This male Kingfisher is deservedly on the receiving end of a ear bashing as it has clearly been shirking nest building duties unlike the female who displays evidence of her industry !

The bronze cobblestones mark the detour that was used to avoid having to do the Hitlergruss (Nazi Salute) at the Feldherrnhalle during the Nazi regime.

So after being away from SL for a long time Mads asked me to do him a complete makeover as he was still a classic avi.

Not one to shirk a challenge this is the finished result.

Head is Skyler Evolution by Lelutka

Body is Belleza Jake

Skin is by Clef de Peau

Hair by Stealthic

Jacket and tee by L'Emporio

Shape by Rachel

Hes been called a geek and an anarchist by friends with this look, so I think we hit the nail on the head!

A pretty clear shot of a Brown Shrike. The Shirkes are also known as the "butcher bird" because of their feeding habit. The bird is found mainly in open scrub habitats, where it perches on the tops of thorny bushes in search of prey that it impales on the thorns.

Ich wünsche euch einen gemütlichen Sonntag. Hier ist es nicht nur regnerisch, sondern auch sehr windig. Da duckt man sich am besten weg oder sicht sich ein gemütliches Plätzchen

I wish you a cozy Sunday. It is not only rainy here, but also very windy. It is best to shirk from the wind or look for a cozy place

And don't forget when your elders forget

To say their prayers

Take them by the legs

And throw them down the stairs

When you think your toys

Have gone berserk

And it's an illusion

You cannot shirk

You hear laughter

Cracking through the walls

It sends you spinning

You have no choice

Following the footsteps

Of a rag doll dance

We are entranced

Spellbound

This post was sponsored by the wonderful Be My Mannequin? Pose store and Clover!

The pose featured in this post can be picked up at their mainstore location and is part of a set of 4! maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mythical/111/166/24

Please check out the rest of their great poses here!: www.flickr.com/photos/darkestraveness/

~Featured Pose~

~Be My Mannequin? - Close-Up Set 1

Clover is a wonderful little store filled with so many interactive cute and creepy toys. I seriously can't rave enough how much I love this store. The item I picked is the potion brace, which adds a subtle detail to any outfit, but packs a lot of fun with its interactive potion menu. You can either drink or give a selection of six potions and enjoy the effects. From floating into the abyss to cursing your friend with hiccups. Pictures don't do this thing justice, you have to go play!

Please check them out!

Clover - www.flickr.com/photos/cloversl/

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/RAWR/212/194/22

~Featured item~

~Clover - Potion brace

~Other Stuff~

Violent Seduction - Lachesis

Magika - Gemma

[ContraptioN] The Everybook

~My Backdrop~

Paparazzi - BACKDROP - Ivy Steps

Location:BBBB Studio

Sitting Paragon: Zara

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Woman In Red

~Allan James Saywell~

If only you could have seen

My Woman in red

He caught his first sight of her

Behind a brick kiln shed

Though she appeared a shadow in the haze

Enslaved for ever he would be

Should anything stop a man from his work

Duties he would never shirk

His gaze transfixed on the way she walked

She floated past

Left him with only a stare

He could see her better

Only for the glare

If only he could have said

To the woman in red

The thoughts that were running

Through his head

Long of stride, strong of thigh

She continued to pass him by

The kind of woman that make strong men cry

Was the woman in red

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This old warrior found a place to hide from further heavy work on the farm in eastern Washington.

♥My Blog♥

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мy мυѕιc "Supertramp - School"

"I can see you in the morning when you go to school

Don't forget your books, you know you've got to learn the golden rule,

Teacher tells you stop your play and get on with your work

And be like Johnnie-too-good, well don't you know he never shirks

He's coming along

After school is over you're playing in the park

Don't be out too late, don't let it get too dark

They tell you not to hang around and learn what life's about

And grow up just like them, won't you let it work it out

And you're full of doubt

Don't do this and don't do that

What are they trying to do?

Make a good boy of you

Do they know where it's at?

Don't criticize, they're old and wise

Do as they tell you to

Don't want the devil to

Come out and put your eyes

Maybe I'm mistaken expecting you to fight

Or maybe I'm just crazy, I don't know wrong from right

But while I am still living, I've just got this to say

It's always up to you if you want to be that

Want to see that want to see that way

You're coming along"

"If you take a few moments, following your breath while looking at the moon, you become present and the moon will be more beautiful and brighter in your eyes.

Let us live in mindfulness and see the beautiful qualities in our loved ones, and recognize the wonders in the universe."

- "The Song of The Moon" by Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022).

This week saw the passing of a giant. A human being so compassionate, so peaceful, so humble, and so utterly undogmatic that his death almost passed without notice in the world's media. I dedicate this picture to the beloved Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/

Now before you respond and say that such an irreverent piece of photo art is not worthy of the beloved Thay (as he was known to his millions of friends), I would invite you to take a look at any one of his 100 books and tell me why this monk could not smile. But smile Thay did, and he encouraged everyone to do it.

Two years ago this humble and tired old man, who trod lightly upon this earth, made the decision to return to his homeland after 35 years at Plum Village, the community he founded in France. He had left an exile for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. And I believe that until the day he died, the Vietnamese communist government kept close watch on this dangerous subversive.

