Still Gravity

Touring the USS Alabama  in the summer of 2012 - License our images  here .         The USS Alabama was a South Dakota-class fast battleship that served during WW2 in the Atlantic and the Pacific. 2,500 sailors managed this gigantic mass of floating iron that got a bunch of battle stars during the war - nine to be exact.  The good part is that the "Mighty A" or the "Lucky A" never lost a soul to enemy fire - even if there were deaths from friendly fire. Its air defenses downed 22 Japanese warplanes.  Now the immense ship born in 1942 seats in a corner of Mobile Bay with views of the high-rise buildings of the City of Mobile and the Interstate 10.  Turrets and canyons are the most impressive thing here. The two tons shells could reach a target 23 miles away. The powerful barrels only could shoot 395 times before needing replacement. What a costly beast.       Some say tha

The attic was a door to his past. A place of old memories. Faded toys of his grown children, dusty and meaningless trophies, and a lifetime of useless crap.  One day, he found a forgotten box in the darkest corner. It jailed old pieces of his mind on a bunch of yellow papers smeared by ancient typewriters. These were stories born under the sign of chaos. The box ended downstairs, and the digital retyping began.  Running out of life, these short stories were the only things he could give back to the world. Finally, the old man defeated his kakorrhaphiophobia. No more worries. Just peace. 

Nightfall in Raccoon Mountain, Tennessee - License our images  here .  We arrived with the sunset to Raccoon Mountain RV Park for an overnight stop. There was enough light for a short hike of the surroundings. The caverns were already closed.  Racoon Mountain was part of the Cracker Line of the Union Army during the Civil War. They opened this supply route in 1863 after the Union defeat in the battle of Chickamauga. The soldiers named the line - I guess because they got a lot of crackers.   The mountain has "raccoon" in the name, but we didn't see any - Did the Union soldiers eat all of them?  Peaceful night surrounded by huge motorhomes.

Businesses are fine, busyness is the problem. Too much busyness has mutated us from human being to human doing. Now we can't stop and be still.  Amazing that the ancient Seneca touched this in  On the Shortness of Life . In consequence, when the pleasures have been removed which busy people derive from their actual activities, the mind cannot endure the house, the solitude, the walls, and hates to observe its own isolation,

I always remember his series Cosmos from the 1980s. Some interesting views from the American astronomer .  Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space. Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars. We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. The nitrogen in o

The popular Dock Street - License our images  here .   Rustic and aged, Cedar Key was one of the "big cities" of Florida. It's surrounded by tales of American Indians, Spanish Conquerors, and pirates. That's why there are a few museums. True that its buildings still smell to the old frontier.   The old Cedar Key Cemetery with its tombs decorated with shells and the picturesque Dock Street over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were good places for pictures. Later, the Steamers restaurant provided lunch. Tasty fish with views of Atsena Otie Key, the original site of the town. Some ruins survive over there.  The thousand-mile walk of  John Muir  of 1867 ended in this town. Impressive the many adventures of this explorer. He wrote a book about this trip called A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf - link is affiliate to Amazon, meaning that if you buy it, we get a small commission without additional c

Daniel B. Woods published Sixteen months at the gold diggings in 1852. The book tells his experience as a forty-niner in the Gold Rush of California - before that, he was a schoolteacher.   Woods got to California through a Mexico of just 7 million inhabitants. The country was plagued by robbers and guerrillas and his journey was dangerous.  Later, he met a San Francisco of tents and adobe houses drown by sickness, alcoholism, and suicides. There, he had a close encounter with death, At that very moment there was the sharp crack of a pistol in the store adjoining, and separated only by a cloth partition. Daniel B. Woods was a religious man and draw inspiration and strength from  The Pilgrim’s Progress , a popular theological fiction of the 1800s.  In his book, he talks of their interactions with the American Indians.  At the River Mercedes we saw some Indians, called Savage’s Indians, from an American with that name, who shot the chief and took his place in the tribe. He also tasted g

Sunset in the Suwannee River - License our images  here .         Days of rain over the spot where the Suwannee River gets wide and mighty. Days of camping in a hidden corner of Florida with soaked hiking and wet cooking by the campsite. Beautiful spring with cold waters that got noticed by  William Bartram  when he walked around here in 1774. Nice natural pool. Manatees come in for the warmer waters of the springs in the cold nights of winter. We saw a few, but a couple of them were pretty special.  Mom with a baby. 

