Sunday, June 30, 2013

Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument

The Paris artist's last in a series of four active art memorials to philosophers, the Gramsci Monument in the South Bronx Forest Houses development is opening tomorrow for a two and a half month run. The Times article is an interesting read and explains concepts about the artist's well thought through premises and the projects positive effects on the community at large.

Credit: Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Friday, June 28, 2013

CumuloNimbus


In the midst of a heat wave here in Sanpete, we often see this sort of cloud build over the eastern plateau; it doesn't always bode rain, but it certainly is a relief from stifling heat until the real monsoon starts pumping.
The difference between 99ºf and a much more palatable 82-90º, really.

Yes, we scan!


Call a spade that which it is. NYTimes op-ed contributors  Jennifer Granick and Christopher Sprigman say it like that: The Criminal N.S.A. .

Sunday, June 23, 2013

For All Fathers


Composed at our little house on the high desert today, and read at David's Granary Concert earlier this evening...

Near to the Border

Near to the border of every extreme
most can define an ideal
between cold and hot,
the wet and the dry,
even ones self and the other.

As a brocade of straw or silk from the webs strand
might be as reconstruction of vision in youth
amongst laughter and pain,
the granite and the ether;
even that which is mutable and contrary.

By way of shelter, gods action in kin
each flank of creation acts well in its part
as light from fire-
heat and light from within slumbering coal.
So too each introducd spirit may become,
and thanks to the child
therein a father
quite near the borders of every extreme.  

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

San Diego, California

Back in the icy month of February, about the same time I received yet another wave of bad news on the job front, my friends and I planned a quick trip for June.
It was worth every minute, day and month of anticipation.







































Way too short a time, and much too good of memories for a lowly mountain desert boy like me. Gotta find a way to get back and try again. Yeah, I know I've said the same before, but I'm still working on it.


Thursday, June 13, 2013

Dry


The usual descent into summer in the high desert foothills around here is to go from the high fifties and a rainshower every other week to the nineties and nary a drop for a month or two within the space of a few days. Before overgrazing in this valley in the early eighteen hundreds and again toward the end of the century and cheatgrass invaded the Great Basin sometime at the turn of the nineteenth century, things were somewhat different, I'm sure, but now mid june marks the turn from green and promising to brown and tinder-parched.
The dirt roads are getting a bit dusty and hot, as well. Whew.


Monday, June 10, 2013

The Way of the House

As the spring matures and summer approaches, gardening gets a little more intense and high water brings the imperative to use what we have before it heads on over to Delta's Elysian Alfalfa Fields.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Melting Skyline

On the mountain here, there's no really 'average' year. If there is an 'average' amount of snow on the ground, how fast it melts off and down the watershed is affected by how much dust has darkened the snow at how many intervals, how much wind and pressure changes occur, and how quickly the spring heats up.
We've been crossing the 90ºf mark fairly regularly in the valley for the past few days, so the snow's heading down the mountain and into the atmosphere at an alarming rate and causing the 'Shoe to show its bones, so Jess and I headed up the trail to see how close we could come. About a third of a mile from the top is how it shook out, and that's the way it was this June 3, 2013.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

June









Blue sky and poppies. That's the theme for the month. Oh, and hopefully no more frost after this morning.