This is at the top or beginning of Eagle Falls overlooking Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA. The adventurous and physically adroit hike down the mountain to take shots of the waterfall.

last week

and, yes, this is in full color.

This huge skulker was hunting for a meal within the trees and just popped out a few feet below where I was sitting. This is a full-frame shot :)

I've blogged about this trip here. Please let me know your comments.

This was taken in Liwonde National Park from my car, pointing up at a pretty terrible angle. It is a wonder it turned out as well as it did! I wish I had a brilliant blue sky in the background, or better yet - a mountain or lush green trees in the background, but the day was quite pale and hazy, which makes this bird's white head disappear a bit with the background.

What I like about this photo is the perch. The dead branches are all spaced so well and fill in the empty spaces, so I felt this shot was a keeper, despite the off white background.

This is Andre, his friends call him Sable.

Andre is from Lithuania, and he is crazy! He said the reason he is crazy is because there are no mothers in Lithuania to worry about the children.

Andre climbed out along a ledge, down the cliff, and then back up to where he is standing. All this with a 2000 ft. vertical drop below him.

He did all this in tennis shoes and with his bare hands, without any ropes or other climbing equipment.

A good reason to live.

A good reason to stay up late.

Hold on.

To this. And that.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPnOEiehONQ

This guy is my little buddy. He brought me a string to play with as the election was called last night.

This sign, seen in Karesuando at 68º north in Swedish Lapland, was one of the more impressive markers I've seen. Despite the cold, I found myself standing there for quite a while, picking out all the places I've been and all the places I would like to go. The numbers were mind-boggling too -- from a bit over 100km to Kiruna, my previous stop, to over 6600 to Sapporo, where I rang in the New Year, all of the distances seemed to be quite a long way!

Short Meaning:

Be aware of beauty in the world around you.

Not So Short Meaning:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

And If You Have 5 Minutes To Kill:

Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address By David Foster Wallace

- May 21, 2005

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

- David Foster Wallace

This is a wintertime view from the local fishing pier in Santos, Brazil.

Vista do pier.

Esta é uma vista de inverno a partir do pier de pesca local em Santos, Brasil.

This was just what I needed, a complete pampering and lovely makeover and photo session.... huge thanks to the fantastic JoJo and Tim/Tamara from FourthSpace, a brilliant makeover service and such lovely and friendly people. (www.thefourthspace.com or their flickr account at www.flickr.com/photos/thefourthspace.)

So what do you think about the new look? More pics to come from this session... don't worry, I won't subject you to all 350 though :)

Mellila - Nador

a european border in Dec. 2013

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melilla_border_fence

Looking at this sends me reeling...it seems like 30,000 years ago. This whole block of time feels so detached from the rest of my life. And it hurts. A lot. But it's still beautiful.

This has been covered up for several decades with other signs including Sears, Fashion Gal and/or Fashion Bug, and others I can't remember. Currently a local Harley Davidson dealer is using this building to hold tons of motorcycles. I grew up blocks from this building and have never seen this until last year because it was covered up. I never even knew Kroger was in this area.

This image combines an old selfie and the groundhog that was my nemesis during my last year of homeownership before we downsized. Photoleap was used to create this image.

Such a shame. This is a lovely pastel and floral skirt but it just won't stay up. I am planning on losing weight not putting it on so this is one of two memento pictures.

My hair needs a brush through it!!!

Captured this one on my iPhone tonight .. used it's panoramic function which I really like.

Thanks for viewing and any comments.

9to5mac.com/2013/09/20/how-to-use-the-new-camera-app-in-i...

This weekend I attended an event hosted by the David Lynch Foundation (visit dlf.tv) located at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. The generosity that comes out of this man is unparalleled. His vision is simple: Let's make a better world.

Thank you David Lynch for your words and infinite inspiration.

Now let's go fishing.

This rather interesting Mercedes Vario truck on what appeared to be older DIN-font diplomatic-series plates, was parked along Leipziger Straße. Given what type of vehicle it was, and the age of the plate, I have doubts about if this vehicle is linked to an embassy, however the coding fits with being used by non-accredited diplomatic staff at the Algerian embassy, located 6km north to where I spotted this vehicle, in the north of Berlin. The vehicle was also parked outside the Bulgarian embassy, adding to the confusion I must say. Are the plates of the 'diplomatic' type, or of another type which I'm not aware of?

