Thurber’s Wild Cotton Blossoms (Sabino Canyon Recreation Area) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
— James Thurber
Archive for the ‘Tucson Arizona’ Tag
Thurber’s Wild Cotton Blossoms Art Leave a comment
Morning Shadows Leave a comment
Morning Shadows In The Sonoran Desert — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Yes, the sun has risen again.
I can see the windows change and hear a dog barking.
The wind buckles the slender top of the alder,
the conversation of night birds hushes,
and I can hear my heart regular and strong.
I will live to see the day end as I lived to see
the earth turn molten and white, then to metal,
then to whatever shape we stamped into it
as we laughed the long night hours away
or sang how the eagle flies on Friday.
When Friday came, the early hours perfect
and cold, we cursed our only lives
and passed the bottle back and forth.
— from One Day by Philip Levine
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Turkey Vulture On This Turkey Day, 2021 2 comments
Turkey Vulture — Image by kenne
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Thurber’s Cotton Leave a comment
Thurber’s Cotton with Bee (Sabino Canyon) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The cup-shaped flowers are 1 1/2 inches (3.8 cm) wide and have 5 broad, white petals that fade to pink as they age.
The petals are either solid white or streaked with pink at the base. The flowers are followed by round, green seed capsules that dry
to a brown color and split open to reveal the seeds and only a few, sparse cotton fibers. This plant is related to cultivated cotton,
but its cotton is too paltry for commercial use. The leaves are green and palmately lobed with 3 or 5 point-tipped lobes.
The leaves turn a bright red color in the fall (around late October). Source: fireflyforest.com
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Sycamore Canyon Panorama Leave a comment
The Arizona Trail Runs Through Sycamore Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains — Panorama by kenne
“She was actually learning to love Arizona.
The beauty and color and solitude,
the vastness of it had called to something deep in her.
First, she had complained of the dust, the wind, the emptiness,
the absence of people. But she had forgotten these.”
— Zane Grey
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Red-Tailed Hawk 2 comments
Red-tailed Hawk in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
Hawks gotta fly high
Staking out a hunting spot
Cross the desert plain
— kenne
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Fallen Leaves On The Sky Islands Leave a comment
Fallen Leves in the Sky Islands — Image by kenne
Sky Islands are isolated mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico,
connecting two very different mountainous regions.
Sky Islands are places where you can see incredible plant diversity in only a few miles.
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Mt. Lemmon Mushrooms Leave a comment
Mt. Lemmon Mushrooms — HDR Image by kenne
out of the darkness
into the forest shadows
a new life in light
— kenne
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Duskywing Butterfly — No Words 1 comment
Duskywing Butterfly — Image by kenne
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Greater Roadrunner Leave a comment
Greater Roadrunner (Sabino Canyon) — Image by kenne
The desert is human
endeavour’s most fitting graveyard;
the slow bleaching,
the gradual eroding into sand,
the heat stifling sound as it leaps into the air.
IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. But it always does.
— from Roadrunners by André Naffis-Sahely
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Northern Mockingbird 1 comment
Northern Mockingbird in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
One of the most familiar birds in the Sonoran Desert is the Northern Mockingbird. They hunt insects and spiders eat a wide variety of fruits;
berries of lantana and pyracantha are mainstays. Males and females have similar plumage: nearly uniform gray except for long dark tail
and white patch in open wing. Males are the singers that often practice all night long on a concatenation of bird songs borrowed
from a variety of other bird species. Three plants in particular produce fruit attractive to mocking birds: Desert Mistletoe,
Fremont Thornbush, and Desert Hackberry.
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Phainopepla Art 1 comment
Phainopepla — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Bird perched on a limb
A shadow against the sky
Art in black and white.
— kenne
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Fall In The Sonoran Desert — No Words Leave a comment
Fall In The Sonoran Desert — Image by kenne
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Fire Above The Canyon Leave a comment
The Big Horn Fire Above Sabino Canyon, June 2020 — Photo-Artistry by kenne
. . . In remembrance of last year’s Big Horn Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
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A Follow-up To November 13, 2021 Posting 1 comment
The November 13th posting, “Chevy Bel Air Taillight Art” took me back to a June 1, 2009 posting, “We Have Lost Another Piece of The Pie.”
We Have Lost Another Piece of The Pie
“. . . bye-bye, Miss American Pie.
Drove my Chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys
were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, ‘this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.'”
In the Don McLean song, “American Pie,” he wrote about “the day the music died,” referencing the 1959 plane crash causing the deaths of Budd Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper. Now it’s the Chevy’s (GM) turn to test destiny.
These were also the days when “See the USA in your Chevrolet” rang through the head of many a young boy, such as I. The first car that made me aware that I was hooked on cars was my grandfather’s 1945 Chevy. My first car was a 1950 Chevy, followed by a 1953. Emotions are the makings of the human experience. What would life be without feelings, without passions, whether short-lived, or life-long?
A part of me has always been a “car guy,” struggling with the other me (like a marriage), resulting in an intense love affair to this day. As with all relationships, the thrill of driving is about closing the gap. Connecting with a car is not about becoming one but about maintaining identity while always seeking to close the gap. Even though the evidence that GM would file for bankruptcy has been apparent for some time, today’s formal filing still came as a shock. Chevy and GM will live on, but an age has died – another piece of the American pie. Now we are singing:
“. . . bye-bye, Miss American Pie
GM drove to the Feds
But the Feds exposed their lie.
And them good old boys were still
Drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“This’ll be the day that I die.”
We Have Lost Another Piece of The Pie. As Michael Moore recently wrote, “It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete.” For the “car guy” in me, I experienced a real blow to my psyche. The pragmatic me is saying, “it’s about time!”
The “car guy” would now like to share a couple of blog posts over the last couple of years:
Soul of a Car
Signs of age
Tell the story
Miles on the gauge
Count the glory
Now at rest
In the shade
Once the best
Of the fifties decade
There is a key
Only to a past
Now rest free
At long last
A rusty door
A broken fan blade
Longing for more
Feeling only frayed
Having a heart
A few remaining horses
Seeking a start
From special forces
Old cars can rust
But never the soul
Covered with dust
Stuck in cruise control
Moving On…
How do you measure the worth of a “driving machine?”
Miles? Miles per hour? Drive-ability? Reliability?
Attractiveness? Safety? Maybe all these.
But the real worth of the 318i that I bought, September 1983,
and sold, September 2007 can only be measured by those
intangibles by which we measure passion.
It is not my nature to dwell on the past, but parting with something
that was an extension of my very being was not easy. If there is one
image that reflects more than a third of my life, it was this little BMW.
…the road always calls.
— kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 