Curiosity

"Curiosity is the thirst of the soul."

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). In "The Rambler" (English Journal), 103, 12 March 1751

Apologies

My apologies: My wife and I were gone this weekend past, to Hood River Oregon, where we attended her niece's wedding. A beautiful event and I have pictures to show it....HOWEVER, during the download process on Sunday evening my hard drive melted down! I'm now in the process of getting a replacement hard drive and will probably send the defective hard drive off to get the data retrieved (an expensive process but I have wedding pictures on said hard drive that I'd like to get paid for). This is the reason I haven't posted in several days. I hope to be back on a regular posting basis soon.

D.

Blackbird

"THE nightingale has a lyre of gold,

The lark's is a clarion call,

And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,

But I love him best of all..."

---

William Ernest Henley. 1849–1903, "The Blackbird"

Azure Hue

"Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue."

---

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844). The Pleasures of Hope, 1.7, 1799

Number 57

Bernard Law Montgomery: "They say that familiarity breeds contempt."

Churchill: "I would like to remind you that without a degree of familiarity we could not breed anything."

---

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) After suggesting to Field Marshal Montgomery before the Battle of El Alamein (Egypt) that he study logistics, 1942. In William Manchester, "Preamble: The Lion at Bay," The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, 1983

Gorge

"Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another."

---

John Muir (1838-1914) "Our National Parks", 3 (closing words), 1901

Roadside Blue

"Yon wild mossy mountains sae lofty and wide,

That nurse in their bosom the youth o’ the Clyde,

Where the grouse lead their coveys thro’ the heather to feed,

And the shepherd tends his flock as he pipes on his reed..."

---

Robert Burns, "Song—Yon Wild Mossy Mountains"

Volume: Poems and Songs.

The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. Year: Published/Written in 1786

Montana

"It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda."

---

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) 'Travels With Charley: In Search of America" 3, 1961

Imitation

"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."

---

James Baldwin (1924-1987). 'Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, 3, 1961

The Lamb

"The toddler craves independence but...fears desertion."

---

Dorothy Corkville Briggs

Every Crystal, Every Flower...

"The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work---every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator."

---

John Muir (1838-1914). 26 July 1869, "My First Summer in the Sierra, 6 ("Mount Hoffman and Lake Tenaya"), 1911

Ugly Duckling / Beautiful Swan

"To photograph is to confer importance" Susan Sontag (1933-) On Photography, 2, 1977

"So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful." Susan Sontag (1933-) On Photography, 4, 1977

Admiring Friend: My, that's a beautiful baby you have there!

Mother: Oh that's nothing--you should see his photograph!
Anonymous: In Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, 1 (epigraph), 1961

Standing Alone

"Oh, cursed be that arrogant satisfaction in standing alone."

---

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Journal, 8 May 1838

A Beast the Color of Winter

"When the goat had finally gone as far as it could, there was not enough room to turn around. So, Chadwick writes, 'after some tenative foot shuffling the mountaineer braced its front hooves on the ledge and slowly raised the rear of its body off the ground. Clenching my hands tighter and tighter on the binoculars, I watched the beast lift its hindquarters higher and higher and begin to roll them straight over its head. The rear hooves touched the wall here and there for an instant, yet what the creature had effectively carried off by the time it was finished was a complete slow-motion cartwheel, or technically, what gymnasts call a rollover. I put down my binoculars and remembered to breathe, and this mountain goat, an averaged-sized billy, strolled off in the direction from which it had come."

---

David Rockwell, "Exploring Glacier National Park"

Rainy Day

Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park

"Good luck and good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers. Some, falling on meadows and bogs, creep silently out of sight to the grass roots, hiding softly as in a nest, slipping, oozing hither, thither, seeking and finding their appointed work. Some, descending through the spires of the woods, sift spray through the shining needles, whispering peace and good cheer to each one of them." John Muir (1838-1914)

The Blues

"Princes and magistrates are often styled serene, but what is their turbid serenity to that ethereal serenity which the bluebird embodies? His Most Serene Birdship!"

---

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Journal, 12 January 1855

Imago Dei: The beginning

"There are crowds who trample a flower into the dust without once thinking that they have one of the sweetest thoughts of God under their heel." Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881)