Still Gravity

C cooking in our campsite at Colt Creek State Park, Florida - License our images  here .         Colt Creek is a small state park in Central Florida. It's at the southern tip of the Green Swamp Wilderness Preserve. We hiked the trails and rode the bikes but passed on kayaking in the small lake.  The state park rents kayaks.  These lands were used before for cattle, harvesting pine trees, and mining. The state of Florida bought them in 2006.  On the wildlife side, we met two rattlesnakes and a few raccoons. There were coyotes singing to the moon in the chilly nights.  Our truck camper in the Colt Creek campground.  Colt Creek State Park was a quiet place with few visitors. Perfect for relaxation. More photos here .

Rumi's poem "The Fragile Vial"  may have the answer.   A True Man stares at his old shoes and sheepskin jacket.  Everyday he goes up to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat. This is his wisdom, to remember his original clay and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.

Cloudland Canyon - License our images  here .         Another Georgia canyon painted with the colors of the fall. This is the western edge of Lookout Mountain. It was known as Sitton Gulch. The Cloudland Canyon name came with the state park created in the 1930s.  We hiked the rims and went to the bottom for the waterfalls. All was dry. Winter is coming. No creek at the bottom of the canyon. 

The idea comes from the wisdom of the American Indians - in this case from the Sioux or Lakota. It's all about keeping an eye in the bad wolf that brings out the worse in us. An old man spoke to his grandson. "My child," he said. "Inside everyone there is a battle between two wolves. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth." The boy thought for a moment. Then he asked, "Which wolf wins?" A moment of silence passed before the old man replied, "The one you feed…"  

The busy campground of Highlands Hammock State Park, Florida - License our images  here . This state park is in a big hammock northwest of Lake Okeechobee. The main campground was full and also all the primitive sites  on the other side of the park were reserved. Not the best of the stays in such a busy campground. Smoky camp.  The trails  - photos of another trail here - of this park are beautiful, and the loop road is great to ride bikes - only three miles. This Florida state park was built by the  CCC Corps  of the 1930s. There is a museum in the park.  Inside the museum of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Check this video for more of our photos from this park.  During our stay, we visited  Bok Tower Gardens . Also known as "Bok Mountain Lake Sanctuary" or the “Singing Tower”, the tower is amazingly beautiful. It's on top of Iron M

Everybody knows one or two bad critics - sometimes more. They are those folks that point our faults with ill intentions.  Do they matter? No. They don't count. Keep pushing forward and forget about them.   President Theodore Roosevelt put it well in a speech at the Sorbonne, France, on April 23, 1910. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with thos

Mountains around South Pittsburg, Tennessee - License our images  here . This is a memory from 2005. The spot was close to South Pittsburg, a small town on the banks of the Tennessee River by the Sequatchie valley. Nearby - in the direction of the picture but in the state of Alabama - is Russell Cave National Monument. We didn't go because we were traveling north towards the city of Nashville.  Russell Cave is one of the oldest archaeological sites in the southeast of the US. The cavern was a shelter for locals for thousands of years. The remains of campfires are dated between 6550 and 6145 BCE - this was over 8,000 years ago. Interesting place to visit.

Napoleon was... Napoleon. No presentation needed. Think what you want about him, but he said some interesting things.  Ability is nothing without opportunity. Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man. And if he didn't say them... the lines still sound very true.

This is a hard to answer question. Some say that was Ovidio with his  Tristia . He wrote the letters during his exile in the times of Augustus.   LITTLE book, you will go without me — and I grudge it not — to the city. Alas that your master is not allowed to go! Go, but go unadorned, as becomes the book of an exile; For others, the first place goes to Saint Augustine of Hippo with his  Confessions . This text was written between 397-400 AD.   Passing hence from infancy, I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me, displacing infancy. And what about the Spanish world?  The first one there was  Memorias  from Leonor López de Córdoba. Written between 1401-1404, this lady was a confidant of Queen Catalina of Castile until vanished from the court.   Sepan, pues, quienes vean este escrito que yo, doña Leonor López de Córdoba, hija de mi señor el maestre don Martín López de Córdoba y de doña Sancha Carrillo, a quien dé Dios gloria y paraíso, juro por este significante de la cruz que yo adoro,

Building in Miami reflecting the sun - License our images  here .         Square and rectangular geometric patterns are boring to the eye. Why? Monotonous repetition. Lack of surprises. In the case of this building, all the bets are on the brutalist architecture of the 1950s - the one in which socialist and communist countries were "masters" because of lack of money and good taste. Apartments enclosed in these styles feel like offices. Or even worse, they feel like jails - are they not the same? A circle has no end. Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation