View allAll Photos Tagged Stringy,
Each morning there seems to be a massive UP manifest train that heads over to Barstow.
When it runs well, it runs well, but when it doesn't things can clog up on the hill as I've seen a few times. Today its chugging along reasonably well, although there is a BNSF pig train chomping at the bit behind it. I was hoping that he would have been a few hundred feet further ahead here, but alas the UP pushers are only just leaving Caliente behind and passing the road crossing. Not that you'll probably be able to see that in this little picture.
23 Sept 2016, Tunnel 1, Tehachapi Pass, California.
Usnea on Mountain Laurel, Bennett Gap Trail
2014 © Christina Melton
__________________
Connections in nature result in an organism that is greater than the sum of its parts...
A lichen is composed of at least two different but connected organisms – a fungus and a colony of microscopic green algae or cyanobacteria. The fungus supplies a root structure, the shape, and reproductive structures. The fungus also finds, soaks up, and retains water and nutrients. The algae or bacterial cells provide carbohydrates to the combined organism through photosynthesis – something a fungus cannot do. In effect, the fungus is fed by the algal partner. The algae partners in lichens cannot live outside their host, nor can the host live without its algae. It is their connection to each other and to their environment that permits each composite organism to survive and to thrive.
This particular stringy lichen, Usnea (Old Man’s Beard), is said to be an indicator of air quality. If the air quality where it is growing is compromised, this lichen disappears. Almost anyone who has walked through a forest has encountered Usnea, but may not have noticed it and probably didn't know the inconspicuous gray-green fuzzy stuff covering many of the trees is one of the strongest immune tonics in the herb world. Usnea species – a source of antibiotic and antifungal lichen acids – have widespread potential for medical applications, with Usnic acid being found more effective against some bacterial strains than penicillin (particularly against Staphylococcus and Pneumonococcus). It has been used in cosmetic production for its antimicrobial and antifungal properties as a preservative and deodorant, and to create dyes for textiles.
• www.freshvista.com/2012/patterns-in-nature-lessons-from-l...
• www.christopherhobbs.com/wp-website/wp-content/uploads/20...
Everyone loves new lens day! Today I stumbled upon a used macro lens in a shop and instantly fell in love. I knew it was the perfect match and a type of lens I always wanted.
Nikon D7100 + Tamron SP 90 mm Macro 1:1
The matted stringy feathers on this Wood Stork nestling's head, neck and chest look more like wooly fur than feathers.
Location: Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, United States of America
Our Daily Challenge: String, Stringed, Stringy
My images are posted here for your enjoyment only. All rights are reserved. Please contact me through my email at: laurietakespix@gmail.com if you are interested in using one of my images for any reason. Web page: laurieabbotthart.com
A quick shot of what I've been working on. Please excuse the stringy/hairyness. I'm glad all the pieces are basically made- just working out the finishing details. Hopefully there will be enough left over time to make a mouse pet AND take some decent photographs of the finished product.
Hoping to prove in one of the upcoming challenges that I'm not a one trick pony! For me, it seems like the last few challenges have called for this tedious embellishment. I love to do it but I'd like to stretch my skills by not considering what fans would like to buy. Looking forward to the next challenge announcement!
In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- have collaborated to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.
In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon.
Each telescope's contribution is presented in a different color:
- Yellow represents the near-infrared observations of Hubble. They outline the energetic regions where stars are being born as well as reveal hundreds of thousands of stars.
- Red represents the infrared observations of Spitzer. The radiation and winds from stars create glowing dust clouds that exhibit complex structures from compact, spherical globules to long, stringy filaments.
- Blue and violet represents the X-ray observations of Chandra. X-rays are emitted by gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosions and by outflows from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center. The bright blue blob on the left side of the full field image is emission from a double star system containing either a neutron star or a black hole.
When these views are brought together, this composite image provides one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy's mysterious core.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/galactic/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/D.Wang et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC/S.Stolovy
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
Self portrait (of sorts). This is the first shot of my Fluid Dynamics series.
See the second one here.
Single off cam flash (SB700) with very close umbrella top right.
Got to admit, a few novice mistakes notwithstanding, I'm pleased with the way this turned out.
