View From The Truck Window: December 2020

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

This is a hedge apple trunk (maclura pomifera), also called Osage orange, once a stout and strong natural fence around the edge of farm fields throughout the Midwest. In the fall after harvest, cattle were turned out in the fields to clean up what ears of corn escaped the harvester. When pruned, the hedge apple sprouted abundant shoots from its base; as these shoots grew, they became interwoven and formed a dense, thorny barrier.

Hedge apple was replaced by the invention of barbed wire, and today fences are being taken out everywhere, as farms no longer have cattle or hogs. Hedge is so tough that it takes a bulldozer to remove it.

Quotes I Like

"To make images is a way of ordering one's world, of exploring and understanding one's relationship to existence. . . . The images we make are often ahead of our understanding, but to say "yes" to a subject is also to have recognized, however dimly, a part of oneself; to live with that image, to accept its significance is perhaps to grow in understanding."

~ John Blakemore

"The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking -- and looking."

~ Brooks Atkinson

"To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing, to cry freely, to collect experience and shape it into forms that others can share."

~ Jan Phillips

"Images unearthed are not merely random, they are metaphor. I am not creating something else. I am revealing who I am."

~ Catherine Moore

"Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator."

~ Unknown

"We do not remember days, we remember moments."

~ Cesare Pavese

"Life is getting up an hour early to live an hour more."

~ Hal Borland

"The silence spoke loudly of silence,

and the rivers kept speaking,

of rivers, of boulders and air."

~ Jane Hirshfield

"Have you ever noticed how "What the hell" is always the right decision to make?"

~ Terry Johnson

"I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them."

~ Diane Arbus

"Photographers too often hear, "Your camera takes good pictures." Imagine telling an author, "Your computer writes such great books."

~ Sandra Juto

"Art is not a pastime but a priesthood."

~ Jean Cocteau

"Earth's crammed with Heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes -

The rest sit 'round it and pluck blackberries."

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Icy Fingers of Winter

Monday, December 28, 2020

A Quick Flash of Color

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Merry Christmas, My Friends!

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Early Shadows

Just Swimming In Texture

Monday, December 21, 2020

The Mountains Overhead

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Drama From The Skies

Monday, December 14, 2020

Al Fresco Lunch

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Chase The Squirrel!

Tuxedo Required

Don't Fence Me In

Morning Catch

Afternoon Calm

Evening Window

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Feeling Confrontational