Thoughts
Foto Friday: Sky Gazing
Flick Friday is a bust. No releases for today. So, it’s another installment of Foto Friday. Submitted for your approval…my walk this evening. ~Vic
See Sunsets Local as well.
at Gold Park
POTD: Examiner Encounters 3.0
I posted a couple of pictures from my Examiner days back in May. I found another one. I took several pix while working but, I have them scattered. There may be more. I don’t remember why she had the Service Dog. She certainly wasn’t blind and didn’t have any disabilities. I think she may have been a trainer. What an adorable baby. ~Vic
Picture of the Day
Shutterbug Saturday: The Town
I’ve posted enough times about the small town I live in. It’s old, it’s eclectic and it is walk-able. It’s also way too expensive, unfortunately. But, I am enjoying it while I am here. ~Vic
09-28-2019
10-06-2018
06-13-2018
07-17-2018
07-17-2018
Back Entrance
07-14-2019
(Length 00:01:40)
(Length 00:03:53)
Autumnal Equinox 2019
Now that I have gotten the Billboard nonsense off of my chest, today is the first day of Autumn. The Equinox of 2018 fell on September 22. I wasn’t out and about, today so, no pix but, I do have some from last year.
09-23-2018
The Equinox for our area occurred at 3:50am EDT. ~Vic
Music Monday: Billboard Rant
Well, well, well…silly me. I was planning to do a post on a fresh Billboard chart entry for the week of September 23, 1989. After having done a Hot 100 entry and an Alternative Rock entry, I was looking at Adult Contemporary, Hot R&B, Hot Country and Mainstream Rock. Ladies…Gentlemen…if you so desire to look at Billboard’s history charts other than the Hot 100 chart, YOU ARE SHIT OUT OF LUCK. You can’t look at ANY of their charts, even the new ones, except the Hot 100…UNLESS YOU PAY THEM. This has happened, just in the last week.
I’m not paying these assholes $12/$13 a month just to LOOK at their damn charts. I was attempting to showcase ALL music pieces instead of just the number ones or stuff on the Hot 100, only. Not every song debuts on the Hot 100. Most country music goes straight to the country chart. Most rock, what new rock there is left to listen to on the radio, goes to rock charts. Now, I have no way of knowing what debuted when…or where. If anyone out there knows where I can get this information, let me know. FUCK THEM.
This situation tells me that Billboard magazine is in trouble and hemorrhaging money.
FFTD: Azaleas
Azaleas are usually Springtime visitors. Some of them, well, they are the late bloomers. This is a small bush on the First Baptist church property. ~Vic
Flower for the Day
Shutterbug Saturday: Training
My paternal grandfather was a firefighter, my brother-in-law is and my dad nearly was. I grew up going with my grandmother to my hometown’s fire department HQ, bringing lunch for my grandfather. When he retired, he worked dispatch.
As a Drivers License Examiner, I got to give road tests in firetrucks.
I was lucky to catch this. I was walking home from the local market. ~Vic
Training The Next Generation
Music Monday: The Alarm 1989
Shaking things up a bit and being different. ~Vic
Thirty years ago, today, Sold Me Down the River by The Alarm, a Welsh alternative rock/new wave band from Rhyl (formed 1981), debuted on the Billboard Alternative Rock chart, entering at number ten. The first release from the album Change, their fourth studio album, it peaked at number three after five weeks. It made it to number two on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in October, staying there for two weeks and number 43 on the UK Singles Chart, starting September 10.
I confess. I’ve never heard of this band. They are still active (Band Website).
From LyricFind:
There’s a fire beneath my skin
There’s a fever that makes me ill
Got a love, a love that kills
I’ve got twenty-four hours to live, come back
I’m begging you please, come back
Come back
I’m down on my knees, come back
I’m begging you please
I don’t know why and I don’t understand
How you sold me down the river
I don’t know why, I don’t understand
How you sold me down the river
Sold me down the river
There’s a rose across my chest
Got your name written on it
Love’s the drug that I live by
Give me a shot before I die, come back
I’m begging you please, come back
Come back
I’m down on my knees, come back
I’m begging you please
I don’t know why, I don’t understand
How you sold me down the river
I don’t know why, I don’t understand
How you sold me down the river
Sold me down the river
Oh yeah, sold me down the river now
Sold me down the river tonight
Hoo-hoo
I’ve got twenty four hours
I don’t know why, I don’t understand
How you sold me down the river
Sold me down the river
FFTD: Tulips & Narcissus
A companion piece to an earlier post, the white Narcissus is a beautiful contrast. The telephone pole, not so much. I still don’t remember where the pix were taken. ~Vic
Flower for the Day
Shutterbug Saturday: Animal Friends
Update: I am changing the headings to all of my wildlife posts to Animal Friends. ~Vic
The deer in this town are so used to not being hunted, they will come out in broad daylight, eat, play and stare at you. Some are almost tame and you can get rather close to them. They’re cute but, they will mess up a garden if it is not properly secured. I learned the hard way not to plant tulips and I discovered that they like green/white Hosta but, not the green/yellow. They will not touch Narcissus. ~Vic
04-30-2019
05-22-2019
05-22-2019
The fuzziness makes it look like a painting.
05-22-2019
Harvest Moon 2019
I did a Harvest Moon post last year and, once again, I can’t get any pix of tonight’s moon. We have an incredible low ceiling and I haven’t seen the sun all day. On a positive note, a low ceiling makes sound travel farther and I can hear the local high school football game from three miles away. The last time there was a full moon on Friday the 13th, it was January of 2006 and it wasn’t here. Technically, my area won’t be full illumination until 12:33am EDT but, the rest of the country, westward…Jason might turn into a werewolf.