Lightbox = L = better
I have seen numerous female Rufous Whistlers at this location however, this is the first time I have seen a male. To my surprise I didn't see just one male but three as they fossicked and prodded looking for insect in the stringy bark of the jarrah trees.
She lives in a swamp in a hollow log
With a one-eyed snake and a three-legged dog
Bent, bony body, and stringy hair
And if she ever seen y'all messin' 'round there
She'd go... another man done gone
Marie Laveau
Song by Bobby Bare ‧ 1973
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CAMO- Solagne Braids
Mesh Hairbase
9 Accessory Colors
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Tinting Option
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(Baby Hairs Not Included)
Boutique #187# Moth and Flame
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Violetility- All-Seeing Rose Gauges
Violent Seduction- Ersa
Viena- Magnolia Glitter Eye Liner
Picasso Babe- Reborn- Moonlight
Lelutka- Avalon
Ebody- Reborn
Devilistic- Kashmere
Swallow- Gauged S Ears
All Dives- Chuh Boxeodora Hairbase
VelvetVue- Inquisition Eyes
Genial chenille. That’s W9’s description. “Chenille is any sort of yarn that has long pile — that is, stringy ends that are rooted in the core. It could help you remember what chenille is if you know it's a French word originally meaning “hairy caterpillar,” which is something it resembles.”
Thank you to Halladay Bill who gave us precise directions and helped us find the bird at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary.
L to R:
- Ghost Rider
- Daredevil
- Iron Man
- Spider-Man
- Iron Fist
Origins:
Ghost Rider / Jonathan "Johnny" Blaze
- A businessman struck by the magic of Morgana Le Fay, he was possessed by a demon from another dimension. However, he managed to repel it using a ring that interdimensional repellants, created with stark tech and Morgana's mystical artifacts. Now, he uses that ring to summon the demon, gaining blazing powers from another plane.
Daredevil / Matthew "Matt" Murdock
- College roommate and current roommate of Peter Parker, Matt Murdock was a lawyer-turned vigilante. However, not soon after starting his new career, he was blinded after being exposed to one of Mysterio's weapons. Soon after, he was given technology by Tony Stark that allowed him to hear much better than the average human, giving him a "Radar Sense". He continues to fight crime with Peter Parker and the Avengers.
Iron Man / Antony "Tony" Stark
- Owner of Stark Robotics and expert at building/designing drones, Tony Stark became Iron Man after an attack at a press conference. He decided to build a robot suit to clean "bad-guys" off the street, including "vigilantes" Daredevil and Spider-Man. Using a suit powered with Morgana Le Fay's magic, he now leads the superhero team known as the 'Avengers'.
Spider-Man / Peter Parker
- After being bitten by a radioactive spider on a field trip with Matt Murdock (His college roommate), Peter developed powers, allowing him to mimic that of a spider. He soon created gauntlets that allowed him to shoot "webs", stringy, disposable wires created by Stark Robotics. He now works with Matt and defends the city as part of the Avengers.
Iron Fist / Danielle "Danni" Rand
- Danielle "Danni" Rand, AKA Iron Fist, decided to become a vigilante after seeing Spider-Man and Daredevil take on the crime of New York. She is a master in multiple forms of martial arts, and is also a talented gymnast. Although she is in her late teens, Danni is a strong member of the team.
THE AVENGERS
- Created after a demonic invasion of New York City, orchestrated by Morgana Le Fay, the government-operated PMC called "PROVIDENCE" recruited vigilantes and superheroes to unite the city and stop future invasions / threats.
The sun was getting low in the sky giving the perfect back lighting to this rainbow lorikeet. Love the light on its beak, under side and highlighting those stringy branch pieces that the birds do to it.
Every fall, Dad went deer-hunting with some of his friends; and he always came back with a deer -- head, antlers, hooves, skin, and everything else.
Lest you think that this was just a redneck sport, I should point out that he had the deer butchered, and for the remainder of the fall, winter, and spring the family's meat consumption often consisted of various cuts of venison.
When I grew up and began to see venison on the menu of fine restaurants, I shook my head in wonder. I assumed that venison was always tough, stringy, and gamey.
