Sproing !

Right, so remember on my last post I was telling my inner pessimist to shut up? About it snowing again? After that lovely string of 70 & 80 degree days we had? Frickin' Michigan. I swear. Doggone it if he wasn't right!

So, before the 8 inches of snow we got last weekend, I went out into Kensington Metropark and shot some photos of what is easily my favorite time of year. When the trees just start to green up......you look into a stand of trees, and there's a lovely green haze...you can't really see the leaves, but the buds are giving the forest world a light, bright green twinge. Very very nice.

Oh, and I'm making the images a bit smaller now. Hope you can still make them out enough to be interesting. Please do let me know what you think.



My favorite bird:



Love these tiny white flowers:



Check 'im out - talk about sticking out like a sore thumb on the forest floor in spring - it's a wonder he didn't get eaten already....



Now this is better camouflage. Little bitty garter snake, playing hide and seek:



I love Kensington. I should make a bumper sticker. Then, on second thought....perhaps that's an impulse best resisted. Heh.

Check it out: God's own artwork:



My second favorite bird, the Redwing Blackbird. What a beautiful little creature! (Jeff Corwin, you ain't got *nothin* on me!) There is a boardwalk in Kensington right on Wildwing Lake where you can watch a whole bunch of these guys building nests and doing "spring bird things" if you catch my meaning.



Lovely.



The missus, sitting:



Clinging:



Preening:



On that same body of water, swans are everywhere. Here's one getting his ungainly weight airborne:



Two for the price of one:



Mrs. Swan, nesting! How cool! (Geez I'm such a geek....)



Back at "the ranch", enjoying that day's sunset over our front field:



Life is good. We are very, very, blessed.

City of Angels Pictures

Hey yo -

Well, so finally I'm getting around to the very last leg of our west coast trip. Oh, and just to reiterate, for those who have not been paying attention, we're back home now. No longer out west. Yep, just makin' sure ya got it, we're back in MI. Back here, in the lovely, spring-ifying Mid West. (Hope "springs" eternal....there is a black pessimist inside that says "hey man, this is MI......it could definitely still snow again....")

I'm telling him to shut the hell up and get sweet. The pessimist that is.

So, here we are, back in LA. There is a museum in LA that was built using money from the will of J. Paul Getty. It's called The Getty. Imagine that. Eponymous. Hee. the museum is an absolute must-see if you end up in LA for more than one or two days. It is an astounding edifice. Karen, Bill and me went there one evening, and spent the first hour or so just checking out the landscape and surroundings. Wow.

Here's a view of LA from the hill on which the Getty is built.



Just north of LA is a pretty town called Malibu. One day, we took a drive-around, and found this little gull posing for us:



Right to my right as I was looking at Mr. Gull was this great rock in the surf. After a few less than successful shots, I got it!



One of our first nights in LA, our friend Bill took us around to a well-known mall called "The Grove". Cuz it never rains in LA (or hardly ever), they had made this an outdoor mall. Guess what it was doing the night we were there? :-/



That fountain was really pretty cool. They were playing Frank Sinatra and other Ratpack tunes and it would make its patterns to the music. No kidding. :-)

Karen, imitating Jackie O at the Grove:



Later in our week there, we went driving down south of LA proper to Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and other "________ Beach" places whose names I cannot remember at the moment. Whilst we were down there, we found another waterfowl who wanted to pose for us:



We stopped for lunch at an indoor market in a very, very snooty part of Palos Verdes. Being the end of the trip, I was getting concerned about how much money we were going to drop at this joint, but not to fear. It was remarkably affordable. And, the service was nice! How cool. Anyways, out front, there was a fountain depicting the ancient god Neptune:



And his, er, consorts...



Nice choice for fountain placement, that...

Here's Palos Verdes. Man, what a lovely day that was, and what a fantastic place to be rich and shameless!



There were opportunities to make like a billy goat and climb down the sheer face of the cliff to the ocean below. I went a little ways until the path petered out...man, talk about adrenaline rush. I thought I was goin' over for sure. On the way back up, Bill found me pulling a "Governator":



Bill's camera was pretty cool. It has this feature that allows you to take multiple pictures of a panorama, line them up, and "voila", instant panorama:



And he paid way less for his than I did for mine... :-(

Another panorama here, this time of Redondo Beach on our way back up the coast to LA proper:



There ya have it, the completion of our trip...from Vancouver BC by car up to Whistler and back to Vancouver, then by bus and ferry to Victoria, by ferry to Seattle, by ferry to Vashon Island, by car to Thorp WA, by car back to Seattle, by car down to San Francisco, by car down to LA, some 1400 odd miles.

Along the way we met some great people. Friends new and old, family, even complete strangers took care of us in many ways. We are so fortunate...a friendly film maker by "accident" in Vancouver, Andy Park in Langley BC, Bill and Katie Burr, Melissa Burr and her fiance Nate, Terry Butler, the most encouraging-est guy on the planet, Bill Ranta, Richard and Shelley and their cute kids, Ron Burr, Brad Bailey, Dan Davis Jr., and on the list goes.