Mount Mitchell on the left and Grandfather Mountain on the right - Photos: Still Gravity.  These are amazing memories recorded in old 35mm images. Two decades ago, we embarked in a road trip tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway with the kids.  The long drive went on from North Carolina to Washington D.C. Waterfalls, old mines, the tower on the summit of Mount Mitchell, the scary walking bridge over the deep cliffs of  Grandfather Mountain, and the too many overlooks to count over the oldest mountains of North America.  On the side of the humans, impressive tour of the  Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the largest house in the country.  It was always fun to travel with the children. But life keeps going. Only the memories remain. 

The bridge was falling down in 1014 from the hand of Olaf "the fat", "the stout", or Saint Olaf - Olaf Haraldsson .  And then, the Icelandic poet Sigvat the Skald had the brilliant idea to compose a song to celebrate Olaf's victory.  But, of course, you won't find a "fair lady" in that version. Hardcore Viking stuff.  London Bridge is broken down— Gold is won, and bright renown. Shields resounding, War-horns sounding, Hild is shouting in the din! Arrows singing, Mail-coats ringing— Odin makes our Olaf win.

I didn't know it. My teachers taught me that the Spaniards brought the horses to America during the conquest. This was a half-truth. This really was about the return of the horses.  Happened that horses evolved in North America and later moved to Eurasia through the Bering Land Bridge . They got extinct during the Pleistocene in this continent and returned as domesticated animals with the Spanish conquerors.  And then went wild again here. But now we are talking of the mustangs .   A full circle story.

Things repeat. Nothing comes from nothing. Creative recycle.  This fragment of "Mop the Pet Cat" from  The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Tales in Words of Three and Four Letters  from Aunt Fanny - the penname of  Frances Elizabeth Barrow - makes me remember Dr. Seuss.  I. O Ned! the sun Is in the sky, And you in bed— O fie! O fie! II. Get up, get up, And go and run Out in the air, For it is fun. III. Sit in my lap, As you may do, So I can tie The bow for you. IV. Now get the cap, The new red top, And let us go To see old Mop, V. My old pet cat, Who has one eye— For one is out, Let me say why.

The old city of White Springs, Florida - License our images  here .         Sleepy place at the banks of the Suwannee River that once was a popular destination. A sign over the rusting store by the only traffic light in town says that the business opened in 1865. Nearby is the old bathhouse that used to attract travelers from the north coming for the waters of a mineral spring to recover their health - here you can see the bathhouse at its best times. Now White Spring is a small rural city. Even the barber left.  Suwannee River, the old bathhouse, and the state park with its musical tower.  We camped in the neighboring Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. The park is at the banks of the Suwannee River - a blackwater river . It has a carillon tower and a museum about Stephen Foster, "the father of American music&q

Aiming - License our images  here .   You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.             Rabindranath Tagore Goals are the first steps in planning for the future. They are targets for our "energy weapon", for our efforts. But like it or not, there are impossible goals. Goals must be achievable, or we are deceiving ourselves.  We need to know our wants to set goals. Most important, we must know ourselves. Our capabilities and limitations. Only later, we can create the actionable pieces. Because like the Chinese proverb says, you only can eat an elephant one bite at a time.  On the way to reach goals, celebrate successes and learn from the failures. And remember that the journey is as important as the destination. Keep focus on the aim, because aiming everywhere means reaching nowhere.  W