********************************
Most of the photos in this album were taken nearly 40 years after we first moved to Riverside, CA, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Riverside) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch8.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Riverside? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now (including some of the drive from Riverside to Omaha, where our family moved next), as well as some “real” contemporaneous photos I’ve found in family scrapbooks.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended one school, somewhere in downtown Riverside, when my parents were looking for a house; and when they finally found a house out at the edge of town (at the base of the San Bernardino foothills), I was switched to a different school. This was typical; I usually attended two different schools in every city we lived in, and I attended a total of 17 schools before heading off to college.
2. While I eventually rode my bike to and from the second house to my school, I started off riding a school bus. A bunch of us kids would wait on a corner for the bus to arrive; and it was at the edge of a huge orange grove that seemed to stretch on forever. There were always a few rotten oranges lying on the ground, thoroughly rotten, and these substituted nicely for snowballs. There is nothing like the experience of being smacked in the stomach, of your fresh clean shirt, with a rotten orange.
3. Like most other suburban kids in the 1950s, I was allowed to do all sorts of things alone — as long as I returned home by dinner time. I could ride my bike anywhere I wanted, alone; I could hike way up into the hills alone (as long as I had a pocket-knife, which my father insisted I carry in case I was bitten by a rattlesnake). And I was allowed to sleep outside in the back yard, in a sleeping bag, virtually whenever I wanted to. The weather was always quite mild, the skies were clear (Los Angeles smog had not reached us in those days), and the stars were utterly amazing. There were shooting stars to watch, an experience I have never forgotten.
4. I discovered that marbles were excellent projectiles to shoot with one’s slingshot, and that they would actually travel in a more-or-less straight line. I became pretty good at shooting lizards with my slingshot; all I needed was an endless supply of marbles (because you could only shoot them once, at which point they would generally disappear somewhere). So I began practicing quite hard, played competitive games of marbles every day at school, and eventually amassed great quantities of the little round things.
5. Even better than lizards were spiders; they were everywhere, and they were relatively easy to catch. I don’t think any of them were dangerous, and in any case, none of them bit me. I sometimes put them in my pants pocket for the day, and I often brought them home. And I would put them in the dresser drawer with my socks and underwear; it seemed like a good place for them to relax. My mother discovered a couple of them one day, and was not impressed.
6. We had relatives in the city of Los Angeles, and made the 50-mile drive to visit them once or twice a year. We also made a 50-mile drive once or twice to visit San Juan Capistrano, which my parents thought was the most wonderful place in the world — mostly, they told me, because of the famous swallows that migrate each year from someplace in Argentina. In fact, I think they were impressed because they were old enough to like a 1940 hit song, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano,” which I couldn’t stand. If they had told me the place was the locale of the first Zorro novella (“The Curse of Capistrano,” published in 1919), I would have been much more impressed.
7. Riverside is where I got my first dog—a mutt named Blackie, that was part of a litter produced by the next-door neighbor’s dog. It provided an open invitation for me to visit the next-door neighbors whenever I wanted, and swim in their pool (a rarity in those days). At the end of our year in Riverside, Blackie moved with us to our next location — traveling all the way in a little house/bed that had been made for him in the World War II Jeep that Dad hitched to his Chevrolet.
8. Riverside is also where I had my first exposure, at school, to kids of other ethnic backgrounds. There were Asian kids, and black kids, and Latino kids (whom, sadly, my father referred to generically as “Mexicans,” but whom he also held in high respect because he remembered watching their comrades working harder and longer than any of the “white boys” in the rough mining and ranching camps on the Utah/Colorado border, where he had grown up). All of us were thrown together in the same classroom, all of us traveled to each other’s houses and neighborhoods after school, and nobody seemed to think it was unusual in any way.
9. I learned, to my enormous delight, that I *was* different in one special way: I was left-handed. During the pickup baseball games that we played constantly during recess, lunch, and after school, there were never enough baseball gloves for everyone, so everyone simply shared with everyone else (after all, if your team is at bat, you don’t need your baseball glove). But I was the only left-handed kid around, apparently the only one in the whole school; so nobody ever wanted to share my glove.