But Thay was also considered subversive in America too. In 1967 the peace-loving Dr Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize (it was worth more then than it is now having been tainted by some of its more recent recipients). An argument could be made that this decision by King to oppose the Vietnam War is what got him killed. One thing is certain, supporting civil rights was okay, but opposing America's involvement in the "sacred" war on communism was not. But Thay survived and thank God he did.

The community he built around the world, not just at his monasteries in Europe and in Asia, consists of people of all faiths who seek Awakening. He was Buddhist by conviction and calling, but he would rather we didn't think of this in religious terms. Oh the ritual is there, and it's all important to a point, but what is most important of all is discovering the wisdom on the path of life. A Wisdom that is truly Eternal (and Thay would not shirk from this word in the midst of a Materialistic onslaught in the contemporary world).

His beautiful Song of the Moon, which I've quoted above, is as good as any of his statements about life. Because in essence, the Wisdom of the Path is quite simple, though the practice is arduous.

I received word of Thay's death almost the moment it happened, as I have been a recipient of his wonderful newsletters that would come to my email every few weeks. It was not unexpected, but I still felt a deep sense of what the world has lost by this unique man's testimony. Thay's borrowed body was cremated yesterday in Vietnam, but his spirit lives forever in everyone who takes his words to heart.

PHOTONOTE:

Needless to say this is not an actual photograph, but it consists of real photographs taken by me. That giant moon you see is in fact the very same moon you saw in my previous few shots. With a little resizing and cloning I was able to create an image more expressive of the importance of the moon. Oh, and for the groups that reject my photo montages as "not real photographs", I just assure you this is neither a second life screenshot nor AI.

✧Tune✧

The Poor Knight of the Cross of Acre

Roleplay Character for Burgundy in Blood

The Knights Vow:

“Every brother who is professed in

the Holy service should, through fear

of the flames of Hell, give total obedience to the Church; for nothing is

dearer to Jesus Christ than obedience,

and if anything be commanded by the

Master of the Order, or by the holy

Inquisition, or by one to whom he has

given his power, it should be done

without demur as if it were a command from God. Each brother who petitions for service before the Cross

of Acre must despise wealth and

embrace poverty, must despise licentiousness and embrace chastity, must despise willfulness and love obedience.

“No brother shall shirk from the

duty of facing the Adversary and

driving him from this Earth with the

name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Nor

must he fail to give succor to the poor,

and to the orphaned, and to the innocent victims of the road. All this he must swear on the True, Holy and

Beloved Cross of Acre on which Our Lord, crucified, suffered and died for the salvation of the sinful soul.”

Red-backed shirke | Averla piccola | Pie-grièche écorcheur

TentaTion

♦ Bacdrop 18 : bathroom

KARNA

♦ Shirk & Body OXANE

►►► ♦INSTAGRAM♦

After shooting it at East Shirk, I hustled east towards the acid plant in West Tulsa as I knew that was the shot I wanted next. I got ahead with plenty of time to spare to setup the tripod and then kick the dirt around for a couple minutes before headlights came around the corner. I haven't shot an eastbound here since the Gilcrease Expressway was completed. Just one of the many changes occurring in the Tulsa metro...

X-LUBHAY (Empty - Lubbock, TX to Hayti, MO)

BNSF Z-MEMLAC7 14L flies West into Mannford, Oklahoma behind a quartet of BNSF GE products. After rapidly entering the Avard Sub at the North end of Cherokee Yard in Tulsa, this hotshot quickly overtook two other Westbounds, one just West of town and the other at Shirk.

2025 07 25 1D0A0153-R5

Lanius collurio.

Red-backed Shirke.

Plus besoin de courir après les jeunes, ils viennent d'eux-même récupérer le repas dans mon bec.

*** REASONS FOR MY ABSENCE ***

On me belly for this shot....

“No composite overlay added here!”

A lot of my contacts (YOU) have been wondering what the heck happened to me... I'm alive and well..

I am just busy with stuff that is also a passion of mine.

Well, the long and short of it is: Each year at this time I volunteer my time to help organize the "Make A Wish" tuna challenge. It is the largest tuna fishing tournament in the US and the largest philanthropic organization on the west coast providing needed monies for the "MAW" foundation. We help grant wishes (unfortunately for some their last wish) for children with life threatening illnesses. Plus, the birds have disappeared here and I have had nothing to share.

: ^ (

Then my dear friend Dave Zimmerman www.flickr.com/photos/111053253@N04/ from flickr contacted me and said he would be in my neck of the woods on Friday the 13th. Not being superstitious I begun looking for a venue that might be lucrative for him justifying his jaunt all the way from Winnipeg Canada. So ( and forewarned) I told him to meet me in the Imperial Valley where the temperatures are currently reaching 115 degrees Fahrenheit to shoot the Burrowing Owls. He is a tough brave soul to agree to this. And, I might add one great dude!!!! We had a blast shooting together. I have had the pleasure of having face time with several folks on flickr. I cannot tell you what an honor it is putting a face with a name and very truthfully has always been such a memorable occasion with each and every new friend I make, aside from just offering kudos on pics we choose to share.

Oddly enough this is where I left off in my posting awaiting brand new hatching peering out from their dens. I returned back there three times to no avail..no new chicks making themselves visually available, and then got discouraged as it is a (250 mile round trip ticket to this venue...) This image is in first light of this new fledgling Burrowing Owl chick.

