The wonder of electricity through a timer, lights greet the sunset offering cheer until, precisely 4 hours later, surrender to the night UNLESS there is a power outage and the lights return for a renewed countdown.
Pushing Back….
…Darkness
Category: Modern Life
Santa Elf Spotted…..
….on paddle board.
She was captured via IPhone coming…..
….and going on the Cayuga Inlet off Cass Park, Ithaca, New York, on a December afternoon.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Our Solo Thanksgiving Feast
We spread our Thanksgiving goodies over three meals for our 2020 solo celebration.
Breakfast: Homemade Apple Pie (Grannie Smith Apples), Coffee with foamed milk and cinnamon
Lunch: Relish plate, sour cream onion dip, potato chips (avocado oil), Irish cheddar cheese and crackers, Dr. Frank Pino Noir
The roses are the last blooms from our garden.
Copyright 2020 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A Day at Iron Kettle Farm
We miss you, Mom.
One Saturday of October 2012 we enjoyed this last outing with my mother Catherine Ann Wills. She passed away June 2013 at the age of 90 years. We miss you, Mom.
A display of large pumpkins near the entrance to the Iron Kettle Farm.
Enter…if you dare….Corn Mazes are popular tourist attractions and are not simply corn fields. The plantings must be made later, planted thinner and fertilized less than those used for crops.
These small, inedible squash, once dried and hollowed out, become gourds. The plant is in the Cucurbitaceae family of the genus Lagenaria. The squash on this table are too small for anything but displays and decorations, such as centerpieces. Great fun and make and enjoy.
These ornamental squash, also know as cucurbita are not are large enough for use as food. When dried, will last a long time.
Take your pick of pumpkins….
…the pumpkins are sorted by size and price.
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We chose small to medium sized pumpkins.
Thankfully, the trees kept to their usual habits and did not talk to us today.
My dear wife, Pam, was in her element. She loves gardening.
We left the wheelchair at home and Mom enjoyed exploring the exhibits, watching people and the exercise.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Drying Butterfly…..
….on a Sonic Drive-In Order Station.
On Tuesday, December 17, 2019 a caterpillar dropped from vegetation to crawl across the parking lot of Sonic Drive-In, 2140 N Courtenay Pkwy, Merritt Island, FL 32953, crawl up an order station, affix its tail to the kelly green semi-gloss enamel, to form a chrysalis.
The afternoon of New Years Eve, 14 days later, we spied the Retro theme of this fast food business, finding it appealing, stopped for a hi-fat lunch of hamburgers, onion rings (“highly recommended, very delicious”) and (ha, ha) diet sodas, choosing this same order station where the emerged Brush-foot butterfly, of the family Nymphalidae, clung, drying in anticipation of flight.
Captured here with the Apple IPhone 8. I cannot identify the exact butterfly species this is. Source: wikipedia article on Nymphalidae.
Click photograph for the slide show. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Me and the War on Christmas
Flourishing after 2017 Years
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“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski
It is necessary to find insights in unpleasant places. Take this quote from Bukowski, a reprehensible individual in that following in the totality of his actions will lead to bad results. What can you say about a guy who believed his downtown Los Angeles neighborhood was ruined after the the pimps and whores were forced out? Still, Bukowski wrote well about the personal truth of his self-made environment, one he drank, whored and wrote his way to become a present-day saint of atheists.
With Trump and his “War on Christmas” is analogous. Trump does the magician’s, the practiced thief’s, slight of hand, distracting us while pocketing the coin, picking the pocket. His use of this slight of hand is effective in so far the premise is true. Sure, there is a War on Christmas. It started 2017 years ago when Herod ordered the innocents slaughtered to destroy the rumored Messiah. Then, as now, Herod was defeated by dreams and determined action. This is a link to my take on the story, ““Christmas Angels”.
A return to Christmas Past brings us to the “Me” of the title and how Amol K. shared in our 2002 celebration. Amol had arrived from India as a new hire for our team. That fall I searched for a roommate to share in household expenses. CBORD’s Human Resources department brought Amol and I together. He required temporary lodging until his marriage planned for 2003.
A single parent who raised a son alone, my Christmas preparations started immediately after Thankgiving with boxes of materials and decorations organized over fourteen years into beginning, middle and end boxes. In this way, day by day, I gradually transformed our home for Christmas. Workday evenings, unpacking a box at a time and laying out the contents.
The changes caught the attention of Amol. Raise in a middle class family of Bombay, India, Amol, a practicing Hindu, asked questions about the objects and images slowing building with the month, the sun drawing down lower and lower on the horizon, darkness now falling soon after 4 pm. Amol was curious to understand these new experiences.
Amol saw correlations with his own belief systems and stories and enjoyed helping decorate the tree on Christmas Eve.
We attended Christmas night mass together, shared presents Christmas morning. It was not a question of Amol becoming a Roman Catholic proselyte, he enjoyed experiencing the stories, practices and celebrations of Christmas.
Beliefs and religious practices are like a sky scraper. A push against natural law, constantly under pressure from gravity, wind, frost/thaw cycles and human fanatics who must see them come down by whatever means necessary. “You must break eggs to make an omelet.” This is a photograph taken on the returning training ship Empire State July 2001, less than two months before a fanatical suicide attack brought the Twin Towers down.
Happy New Year, remember to love your neighbor as yourself in 2018.
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 