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, ACT
Not often seen at the Reserve so always fun to watch when they're feeding amongst the stringy bark
Debarked tree root with bark and leaves, near Batemans Bay.
Actually on a punishing track that took us out to a wind-tossed headland. We stood on what I am sure was a crumbling edge & looked down on waves crashing over a rock platform way below. All the vegetation was stunted. What surprised me about this root sticking up out of the track (note the photographer's foot with sore toe) was that it had bark so was more like part of the trunk or a branch. Stringy bark do this - push their branches underground - as a conservation strategy, so perhaps this tree was doing similar.
[Debarked tree root w bark+leaves_nrBatemansBay_IMG_1998]
Typical eucalypt forest in Victoria's high country. The Stringy Barks have shed their rattly outer coats at their feet, over time.
A pleasant hike, not far from Jamieson.
somebody had dinner...
The picture is taken in Vienna on a deserted spot behind the biology centre a few hundred meters away from my home...
it wasn´t a small space, it was a huge area somewhere between the Simmering district and mine (Landstrasse)...
sometimes when I had done all my housework, cleaning our huge apartment, scooped up the cat poop, done the shopping and I had not enough time to start painting something new or was just out of inspiration I would often got to this strange "Urban Desert" the highway was above on huge pillars of concrete, you couldn´t see the cars but you could hear them...
But I could also hear urban-birds Tweeting out their messages on their social media...
...in the middle of this mostly abandoned area was a big hole down the ground with some Urban Ruins of a cellar, often there would be new graffiti and/or tags there, once there was a burned out scooter or bike (I think I have posted pics of it here)...
this place gave my very stressed mind some peace, my secret garden in the big city...
other places I sometimes ventured to was a small graveyard also at the borderland of Simmering-Landstrasse districts and if I had even more time I would wander to the larger cemetery (never taking the 71 tram in fear of dying buried there)
... there I would have chats with some of the famous people I knew from the history books but mostly chatting with Falco who had a very kitsch all-glass tombstone...
Peace and noise!
/ Mushroombrainin tranquil panic
Captain finally got his pumpkin...just his size...I took all the seeds for roasting and left him all the stringy sticky goodness, however this is his first time trying out the fog machine and he kindof froze up...like when his pumpkin shirt gets put on and he all of a sudden can't walk normal. He did eventually take to the pumpkin for some bites.
(no chocolate was consumed by doggies)
My "fast and free" spin. It went really quickly, the roving pretty much spun itself. It is a tad bit overspun so it feels a little stringy, but it was a very very fun experiment. I thought this would be more sportweight, but turned out to be more of a fingering/heavy fingering. And the colors, oh the colors!!!
The fiber was given to me by SourCherries (aka amariaj) for the HHHH swap.
Fiber:
All Spun Up sw merino
Approx 307m/100g
2ply fingering weight
I took this purposely macro to show the tiny flowers of the witch hazel. Usually a photo will just show the long stringy 'petals'.
from Wikipedia
"Each flower has four slender strap-shaped petals 0.95–1.91 centimetres (3⁄8–3⁄4 in) long.
The genus name, Hamamelis, means "together with fruit", referring to the simultaneous occurrence of flowers with the maturing fruit from the previous year."
Witch hazel aka Hamamelis has a lovely winter scent.
This is a favorite - I love her little face and her high button boots, her hat and her rather stringy hair.
I bought this years ago in Connecticut.
( it's a tintype - thanks inferno55!)
It's on thick (I assume) tin. And her cheeks are tinted. Any guesses as to time? I'd guess 1870's or 1880's.
A collaboration of images from POSS-II DSS-II / Terry Hancock / Tom Masterson, this final image is only a small portion of the constellation Auriga but it's packed with amazing features. Most notably it's easy to be drawn to the overwhelming red and more subtle blue areas of nebulosity, but also the striking cluster's of stars as well.
