Please enjoy photos of these lovely growing things on campus and around town. This first one is growing not too far from my office. It is called the Casa Blanca Lilium, an oriental hybrid lily. The texture on the petals is a beautiful thing. They’re pretty easy to grow and lovely to look at, aren’t they?
How do you feel about the Acer palmatum? Commonly called the Japanese maple or, as I just learned the red emperor maple, they can be shrubs or small trees. I suppose that has to do with its care, being pruned or out in habitat. This one is found in a well-manicured flower garden at a downtown church:
Cultivated for forever in Japan, Korea and China, they started spreading around the world in the 19th century. There are three subspecies and dozens of cultivars. Maples on the seas.
Here’s the Phlox maculata:
It’s a perennial, indigenous to the eastern United States and now also growing in Canada. Or maybe you’re more interested in the bee. That, of course, is your common bumblebee, one of the 250-plus members of the Bombus genus, about four dozen or so are in the U.S. Don’t ask me which one this one is from, we aren’t that close.
He was a pretty fair model, though.
Those aren’t bad, I’d say, for cell phone photos.
family / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Catching up on pictures 18 Jul 19
Those first few days, or hours or minutes, back, you always have to catch up on things. Email, mail voicemail, mail mail, memos, procedures, whatever it is. Sometimes it takes longer than others. I got lucky this time, and by running through vacation photos and videos for so long that stretched out the whole trip in my mind a bit. Why, yes, those seven days did turn into two-and-a-half weeks somehow.
We were promised some other photos, too. If those come through, we’re going right back into the old vacation by way of memory.
Until then, though, we’re back here. And in this space we must fill our time with something. Today and tomorrow, are a few things that I’ve drifted through while still on island time.
This is a parking deck on campus. Masons have been reworking the brick and it looks like they are coming to the end of this particular project:
It would have been weird if I’d stood there and watched that all day, but the light and water droplets dancing around were rather mesmerizing. I just saw it at the right time of day.
Unfortunately, the timing was wrong on this. No matter how much I bent, leaned or twisted I couldn’t get them all in, or keep the sun out. But they’re keeping the sun out. And if you need a visor, you go with something classy like this:
“Thank you for being a — ” BUNNY!
Some time ago I picked up this old poster of the county. It’s a print of the way things were in 1856. I finally put it up in my tiny little office and give it a glance every now and then. Now, these people aren’t my people, but it is interesting to see the names of some of these land owners who are now just road signs to most weary commuters. My uncle worked with a man from here and that man’s family name is on this map, showing the plots of land his ancestors owned once upon a time.
The whole thing shows land owners names, first and last. And I’ve been able to pick out a few important ones. These people sold a key parcel to the university, for example, and that man was the local director on the Underground Railroad, such as it was through here. I spent some time trying to discern exactly where our modern house is. There is one road that, if it hasn’t moved in 170 years, helps get you close. But the waterways aren’t terribly accurate on the map. Finally I figured it out, and I know the name of the man that owned the land and I think I found out where he’s buried, too. Again, not my people, but still somewhat interesting.
One thing I’m struck by, when I stare at that map: there aren’t enough people named Enoch anymore. It stems from a Hebrew word which means dedicated.
One of my great-great-grandfathers was also named Enoch. He was born 15 years after that map was drawn, and lived in a different place entirely. Neither place has enough kids named Enoch these days. It sounds like the strongest, sturdiest word in the world. Just say it out loud a few times.
Last Thursday was our last four-dive day of that trip. The Fourth, when you watched fireworks, I watched fish. While you looked up into the night sky, I looked up into the ocean on a rapid ascent trying to avoid jellyfish. While you ooohed and aaahed big percussive explosive, I enjoyed the quiet of a starry Caribbean night. There is nothing wrong with the July Fourth celebration, but there’s nothing wrong with trying something different, either.
There is an accumulative effect, even at a recreational dive depths, of the pressure on the oxygen in your blood stream. By day five, which is what last Thursday was, most people are really starting to feel it. Nitrogen buildup makes you feel rather tired, they say. Plus it is a tiny bit more physical than you’d realize. But mostly it is the chemistry.