I DO have some shots from September 15, 2016, tho, taken with my, then, Samsung S5.
From Moon Giant:
September’s Full Moon was called the Full Corn Moon or Harvest Moon by the early North American Farmers. The term “Harvest Moon” refers to the Full Moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox. The Full Moon closest to this Equinox rises about 20 minutes later each night as apposed to the rest of the year when the moon rises around 50 minutes later each night. In the northern hemisphere, the Full Harvest Moon rises very soon after sunset, providing plenty of bright light for farmers harvesting their summer crops. September’s full moon is so well-known for its luminosity and brilliance that certain Native American tribes even named it the Big Moon. The Full Harvest Moon holds major cultural significance in many different communities, who spend this full moon not just celebrating the fall harvest but, also, the moon itself.
The most widely known tradition associated with the Full Harvest Moon is the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated by Chinese communities all around the world. It is also known as the Mooncake Festival. On the full moon night of the eighth lunar month, people gather with friends and family to admire the brilliant full moon while eating mooncakes and drinking tea. Mooncakes are a rich pastry traditionally filled with sweet bean paste, or lotus seed paste, and sometimes, even include salted egg yolks. The sweet osmanthus flower also blooms during this time and, is often used in teas and the reunion wine drunk when visiting with family. It is a common tradition to celebrate by carrying brightly colored lanterns. [You] can often enjoy the beautiful sight of lanterns hanging in front of buildings or in parks, or sky lanterns floating towards the full moon.
The Japanese celebrate this full moon with the Tsukimi tradition (which literally means moon-viewing in Japanese), where people prepare offerings to the moon and eat round tsukimi dango, or rice dumplings. In Korea, this full moon is celebrated as Chuseok, which is one of Korea’s most major holidays, similar to Thanksgiving. People travel back to their hometowns for reunions with their family and tend to their ancestors’ graves. Traditional activities include exchanging gifts, playing folk games, drinking rice wine, and eating songpyeon, which is a rice cake shaped like a half-moon.
[The] Full Harvest Moon is called the Nut Moon by the Cherokee tribes, who gather all sorts of nuts to make nut bread, which is eaten during harvest festivals such as the Ripe Corn Festival. During this moon, Native American tribes pay respects to Mother Earth for her generosity in providing food for her children, including corn and other staple foods. Chinese communities, on the other hand, spend the Mid-Autumn Festival worshipping the Moon Goddess, Chang’e.
Just as I was creating this post, our clouds cleared. I got a couple of different shots as I was experimenting with my phone’s camera settings.
Howl for me! ~Vic
Wayback Wednesday: Hurricane Carla 1961
I realize that September 11 is usually reserved for the remembrance of 9/11 but, that seems to be all over the news as it is. There are other things that have happened on September 11. ~Vic
Fifty-eight years ago, today, Category 4 Hurricane Carla slammed into Texas, making landfall near Port O’Connor. She was the first Category 5 of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season.
From the National Weather Service:
Carla was the most intense hurricane to make landfall on the Texas coast in the 20th century and second in recorded history only to the Indianola hurricane of 1886. Carla was the last of 6 hurricanes to make landfall on the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds stronger than 130 mph, in the 20th century. Carla ranks as the 9th most intense hurricane to affect the United States since 1851.
Carla made landfall on the afternoon of the 11th on the northeast part of Matagorda Island as a strong Category 4 hurricane […]. The eye of Carla moved across Port O’Connor and Port Lavaca and, then, inland just east of Victoria. Carla weakened to a tropical storm on the morning of the 12th just east of Austin.
Carla was an extremely large hurricane with devastating effects from the winds and storm surge […]. The extreme tides inundated downtown Port Lavaca with 2 feet of flood water and displaced fishing boats and tug boats on Highway 35. With the slow movement of Carla, the hurricane pushed a storm surge of 22 feet above mean sea level at the head of Lavaca Bay in Port Lavaca. This is the highest storm surge in Texas hurricane history.
From Wikipedia:
[Little-known] newsman Dan Rather reported live from the second floor of a building in Texas City during the storm, an act that would be imitated by later reporters. This marked the first live television broadcast of a hurricane. Rather also alerted the public of the size of Carla in a way that “literally changed the way the world sees hurricanes”, according to a fellow reporter. Broadcasting live at the Weather Bureau Office in Galveston, Rather asked a meteorologist to draw an outline of the Gulf of Mexico on a transparent sheet of plastic. He then held the map over the black and white radar screen, which put the size of Carla into perspective, saying that Carla was the size of the Gulf of Mexico. CBS was so impressed with Rather’s work that he was offered the position of correspondent.
Carla remains number one on the Hurricane Severity Index.
POTD: Hurricane Supplies
Hurricane Matthew in 2016 made four landfalls, hitting Haiti, Cuba, The Bahamas and, then, finally, the area of McClellanville, SC. It dumped a lot of rain on us and our river across the street flooded quite a bit.
As with any storm, supplies are always needed as no one really knows how bad BAD can get. Growing up, it was usually the snow & ice storms that would send folks to the stores for the “bread & milk” run. These days, any storm brings on the shelf-wiping. Standing in line at one of my local Food Lions, I couldn’t help myself. I had to snap this shot. There were people walking by, stopping, looking, shaking their heads and walking away. I started to giggle. This was the caption that popped into my head…
Forget the milk. For God’s SAKE, get the DR PEPPER!
10-04-2016
FFTD: Yellow
I think this is a Wingstem or Yellow Ironweed (Verbesina Alternifolia). If I am wrong, y’all speak up. ~Vic
Flower for the Day
Cosmic-Observation 