Smoke covers the Catalinas today. With the use of Photoshop and a Dehaze filter,
I created this less smokey image. — kenne
— Patrick Jennings
(The Bighorn Fire remains only 19% contained.)
Still Life Shadows — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
Image by kenne (January 15, 2010)
“It was the spring of 1968 and I had taken a week off to join college friends in Daytona Beach, Florida. Our sunburns had not yet turned to tans and we had barely finished the first of several cases of Old Milwaukee beer (with pull tops, a recent innovation) when President Johnson shocked the nation by announcing that he would not seek another term. The Vietnam War had worn him down — and out.
And then four evenings later there was a commotion.
“They killed the nigger! The nigger’s dead!” cried a group of drunken college students as they danced and whooped in the parking lot of the motel adjacent to ours. “They killed the nigger!”
My Old Milwaukee high evaporated in a flash. We turned on the television. Dr. King had been gunned down at a Memphis motel. I wanted to hurt those students. I wanted to throw up.
We drove north the next morning. As we approached Washington, there were huge black clouds of smoke over the city. We overtook a convoy of troop carriers filled with National Guardsmen, rifles slung over their shoulders. The riots following Dr. King’s murder were well underway, and the New York Avenue corridor of tenements, flophouses, liquor stores and churches in Northwest Washington was in flames. It was hard to drive around the city in those days, but we found a detour.
The rioting spread, and the next night. I was again in newspaper reporter’s mufti and took my Daytona tan down to The Valley, a poor neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware where young blacks were skirmishing with the city police and National Guard. There were fires and intermittent gunfire from snipers atop the row houses. At one point a bullet whizzed over my head. Yes, just like in the movies.
I was still shaking when I got back to my apartment the next morning. I cried over the inhumanity of my fellow man, for my black friends and for Dr. King.”
— from “Remembering Dr. King & The Never Ending Struggle For Civil Rights” by Shaun Mullen (January 16, 2012)
Cooper’s Hawk (Sabino Canyon Recreational Area) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
Female Phainopepla Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Paulo Coelho
Raven Lovebirds On Christmas Eve — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
Mushroom — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Mushroom Transportation
— kenne
Sonoran Desert Painting — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
Main Dock of the Bay — Digital Art by kenne
— kenne
Saguaro Hole In The Sky — Computer Painting by kenne
— kenne
Tanuri Ridge Sunrise — Computer Art by kenne
Morning
Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
— Billy Collins
