View allAll Photos Tagged lessons
Large motmot of tropical lowland forest and edge, mainly in humid areas. Perches low to high, usually in shady areas. Blue crown with a big black central patch, unlike solid blue of Blue-capped Motmot, which occurs to the north. Plumage overall less contrasting in pattern than Turquoise-browed Motmot, with much smaller tail rackets. The name ‘motmot’ comes from double-hooting call of this species, which can sound like an owl, and is mainly uttered around dawn.
“People who’ve never read fairy tales, the professor said, have a harder time coping in life than the people who have. They don’t have access to all the lessons that can be learned from the journeys through the dark woods and the kindness of strangers treated decently, the knowledge that can be gained from the company and example of Donkeyskins and cats wearing boots and steadfast tin soldiers. I’m not talking about in-your-face lessons, but more subtle ones. The kind that seep up from your sub¬conscious and give you moral and humane structures for your life. That teach you how to prevail, and trust. And maybe even love.” ― Charles de Lint
And more lessons... lots of lessons today .... starting out with, if it's a 70 degree day in November, forget the work you are supposed to be doing and do what you WANT to do .... which leads to a mission to find more props for upcoming adventures, and a phone call, which I ignored the first time, but the second time, I figured I should answer, only to have a friend say to me... "I'm in Home Depot and pints of fake blood are $1.69... how many should I pick up for you?" Wait... what? Blood .... in Home Depot.... and I find myself saying... uh..... get me 3, no ... never mind, I'll go to my Home Depot and get them, you don't have to get them for me.... and that, was pretty much the end of any chance of getting things accomplished.... a fog machine (YeY!! I've always wanted one....) several pairs of crazy tights, a Halloween wreath, a bag of bones,a deer antler headband, candles and more.... and yes, a pint of fake blood later, the day was out of control. All plans of accomplishing anything were forgotten, I put on hiking books, noted that it looked like it would be a good sunset, and headed off into the woods...where I lost all track of time and missed what I'm sure WAS a spectacular sunset, judging by the deep pink that I could just see through the trees in the woods ... and when I finally made it out of the woods... there was pretty much no light left.... and no point in even trying to do anything constructive, with pretty much no way to justify how I had spent my day off. But, hey!! I now have a fog machine... and a pint of fake blood! (Yey, me!!) But, wait.... what was the lesson that I learned..... ? I forgot.
Named after French naturalist Rene Lesson, this colorful motmot is found from S. Mexico to Panama. Seen at Gamboa. Panama.
Having fun with Khayrullo Dadoboev (Tadjikistan) and Berkant Çakıcı (RUS / Turkey) before starting Tamburi Mundi Festival 2022, Stadtgarten Freiburg (GER)
Berkant Çakıcı died of heart attack on January 2, 2023, while performing on stage.
What says summer fun more to a kid than violin lessons? Aww...I wanted to go to math camp this year!
The Ham took this. If I'd been thinking I'd have just set the camera timer (which I haven't figured out how to set yet) and had all three of us jump.
I told her to sit while taking this (the d50 she can handle, but the d300 is a bit on the heavy side). After this jump she started getting into it and wanted to stand up, i took the camera. She took only one shot and nailed it first try at 2.8 even.
We lost T-mo yesterday morning and he was gone all night. The fire station is in a pretty rough neigborhood and there are stray dogs that hang around all the time. We thought for sure that we would not see T-mo again but he showed up at the fire station this morning and all he has done since is exactly what the picture describes. Maybe he learned his lesson.
Large motmot of tropical lowland forest and edge, mainly in humid areas. Perches low to high, usually in shady areas. Blue crown with a big black central patch, unlike solid blue of Blue-capped Motmot, which occurs to the north. Plumage overall less contrasting in pattern than Turquoise-browed Motmot, with much smaller tail rackets. The name ‘motmot’ comes from double-hooting call of this species, which can sound like an owl, and is mainly uttered around dawn.