*Edit*: The vehicle is not diplomatic-registered instead being registered to the regional/local authorities/state government, which used a similar format to the diplomatic-plate system, before going to an all-numerical 1-5 digit system, presumably when the 'Euroband' plates were introduced in Germany. These plates are apparently very rare to see in Berlin (maybe in the whole of Germany too?). I presume that the code '16' is relevant somehow. Many thanks to TIMRAAB227 for clarifying this registration, though any more information on this plate-type would be greatly appreciated.

Berlin, Germany

This sanctuary in Pattaya, Thailand is carved entirely from wood. To me this is one of Thailand's most beautiful structures.

There's copper & black there too! ...And they come together in quite a lovely ensemble!

I just love this clingy wet look "wiggle dress" that came in from coquetryclothing.com! I thought it would look good, but I didn't expect it to look _this_ good! Call me a happy (very happy) customer!

I've matched this marvelous red "Mystique" wet look lycra spandex halter style minidress arrived from coquetryclothing.com with my Premier copper fully fashioned Euro heel stockings from secretsinlace.com and my black patent peep toe platform pumps with the 5" heels from venus.com.

To see more pix of me in stockings and lingerie click this link: www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157627113549549/

To see more pix of me in other tight, sexy and revealing outfits click this link:www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157623668202157/

To see more pix of me in clothes from Coquetry Clothing click this link: www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157626739774869/

To see more pix of me showing off my legs click this link: www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157623668202157/

To see more pix of me in fully fashioned stockings click this link: www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157627113549549

DSC_1750-3

This picture was taken at Sauvie Island, Oregon just as the sun was beginning to set.

View Large On Black- and press F11

Cultural diversity is among the things that make this city one of the most fascinating places on the planet.

As if it wasn't colourful enough already, in 'warming it up' I went to exremes - and liked the result, so I left it 'golden' :)

Published on News2Me illustrating article on... Internet Marketing

NonViolent...this one's for you :)

This is Kevin. Well, Kevin's back anyway :)

I met him at my niece's graduation party. I asked him if I could take a pic of his back so I could use it for my anatomy class and he obliged. He said he was going to get the organs tattooed behind the bones, but he wants to quit smoking first so he can get pink lungs tattooed under those ribs

:)

About the picture! I had this shot framed. I knew what I was looking for. When I saw it in the viewfinder, I snapped and almost died! My flash didn't fire (This guy was standing at a keg under a big tarp) The ONLY thing that I did to this was brighten it up so that I could share it with everyone! This is the originial shot that I took. yes, I know, it's completely black!

"This picture is #4 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at www.100Strangers.com"

After posting it to myself, I've gone back to working my way through my copy of 'Wreck This Journal'.

Photography is great. Bringing your camera on a day's hike and capturing that special moment. This abandoned shed I stumbled upon on the border of the Haaksbergerveen. Hard sunlight and clouded sky challenged me to create a dramatic landscape image. Using different techniques and plug-ins ended up in this result.

This week there have been spring tides which means very low water so the repair work on the pier can start again.

As with most of the pages in my journal, I can't decide if this one is "done" or not.

Has seen better years ;)

On the road between Tailem Bend and Wellington, SA, Australia.

This was the highlight and reason for my Southern Arizona Adventure 2024. This is stage 8 of 9.

I was lucky to secure permits for the once monthly photography tour of Kartchner Caverns. Kartchner Caverns State Park strictly forbids any cameras or cellphones in the Caverns. Except for one trip per month for 12 to 15 photographers currently $125. I planned a 4 day 3 night road trip around Southern Arizona anchored by my Kartchner Cavern permit.

I was expecting dark conditions. The State Park turned on all the lights in the Big Room. They don't like turning on all the lights since can cause an increase in algae. This is the reason they only have one photography tour a month.

I found myself adjusting my histograms to not clip the highlights. Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome. Next time I am going to bracket my shots. I almost wish I had brought a ND filter or tried a handheld GND filter.

I don't know speleothems so I won't even try to identify. If anyone can help me with the identification, I will appreciate it.

www.nps.gov/subjects/caves/speleothems.htm#:~:text=The%20...)%20when%20needed.

