The art show at 510 San Pedro SE, Albuquerque, NM is still on until 6:00 pm. The second photo is a 360 panorama of the space at the end of the day when everyone was winding down. Laurie has water colors and photos in the show and I have some of my photos in the show as well. The various styles of art is interesting and each artist has an interesting life story.
How many workers does it take to build success and plant a tree? Don’t forget to pray over your chicharrones.
Guildenstern was in the middle of his kitty workout when when I went out to the sunroom the other morning — his cat-like routine on the treadmill doesn’t burn many calories, but he finds it to be very satisfying.
Tristan and David are in Madrid, Spain for a couple of weeks. You can follow their adventures at Margarine is Murder.
I had another biopsy, the second this year, and this one was a real pain in the neck, since the “hot” lymph nodes they biopsied are in my neck. I suspect the hot lymph nodes are more reactive from allergies and congestion than they are cancerous; however, we can’t ignore hotspots and need to chase them down and see what they are made of. I think they may have been skimping on the lidocaine to save money, because the area they biopsied was never very numb and I could feel everything they did. On top of that, I have very good peripheral vision, so even though I had my head turned to the side and was looking at the wall, I could see as the doctor lowered the needle and then I could see the top of the syringe as the doctor moved it up and down and around to get the tissue samples. Needles to say, my neck is very sore.
The heavy rain we had was welcome, but not the hail as it pretty much ruined our vegetable garden, and stripped off a lot of leaves from other plants. The hail cut an oriental lily in half, leaving a cross section of the flower, and the last photo shows what’s left of our corn, beans and melons.
We had a major hail storm in Corrales this afternoon, which Laurie bravely recorded. By the time I got home, we just had large lakes along our road.
I’m listening to a course on the history of Christian theology, and the last lecture I listened to was on how Christians came to the idea of the soul separating from the body and going to Heaven or Hell when they die. Believe it or not, the idea of the soul going to heaven when one dies is not in the least bit Christian in origin, or even Jewish for that matter, but purely from Plato. If you stick by the Christian tradition, Christ returns to establish God’s Kingdom on earth and resurrects those Christians who are saved to be part of the Kingdom of God on earth. So why is the idea that our souls go to Heaven or Hell when we die so prevalent in the Western Christian tradition? Mostly because Augustine was well versed in Plato and liked the idea of a separate body and soul, but he still believed there had to be the resurrection of the body before the soul could achieve complete happiness. One problem is that Paul and the other New Testament writers believed Jesus would return in their life-time, so there was no problem about what happened when a Christian died, but as time wore on, later Christians became anxious about what happens when they die. In a simplistic way of looking at a very complex and drawn out issue, Plato had the easy answer — good souls go to Heaven and bad souls go to Hell — but then there are the questionable souls, that, again because of Augustine, are believed to end up in purgatory, at least in the Catholic tradition!
After I dropped Laurie off to sing in the choir at the early service, I went over to UNM and photographed the ducks and the architecture. The clouds were building up over the Sandias on my way home, so I stopped at the jetti sculpture on Coors and got the shots of the Sandias, clouds and sculpture.
Okay it’s actually a wasp, but “A Wasp and Button” didn’t quite have the same ring to it. For the rest of the story on Button, the rattlesnake we rescued on July 1, she (we decided he is probably a she) ate and then Tristan and Laurie took her out to the mesa and let her go (the last two photos).
Three thirty PM the clouds let loose and we got a nice downpour. The Monsoon season is underway.
Corrales canceled the water fights this year, and since the bosque is closed we couldn’t go out to the river to watch the fireworks. I don’t know why they cancelled the water fights, but if it was to save water, that’s ridiculous as flushing your toilet uses more water than a squirt gun fight — so it must have something to do with guns and violence and all that — you know all those studies that show how squirt guns and water fights turn kids into violent criminals. Whatever the reason, no one can have fun in Corrales on the 4th. Despite Corrales, we had a great time with Jerri, Bob and Tristan and the lightning gave us a wonderful light show.
Off Center & Not Even 