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

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. .

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 one’s self and the other.

As a brocade of straw or silk from the web’s 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, god’s 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 introduc’d spirit may become,

and thanks to the child

therein a father

quite near the borders of every extreme.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

June

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