Wordless Wednesday: Quest for the End of Indian Creek

guest blog by mike: i is a happy birb

 ah, hello! I... am mike! or, saint michle the archangel defend us in battle is my full name, but we usually just go with mike.

now, you half to understand, I am a bird. so I go in a cage. in a room. on a floor. in a house. in a street. in a neighborhood. in a state. in a country. in a continent. in a world. in a ect.


but I am let out... when I am good. but if I fly onto the floor, 'no' someone, or anything else bad, I am put back in.

lets get serious with the no part.

 so I admit to being a huge computer fan. but also, I am a big no fan. look
left to see a no and right to see computer. 'tom' means Tinfoil Olive Man.

whats that you say? one of choclos bionicles? cool... lets no it! (ok, lets not get into the hero factory-bionicle thing.)
all that aside, I should... eat something.

Guest Blog by Choclo: Fire Lord`s Missing Something!

 I am Fire Lord. and what I do? MAYBE you gussed it. I burn stuff.  ( I  think I misspelled "guessed")


WAIT! I think I am missing something! (Aw, shoot. Now I have to grab it!)

 WELL THEN! Cause Jetbug is napping,  Drilldoser is camping, and Nitroblast  is on  vacation, I will  have to
get it myself!

 SO! THAT'S WERE D.C* HQ IS!




*Drilldoser`s Canoes

Well, this is longer then I thought.

So Iv`e been taking selfies.




And lots of e`m.          

 wow, this (as I love burning up greenery),  this is  quite nice to look at.

*Whew!*Where is it??? Oh, there it is!









My... fresh snakeskin! (I'd better take this thing off before  I burn it off!

Poem of the Week: Enemies

Enemies

By Wendell Berry

If you are not to become a monster,

you must care what they think.

If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,

and so become a monster

of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy

that is the way of liberty?

From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;

they are to you as sunlight

on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except

as monsters like yourself,

pitiable because unforgiving.

HT: Poetry Foundation
Image HT: KissPNG

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Favorites from Crimora (Accompanied by a philosophical rant about photography)

By "favorites" I mean the Prime Minister and I rounded the 153 photos I took during the trip into these 12. 

To the pessimistic eye, photographing nature may seem like little more than creating a pale reflection of a former reality.  For my eye, however, is serves a different purpose. 

When I look to document many subjects, the concepts of Plato come to mind, describing how art is a step downward from actual nature, as it merely imitates, rather than reproduces, reality.  I would agree with his statement of art as imitation; however, I feel a part of the beauty of this imitation is how it can grow our appreciation for the real thing.

Video game technology has made massive advances since its beginning in 1969, having leapt from bitmap graphics to polygons and image maps.  Yet in the end, even the most advanced of games are still just made of these; upon looking closer, any model will still become blocky and its textures blurred, even if it takes a closer look than it used to to see the difference.  However, reality has no such limits; a closer look at nature only yields more detail and intricacy.  To me, this points to video games not as poor imitation but as highlighting the detail and beauty of the reality it imitates.

Photography, to me, brings with it much of the same thing: it gives attention to that which is already real, especially things we normally wouldn't stop to pay attention to.  The point in documenting isn't creating something less, but drawing attention to something more, letting others see beauty in things they hadn't seen in that way.





I feel part of photography comes down not only to philosophy but even to the Divine.  The Earth, despite the political turmoil we largely remember it for, is ultimately God's gift to us; every scene of beauty is something He made for us to wonder at (or sometimes just laugh about), even though we rarely recognize such a gift.

I feel this is where photography steps in: we can't hope to perfectly replicate such an immense world, but we can capture and imitate little bits of it, not creating so much as displaying the beauty of something we typically take for granted.  God gave us this world, so I view our attempts to showcase its beauty as a way to say "thank you" in our own way, expressing our gratitude for those experiences. 

In fact, "experiences" can apply not only to nature but also to our everyday lives.  I spoke in my previous guest blog about how art can allow one to share his or her view with others and to widen his or her own.

While this is true, I also feel photography can highlight smaller moments much like how they highlight nature, making them stand out in a Kant-like faculty of resistance that adds a theological justification for the moment's existence (okay too much) by revealing the beauty in our lives.

Especially in times of international turmoil and hardships suffered by all too many lives, we all need a reminder that life is inherently good, and our imitations of such moments highlights this point, just as it does the beauty of our surroundings.  

The Great Book Sort of '18, Part 2

 We thought a lot about why and how the book shelves got out of hand, and one big reason was having the Legos take over the book shelves. 

They were in front of the books, but that meant no one wanted to move them to get at the books, let alone to put books away!

Since the Zoomlians declared the Legos to be necessary (and since I don't want to think about how much we've spent on Legos over the years), we decided to make dedicated Lego display shelves.

And, since we were repainting the library, we were able to paint the shelves to match!

The main walls are peach and the accent wall and shelves are periwinkle.

 And you know, if you organize one part of the house, it means reorganizing the rest!

Not only did a lot of extra stuff end up in the guest room, we decided to move Zorg's desk from the library to the office.

Which meant moving my desk from the office to the guest room.

But we got there in the end!

Now, if only I could get the back basement organized...

The Great Book Sort of '18 Part 1

 We went through every book in the house.

The pictures are mostly the library, but we have book shelves in every room except the bathrooms!

 I had thought we were up to 4000 books, and I knew from experience that we really can't keep more than 3000 without losing track and creating random piles.

It turned out we were probably closer to 5000 books, maybe a bit more.

 We gave away or donated about 2000 books!  And that's not counting the ones we recycled because they were in terrible shape!

 We sorted and we culled and we cleaned for a week, but we ended up with around 3000 books that we love.

And we know where all of them are!

Wordless Wednesday: Shark Tooth Hunting