***One more thing that has kept me pretty busy with everything else is a lack of responsibility for the Burrowing Owls from two separate entities that acquired federal grant monies to insure the procreation and health of this "bird of interest" as a result of the declining numbers in SoCal. My first set of images I took of a female was covered so badly with Ticks, Mites, and Lice she was on the verge of death. I chose not to share that image on flickr. I contacted state and federal agencies and essentially blew the whistle on the agencies taking grant monies and shirking responsibilities via poor management and lack of interest relative to the very reason they were granted these monies in the first place. Now both entities are making themselves very visible dusting the burrows as should have been done all along and the birds are looking much better and healthier.***

Thanks for your continued support and interest in my work.

Make it a great day my friends....as it is always a choice!

Caught this shirker taking 40 winks in the greenhouse, supposed to be mousing 😊

I shirk the groups Sweeper inflexible because I do not accept that I can not fulfill obligations. Thank you for your understanding.

Enjoyed a nice morning out at Crex Meadows this morning. Not super active, but seeing 3 wolves, 2 shirkes, and some Sharp-tailed Grouse was satisfying.

dark | light :: [dictionary] :: in collaboration with mark valentine

for xd360

fan·dabby·do·zee /fændæbēdəʊzē/ (n) (a)

i. ludicrously odd; extraordinarily good; "fandabbydozee bacon and tahini sandwich"

ii. extravagantly fanciful in design, construction, appearance

iii. extremely pleasing; used especially as intensifiers: "gideons latest is fandabbydozee"

iv. barely credible; fantasy; mythical "the fandabydozee art of the shirking design director"

synonym : imaginary

antonym : boring, mundane

I found a few minutes to play with my copy of NIK tools. I used Sarah in Andrew Shirk's outfit to make a very appealing witch.

Padstow, Cornwall

An early start to tidy and clean the Airbnb before the 10am departure deadline. Luckily for the majority of us, Geoff had already been up hours on account of a mysterious knock on his bedroom door. Thinking he had overslept and shirking his share of the tasks, he leapt out of bed, got dressed rapidly and bolted downstairs to find the house still in darkness and not a sole to be seen.

Now, Geoff’s not one to sit idly by or play on his phone until the rest of us surface so he single-handedly did all of the downstairs on his todd… top man! Nothing to do with the picture, I thought I’d just mention it.

Setting off way before 10, we managed an extra stop-off at McDees before heading north-east to Padstow for the lighthouse, RNLI Station and Padstow itself. So, here we are at the last location – sitting on the harbour eating fish and chips from Rick Stein’s takeaway.

I have a lot of beautiful swallowtail butterflies in my back yard. I put the female in comments for those interested to compare to the male.

The dog days of August are upon us. I'm a shirking violet in the heat and humidity but the butterflies seem to like it.

Thank you for taking the time to visit. :-)

Love’s Tilth

Hwsmonaeth Cariad

I loved, and bore the labour,

And am, twice over, lover.

I fan love like an ember,

And lamely I remember

How love, like a worm, will filch

Hope, and channer through the flesh.

There is a germination

In my heart – a strong motion

Of growing: a shoot groping

From a sown seed burst open.

My labour, ever honest:

To till love until harvest.

Care and woe dogged winter tilth

When ice crystals crept in stealth

Destroying, and January

Brought no joyful husbandry:

I mulched my love, ploughed furrows

For Morfudd, ignored her frowns.

Sharp were the ploughshares which scored

Through my breast and left it scarred

To the heart, and the coulter

Rent my ribs with a clatter,

Scored a wound, sowed my portion

Of love, harrowed my passion.

I waited three months, patient

Until Spring’s warmth grew potent

And love took root. It was stout

Toil to fence it all about,

Protect it from slugs. I strove

Night and day – kept love alive.

Nor was I lazy in May,

But guarded wealth, crops made

Safe with a hedge well-planted,

The green twigs plashed and plaited

Together. While her love thrust

Its stem through my riven breast

I did not flinch, but held fast,

Fixed my eyes upon the feast

Of love to come; no shirking:

I whet my steel for reaping.

Grim loss! Great storms came and felled

Every wheat-stalk in the field.

From the south, a veering wind

Seared through my heart, cleft a wound,

And in my wind-battered face,

The stars of love, my eyes, fierce

With weeping, bore heaviest

The rheum of tearful harvest,

And Morfudd’s form, refracted

In their wet flood, was fractured

And swam, occluded by torrents

And eyelids red with torment,

The field awash with flowing

Water, my fond heart failing.

The harvest of my heart is lost:

Not a single sheaf is left.

Wind’s fury, autumn’s rabble

Leaves ravaged fields of stubble,

And fast rain flows from the high

Cheeks of the eastern sky:

Tears for her of Eigr’s hue –

My crop all spoiled, and I rue

The day I planted. Alas,

Love brings only torment, loss:

I sowed, yet I failed to reap.

Ruin came, found me asleep.

I am pledged to blight and dearth,

For now love must starve to death.

Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. This poem provides quite compelling evidence that Dafydd was familiar with the 13th Century French Roman de la Rose, which also made comparison between the ill-fortunes of unrequited love and the farmer’s struggle to sustain a crop until harvest. Indeed, it is known for certain that this text was available in Wales in Dafydd’s time, for a copy of it is listed as one of the belongings of an executed rebel, Llywelyn Bren, in 1317. (See Rachel Bromwich, ‘Tradition and Innovation in the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym’, in Aspects of the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym, Cardiff, 1986, pp. 73-75.) However, it is also likely that the poem contains a strong autobiographical element, and that the “storm” represents Morfudd’s marriage to the churlish Bwa Bach, who is later to be characterised by Dafydd as Eiddig, the Jealous One. It was not a bountiful harvest for Morfudd either; there is evidence in others of Dafydd's poems that she was abused by her husband.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBcr5dvr3Yc

The theme for “Looking Close on Friday” for the 26th of November is “lips”. In recent months, I have been exploring a new avenue in my creativity, that of portraiture photography. I used my sitter for the “Smile on Saturday” theme of “nose” a little over two months ago and again a little over a month ago for “Looking Close on Friday’s” theme of “dots and stripes”. My elusive sitter has agreed to return for a third time, and has kindly shirked his usual garb of a smart suit and tie in exchange for a tulle ruff. When combined with a special plaster mask layered with torn paper given to me as a gift by an artist friend who made it especially for me, I think they give my shot something of a commedia dell'arte feel. In keeping with the Italian feel, I have given my photo the title of “Baciami”, which I am told is Italian for “kiss me”! I think he has a rather lovely set of lips which are quite kissable, don’t you? I do hope that you like my choice of this week’s theme, and that it makes you smile!

I got word the previous day that this eastbound empty cottonseed train was headed my way with a warbonnet leader and an executive MAC trailing. After checking with a source the following morning, I was in luck as the train had just pulled up for a crew change at Shirk about 10 miles west of Cherokee Yard. I drove out to the siding and waited for the new crew to take over.

I waited for almost exactly an hour before they blasted off east. This shot is just east of the signal where the track curves back towards Highway 51.

X-LUBHAY (Empty - Lubbock, TX to Hayti, MO)

"Clap! Snap! the black crack!

Grib, grab! Pinch, nab!

And down, down to Goblin town

You go, my lad!

Clash, crash! Crush, smash!

Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!

Pound, pound, down underground!

Ho, ho! my lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!

Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!

Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,

While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,

Round and round far underground

Below, my lad!" -The Hobbit

The Company of Thorin Oakenshield has been captured by the Goblins of the Misty Mountains, and now they are making a daring escape...

Okay everyone, here is one of my best MOCs yet! I'm really pleased with how it turned out (even though it was a little rushed).

Here is my entry for the RPG Fantasy Adventure category. This is my final entry to the CBC 2017.

I'd love to hear what everyone thinks about this, so please drop a comment! More pictures, or portraits on the way!

-Caleb

The pulley wheels are spinning fast,

Leather bands drive strange machines.

Lights flickering, shadows cast,

So it was in my dreams.

Noise deafening as drills bored through,

Metal sheet and iron struts.

Chaos reigned in this motley crew,

As man tightened bolts and nuts.

Soon my senses were in a whirl,

I could not take the pace.

Beads of sweat from my face do purl

In the madness of the human race.

Twelve hours long no rest for me,

The machine the master of my fate.

No way out that I could see,

My soul began to fill with hate.

I was a member of a working force,

Prefabricated parts left the machines.

Little pay a matter of course,

This is what filled my dreams

Assembly lines teams of workers,

Rushing feet; hands so adept.

Here no place for shirkers,

For there is a fixed target to get.

The siren blows end of shift,

Tools change hands others take our place,

My spirit takes on a new lift,

As a smile gathers on my face.

- Industrial Dream, by Bernard Shaw.

Some contacts have asked about the Queen in the Alice in Wonderland series I've been posting. Well, here he/she is!

Rodney was a friend of fashion designer Andrew Shirk. I only met him on the day to the shoot, but he was a fun person to speak with in the car on the way to Kansas City and slept on my shoulder on the way back.

We took this series in the courtyard of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in KC. Behind the queen is one of four giant shuttlecocks by Swedish sculptor Claes Oldenburg.

Ray's parents emigrated to Canada from Hungary in 1928 (Dad) and 1933 (Mom) and he was born in 1936. The family farmed, as many did back in the day, growing seasonal fruits, raising chickens and later expanding to dairy cattle. As a farm kid he had plenty of chores, but this was no reason to shirk school studies and he graduated in 1955.

He then left home to see new places and try his hand at a variety of jobs, eventually settling on opening his own garage in 1963 just down the road from the family farm. He wryly recalls: "I opened the shop on April Fool's Day and later that same month I got married on Friday the 13th."

When asked: why those dates? he replies: "Why not?" :-)

The local newspaper did a feature on him part way through his 40 years of owning Ray's Esso: "many boys learned the fine art of grease-monkeying, cussing and gas pumping, along with an honest day's work at Ray's."

Project 100x

32-100 Strangers

2025 07 25 1D0A9867-R5

Lanius collurio.

Red-backed Shirke.

C'est moi le dernier de la couvée.

The David L. Shirk Ranch is a historic ranch located in the Guano Valley of eastern Lake County, Oregon, United States. The ranch was originally homesteaded in 1881. It was purchased by David L. Shirk in 1883. He operated the ranch until 1914. The property was acquired by the United States Government in 1942. The ranch is now administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The remaining historic ranch buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Native peoples, the Northern Paiutes, inhabited the area for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers. The Paiutes had adapted to the high desert environment by living in scattered groups and moving frequently to take advantage of season lakes and migrating game animals.

