3Dsound: Draggin' the Line

Hike Fort Collins: Proof you can corral your co-workers and 18-year-old daughter into hiking with you at dawn

2012-05-07T00:04:00Z

Hike Fort Collins: Incidence of April wildflowers on Horsetooth Rock Trail

2012-04-23T08:02:59Z

Northern Colorado
Draggin' the line

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What we did

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What we found

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What it means

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Photos of April wildflowers on Horsetooth Rock Trail

Kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), Heath family (Ericaceae)

Mountain ball cactus (Pediocactus simpsonii), Cactus family (Cactaceae)

Mountain bluebell (Mertensia longiflora), Borage family (Boraginaceae)

Pasque flower (Pulsatilla occidentalis), Buttercup family (Ranunculaceae)

Plains prickly pear (Opuntia sp.), Cactus family (Cactaceae)

Sand lily (Leucocrinum montanum), Lily family (Liliaceae)

Spring beauty (Claytonia rosea), Purslane family (Portulacaceae)

Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus), Rose family (Rosaceae)

Unknown A

Unknown B

Unknown C

Unknown D

Unknown E

Unknown F

Unknown G

Unknown H

Wax currant (Ribes cereum), Currant family (Grossulariaceae)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Composite family (Compositae)

Photos from the trail

Hike Fort Collins

{ political cartoon } Dogs against Romney

2012-04-20T01:40:00Z

Election 2012
Dogs aren't luggage or lunch: Vin Paneccasio [New York based artist and Account Executive at Bluecat Traditional] (12-Apr-02), The Daily Maul [where there's always blood in the water], online at thedailymaul.com (accessed 18-Apr-12).

Election 2012

Hike Fort Collins: Horsetooth Rock at dawn

2012-04-15T00:02:00Z

Northern Colorado
Draggin' the line

On Wednesday a Facebook friend posted a photo he'd taken from the top of Horsetooth Rock at dawn. When I saw the photo, I immediately recognized the inevitability of hiking to Horsetooth at dawn, as a touchstone experience for living in Northern Colorado. Which is what subsequent research verified. If you're in Fort Collins, you've got to see the sunrise from Horsetooth Rock. It's an accomplishment you can check off, an experience you can know firsthand, and a source of insight you might engage.

So on Friday, I got up at 3 am, ate some breakfast and checked my e-mail before driving over to Horsetooth Reservoir and the Larimer County Horsetooth Mountain Open Space. I was on the Horsetooth Rock trail by 4:20 am.

I wasn't alone. Several carfuls of young people in their late teens and early twenties pulled into the parking lot about the same time I did. They were all friends and hit the trail behind me.

I managed to stay ahead of them and periodically looked over my shoulder to see their flashlights flickering on the trail below. Actually, bringing a flashlight hadn't occurred to me. Still, I was shocked by the amount of ambient light from Fort Collins that filtered over the foothills and illuminated the trail. I didn't have trouble seeing where to go.

I reached the summit before 6 am and was soon joined by the young people, whose group of over ten included guys and girls, all of whom greeted the dawn with hoots, ululations and excited conversation. They'd all been up all night. So this wasn't the time for quiet meditation, like I had thought it would be – but watching the sun rise over the eastern Colorado plains does give you a lot to hoot about.

On my way down the trail, four runners passed me, followed by four mountain bikers and a lady who seemed to be taking her dog for an early morning walk. All of that trail activity – along with the young people and myself – occurred on a weekday before 7:30 am, and it tells you how important the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space is to Fort Collins.

As I descended the trail, I also saw wildflowers. Pasque flowers bloomed just below Horsetooth Rock. They were breathtaking, in their sturdy insistence on rising above the soil surface to face the cool spring air. Further down the trail, the extravagantly flowering serviceberry bushes made me happy to have taken the time to make this hike.

Hike Fort Collins

Dashboard drumming Bible study: Crabapple blossoms on Easter – Thinking about Psalm 104 and the Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten

2012-04-11T00:11:00Z

Easter
By Thee man livith and drags the line

When we think of Easter and Christ's resurrection, we think of sunrise and sunrise services. The association between Christ and sunrise is metaphoric, rather than worshipful of the sun, but anyone who's participated in an Easter sunrise service knows how Christian worship becomes transformed by the wonderful experience of singing hymns while watching the dawn break into a new day. It's an experience of daybreak and creation that the author of Psalm 104 described like this:

1. Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou are very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty,
2. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain;
3. Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind;
4. Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire;
5. Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.

The Psalm's author conflates our Judea-Christian God with the sun. On Easter morning we can understand the author's point of view, even if we don't realize the author is probably referencing the ancient Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten, which dates from around 1375 BC.