You know, finally, after all this time, my brain is just starting to clear. The trip was a good first step away from "life as usual" and the move also had to happen of course...but it has been a long strange trip for the past six years, in many of the different senses in which you can take that phrase.

I think it's possible that things are finally coming together. Let's hope so anyway.

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

Obituary

Here is a great article on Pope John Paul II:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0504030319apr03,1,3411133.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Requires annoying registration, but worth it.

Hope you enjoy it.

Wilco plays Austin City Limits

Lately I've been getting into Wilco. It started out innocently enough with me reading the story of how they "got screwed by 'the man'" when their record label (at that time) dropped them when they turned in their second to most recent album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". That story (recounted in the book "Learning How To Die") set off a flurry of used-and-new record buying on my part. (Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and even a record by a former bandmate: Son Volt's debut, called Trace.) Last night I got a chance to see them play live at Austin City Limits, which is a club in Austin TX. Unfortunately they were opening for a much less interesting group of songwriters, so they only played four or five songs. Very interesting performers. Talented, musical, tight, and not a one of them a plastic-pop manufactured star.

These guys are probably not for everyone, but if you're into checking out music that's a little off the beaten path, and you don't mind old-school country-style musical influences...

(but thankfully not the pathetic "my wife left me for another man and shot the dog on her way out past the fourteen dead cars in our front lawn" kind of country)

...you ought to check them out.

Oh, and their lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, gives both Keith Richards and Iggy Pop a run for their money for the "ugliest man in rock and roll" title. :-) No offense, Jeff. You rock, man!

Big Sur

So, where were we?

Oh yeah - we left San Francisco (an eternity ago) on February 8th. We poked our way down the Pacific Coast Highway for a couple of days in a rental convertible (wah hoo!) and stopped for the night about one third of the way to LA in Monterey. Had we known then what we know now, we probably would have spent more time there than we did in SF. The Monterey area is absolutely stunning. Not to mention that just south of there is Carmel by the Sea, which is home to an old Catholic mission and also, oddly enough, the place where Clint Eastwood was mayor for a time. No joke.

Here's a picture of our convertible parked on a cliff near Big Sur.



Big Sur is an area along the CA coast that has some of the most georgeous scenery I've ever seen. And, thankfully, a National Park. We loved it. It was one twisty turney, hair-raising hairpin turn after another. (Which Karen with her vertigo issues just loved...)

I found this next area by accident. We were driving by one more amazing vista, when I noticed this huge rock sticking up out of the ocean. I stopped the car, got out and started picking my way down the cliff to the sand below. I'm so glad that I did. This first picture is pretty much my vantage point from the road I think:



Here's one of that Big Rock from sea level:



This is more or less what the whole coast is like. I don't want to sound jaded, because it's fantastic...it's just that you get a little overwhelmed by it after a while. I musta said "wow" more times than a valley girl from the 80s during this part of the trip...



There was this one time (this ranks as one of the coolest things that happened on our trip) while we were driving along that we saw (what we believe to be) a red-tailed hawk coasting along a thermal right over our heads. He was so close that we might have missed him altogether had we not had the convertible top down. Since I was driving, I did not get any still photos, but thankfully Karen was able to get some digital video of this amazing creature. It followed us (or we followed it) about 15 feet above our heads for probably 10 or 15 minutes of driving. We almost crashed about 10 or 15 times because I was more interested in the hawk than the road...c'est la vie.

This bridge is famous for some reason we read about in our guide book. I cannot remember why at the moment...



So, we're driving along, and we come upon a bay with some sacked out seals. We stopped to have a look because we didn't know that we would find a "seal refuge" a little bit further on. So, I'm wrestling with my long lens, and I can't get anything to look right. Pouting, we drive on a little ways, and then we see signs for a scenic area of some description. Getting out of the car, this little guy greets us, almost like...may I park your car for you? Oh, no, wait, that was LA. Actually what he was after was a handout I think:



Right in front of our car, there were a couple of these great big slickly furry shapes lying prostrate in the sand. None of them were moving, and Karen and I thought for sure that meant they were dead. Made us very sad for a moment, but then we kept on a little further. Turns out these guys were just sunning themselves, and just pretty much...look dead when they are sleeping. This next scene is pretty rough to take if you think that the sleeping are actually dead:



Turns out they are Elephant Seals. And while they are cute "in their own way" (especially the babies), they sure are funny looking:



I think this is a little further back up the PCH, but check out this sunset!



And, finally, I thought this was a cool shot too:



Next stop, LA!

Karol Wojtyla

For those of you who have been sleeping, the father of the Catholic church passed away today. This makes me sad, because even though I am not a Catholic, I have great respect for this Pope. He was an international traveller, a peacemaker, passionate about young people of all races and creeds, and from all accounts, he was truly a kind and Christ-like man. Things you might be forgiven for hoping to find in the character of a Pope.

May his soul rest in peace.

For more on this most interesting of modern men, please have a look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II

Also - if you like to get smart in a hurry, you should bookmark wikipedia. It's a very cool resource. :-)