The Shirk Ranch property was originally homesteaded by R.A. Turner around 1881 and then sold to William Herron. Shirk bought the ranch from Herron in 1883. When Shirk purchased the land, there were three building on the property, a house and two sheds. There is no record of the size of the property when Shirk bought it, but county tax records show the ranch was 480 acres in 1887.

Because it is an excellent example of a pioneer cattle ranch in southeastern Oregon, the Shirk Ranch was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 4, 2009. The historic district covers 14.5 acres (0.059 km2). There are nineteen structures in the historic district. Fourteen are contributing elements and five are non-contributing.

Today, the historic Shirk Ranch suffers from benign neglect. The ranch has never been fully inventoried to determine the significance of its assets and none of the buildings have been stabilized or restored. As a result, several of the historic buildings are in poor condition.

As the sun settles on the day ...

the days you walked and can say ...

I lived, I loved, I played, I worked.

I did not back down, I did not shirk

the day I rode my last wave.

In the last six months of 2011, I reflected a lot on the value of my own work and, as a result, I became disheartened. I realised that so much of it was cowardly and lacking in substance; I felt I had lost some enthusiasm and worried that I was losing my passion or my ability to see. I became annoyed that, in those cases where I felt I was braver, where I felt an image had something to say, few people seemed interested. I'm not sure whether I stand by everything I said in it, but my anxiety culminated in this cathartic upload at the end of the year.

Photographs such as this one - a person's head and shoulders at one side of the frame, the rest occupied by their surroundings in shallow depth of field - are those for which I have probably become best known. I have written about them and collected them in a set here. They are also the photographs that - over the course of my reflections - I came to despise. They are easy, safe, cowardly and, often, totally pointless. They pleased the subject; they pleased a lot of people here on Flickr; that, in turn, pleased my ego and ultimately damaged my work.

It is a platitude, having been said many times and by better photographers than me, that a good portrait is about more than light and lines. How to understand light and lines can be taught as a recipe is taught - although some people have what I am tempted to call a natural intuition for it - but how to feel cannot be taught in this way; and if, as a photographer of people, you do not feel what you are photographing, then you will end up with a lot of the dross that can be found collected in that set. I have taken so many photographs when I did not feel, or when my ability to feel was restricted by sticking to a safe recipe of light, lines and pretty colours. I wrote that I worried I had lost my ability to see: in fact, I had become so concerned with seeing that I forgot that feeling must accompany it if a photograph is to be great.

This photograph is different from those others, and I knew it would be the moment I turned my head and saw the scene. I stopped talking to my Dad in mid-sentence and shuffled off hurriedly to raise my camera. Because of what it made me realise, this is one of the most important photographs I've ever taken. It is personal, because it is a photograph of my sister, and so it likely won't speak to others in the same way, but I felt so much, and I believe the strength of that feeling is here in this image.

My sister had been particularly moody that afternoon, and had pushed my patience so close to breaking that I had decided to stay away from her for the rest of the day. When I saw her soon after standing like this, I felt something very strong and very sharp. I did not know what it was, because we cannot continuously feel and simultaneously begin to understand those feelings, and this - this - may be the most important reason for a photographer to take photographs. For when I sat down and looked at this image - my sister standing across the crowded carriage in the cold fluorescent light, clutching that pole as though it were her only friend, her hair blown across her troubled expression by the breeze that passes through the incredibly long trains of Hong Kong's metro - I felt her pain, whatever it may be, and my own hostility melted away.

I see light and I understand light, but what good is light if it does not illuminate something that we feel?

Much of the dissatisfaction I have been feeling with my work is tied deeply to this website. Flickr is my audience, and it was for years a place for me to share what I created, but then I began to feel a pressure - caused by my own insecurities about artistic merit and professional status - a pressure to create to share and to share to please; a pressure which stunted my growth, and resulted in the collection of gimmicky photographs that I have felt tempted to purge from my Flickr stream altogether. I won't delete much of what has been uploaded before, though: it serves as a record and a document of those insecurities, of the photographs I took to indulge them and, more recently, of my full realisation of these facts.

Now, I will upload and share on the basis of quality, not quantity. I may not upload to Flickr on a daily basis anymore. But when I do upload, it will be because I felt something. That said, I want my Flickr to continue to be a diary of sorts; one in which I can - as I occasionally do - look over past entries for an hour or so and think about things. For that reason, I may continue to upload the occasional substandard image because it depicts or represents a moment I want to remember. What I wrote at the end of last year was, I think, a plea that those who look and comment on my photographs raise their standards. That was foolish: an attempt to shirk my own responsibility, as though my work could only improve if people changed their attitudes to it. It was my own attitude that had to change, and I believe that it has: I have raised my own standards.

This has been my second moment of (at least to me) great insight - I am tempted to call it an awakening or epiphany - in the past two weeks: I wrote ambiguously about the first on this earlier image. They have given me confidence that, through proper contemplation and conversation - whether with others or with myself in writing - I can get to the root of other issues that have troubled me for years. The next task is to act on these new insights. I suspect - I hope - that that will be easier - because not much is more difficult than to confront and examine your own darkness - and for that reason I am sure 2012 is going to be a very interesting year.

Hong Kong, 2012.

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The assassin songbird.

Northern Shirkes often will perch on the tallest tree available. In this case, the tallest tree in the immediate area was not terribly high.

