Category: Nature

Miracle? All of it. 

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At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn. A view of the horizon, the whole entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark. As though the soul can be quiet for those moments.

All life amazes me.

~ Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton: A Novel

Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge.  Her new book, My Name Is Lucy Barton, was selected as An Amazon Best Book of January 2016.  The excerpt above is not representative of the storyline but Strout is a master at story telling.  “My Name is Lucy Barton” is highly recommended.

Check out the book reviews:

Notes:

  • Related Posts: Miracle? All of it.
  • Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Let’s just say: “Oh”

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I had to validate. I did.  See water.usgs.gov for fact check.

And this “theme” has been top of mind following a passage I read in Elizabeth Strout’s new book:

I asked if my brother had a job. “He has no job,” my mother said. “He spends the night with any animal that will be killed the next day.” I asked her what she had said, and she repeated what she had said. She added, “He goes into the Pedersons’ barn, and he sleeps next to the pigs that will be taken to slaughter.”

~ Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

Source: Thepoetoaster

Post Long Weekend Wake-Up Call

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Source: Lemur via Exactly

 

Eric’s Excellent Adventure

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Photos taken by Eric Kanigan in Iceland on January 4-6, 2016

Ethereal Blue

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“Photographer Steve Mandel recently ventured to Antarctica where he captured breathtaking images of glaciers. His frosty shots are a unique twist on landscape photography—instead of presenting one view of the icebergs, the California-based creative shot a split view in a single frame. Half of the picture shows the glacier above water, while the other part illustrates what lies beneath.

‘This was my first [time] shooting above and below shots,’ Mandel tells us in an email. ‘I was inspired by some images I had seen taken by a National Geographic photographer.’ He’s fascinated by the form, color, and physics of icebergs, and explains what makes them so special. ‘The top of the glacier is white because it is new snow, that over time, compresses. The beautiful blue color in the ice is older ice in which the air has been partially compressed out.’ This delicate balance produces images that often have an otherworldly feel to them, and with this series, Mandel has captured moments frozen in time.”

Don’t miss other Mandel’s other photos in the series at his website: Antarctic Ice

Don’t miss the interview with Steve Mandel: My Modern Met

Source: My Modern Met