Sonoran Desert Wildflowers — Image by kenne
We stand together
Belief clings, but faith let’s go —
Confirm the unknown.
— kenne
Sonoran Desert Wildflowers — Image by kenne
— kenne
Men’s Restroom Wall — Image by kenne
— Charles Bukowski
Joshua Tree Seedpods — Black & White Images by kenne
— kenne
Colorado River South of Hoover Dam Panorama — Images by kenne
of these mountains
are no match against
the mighty river.
Weary of its motion
they open to
potent penetration.
— kenne
Patio Sun Screen — Image by kenne
Our patio is where we can sit and watch the sunset. But when the temperatures start going over 100 degrees, it’s time for the patio sun screen. Through the screen we can watch the sunset with the shadows of the sago palm and olive tree on the screen — beautiful day in the desert!
We almost made it through May without hitting triple digits.
kenne
“The Cliffs of Zion Canyon” — Panorama by kenne
— kenne
Zion National Park Towering Cliffs — Image by kenne
— kenne
“Granite Angles” Zion National Park (May 20, 2015) — Image by kenne
— kenne
Zion National Park Panorama Taken From Our Balcony at Majestic View Lodge (5/20/15) — Image by kenne
— kenne
Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area Outside Las Vegas, Nevada — Images by kenne
(Click on any of the images to see larger view in a slideshow format.)
I came to the canyon seeking an escape
from the manmade strip of bright lights.
Decade old Scenic wildfire still fenced-off.
Vegas influenced exhibits at the visitors
center providing impressive vistas of
the northern Mojave Desert.
Hiking the rocks and desert floor
ending the day on the 13 mile Scenic Drive.
Collecting my winning in nature’s house
the freeway takes me back
to where the house rules,
I lose.
— kenne
Ed Folsom presenting “Counting from One to a Million, Whitman and the Civil War Dead” — Image by kenne
For the 24th year the Writers in Performance series at Lone Star College – Montgomery celebrated the birthday of Walt Whitman. For the last several years the celebrations has been in two parts, one a lecture on campus in the afternoon, the second part an evening gathering of poets at a local pub or cafe.
This year’s lecture featured Dr. Ed Folsom recognizing the sesquicentennial of the publication of Dram Taps, most of which Whitman wrote while serving as a hospital volunteer tending wounded and dying soldiers. Whitman felt that a poet’s voice was needed to document the war and help make sense of such a travesty.
This year’s Birthday Celebration for Walt Whitman took place May 7th, which I thought would be appropriate to delay posting till this Memorial Day, 2015. (Post Note) — The holiday originally was called Decoration Day and was a day of remembrance for Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War.
kenne
The Gathering of Poets at Dosey Doe Music Cafe, Conroe Texas — Images by kenne
The following passage from Dram Taps includes the longest sentence ever written by Whitman.
The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up — The Unknown (from Memoranda During the War)
THE DEAD in this war—there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south—Virginia, the Peninsula—Malvern hill and Fair Oaks—the banks of the Chickahominy—the terraces of Fredericksburgh—Antietam bridge—the grisly ravines of Manassas—the bloody promenade of the Wilderness—the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill’d in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown’d—15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities—2,000 graves cover’d by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)—Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest—Vicksburgh—Chattanooga—the trenches of Petersburgh—the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere—the crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those prisons)—the dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills—(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach’d bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet)—our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend—the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee—the single graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)—the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)—some lie at the bottom of the sea—the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States—the infinite dead—(the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word
UNKNOWN.
(In some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown. At Salisbury, N. C., for instance, the known are only 85, while the unknown are 12,027, and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches. A national monument has been put up here, by order of Congress, to mark the spot—but what visible, material monument can ever fittingly commemorate that spot?)
Palmers Penstemon — Image by kenne
The thrill hasn’t gone
it’s just move
to a new place —
I’ve found it,
have you?
Some know
where it’s at,
some don’t —
easy come
easy go.
I get all
the love
I need
down a
new path
where
the passion
remains —
but then,
who am I
telling you.
— kenne
Red Rock Canyon Panoramas by kenne
— kenne
Red Rock Canyon (View along the 13-mile Scenic Loop Road) — Panoramas by kenne
There are many beautiful scenic views in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. In September of 2006 a wildfire burned nearly 2,000 acres. The blaze, dubbed the Scenic Fire, burned rugged terrain inside the area’s 13-mile Scenic Loop Road, less than two miles west of the Red Rock Canyon visitors center.
I was able to get in some hiking while photographing this beautiful canyon in the Mojave Desert north of Las Vegas.
kenne