There were hundreds (perhaps 1,000+ combined) of flocking Horned Larks and Lapland Longspurs around on this day but the Shrike had not found them at this stage of the afternoon.

arte

Immature Red-backed Shrike, Lanius collurio, 18 cm / 7 in. COMMON and widespread from sea-level to 3,000 meters.

Shimba Hills National Park, Kwale. Kenya.

©bryanjsmith.

Donna's current works in progress focus on cultural aesthetics, in particular visual dissonance and its role in intercultural communication processes. Visual dissonance occurs when we are confronted with something that is unfamilar to us. The first human response is to reject it and in fact this unfamiliar image/idea may produce feelings of fear, anger and even nausea. As we become more accustomed to this unfamilar object/idea we begin to place aspects of it into our memory store and this enables us to approach it with more confidence and with less trepidation.

Donna has recently returned from a residency in Paris where she followed the life and works of French post-Impressionist artist, Paul Gauguin – his responses to cultural difference and his presentation to European society of the unfamiliar. Importantly, this ongoing research explores how the psychological processes of dissonance can be mediated by artists providing ideas-spaces that can create bridges between rejection of the unfamiliar and acceptance of new understandings. Small collaged compositions were produced during the Paris residency and these now form the starting point for the current series of paintings being produced at the studio in Brisbane. These compositions deliberately make use of famous European art to trace the journey and impacts of Paul Gauguin as a critic of French colonialism.

The series is an unashamed homage to Paul Gauguin who even as early as the late 1880’s, through his personal journals, writings, sculptures, prints and paintings, did not shirk the difficult questions about the negative consequences of colonisation on indigenous peoples caught up in French colonial expansion.

The Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern serves a small explosives manufacturing plant at Mount Carmel Junction, Pennsylvania. Since there is no runaround track nearby, the crew normally releases the brakes on outbound cars and drifts them down a small grade to get them on the west side of the engine for the return to Port Clinton. Normally, releasing the brakes and a prod with a pry bar under one of the wheels would be sufficient to get the car rolling.

On this brisk day, the combination of a sticking brake mechanism and stiff axle bearings kept the car, an empty covered hopper that had carried ammonium nitrate-based fertilized to the plant,from budging. So two crew members and two photographers put their backs into the effort, and the car begrudgingly started to give. After a little momentum was gained, conductor Shane Frederickson climbed up to man the brake wheel. I shirked my responsibility of pushing to back away and take this photo, leaving my friend Dennis Tiley and the engineer, Mike Bednar, to keep the covered hopper moving.

View On Black

It was really all about that one dead leaf that fell onto the remnants of green left in the forest.

(I'm throwing up old pictures, and film stuff, because I'm just really tired. Between work and school, I barely have the energy to take the picture, much less edit it. And I'm definitely shirking on my duties of commenting/critiquing/being social. Tuesday I will make amends, I promise.)

or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man :-)

Mark Twain

HBW!! Resist!!

j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, Raleigh, north carolina

Conceived in the passionate autunno caldo of 1938, i was born to spit up the shellac of Latin on my fetal tongue.

Maman, my great Maman, thrust me from her flesh cradle with an emphasis of her thick Haitian thighs - into the cool, patient fisherman-calloused hands on mon papa. As he swatted my tiny empennage, he tenderly hushed my blither with the sweet fermented rine of a melon, and by the setting of my first Caribbean sun, Maman was cooing delicious vodoun fables in time with the lazy metronome of her steel drum rocker. "What a

terrible baby you are, shaking inside your mama's belly like a Carnival boy; my insides are an atelier, not a dance hall...'

I passed years like stalks of field cane (striaght and sweet and green) wrapping my child-body in a naked pastiche of creole jazz, muddy-ankle football, and the innocent sexuality of rhythm. Lazy days of cacao and calico were spent on the fetid foreshore of our village unraveling papa's gnarled fly-nets; while the humid python-winding nights were swallowed by the pulsing rapture of cheap cane rum and the tongue-on-skin throng of voudon arousal. When the sun calmed the winds, mon papa would let me steer the skiff to the fishing beds; as he ate his supper bread and sipped grape wine, I would stand on the tenuous bow of the boat and wave to the far inching trawlers and fattened cargo-ships. I have the memories of a scattered, but happy, diarist; poplin-rough Sunday school clothes and the gangly flush of pubescence, maman's unnerving truth serum stare and the droning lisp of our beetle-faced cure'...and when my lean body first began to yearn for the wettened loggia of a woman's legs,

I was awkwardly depulced by the silly youngest daughter of a wild tonton-man, who though she was a few years beneath me wanted only to mustang-ride on top of me.

Haiti is a violent wealth of color cloistered in a vault of shadows; a green and grise' catafalque bedecked with bright ribbons and gimcrack liturgies, big generals, and little girls, a lethal coup poudre potion mixed in a cardinal-purple zuchetto - once, in the citron mist of waking, Maman mumbled, 'Come here children...come inside, my house is warm, I will feed you...'