The features that arouse the greatest curiosity for most cave visitors are speleothems. These stone formations exhibit bizarre patterns and other-worldly forms, which give some caves a wonderland appearance. Caves vary widely in their displays of speleothems because of differences in temperature; overall wetness; and jointing, impurities, and structures in the rocks. In general, however, one thing caves do have in common is where speleothems form. Although the formation of caves typically takes place below the water table in the zone of saturation, the deposition of speleothems is not possible until caves are above the water table in the zone of aeration. As soon as the chamber is filled with air, the stage is set for the decoration phase of cave building to begin.

The term speleothem refers to the mode of occurrence of a mineral—i.e., its morphology or how it looks—in a cave, not its composition (Hill, 1997). For example, calcite, the most common cave mineral, is not a speleothem, but a calcite stalactite is a speleothem. A stalactite may be made of other minerals, such as halite or gypsum.

Classifying speleothems is tricky because no two speleothems are exactly alike. Nevertheless, speleologists have taken three basic approaches: classification by morphology, classification by origin, and classification by crystallography. All three of these approaches have their problems (Hill, 1997), so cavers often take a more practical approach that primarily uses morphology (e.g., cave pearls) but includes whatever is known about origin (e.g., geysermites) and crystallography (e.g., spar) when needed.

nocache.azcentral.com/travel/arizona/southern/articles/20...

The Kartchner Caverns, rated one of the world's 10 most beautiful caves, is an eerie wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites still growing beneath the Whetstone Mountains 40 miles southeast of Tucson.

The limestone cave has 13,000 feet of passages and hundreds of formations built over the past 200,000 years, including some that are unique and world-renowned. It's a "living cave," with intricate formations that continue to grow as water seeps, drips and flows from the walls and slowly deposits the mineral calcium carbonate.

The caverns were discovered by amateur spelunkers Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen in 1974 on land owned by the Kartchner family. They kept the cave a secret until 1988, when the Kartchners sold it to the state to become a state park.

The highlights of the Big Room tour are a stretch of strawberry flowstone, which has been colored red by iron oxide (rust) in the water, and a maternity ward for 1,800 female cave myotis bats, with black grime on the ceiling where the bats hang and piles of guano on the floor. Visitors who look closely will see a bat's body embedded in one of the cave's formations.

Though not all are available on the tours, the caverns' unique features include a 21-foot, 2-inch soda straw that's one the world's largest (Throne Room), the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk (Big Room), the first reported occurrence of "turnip" shields (Big Room), the first cave occurrence of "birdsnest" needle quartz formations (Big Room) and the remains of a Shasta ground sloth from the Pleistocene Age (Big Room).

azstateparks.com/Kartchner

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartchner_Caverns_State_Park

Kartchner Caverns State Park is a state park of Arizona, United States, featuring a show cave with 2.4 miles (3.9 km) of passages.[1] The park is located 9 miles (14 km) south of the town of Benson and west of the north-flowing San Pedro River. Long hidden from view, the caverns were discovered in 1974 by local cavers, assisted by state biologist Erick Campbell who helped in its preservation.

The park encompasses most of a down-dropped block of Palaeozoic rocks on the east flank of the Whetstone Mountains.

The caverns are carved out of limestone and filled with spectacular speleothems which have been growing for 50,000 years or longer, and are still growing. Careful and technical cave state park development and maintenance, initially established by founder Dr. Bruce Randall "Randy" Tufts, geologist, were designed to protect and preserve the cave system throughout the park's development, and for perpetuity.[3]

The two major features of the caverns accessible to the public are the Throne Room and the Big Room. The Throne Room contains one of the world's longest (21 ft 2 in (6.45 m))[5] soda straw stalactites and a 58-foot (18 m) high column called Kubla Khan, after the poem. The Big Room contains the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk. Big Room cave tours are closed during the summer for several months (April 15 to October 15) each year because it is a nursery roost for cave bats, however the Throne Room tours remain open year-round.[8]

Other features publicly accessible within the caverns include Mud Flats, Rotunda Room, Strawberry Room, and Cul-de-sac Passage. Approximately 60% of the cave system is not open to the public.[9]

Many different cave formations can be found within the caves and the surrounding park. These include cave bacon, helictites, soda straws, stalactites, stalagmites and others.[12] Cave formations like the stalactites and stalagmites grow approximately a 16th of an inch every 100 years.[13]

Haiku thoughts:

Beneath earth's cool veil,

Stalactites in silence grow,

Whispers of stone deep.

