Sunday poem and pictures

Here's one of my favorite poems: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray (1716-1771.)

There was a time when I could recite this from memory from start to finish. It also inspired the first story that I ever wrote at the age of fourteen which I called "The Paths of Glory." It took the poet nine years to write this poem. He started it in 1742 and published it in 1751 anonymously because he was so modest a man.

It is not only a philosophical and spiritual poem but is almost musical in it's language. Gray used alliteration and assonation not just to be clever but to PACE the way the words are spoken. A simple example is "The plowman homeward plods his weary way." Can you hear how the poet has used alliteration to pace this line till it sounds slow and heavy and weary?

Only Shakespeare and the King James' Bible have provided the English language with more memorable quotes than Gray's Elegy. It is the greatest poem ever written in the English language. Did you ever wonder where this quote came from?

"Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

It's from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

by Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

Picture one: Robin's Wood meadow in summer

Picture two: Robin's Wood meadow in autumn

(These are worth clicking on to enlarge.)

A famous South African - Emperor Norton of San Francisco

One of San Francisco's most famous citizens was Emperor Norton. When I first heard about Emperor Norton, soon after arriving in San Francisco, I did not know that he was a South African.

Joshua Abraham Norton was born on February 14th, 1819. He lived in Algoa Bay in South Africa where his father was a prosperous merchant. When he was 30 he decided to come to California during the Gold Rush and arrived in San Francisco aboard the Dutch schooner, Franzika, in 1849. Norton did not go searching for gold but instead decided to follow in his father's footsteps and go into business as a merchant. He had come to America with a nest egg of thirty thousand dollars, with which he opened a business selling supplies to gold miners. He prospered and started buying up the land that would eventually become San Francisco’s Cow Hollow district.

By 1855, Norton was one of the most respected businessmen in San Francisco. Because of his large real estate holdings, his friends started referring to him as “Emperor.” It was at this time that he hit on idea of cornering San Francisco’s rice market. The city’s large Chinese population were a ready market. In those days the only way rice (or almost anything else) arrived was aboard cargo steamships. Investors were quick to sign on. But this venture failed when two ships full of rice arrived in San Francisco and undercut his market.

Norton spent the next three years in court, and emerged penniless in 1858. Then he disappeared for about nine months. There is no record of where he went. He returned suddenly in the late summer of 1859, proudly walking the streets in a beaver hat and navel regalia. His behaviour was so eccentric that people began to say that he had gone mad. That September, he walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and presented them with this single sentence, which they ran on the next edition’s front page:

At the peremtory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States, and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

Norton I
Emperor of the United States
September 17th, 1859

That day people on the streets began greeting Norton with deep bows and curtsies.

Norton I ruled by proclamation, and it didn’t seem to upset him if not all his edicts were carried out. If taxes or water rates were too high, he commanded that they be lowered. If there were inadequacies in the city services, he ordered improvements. On the eve of the Civil War he temporarily dissolved the Union. After the Prussian victory in 1872, he ordered a week of continuous celebration and thanksgiving. Bay Area newspapers competed for the honor of posting his proclamations, and more than once they devised fakes to generate sales and interest, a practice against which the Emperor railed angrily.

Few monarchs ever had Norton’s common touch; he abjured seclusion and luxury. He attended every public function or meeting, always arriving by foot or bicycle rather than coach, and performed daily rounds of his capitol’s streets, making sure the police were on their beats, and that cleanliness, harmony and order prevailed. If he noticed someone performing some kind act or other, he might spontaneously ennoble them, from which practice the expression “Queen for a day” was obtained. The titles were especially popular with children, who would follow him in groups, looking everywhere for litter to pick up or old ladies to help across the street.

Norton’s personal expenses were few. He ate free of charge at whatever restaurant suited him. After he visited an establishment, the owners were permitted to post a sign: "By Appointment to His Emperor, Joshua Norton I." Invariably, these "appointments" brought great business to the saloon or restaurant so graced. He had three seats reserved for him at every opera and theater performance (one for himself and one each for his famously well-behaved dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.)

The city itself actually paid for his uniforms and the local Masonic Lodge paid for his small apartment. Nonetheless, whenever necessary, Norton had his own currency printed, which was accepted everywhere without question which was surprising because, at that time, U.S. paper money was still regarded with distrust in California. He also had the option of levying taxes, for which his normal procedure was to walk into the offices of an old business friend and politely announce an imperial assessment of ten million or so dollars, but he could usually be talked down to two or three dollars, or perhaps a cigar.

