drive in Little Rock, 8:15 a.m., July 3, 2022. Molly the beagle is at the far end of the leash I've got under my left arm. A similar but larger "Weapons Prohibited" notice is next to the U. S. Navy's door on this side of the building.

Greers Ferry lake Memorial Day Weekend 1972

This was the weekend after Teresa Young, my high school girlfriend, and I graduated from Pine Bluff High School and went with my family on Memorial Day weekend to Greers Ferry lake. That's us water skiing above, an unfocused photo because it was taken from the shaky speedboat pulling us. My mother is in the middle photo, walking to the boat dock from the lake house, and Teresa and  my brothers Arch and Greg are floating in inner tubes near the boat dock in the top photo.  I don't have any other photos of Teresa,  and only had a few when we were together. My dad took these photos (they're slides, actually). Teresa and I managed to stay together, with a few short-term breakups, from October 1970 until about a month after this photo was taken. I went to work as a copy editor for the local afternoon newspaper, the Pine Bluff Commercial (a summer job), right after this Memorial Day weekend was over. The hours were 7:30 to 5:30 Mon-Fri. Even with a full hour for lunch, this was nine hours a day (overtime pay was just part of the job). I also had to work every other Saturday from 3-11 pm, since the Sunday paper was of course a morning paper. During the week, I hated getting up at 6:30 or so, and my having to go to bed early made it difficult for Teresa and I to stay together. We broke up at the end of June and got back together in August, after my job at the Commercial ended. But in September I had to go to Hendrix College, 75 miles away, and Teresa and I only stayed together a few more months. There's more to the story that occurred almost 20 years later, but this isn't the place to tell it.

First James Webb Space Telescope Image

 

Link to New Scientist article about the image.

Bobcat pawprint at the farm

 

The pawprint in dried mud in the photo above has the definite pattern of a bobcat. It looked like a big print to me, so I put a nickel on the ground below it for comparison. Doesn't look so big now.

I'm not so sure about the pawprint below, whether it's a bobcat's or maybe a coyote's. I occasionally see a coyote, but have only seen a bobcat at the farm twice in my whole life. 

Tombstone Shadow (with hat)

Apologies to CCR for using their song title in this weird photographic situation. This is my shadow on one of my ancestors' headstones in Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff, taken by me earlier this month. I was at the cemetery to check on repairs done after a tree fell on some of the headstones last year. The angle and intensity of the light in a photograph can have strange and spooky effects...

One of the bookshelves in my dining room

 

Taken today with an old camera, Canon S120, that I was  recently given. The bookshelf is a twin of the one in the other front corner of my dining room, both made for me in 1990 or 1991 by my friend Pat Calkins when I lived in Austin and he stayed with me for a week or so. I bought the dining room table from Rebecca Railsback Phillips about ten years ago. It originally belonged to the Leon Francis family in Pine Bluff.