Starting with the star clusters in this image, or open clusters as they are commonly called, looking to the left of this image you can find the Pinwheel Cluster (M37) and the Starfish Cluster (M38). The Pinwheel Cluster is located at the bottom left of this image, a more tight open cluster in this image it is some 4,100 light-years away. If it were ten times closer, the distance of the Pleiades it would outshine them by three times! On to the other notable cluster in this image, found in the top left towards the center is the Starfish Cluster. This cluster is a bit more spread out but is about the same size and distance as the Pinwheel Cluster and a bit a bit dimmer.
What really draws the eye in this image is the impressive clouds of nebulosity, the Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405), IC 410/NGC 1893, IC 417, NGC 1931, and a squid like area of Hydrogen Alpha emission that I don't know the name of;) The Flaming Star nebula is the bright and large comma shaped cloud of nebulosity with a blue center to the top right. Some research suggests that the bright star at it's blue center has a proper motion that would have brought it from somewhere in Orion's Belt. Down and to the left of the Flaming Star Nebula is IC 410. A very bright area of nebulosity in this image it contains some really interesting features called the tadpoles. If you zoom into this image you can see them, stringy fields of dust and gas that lead to a wider bright point. The other two notable nebulae in this image are referred to as a cosmic spider and fly because of the way they look. In the center of this image you'll spot the larger IC 417 or the 'spider' and diagonally to the bottom left you'll spot the 'fly' or NGC 1931. NGC 1931 looks much like the Great Orion Nebula but much further away, about 7 times more distant.
Technical Info:
POSS-II DSS-II
~110 Red and Blue chemical plates, each 1x1 degree across.
Terry Hancock:
Captured March 11, 17 2015
Location: DownUnderObservatory, Fremont, MI
H-Alpha 160 min, 20 x 8 min bin 1x1
QHY11 monochrome CCD cooled to -20C
Takahashi E-180 F2.8 Astrograph
Paramount GT-1100S German Equatorial Mount
Image Acquisition Maxim DL, Processing, Calibration and Stacking CCDStack
Tom Masterson:
20x 600" @640ISO Lights
20x Darks
20x Bias
20x Flats
Camera: Canon 6D
Scope: Williams Optics Star 71 Astrograph
Mount: Advanced VX
Guide Scope: Orion Mag Mini With ZWO ASI 120MCS
Capture Software: Backyard EOS
Guide Software: PHD
Stacking Software: Deep Sky Stacker
Final Processing: PSCC
Location: Los Padres National Forest, CA
"Eucalyptus jacksonii is a tree that typically grows to a height of 8 to 45 metres (26 to 148 ft) and has thick, rough, stringy and furrowed grey-brown or red-brown bark. The bases of very old, heavily buttressed trees can have a circumference up to 24 metres."
Wikipedia
I had a very frustrating time trying to photograph bubble film earlier, but these stringy sperm like patterns made it worthwhile.
It was frustrating because I found it very difficult to get halfway decent exposure. The lamp has to be at the right angle to the film, and so does the camera, I think, and that's not easy to do. And I could barely see anything through the viewfinder, so it was very hit and miss.
And I hurt my eye, with the flash going off right next to it. And I got a headache. And it's frigging cold here in the UK. And we don't have double-glazing. I mean, I could go on................ Oh, and I tried using extension tubes with my macro lens, and I could see nothing through them.
But, who said it was easy! And as they say, anything worth doing will have its difficulties. And I love this. It's worth doing. It's worth persevering with.
This slight barely there dress is the new Dallas from the BumBum event. Its stringy, sassy, sultry and sexy. The Dallas by Havoc comes for:
- Reborn
- Maitreya
- Legacy
- Kupra
- Hourglass
- Peach
The rest of my look is....
- Ebody Reborn
- Avalon By Lelutka
- Mischief by Truth
- Blair Earrings by Kibitz
- AvaWay Astrology Necklace
- Goddess Nails by Nailplug
- HD Nipples by Ebody
- Cerise belly piercing by Ysoral
- Sabine Wedding ring by Ysoral
- Infinite Love tattoo by Sam's Tattoo
- Skinnery Bronze (Slim)
- Skinnery Slyvie (Lelutka)
Gulls we’re pulling these up from the brackish water channels all morning. When pierced, they ooze a yellow, stringy mucous-like goop that the gulls seem to savor😜.