Still though, this wasn’t really legal, and feelings towards Norton I amongst the police were rather mixed. In January of 1867, in fact, he was arrested by an overzealous policeman “to be confined for treatment of a mental disorder,” and held at the police station pending a hearing. The public outrage was immediate. Every newspaper editorial denounced the action and there was the real possibility of a riot. Chief of Police, Patrick Crowley, himself opened the cell doors and issued a lengthy public apology to the Emperor. Norton himself was magnanimous about the whole affair and from then on his relations with the police became much more congenial. He led their annual parades and inspected the new cadets; members of what he now called his Imperial Constabulary saluted him when he passed.

Norton I was a great believer in progress and innovation, and many of his ideas, for which he was sometimes regarded as mad, have become realities. He issued numerous proclamations proposing and then finally commanding the construction of a suspension bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland, complete with his own design sketches. His planned San Francisco terminus is within a block of where the Bay Bridge abuts now, and a plaque on it bears testimony to his foresight. He was also convinced that travel by air would one day become common and commissioned panels of researchers and designers to create plans for airships.

The Emperor called for a world of leisure and creativity, a country of the mind without borders, in which all were engaged in their most creative work. Waiters and busboys would present lectures and philosophers would clean tables. ("I could argue all day about the significance of facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table.") He inspired scientists and engineers to draw up plans for great civic projects, mile-high buildings, gigantic ocean-going balloons propelled by bicylists, a network of tubes beneath the city to speed postal deliveries. The plans themselves were considered to be great works of art, and exhibitions drew great throngs. Alas, all records of these plans were lost in the great fire after the earthquake of 1906.

Perhaps the most unusual contribution of Emperor Norton to the city's history was the Modern Aires orchestra; an orchestra composed entirely of recently-invented instruments, such as the bailerophone, the saxophone, and the onmiphone. Although performances were almost painfully cacophonous, San Francisco's citizens flocked to them, laughing and holding their hands over their ears as necessary. Since many of these instruments were so new no one knew how they should sound, the orchestra was different for almost every performance; it was not an uncommon sight for musicians and audience to change places during the course of a program.

Emperor Norton wore a blue military uniform with tarnished gold-plated epaulets, which had been given him by the officers at the Presidio United States Army post, and a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette, and he always carried both a cane and an umbrella. When his uniform began to look shabby, the Board of Supervisors, with a great deal of ceremony, appropriated enough money to buy him another, for which the Emperor sent them a gracious note of thanks and a patent of nobility in perpetuity for each Supervisor.

He sent frequent cables to fellow rulers, offering surprisingly well-informed advice or reflecting on the complex responsibilities of rulership. Many of the responses he got were in fact forgeries, created by his friends to make him happy, but many were not. King Kamehameha of Hawaii (known then as the Sandwich Isles) was so taken with the Emperor’s insight and understanding that towards the end of his life he refused to recognize the U.S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of the Emperor.

Norton I died quite suddenly of "apoplexy," on January 8th, 1880, at the corner of California and Grant, on his way to a scientific conference. He left no heir. He left an estate comprising a two-and-a-half dollar gold piece, three dollars in silver, a franc piece of 1828, and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine.

San Francisco went into a period of deep mourning for three days. Ten thousand people from every walk of life lined up to view his mortal remains and his funeral cortege was two miles long. At 2:39 p.m. that day, during his funeral, San Francisco experienced a total eclipse of the sun. Fifty-four years later, Norton’s coffin was reinterred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma. Once again, flags throughout the city were lowered and businesses closed their doors. About sixty thousand people attended the ceremony, which was accompanied by full military honors and taps.

Pic one: Norton at the age of 35 when he was at the height of his financial success.

Pic two: Norton, when he first returned after disappearing for nine months.

Pic three: a formal portrait of the Emperor.

Pic four: a cartoon of Norton helping himself to dinner watched by his devoted dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.

Sunday poem and pictures

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

From "As You Like It," act II, scene vii by William Shakespeare.

Top picture: one of Andy's greenhouse orchids - dendrobium.