A man will attempt to run from the mange of furies that burrow into his pores, but the Haiti-man alone can drown his vermin in the dank, muscular suffocation of his black magic voudon. It is a carnal intercourse of spine and cortex, making love in a large wrought-iron washtub, hand-bathed in a rotgut sweat of fermented slave tears and corrupt eucharist wine - by the naked hands of writing and coming, which have submitted their strong backs to the raw dictatorship of fear and adoration. Mon papa, tapping his inert, Papa-Doc old boat engine with a scarred bonig knife, said, voudon is like a magic carburetor, mixing an explosive solution of Haitian blood and spirit breath - a glazed smile for his own wit; and then, in a guarded sotto-voce, he whispered as beaten men do, 'Maman...has a great lord sleeping inside her breasts, and when he awakes...he treats her to a powerful feast; she can tell the future and smell your lies, bottle your ti bon ange soul in a gas can if she feels like it, or even make a man's backbone shake like a dying jellyfish...be afraid of Maman, but love her well.' Year later, Maman in her chicory-scented pinafore, rolled with laughter when I retold what our late papa had said. "That man...I miss his simple grin and his slow hands...Tonight we will dance for him; you, who fed on the outside of my breasts, and my 'great lord' who is suckling inside them. Papa will smile, no?'

At Pentacost, when the pursed black lips of the green island hummed dark Catholic hymns, I would pilgrimage off to the eastern most Dominican tip of the island and imagine that I could see past the scattered lily isles of the soul-bayou Caribbean over the ungenial Atlantique and onto the gelid farshore of Europe; meditating, scrutinizing over the gendarme-sneer of the French or even the gaspacho-gold face of the

Spanairds. The Europeans fascinate me. I can picture the finger-tip calculations of the the captivated servant trying to understand how to climb the stairs between himself and the master, yet they fascinate me more because their paths have been so intricately woven with ours. They branded us with their perversion of Christianity and salved the wounds with whiplashes; we are the gross-deformed bastard-cattle brood of Europa, who abandoned us we she learned that are too stong too die, yet simple enough to decay. I remember a rumor of a blade-quarted Paris-dandy who drank riotous amounts of cognac in the company of a grand Tonton Macoute and then quipped with a sodomist's tongue, 'Ce country is manque'...ha, an unfinished sewer, smell it ! That odor can only be from an ulcerous wound...'I must laugh here. I know that what we are must scare them; the alieness of our revery, the scathing depth of our intensity, the human-bright colors

of violence and treachery that we parade upon our chests like the general's ribbons. Maman said that all the European men should be cooked a bit longer 'their bellies are too tender, they cannot stomach the face-up-close crimes that we can commit - they were built for killing anonymously - big missiles, bureaucracies, and world wars; they dont have the pride of naked resolve to stare into the crevices of a man's eyes and wrest out his soul...Put them in my belly. I will cook them a little more, make 'em more real." Would terrify you? The too intimate suffocation of a bokor queen's flesh womb, gaging blind in a solution of her great lord's semen and the belly-warm blood of sa mare, ma mere? You would be forced to gape with boarding -school eyes upon a blistering fantastique that mocks your swollen insolence. Mind, you can frighten me too; I would be scared beyond myself if I were staked naked between the trenches of Sommes. Pardon me, I do not hate the European gens, but scrutinizing them is like the thick frustration of a child learning to somersault; one day, when my mind is beyond intrigue though, I will roll over my preoccupied thoughts of them as if a playful steel drum rolled down a steep hill.'Voudon is the religion of the cerebellum, an allegro-alfresco celebration of the primal mind that perches beneath the tangled fugue of the forebrain like a trap-door spider. As night chars the canvas of day, the Haiti people start to breathe more freely. We smile with the heady anticipation of an addict carressing a loaded needle in the moments that the sugar cane torches flickr alive and finger drums begin to rumble from rickety porches. I remember the creeping euphoria of feeling my skull becoming light and translucent, the intravenous drip of human alkaloids saturating my veins and vertebrae as the id of my passions secreted a narcotic sweat of expectation. You feel the itch of a nine-month pregnancy, the salavation of salvation...'

The angelus bells of the bokor draw us to their back-yard shacks, which they decorate in a whirl of colorful ideograms and homemade fetishes. Shirts undone and hemlines gathered up, bony chests and weathered chapeaux, we congregate like a brazen cabal, our tongues wagging in chirping mouths for the festivities to begin, to shed our sulking skin and dance nude in a soothing embrocation. Maman was a great bokor. She carried an infectious air of ebullience and pride, as if her eyes were saying can you believe that great things we will do tonight? She would enter the room with a corset of flunkies and a flowing train of petitioners; her hands touching the face of everyone present, laughing and smiling with them. She became a warm-blooded nucleus of a slowly, spiraling galaxy of children, she was Maman to everyone now. Here they called her La Chantelaine, mistress of the house.