Paper Pieced with bunches of 1" strings...it drove me crazy but the best looking blocks always seem to!
Love experimenting with my shadow falling onto different surfaces, textures and colours. The results can be surprising. For example, in this series, my shadow takes on a more artistic form in that it appears abstracted and 3-dimensional. I also think it conveys a sense of movement. What do you think?
Have a wonderful Sunday what ever you do and thanks for taking the time to visit.
One mushroom, amazingly common in southeastern states like North Carolina, that piques the interest of people who find it in their yards, gardens, and other human-maintained green spaces, is the ringless honey mushroom, Armillaria tabescens; a distinguishing feature that aids in identifying it is the consistency of the stem and the top of the mushroom cap: a tough, somewhat hollow stem often with stringy fibrous material stuffed inside, making it hard to break the mushroom apart easily, and it certainly does not snap open like chalk (as in the genus Russula, another common group of wild mushrooms growing in yards and lawns); stems should be white, fibrous, and almost woody, on mature mushrooms grey at the base, and when broken, appear jagged, fibrous, and almost look like a broken stick
_____________________________________________
Charlotte, NC – 2018AUG22 – Ringless Honey Mushroom:
We've had record rainfall lately – the wettest July on record and the 2nd wettest month ever – and just "overnight" these two clusters of edible mushrooms popped in our backyard, Armillaria tabescens, growing with explosive speed, often reach full maturity in a day or two, growing in clusters of multiple individuals arising from the same spot in the ground.
By average rainfall in Charlotte, NC (USA), the wettest month is March: an average 4.4" of rain falls on 11-12 days, though in July rain typically falls on more days, with 3.5" in 12-13 days, the driest month, November: an average of 3.0" in 9-10 days, though in October rain typically falls less days, 3.3" in 7-8 days.
Hope you enjoy the 16% of 49 photos I took here this day!
*Finally* got around to making a new more seasonally appropriate cover for my couch pillow. (Time to retire the fall version for a few months.)
35/365
Every fall, Dad went deer-hunting with some of his friends; and he always came back with a deer -- head, antlers, hooves, skin, and everything else.
Lest you think that this was just a redneck sport, I should point out that he had the deer butchered, and for the remainder of the fall, winter, and spring the family's meat consumption often consisted of various cuts of venison.
When I grew up and began to see venison on the menu of fine restaurants, I shook my head in wonder. I assumed that venison was always tough, stringy, and gamey.
********************************
Most of the photos in this album were taken nearly 40 years after we first moved to Riverside, CA, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Riverside) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch8.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Riverside? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now (including some of the drive from Riverside to Omaha, where our family moved next), as well as some “real” contemporaneous photos I’ve found in family scrapbooks.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended one school, somewhere in downtown Riverside, when my parents were looking for a house; and when they finally found a house out at the edge of town (at the base of the San Bernardino foothills), I was switched to a different school. This was typical; I usually attended two different schools in every city we lived in, and I attended a total of 17 schools before heading off to college.
2. While I eventually rode my bike to and from the second house to my school, I started off riding a school bus. A bunch of us kids would wait on a corner for the bus to arrive; and it was at the edge of a huge orange grove that seemed to stretch on forever. There were always a few rotten oranges lying on the ground, thoroughly rotten, and these substituted nicely for snowballs. There is nothing like the experience of being smacked in the stomach, of your fresh clean shirt, with a rotten orange.
3. Like most other suburban kids in the 1950s, I was allowed to do all sorts of things alone — as long as I returned home by dinner time. I could ride my bike anywhere I wanted, alone; I could hike way up into the hills alone (as long as I had a pocket-knife, which my father insisted I carry in case I was bitten by a rattlesnake). And I was allowed to sleep outside in the back yard, in a sleeping bag, virtually whenever I wanted to. The weather was always quite mild, the skies were clear (Los Angeles smog had not reached us in those days), and the stars were utterly amazing. There were shooting stars to watch, an experience I have never forgotten.
4. I discovered that marbles were excellent projectiles to shoot with one’s slingshot, and that they would actually travel in a more-or-less straight line. I became pretty good at shooting lizards with my slingshot; all I needed was an endless supply of marbles (because you could only shoot them once, at which point they would generally disappear somewhere). So I began practicing quite hard, played competitive games of marbles every day at school, and eventually amassed great quantities of the little round things.
