Here Be Monsters!

The Loch Ness Monster is a creature believed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. Popular interest and belief in the animal has fluctuated since it was brought to the world's attention in 1933.

Today, you can buy a little stuffed Loch Ness Monster, fondly called Nessie, at souvenir stands on the highway that runs along the lake.

Seventy six years later to the day, Photojournalist Punkn captures the very first picture of the long rumored, Big Muddy Ocha!


Long hidden in the murky muddy depths of the Mississippi River, our intrepid photojournalist alertly gets the picture, before the elusive beast slowly sinks beneath the raging flood waters.


She reports, there are vendors hawking little orange traffic cones on the side of the road near what has been rechristened, "Ocha's Bend" for as little as $1.99. I bet you will be able to order your very own stuffed Big Muddy Ocha from an Internet website before the week is over!

Spring in the Hood

I took the following pictures from Port Indian, on the Schuykill River Trail. I wasn't up to doing any walking on Sunday, but the weather was so inviting, I wanted to get out of the "cabin" for awhile. I put on a black jacket and sat on a bench with the sunshine in my face and chest. The warmth felt really good.



I think one of my favorite trees is the Willow, especially early in the Spring when it is one of the first trees to turn yellow-green. I couldn't (or rather mostly just didn't) get off the trail to find an angle where I could take this tree's picture without the wires in the foreground. What I was hoping for was catching the ethereral yellow-green glow of the sunshine reflecting off the Willow's branches. I was pleasantly surprised by the gleam in the freshly green grass.



I sat on the bench and actually dosed off for a few minutes. I think my near motionlessness made the skitterish, hungry squirrels think they could risk climbing through the branches over my head. I whispered very, very softly, under my breath, "please?" and eased my camera out of my coat pocket and took a couple quick pictures.



This squirrel was really, really hungry. It hung on for dear life about 40 feet over my head, climbing way out on slender branches barely able to support it, to reach for the new buds and fresh shoots growing at the very end of the twig-like branches.



These Daffodils, upset because I was intent on willow trees and squirrels and seemingly ignoring them, turn their backs to me... Well, I think these prima divas are beautiful no matter what side you get to see.

Nostalgia - Good Ol' Cone Days

The term nostalgia describes a longing for the past. The word is made up of two Greek roots (nostos "returning home", and algos "pain"), to refer to "the pain a person feels because he wishes to return home".

But like Thomas Wolfe says, in his novel, You Can't Go Home Again, using the voice of the protagonist George Webber, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time..."

This weekend, I got some pictures from Photojournalist Punkn and one of her pictures really made me sit back and ponder things. Somehow, the cresting rise of the hill, and the pleasant boyhood home that lies behind it, further obscured by a tree drapped in freshly-budded green tantalized me... I could almost hear the shouts of the schoolmates playing a game of baseball in the big vacant lot in the valley, looked upon by the cows slowly chewing the tasty cud of the seasons first green grass...

Country roads... take me home...

Surely there is an apple pie, fresh-made vanilla ice cream as well as a small stream to splash some smooth stones into over that hill...



I'm sure Mrs. Delores Pointyhead has some fresh gossip for her good friend Mrs. Elma Perkytop - she's made a point to meet her neighbor at the mailbox that bright, promising, spring day.

I can even hear "Oh, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip.. So you better be sure and listen close the first time!" the ladies on Hee Haw used to sing on TV all those years ago...

But you can't go home again no matter how badly you yearn to...

Blogs of Note

Pennsylvania has recently passed an anti-smoking law banning smoking from inside workplaces. As the storm clouds gather overhead, the Orange Cone Head Aliens and the Orange Striped Barrels push and shove for a protected spot outside near the shipping door.

Ever think it would be cool to nominate someone's blog as a "Blog of Note"?

Well, you can...

Go to http://help.blogger.com/?page=wishlist and in the Vote for Feature section, click on Recommend a Blog of Note.

A text box will open up for you to enter the URL of the blog you want to nominate. Then either sit back and see what happens or tell your friends to nominate some folks too! I entered someone that doesn't blog every day but is always a treat when they do as well as couple other bloggers that always make me smile when I read their words.