The walls of the hovel, brown and tin and worn, would shake and quiver in the pulsing thrum of the swaying, wailing women and the driving beat of the drums. We danced in groups and couples and alone, smiling like pristine simpletons, letting the rhythm knead into us like a masseur's hands. Music is the riding rein of the soul; and the ever-rapid beat of our rhythms echo off the deepest ravines of our psyche, guiding the traveller inwards, through the dense strata of sharks of the upper brain, down into the cradle of the brain stem, where impulse and intuition are as inseperable as wave and light once were, pain and pleasure, sea and sun, woman and man. While voudon is the horse that carries us within, it has a deeper brilliance - the fierce embrace of total submission - as if a man who makes loves to his adored woman, his flaring tongue alive in the passion of realizing that he can go nowhere but inside his lover; he submits himself to the exploration of her depths, his body only a caisson, his soul a conspirator addcited to the narcosis of pilgrimaging inside the body of her spirituality. We, as a people, venture further in the bracing womb of archetypes, deeper into the mythic, yet nascent body of the great child unborn, than of any other people who can serioulsy claim to burrow into the flesh of understanding. Mon papa said we are dogs who can find their way home across a wild sea. This is true - we are suffering children who toil for penury, who sink in a slow misery - but it just may be us who will be blessed by the tears of Allah before the Mohamedans, our forgiving lips alone upon the weeping wound of Christ. I am not saying we are holier than you, only that we are much more human; our sins and sorrows are heavier weights upon our necks as we leap into the blue sea... You should pardon me when i gibber like this; in these later years I am learning to appreciate the breadth of my life, I no longer dwell upon its serated seams but adore the entire panorama; at times, my tongue is slower than my awe.

With the fear of crashing the crescendo of this story, I must tell you that I left behind my island of voudon dolls and emmigrated to the alleys of Paris. Maman died, poisoned. Papa was long dead, exhaustion. The Tonton Macoute wanted to cripple the informal oligarchy of the voudon queens; they would have snapped my back to break our lineage. I was forewarned with the brutality of Haitian subtlety; a black-painted disembowled kitten tossed on my doorstep like a newspaper (Maman was La Chantelaine, they teasingly called me Le Chat) and then after the swelter of a frightened week, they set fire to our house, to papa's old boat, to Maman's back-yard shack... I cried like an unsoothable baby until I reached the skirts of Port-Au-Prince, where I cleaned bilges on an Indochinese freighter for passage to France. I had no papers, no authorization. All I remember of the voyage were the long, rolling waves of fever that slept in my chest like a nervous rattlesnake. In Marseilles I stole down the anchorline of the ship and swam across the chilled harbor until I felt the sand bottom of beach under my feet, and then i melted into the city. After a month or so, I fell into the gravity of Paris.

There are many Haitians here, some wealthy, most nor. They showed me how to bribe the flic-policemen and to temper my slurring patois so its didnt hurt the sensitive ears of Paris. I found a cab to drive at night and a ten-body room to sleep in during the day. I stumbled into Saint-Germain one afternoon and drank coffee with a gabbing clique of student . They were amazed by the stories I told, probably found them charming, distracting. In return they gave me access to libraries and lectures and new thoughts. My mind seemed to grow from weeds into gardens. I began to write, paint a bit, make love to women in dusk-empty parks. I felt as if I were a cave dweller climbing foreign but delicious alps, shocked by the brightness of the sun and the limitless expanse of the sky.I learned to fish with a rod and reel. Some weekends I drop a line into the dirty Seine and ponder, my line bobbing for memories. When I think of my Haiti I cannot remember the people of the homes, they are like dry parchment paper, rather I see the cumulous balls of smoke lifting from papa's rosewood pipe or I smell the acrid resin of boiled candle wax and chicken entrails slipping from Maman's alchemist kitchen. More, I can still feel the reassuring constriction of voudon about my torso and tongue, as if i had been sewed into a new skin, one more alive, more luxuriant, more spohisticated than my own. Voudon made me fraternal brother of the gut; I lived like a wise homunculous, wild and alive, in the stomach of the human conspiracy. I know the grinding contortions of our hungers and the soothing coolness of our waters. My thoughts were simple peasants, knowing only the autocracy of impulse and the heady musk of desire. And on this far shore from my birth, I have discoverd that Time is like a scribbled blackboard running the breadth of your life, ever reteaching you lessons and exercises that you forgot or never understood. Now, living in the brilliantly glib pages of Paris, I have been given the luxury of contemplative distance to strip my ideology of voudon of its cosmologies and mythos, a sculptor leaning back for perspective, whitened chisel in hand. As if an elder son returning home to hold a father he can now better understand, I embrace voudon for its raw uniqueness, its power to shape our fears and tears back into a primordial clay, allowing us to reenact the passion drama of life and self-creation and death. While I am happy that no horsemen can ride my back now, I wince for children who can never escape from the gnawing brutality of fearing a lonely breathless night or who shirk form staring into the sun, never being able to spit up the bland, anonymous shellac of Latin upon their tongues.

Same train from yesterday's upload, this time at a different spot. Like I said in my previous post (flic.kr/p/2oh6VPM), my battery was failing and I was feeling like a dumbass for not checking to make sure it was charged.

I still wanted one more shot, so I made my way to East Shirk hoping that my battery would give me enough time to pop 4 or 5 images before dying.

Luckily, it did exactly that. I got my pics and the battery died.

This shot was about 30 minutes after sunrise, so the light was still pretty awesome. This Amarillo to Tulsa train had a neat consist of a BNSF GEVO and ACe, Norfolk Southern GE, and freshly painted BNSF GP60. He met this Z at Shirk and would get the green light all the way into Cherokee Yard.

I got word the previous day that this eastbound empty cottonseed train was headed my way with a warbonnet leader and an executive MAC trailing. After checking with a source the following morning, I was in luck as the train had just pulled up for a crew change at Shirk about 10 miles west of Cherokee Yard. I drove out to the siding and waited for the new crew to take over. Here it is right after pulling up to East Shirk.

X-LUBHAY (Empty - Lubbock, TX to Hayti, MO)