5. Even better than lizards were spiders; they were everywhere, and they were relatively easy to catch. I don’t think any of them were dangerous, and in any case, none of them bit me. I sometimes put them in my pants pocket for the day, and I often brought them home. And I would put them in the dresser drawer with my socks and underwear; it seemed like a good place for them to relax. My mother discovered a couple of them one day, and was not impressed.
6. We had relatives in the city of Los Angeles, and made the 50-mile drive to visit them once or twice a year. We also made a 50-mile drive once or twice to visit San Juan Capistrano, which my parents thought was the most wonderful place in the world — mostly, they told me, because of the famous swallows that migrate each year from someplace in Argentina. In fact, I think they were impressed because they were old enough to like a 1940 hit song, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano,” which I couldn’t stand. If they had told me the place was the locale of the first Zorro novella (“The Curse of Capistrano,” published in 1919), I would have been much more impressed.
7. Riverside is where I got my first dog—a mutt named Blackie, that was part of a litter produced by the next-door neighbor’s dog. It provided an open invitation for me to visit the next-door neighbors whenever I wanted, and swim in their pool (a rarity in those days). At the end of our year in Riverside, Blackie moved with us to our next location — traveling all the way in a little house/bed that had been made for him in the World War II Jeep that Dad hitched to his Chevrolet.
8. Riverside is also where I had my first exposure, at school, to kids of other ethnic backgrounds. There were Asian kids, and black kids, and Latino kids (whom, sadly, my father referred to generically as “Mexicans,” but whom he also held in high respect because he remembered watching their comrades working harder and longer than any of the “white boys” in the rough mining and ranching camps on the Utah/Colorado border, where he had grown up). All of us were thrown together in the same classroom, all of us traveled to each other’s houses and neighborhoods after school, and nobody seemed to think it was unusual in any way.
9. I learned, to my enormous delight, that I *was* different in one special way: I was left-handed. During the pickup baseball games that we played constantly during recess, lunch, and after school, there were never enough baseball gloves for everyone, so everyone simply shared with everyone else (after all, if your team is at bat, you don’t need your baseball glove). But I was the only left-handed kid around, apparently the only one in the whole school; so nobody ever wanted to share my glove.
Skin : Glow.// Adriana Skin Sunkiss Cakeday♥
Hair : Babe - Lolita HairstyleCakeday♥
Shirt : VB. Bryna Top PinkCakeday♥
Skirt : VB. Bryna Skirt PC PinkCakeday♥
Stockings : VB. Bryna Pantyhose
PC
Heels : HER. ''Sukihana'' Double-Bow Stringy Baby-
PinkStilettos (Peach) Cakeday♥
Purse : #Montesquieu; Alma '2024' Pink Mini [Check Her Out] CakeDay♥
Chain : [MxU] - VetHearts Big [Princess] CakeDayt♥
Necklaces : [YAGI] RLV ICY CUBAN SET MEGAPACK
The black locust trees had some really nice flowers this year.... I see from Steve these are edible. One source describes them like this:
"Black locust flowers taste surprisingly like the sweetest of sweet spring peas, but with a floral element as well. The texture of the bases is somewhat crunchy, like celery, but without any stringiness. They are a great snack to nibble on (after you have inspected them for bugs), and they are wonderful in salads." More: foragedfoodie.blogspot.com/2013/05/foraging-identifying-h...
This cabinet contains three modern examples of ancient basket weaving techniques. The fibrous rope might be made from stringy bark that can be found on eucalyptus trees. It is beaten and rolled and made into pieces of string that are then woven together. These baskets were used for everything from carrying food to fish traps.
Beefsteak Fungus / fistulina hepatica. Wollaton Park, Nottinghamshire. 05/09/18.
Only the second time I've found this fungi species, so a pleasing discovery.
Two mature fruiting bodies - (brackets), were growing from the base of a large old Oak tree. Both bore the signs that they had been visited by insects and slugs before me!
BEST VIEWED LARGE.