Author: L.E. Hansen

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Home Again Home Again

…Jiggidy Jig

And oh my! What a lovely vacation at Santa Rosa Beach, Gulf of Mexico. It was quite glorious and joyful and fun. A family gathering of the generations from the oldest—Matriarch Rita—to the babies and the youngest—Baby Rita. And those two pulled off the greatest feats and bookended the event.

Baby Rita took her first steps and then took off. Next, to complete her charms, she sang her first song. (I’m not sure what it was but it was great, and got the most applause from the audience.)

Meanwhile, at 87, Rita went to her first Karaoke and also danced! She came home with the latest incoming bunch at 1:00 a.m. And woke me up to tell me what I missed and how much fun she had.

So here’s the view on the beach (sans edits). I hope to clean up more pictures for posting and make a few more notes on the time at the Gulf.

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View From the Beach

 

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Gonzo In 2005

huntersnoteWhen I was younger, pretty much any rebel was my hero. And I can’t honestly say that I’ve changed much. Unfortunately rebels don’t tend to live long, or well as they age. You might say their “use-by” date comes early. Or they go off the deep end like Che, and Trotsky, et.al. Thompson just basically blew himself up. Literally I’d say, with a gun. He wrote a suicide note. I don’t blame him for being bummed about the Super Bowl though; it went to the New England Pats. At least it was Philly they were playing, not Green Bay. And there is a definite vacuum once football season is over. The eternal and existential questions arise. What’s it all about? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Does anything matter?

And then there are all of the wonderful quotes. Hunter sure knew how to sling ’em. I like them to the point that I used more than one in The Fat Man, under chapter headings. (Just like old times—I don’t know why writers quit such a lovely gesture.) Here’s one as an example. “I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”  That’s the lead for Chapter 23—The Hero In Heroin.

So here we are, once again contemplating life, death, and what happens in between. Who better to guide than someone who observed life in all its normal, its glory, and its ugly. And by the way, Hunter, we’re still here waiting for the answers we sent you on ahead to gather. Let us know, huh?

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Reflection & Syncronicity

I was reflecting on the old home town, and the photos arrived on Facebook. That is such a lovely gift from the Universe. (Although and until I’m sure that the waters did it—moving from one place to another as is its way.) The view below is of Riverside Park, where so often we went with parents and children and sometimes to eat a lunch and watch the river flow by. The view behind the eagle and the street lights is as the street moves up through the town.

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Bob Good Photography—La Crosse, WI—Riverside Park

 

And below is the photo of the Mississippi with the La Crosse bridge in the background. With the bridge seen from this perspective you can see how the one-way pattern of each blends together to create a lovely picture. That effect cannot be captured when viewed directly with the traffic flow. The photo was taken from the back of a boat so that is the wake from the motor that we see curving out behind the boat, in front of the bridge. Another lovely merging of arcs. Viewed as a whole, it appears to form a circle. The river, the bridge, the sky.

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Bob Good Photography—Mississippi River Bridge—La Crosse

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Oh Boy and What?

The Heck! You say

So I was off for the very long weekend of Memorial Day honorariums. And I traveled in silence, unconnected. How incredibly other-worldly it was. Beautiful and filled with such lovely journeys in mind and spirit and body. Travel on lakes and notes in music. Companionship and dog days—swimming and the joy of chasing sticks. How we swam and explored and drifted.

And then the dog and I returned to this place of our very own moorings.

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Cuyahoga Valley National Park post

And heard what happened in our absence. Withdrawal from the Paris Accord? Ben Carson saying that poverty is a state of mind? Mike Pence saying that climate change is just a leftist issue, not of concern to anyone else. Sometimes keeping your head in the sand, your feet in the water, and your head in the sky are where we belong. That our boats may sail on.

 

 

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About Concentration, and Quotes

Photographer Alan McFadyen estimates that it took him some 4,200 hours and 720,000 exposures before finally capturing this perfect photo of a kingfisher’s riveting dive.

Wired

Posted by “Wired” Magazine

This is why ’tis said a picture is worth a 1000 words. And about that quote, everyone from Confucius to Napoleon has been credited. Indeed:  Ivan Turgenev wrote (in Fathers and Sons in 1862), “A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound.” So, a whole bunch of people said it. But this photo proves it.