I didn’t feel that, but by Thursday my ears and sinuses — delicate little features, to be sure — were wearing down. I have to clear my sinuses at least twice every atmosphere, like clockwork. If I can keep count I don’t have to even look at my depth gauge, I just usually know. And somewhere between dives 14 and 18 last Thursday they were beginning to voice their displeasure.
But the diving continued to be great. The weather was pleasant. That big storm system brewing in the Gulf of Mexico kept the temperatures nice and mild for us. We had the roughest seas of our trip last Thursday on our morning dive and the water was barely moving. The whole week was like that, perfectly designed, pleasantly enjoyed.
We did our last night dive of the trip, but there’s no footage of that. We do, however, have more terrific footage taken from the first three dives of the day, and plenty of neat pictures below. (If this whole professorial thing doesn’t work out The Yankee might consider a career in the media.)
(See that joke is funny because … hang on. ‘What’s that, hon? Yeah, you’re probably right. They probably know.‘ Sorry. Anyway, yeah, that joke is funny.)
To the video! And yes, there are more turtles to be seen here and below …
It never stops feeling like an other-worldly adventure, if you ask me.
Do you see what I mean?
In these next four I’m being an explorer, bravely exploring things which ought to be explored:
Here’s one of our delightful little turtle friends now:
They are always a big hit:
No, the reefs never stop being fascinating:
We’re trying to come up with the right human shot. It’s an ongoing experiment. I think we’re getting sort of close. What do you think?
Nailed it!
At the end of each dive you have to do a safety stop. Again, this is about the pressure and chemistry. On some of the dives here we’ve been situated in such a way that we can play around with overhead photos and video, like this one:
Of course there are still plenty of things to see, even at these somewhat more shallow depths:
This is the best photo of the trip and having brought a GoPro was worth every little bit of effort for it. The thing shoots better video than photos, we have come to realize. And you’re just sort of guessing on the older models. It is a wide angle lens, but there’s definitely a point and hope methodology to this camera. This one was supposed to be another overhead, full-body shot, but it didn’t work out that way and, in fact, it works out better this way, I think. Oh, the laughs we had when we were reviewing these at the end of the night.
A version of that, and several other dive photographs, will become banners on the site before too long.
I took this one at a safety stop, whereas The Yankee shot pretty much everything that she isn’t in. There was just something about this little outcropping I enjoyed. Shape and light, and size and wonder, I suppose. It is a tiny little reef mound in the scheme of things, and doing quite well considering the number of humans that stop by it.
Even for this shot, I had to wait for people to get out of the way. That’s always worth it, though.
Tomorrow’s update will feature our last dives of the trip, but I’ve got enough material left over after that to stretch this vacation out until next week. That’s what you should do, anyway, right? Even when you’ve come back home, after you’ve dragged luggage, enjoyed the pleasant Customs experience, sat in the car on the way to the house late at night thinking “The coral looked better than the silhouettes of these trees,” and then found your way to your pillow, you should stay on vacation, right?
We’re heading down to the ancestral haunts for a weekend of nothing much to do. It’s a seven-hour haul, and tonight it involved a welcome break to visit with academic and journalist friends over dinner in Nashville. The choice, as ever, was barbecue:
It was the right choice. You knew it just from the way the sunlight splashes down on the place:
We got in just in time to say hello to my mother and goodnight.
A good friend of ours is a US Army officer, a paratrooper. Five years ago, he had the opportunity to jump into France as a part of the 70th anniversary ceremonies commemorating D-Day.
He jumped with this flag, which hangs in my office.
Here’s a video of his jump. He went out the door of a German plane on a beautiful day over Normandy.
That view makes it difficult to imagine jumping into the dark, knowing the enemy you’ve been training for is waiting below.
Ernie Pyle came ashore soon after and helped people back home understand what the men and boys in Europe were up against:
"Pyle’s first column about the D-Day landings, published on June 12, 1944, gave his readers an honest accounting of how daunting the invasion had been…"
And then, of course, Ronald Reagan talked about some of those famous exploits at the 40th anniversary:
"We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent… The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States and the American security guarantee is essential…" https://t.co/8IHYFfryBt