Kartchner

Southern Arizona Adventure 2024

This Picture is © Copyrighted 2015

Just an archived Bratz pic of Kina from a while back. Ah the holidays. I can't believe its a week away and then BAM! It's new years. The time sure flies during the winter months. I'm offically on a "fashion freeze" till late January. I've bought waaay too much clothes and shoes in the past two months. Gotta wrap some gifts and maybe bake some cookies this weekend. Happy holidays everyone!!!

This is my daughter and my boy. I normally cannot get the two of them together to sit still long enough to get a shot as he winds her up. I was actually taking portraits of Kelly, when Jerry-lee laid down beside her, and hey presto I got them together!!

This was actually shot a few years ago. She's even

prettier now.

This was the first time I attended Fanime in San Jose, CA. It is held annually over the Memorial Day weekend. I really liked it - great cosplayers and some very cool places to shoot. I shot with some cosplayers that remembered me from other ComicCons and met a lot of new faces. I definitely want to go back again next year!

It's always an ordeal when the Terrordrome runs out of fresh vegetables.

Luckily Snake Eyes is keeping a close eye on things.

View On Black

was trying to get a good outside in the "light" shot,this was one of the focus tests.

it was overcast and started drizzling as soon as i walked

out,but i liked this one,so i kept it. Almost made it my 365 for the day.

maybe i will switch them later.

(explored)

This abstract is built around the Previous image of an anchor in the waters of Lake Garda, Italy. This creation takes it out of the water

This mild custom had a great Dreamsicle orange and cream paint job as well as this cool continental kit.

World of Wheels car & bike show. Pgh, PA

This the old LEGO Racers Ferrari FXX

... this brown, faded, and broken

leaf

discarded by the one it’s served

in faithful photosynthesis.

This is me,

this fallen oak,

whose strong bark covering

hid the hollow and rotten

inside.

This is me,

this barren hillside,

timbered, raped, and eroded by

the ways of this world, and the

kingdom of the air.

This is me,

this reclaimed, lush,

and verdant forest,

deep with black loam and

tall with green canopy.

Stretching my arms upward

at dawn

to receive daily rains of mercy

and gentle, loving husbandry.

Explored: January 3, 2007

This has just been discovered in the Australian outback and we’re not sure what it is. Can anyone identify it please.

This doesn't go out to anyone in particular. I'm sure plenty of people have been through this. Been rejected, been stranded, or felt that way. I usually don't hold back the things I want to say. I'm pretty outgoing. But, the one thing I want to say to someone, I can't. It's useless. But, maybe in 10 years I'll have my chance. :) <3

Thank you. <3

www.myspace.com/melsparade

add me!

This photo made it to Explore. Thank you for your interest and support. Got up before 4 am to make an early morning flight.

Previous title: Anyone recognize this view?

a cold shower will wake me up

from this miserable feeling

help me fight the other kind of coldness that strikes my body time after time

i think

but the only difference is that my tears flow away with the water and don't fall on the floor, to be seen by everyone

myrahsphotos.tumblr.com/

On Days like this I realize how dark and crappy the lighting in our house is lol.. But its just the right lighting for Iri :D

PS hey guys do any of you have this dress in Gray?? I Know I have seen it around and I would LOVE It <3 if you have it and want to part with it let me know ;)

This freeform style embraces uneven locs designed to fall forward and frame the face unpredictably yet perfectly. Built to feel untamed and intentional at the same time. Finished with a clean hand-drawn hairbase and controlled color options for balance.

️ Exclusively available at Dream Day

👥 %

🚕 Taxi: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/DreamDay%20Event/114/116/1999

220/365

this photo is skewed to the left!! skewed is a Stats term. I suppose that means I am in full-fledged school mode as of now. Greeeeaat. ;) I guess it's better to get there now than 10 weeks later...but there are only 11 weeks to go! woohoo!!

I can tell you I had on white shoes in the first one...and I needed a white fedora for the last one, then it may make more sense. I thought it was a sweet idea this morning!

It was so strange to actually "have an idea" for a photo this morning...I haven't felt that way since like day 100...or earlier. Anyway, I got home today at like 3:30 and just got to surf around on Flickr for awhile, and remember what that was like too! I've been really busy!! I had no idea...

Hope all is well with all of you <3 xoxoxox