And The Winners Are…

Spunk waiting with AantíiciipÁation!

Gabriela announced the winners of her Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose poetry contest this morning. I am very excited to announce that I shared Third Place with D. Wallace Peach. Congratulations to Virginia Mateias for her First Place poem, and Ingrid Wilson, and Eric Daniel Clarke for their Second Place poems. You can read all the poems at: The Winners of The Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

My poem is One Side Sacred The Other Side Profane inspired by Gabriela’s poem Between Sacred and Profane. I based my poem on W. Eugene Smith’s activism against mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in the 1970s. He published a book titled Minamata: Life Sacred and Profane in 1972 that brought the issue worldwide attention. I first saw the book when I was a photo student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1980s. I wanted to buy a copy of the book back then, but I couldn’t afford it as a student. Now copies sell for hundreds of dollars, so I still don’t have one. W. Eugene Smith was one of the most important American photojournalists of the 20th Century. I don’t think he ever took a bad photo. His County Doctor series is brilliant. Chisso employees attacked and beat Smith in 1972. Smith lost sight in one eye and never really recovered. He died in 1978 at the tender age of 59. His death was a huge loss to the world of photography.

Dawn

We have cloudy skies tonight. The photos below are from last night before I encountered the zombies and sprites.

Christine’s Tree with the moon in the background. Mia’s Tree under Venus. Christine’s Tree with a bicycle in the background.

Sunset

Happy Halloween

My birthday cake. Costco didn’t have any cakes with Happy Birthday!

This is a display along Corrales Road. I’m happy I got it early. The skeleton disappeared after the high winds last week.

All the cats got to try on the bat wings. Loki in photos 12 and 13 was the best batwing model. Glenda (3rd photo) and Gwendolyn (last photo) were pretty good, also. Black cats know they look good in bat wings. Spunk, on the other hand, told me exactly what he thought about wearing bat wings after I took them off him (7th photo).

Sasha, Spunk, Roses, Gwendolyn, Sunset

I brought my guitar stool out into the dance room for Laurie to try it out to see what height stool we needed to order for her to use at school. Sasha was really digging on it so I left it out for her to hangout on. But then Spunk couldn’t resist, and started eating the stool. So now there are several torn places on the seat. Spunk has to be one of the most destructive cats I have ever known.

“Whaddya talking about? Who? Moi? Me! ¿Me? Fi? Mise? Μου? Mij? Mir? मैं? Мне? Resa’s sweet little ‘Spunky Poo💋’? Do I look the the type who would eat a guitar stool?” YES!!!!!

“Oh wow, man! Like there’s some really heavy hallucinogens in that catnip! It’s like I can see strawberry catnip fields forever!”

I thought there would be a really good, colorful sunset out of these clouds last night. It didn’t happen. Everything turned gray. I think Gwendolyn’s catnip hallucinations confiscated all of the strawberry color out of the sky to color her forever strawberry catnip fields.

Moon & Venus, Cator Mortis, Lizard, and A Dilemma

The moon, Venus and binary star Spica were aligned tonight. I got the Moon and Venus from the office parking lot. I never saw Spica. I believe Mercury was in the alignment, also, but it was below the horizon by the time I could see Venus.

Loki had a bad case of Cator Mortis this morning.

Spunk was worn out from keeping us safe from monsters and evil spirits during the night.

Silver was chilling. In the chilly morning temps.

Lizard at Laurie’s parent’s house.

The dilemma was that one of the motors on one our HVAC units at the office stopped working. I needed to send a photo of one fan running and the other fan not running to the maintenance person. The photo on the left was taken in regular iPhone mode, which had a shutter speed fast enough to stop the fan that was running. I used an app called Slow Shutter to take the photo on the right, which shows one fan running and the other not running. I had installed Slow Shutter in hopes of photographing lightning on my iPhone. No lightning so far, but it came in handy to solve the dilemma of showing one fan running and the other one not running.

Rain

I went out to photograph the pending storm this afternoon. Laurie asked if I was doing a time lapse video. I told her I needed to go in and get my tripod. On the way in to get my tripod, Laurie asked if I thought it was too early to take the clothes off the line. I said you probably should take them in earlier than later. My clothes got caught in a downpour last weekend and I had to bring them inside and rehang them in the house. Laurie headed for the clothes line, a went in and grabbed my tripod. I opened the door to the deck and “Boom!” the rain started coming down hard. Laurie had hung her clothes on hangers on the clothes line, so she was able to get the clothes gathered and inside before she got too wet. Very smart of her. The rain was intense for about an hour, which included hail every now and then.

Here’s a short video of the rain with a little hail.

Spunk decided to go inside and show the kittens how to sing with his tail while it rained. I put a translation of what he is singing on the ticker tape along the bottom of the screen in the video.