San Ramon, Alajuela Province, Costa Rica
“Nature does not ask permission. Blossom and birth whenever you feel like it.” -Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Nature can teach us a lot of things and one I’ve learned from her is to be yourself without apology. You shouldn’t need validation or permission from others to be true to yourself. As long as you’re doing no harm and you’re happy, that’s what should matter.
Connect with nature, explore your passions, do what you love. No competition with others, no trying to be better than others. Just be.
Notebooks from Soul Flower, bandana from Carolina Mfg..
“At the next roundabout, take the second exit to stay on Avenida Alejandro del Castillo……”
I groaned. Sally Satnav had got away to a good start with her Spanish pronunciation. “Ave-nee-dah” and “Al-lay-hand-row” sounded pretty good to my ears. “Dell,” well you can't really get that wrong. But “cas-till-owe?” Why had she reverted to the Anglophone double L sound? Why didn’t she say “cas-tee-yo” like she should have done? I don’t know why I let stuff get to me like this. I mean it hardly matters, but I can’t help feeling that acute sense of discomfort when I hear someone asking for a bowl of “pie-ella” or the way to “El Co-till-oh” when we’re visiting these islands. Of course I don’t say anything because I prefer to have friends, but pronounce the double L like we would in the UK in connection with anything remotely Spanish and I’ll probably grimace for a split second, as if I’ve just accidentally swallowed a hot chip. There’s a Majorca born comedian on the UK circuit called Ignacio Lopez (another linguistic double trip hazard) who lives in Cardiff. Once on Radio Four’s News Quiz he said that if he can cope with how the locals pronounce a double L in Wales, then quite frankly we should be able to deal with the concept of how it should sound in Spanish.
How do I know this stuff? Well a lifetime of watching European football players helps one sort the Spanish names from the Portuguese, the Italian and so forth - as long as I didn’t pay too much attention to the late John Motson on Match of the Day. And then there were the two years of evening classes where I lisped C’s and Z’s as if my tongue were glued to my teeth, coughed up G’s and J’s like I had a bad dose of catarrh, insinuated invisible B’s into anything with a V in it, and tried to roll my R’s like they were trapped in a tombola. I could never master the R’s though - how on earth do they roll their R’s so effortlessly? I still probably sound about as Spanish as Paul Whitehouse did on the Fast Show, but I tried. And I’m only able to hold the briefest of conversations, mostly around the ordering of food - I can generally make myself understood, but when the replies come I’m very suddenly like a goldfish trapped in aspic and the exchange rapidly mutates into English. And yes, I know, people who've learnt a tiny smattering of a language are almost as annoying as those evangelical former smokers with their pie-yay-ya this and their El Coe-tea-yo that. This is why I don't say anything. Well apart from here that is.
Once I’d made it out of town the landscape changed, the winding road quickly climbing towards the high ground through brown rocky terrain covered in thick swathes of candelabra cacti for miles and miles. Before long I passed “Mundo Aborigen” - don’t forget to summon up a reservoir of phlegm for that G! - a tourist attraction where visitors can learn about the indigenous Guanche people who lived and worked the islands before the Spanish arrived in the fifteenth century and decided they’d make a nice sunny outpost for the rapidly expanding empire. On a high peak above me stood one of the “more than one hundred life size figures” boasted by the Mundo Aborigen website, a warlike hunter with his spear held aloft against the midday sun. It was quite stirring and reminded me of a scene from “Planet of the Apes,” which despite popular myth wasn’t filmed in the Canary Islands - it just feels like it should have been. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t a real person up there watching the tin on wheels heading into the secret badlands of the mysterious interior, before sending an urgent signal to the elders to prepare the cavalry for an attack.
Sorry - got carried away there for a moment. But who wouldn’t in a place like this? Every time I stopped in a layby I had to scrape my jaw off the tarmac before getting the camera out of the bag. And once I was beyond the inland town of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, eight hundred and fifty odd metres above sea level, I stopped in most of the laybys I came to, just so that I could stare and stammer at the views around me. It’s incredible how so small an island can be so dramatic and diverse. Look at the map and you’ll see a roughly circular outline, a bit like the head of a dog with a floppy right ear, no more than twenty-five miles in diameter. Most of the population live along a line that stretches down the coast from the capital, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the pricked ear in the north east corner, towards the airport. Most of the tourists are billeted along the south coast in purpose built resorts with varying levels of attractiveness. And then there’s the middle. Wild, mountainous and sparsely populated. You only have to go a few miles in and everything changes. It’s been dubbed the continent in miniature and that’s a name that describes the island pretty well.
The second - or was it the third? - stop brought me to south-westerly views over the hiking and outdoor area of Morro de la Cruz Grande (another verbal hand grenade for the unprepared) across a wooded mountainside in the clouds on an afternoon which threatened rain that never arrived. Ahead of me lay just a few more miles, almost all of it in a decidedly uphill direction, while all around I was dwarfed by formidable hulks of land rising into the sky, studded with pine trees like unshaven sleeping giants. All of this grandeur, yet I was less than an hour away from the sun kissed south coast. And this wasn’t even the final destination. As I drove further up into the mountains, it kept getting better and better. Here at the Morrrrro day la Crooth Grrran-day, the adventure had barely started, and there was so much more to come. But in the next story I'll try to stick to English, as much for my own sanity as yours. Heaven help me if any of our Spanish speaking correspondents actually read this!
There are lessons to be learned from watching wildlife.
Perseverance, alertness and the battle for life marks nearly every individual creature.
Temporary defeats normally lead to upcoming successes.
(Photographed near Cambridge, MN)
I needed to post something pretty and bright this evening to cheer me up. My old pc crashed big time today, along with a ton of recent shots. I hadn't backed up for over two weeks!
Yeah, yeah, I know! :-(
Please cross your fingers for me in the hope that those geeky guys coming tomorrow can retrieve them!
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
Robert Benchley
no rules, no limitations, no boundaries it's like an art™
© All Rights Reserved by ajpscs
Here is a three shot panoramic view of the sunset from a week ago. This was at the very peak of the colors in the sky for that sunset. Within ten more minutes all color was gone. This shot also confirms that if I do some LE there in the future, I need to try some at eye level as I like the light that comes through the benches out on the pier. Lower vantage shots that I have taken here keeps the benches right at the horizon and hides a lot of their detail.
While this image is such fun to look at, it is also a reminder to me of the mistake made this day shooting there. You will notice on the pier the camera on the tripod taking the long exposure. I cannot post the image taken at that time (which was during the peak of colors for this sunset) as I got lost in taking these handheld shots and ended up exposing the LE way way too long. I need to have a timer there with me if I am going to get distracted like I was with the colors and reflections going on around me.
You would also think with today's electronics you could get the "Bulb" time specific and then walk away and not have to be there to shut it off.
Oh well - gives me a good excuse to try again. Though not today as there is not a cloud in the sky :(
I was walking down the street and heard organ music in a church which is usually closed...an organ lesson was going on...
The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence.
It’s located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Costa Rica Continued....
On December 19th my wife and daughters did some ziplining and rapelling at a place in Cartago Province called Explornatura and me and my son went on a hike at the same place to see what wildlife we could find. Unfortunately it had been raining all morning and although it stopped for a while when we first arrived the rain started up again while we were hiking. Luckily we were prepared with rain gear but not many animals showed themselves. These animals were seen before and after the rain.
My wife and daughters had a great time on the zip lines and saw a sloth and they highly recommend this place:
Look. Seeing is not enough.
For in life – even what looks constant –
Changes.
So watch carefully – do not let the
Shadow fool you. It is a part of
The picture – even if I did not want to.
But the picture is what it is, and this shadow
Becomes a story by itself.
And understanding that even things I do not
Like, that seems to be wrong – are lessons for life
Its where creation begins.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rwgZetada8
-------------------------------------------------------------
When a Bird is alive... it eats Ants,
When the Bird is Dead... Ants eat the Bird!
Time & Circumstances can change at any time...!
Don't devalue or Hurt anyone in life.
You may be powerful today.. But Remember,
Time is more powerfull than you!!!
one tree makes a million match sticks...
but when time comes..
only one match stick is needed... to burn million of trees!!
So be Good and do Good...