Magazine Posts

Photo shared by Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American

Down the road,
a fast walking pace,
people are passing me.
I didn't know it was a race.

A haunting song,
of a lost love,
was playing
in the Diners
booth. Individual
players. For
each diner
could select
their choice
of music,
to hear
in the comfort
of their booth.

Life will always be interesting.
No one said life would be fair.
All the pitfalls and hazards,
No one said the path would be smooth.
Enjoy your life, it depends upon you
Doing all the things you know how to do.

Why do I write?
I wish I knew.
I write about me,
I write about you.
I will write about happy,
I will write, if I'm sad,
I will write when I'm good,
I won't write if I'm bad.
I write for you readers,
I will write directly to you,
For writing is joyful,
It matters not what I do,
As long as I write for many,
Not just a few.

A pathway into the mind
of cluttered confusion.
No connection to ideas or thoughts.
Sees objects but cannot identify.
Little thought, no logic, to seize on.
What must it be like to not know
you don't know or can't reason?

Dark is the night,
if the Moon is away,
as stars awaken
twinkling their array.

The wind blew;
it swirled,
pennants waved
as unfurled.
Old Glory hung,
limp and narrow,
when a gusty breeze;
Stars and stripes waved,
for the best country,
in the World today.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

cept for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas. The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,500 light-years away. Share the Sky: NASA Open API for APOD

 Over 100 years ago, long before color-sensitive film was invented, the Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky created high quality photos took by taking 3 individual black and white photos, each with a filter (red, blue and green)  in full color. 
This self-portrait on the Karolitskhali River, ca. 1910, shows Prokudin-Gorskii in suit and hat, seated on a rock beside the Karolitskhali River, in the Caucasus Mountains near the seaport of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

Sergei Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863–1944) Was a chemist and photographer of the Russian Empire. He is best known for his pioneering work in color photography and his effort to document early 20th-century Russia.Around 1905, Prokudin-Gorsky envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advances that had been made in color photography to document the Russian Empire. His ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire. He set out to do this around 1909 through 1915 with a specially equipped railroad-car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and cooperation from the empire’s bureaucracy. The result was a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian Revolution.
While some of his negatives were lost, the majority ended up in the U.S. Library of Congress after his death. Starting in 2000, the negatives were digitized and the color triples for each subject digitally combined to produce hundreds of high-quality color images of Russia and its neighbors from over a century ago.

"Location can play a major role, since the cost of housing, food, insurance and other necessities" Read full article

He rode a dark horse
on those days in the past.
Dressed in dark clothing,
away he would ride,
bringing swift justice
to those who would hide
from the lightning of his shooting,
as he fought, on his ride.
A western justice; a special skill.
Stay out of his way
if you do not want to be killed.