The Great Hymn and the Egyptian worship of the Aten introduced the world to monotheism as a framework for faith. That revolutionary belief included graphical representations of the sun as a solar disk with rays of light streaming from it, which we read echoed in Psalm 104 (e.g., "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind").

Today we appreciate the Hymn because it conceived of deity in a new way and influenced Semitic religion. The Hymn survived for us as hieroglyphic engravings on the walls of believers' tombs. And Philip Glass made an opera of it (Akhnaten, 1983).

Yesterday on Easter, as I drove around Fort Collins, I was struck – like I often am – by the brilliance of Colorado light. It caused me to think of Jesus, who's the light of the world, 'Who layeth the beams of his chambers upon the wings of the wind.' The clarity of Colorado light is what a semiarid environment and 5000 ft elevation do for us.

I was also struck by the flowering crabapples. As I drove down Stover Street in the early afternoon, I realized the crabapples were at their height of blooming – a full month earlier than what they should be. By late afternoon I knew I had to celebrate Easter by taking pictures of the crabapples.

The first photo below is of a crabapple tree located on the grounds of St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Stover Street. The second photo is of the crabapples lining Springfield Drive, just west of the CSU campus. I discovered the Springfield Drive crabapples when I first moved here 18 years ago, and I go to see them each spring. They're a Fort Collins horticultural resource – one that warrants recognition, conservation or emulation.

As you can tell by the long shadows in the photos, I took them after 6:30 pm. Psalm 104 talks about the evening and nightfall and acknowledges their relationship to the sun and day:

19. He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth its going down.
20. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
21. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their food from God.
22. The sun riseth; they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.
23. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening.

These verses are as evocative in depicting what happens at nightfall as the Psalm's opening verses are worshipful (or metamorphic) in praising the sun's splendor. Surprisingly perhaps, it's these later verses and their references to 'going down', 'darkness', 'night', 'creeping forth' and 'prey' that rely more strongly on the Great Hymn. It's as if the Psalm's author felt inadequate in unifying the God who "coverest [him]self with light as with a garment" with the God who makes "The young lions roar after their prey". Or maybe the author recognized the Great Hymn includes some great images and decided to crib some of them for himself.

Either way, the Psalm and Hymn acknowledge the nonduality of day and night. It's what my late afternoon photos of crabapple trees are about: My grateful recognition that Christ's resurrection extends from dawn to dusk and back again; and that Colorado light flatters a crabapple blossom at any time.

Included below are my photos of Fort Collins crabapple trees and the text of the Great Hymn, along with the Great Hymn in parallel with Psalm 104.

Great Hymn to the Aten and parallel presentation of the hymn with Psalm 104

The following pages are from Arthur Weigall (1910, revised 1922), The life and times of Ahknaton: Pharaoh of Egypt, Thornton Butterworth Limited, London.

Dashboard drumming Bible study

{ music video } Strange music: Earl Scruggs, 1924–2012

2012-04-04T00:11:07Z

RIP
Pioneering licks: Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt (uploaded 01-Jan-12), Foggy Mountain Breakdown, PPandGM's Channel [Tuks, I will not forget you!], online at www.youtube.com [video TmXef3ad_zA] (accessed 30-Mar-12).

Bluegrass is such a strange music. It didn't exist until Bill Monroe invented it, yet it claims a providence going back to the hollers and pickin of Davy Crockett. This video of Earl Scruggs captures what makes bluegrass universal. RIP Earl Scruggs.

Pop music

Quotable: "Just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim"

2012-03-16T16:59:14Z

Election 2012
Obama says what's on our minds

"I don't think it requires us to go negative in the sense of us running a bunch of ads that are false, or character assassinations... We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim. We won't even comment on them, we'll just run those in a loop... and people can make up their own minds."

Barack H. Obama
November 11, 2011, speaking with Hispanic journalists at the White House

Election 2012

{ political cartoon } Who said it? Mitt Romney or Mr. Burns?

2012-03-06T22:18:00Z

Economic fundamentalism
What, me worry? The Idiotical [Mad Magazine blog] (05-Mar-12), online at www.madmagazine.com/blog (accessed 06-Mar-12).

Election 2012 — Give to the rich

{ single frame comic } Nice resumé, Mr. Hendrix... But are you experienced? (Exactly my experience last week)

2012-03-01T19:34:51Z

Graphic storytelling
Don't point that plastic finger at me: Craig Swanson (2004), Perspicuity [the notebooks of Craig Swanson], online at content.perspicuity.com/?q=cartoons (accessed 27-Feb-12).

Piss up a rope

All I want for Christmas is a brick of Himalayan pink salt (and a cast iron skillet big enough to put it in)

2011-12-24T12:10:07Z

Christmas