Bottom picture: plumeria - I grew up knowing this flower as "frangipani." It is used to make leis in Hawaii. It is a small tree about 10 or 15 feet tall with very soft wood which breaks easily and gives off a white milky sap. There was one outside of my bedroom window in South Africa when I lived in Isipingo Beach. It has a very strong perfume which would fill my room on warm summer nights. I sure would love to be able to grow one but I would probably need a hot-house to do so.

The first inhabitants of South Africa

The Khoikhoi (meaning the "people people" or "real human beings") were the first people to live in South Africa. They had no written language and therefore no historical records. Some shards of a certain kind of spouted pottery associated with the Khoi, known as Bambata, were found in east central Africa dating back to two thousand years ago. Some anthropologists have speculated that the Khoi are the descendants of the first real human beings whose fossils were found in the Great Rift Valley of central east Africa. [Did the Khoi call themselves the "real human beings" to differentiate themselves from remnants of older hominid races like Homo erectus or australopithecus?]

Shards of the same kind of pottery were also found in South Africa dating back to a thousand years ago. Cave-paintings show that, at that time, the Khoi lived in widely scattered tribes throughout southern Africa - which includes Namibia, Botswana, Lesoto, Swaziland and the Republic of South Africa.

The Bantu people (Zulus, Twsanas, Sotos etc) began moving south from east central Africa into South Africa in the 1500s and drove the Khoi further south and west. The Bantu killed the Khoi men and used the women and children as slaves. The Khoi ended up escaping to the deserts of Namibia and Botswana as well as the Kalahari desert of South Africa where they lived as hunter-gatherers. Some migrated all the way south to the Cape where they settled down and became known as the San. Some became pastoralists keeping mostly sheep and some cattle. Others became fishermen or "Strandlopers" (beach walkers.)

The Khoi are very different from the Bantu. The Bantu are dark brown, tall and heavily built. The Khoi are small and light-boned and have a yellowish skin and almost Asian facial features with high cheek-bones and slanty eyes. They also have steatopygia which helps them to survive in the desert. Their buttocks become soft and saggy when they have had no food or water for a while and swell up like a camel's hump when they eat and drink.

Khoi women have a flap of skin hanging down in front of their vaginas - a good way to keep sand out of their delicate bits. The men have cartilages in their penises which makes them semi-erect all the time. When the Dutch moved north from the Cape and met the Khoi, they called them "Bushmen" by which name they are known to this day.

[I wrote the above before dinner and now I'm back - full of delicious roast beef, roast potatoes, broccolli, gravy and an Eola Hills Pinot Noir, my favorite Oregon wine. It's quite a time-trip to start talking about hunter-gatherers after that. I'm just so glad that I don't have to hunt wild animals, dig for roots and sleep in the desert without a roof over my head, clean sheets and central heating. Thank God for human progress and evolution. BTW in case anyone thinks that South Africa is tropical - nope - only the east coast is subtropical and most of the rest (except for the western Cape which has a Mediterranean climate like California) is high desert with fiercely hot summers and viciously cold winters. The coldest I've ever been was in the Magaliesberg mountains not far from Johannesburg and Pretoria.]

There are still pure-blooded Khoi/Bushmen today living their simple lives in the deserts as hunter-gatherers but they are slowly moving into small rural towns and becoming absorbed by the local Bantu tribes.

The San people of the Cape Colony were called "Hotnots" or Hottentots by the Dutch settlers. In 1713 the Hottentots were decimated by smallpox and those who survived were eventually absorbed by the other people of mixed blood in the Cape who were called "Bastards."

Some of the Bastards were so ungovernable and amoral that they were expelled from the Cape of Good Hope. Those who were allowed to remain became known as "Cape Coloreds."

Those who were forced out of the colony moved north away from the Dutch colony and eventually became known as the Griqua, the only mixed-blood tribe in Africa. [Both the Cape Coloreds and the Griqua speak Afrikaans.]

The Bastards were a truly multiracial tribe made up of thieves, escaped slaves, Cape Coloreds, Hottentots, blacks, giants, dwarves and crooked whites on the run from the law. Roving gangs of Bastards on horseback, known as the Bergenaars, (mountain men) started raiding native tribes further inland and stealing their cattle. They eventually travelled as far as the Orange River. From these earliest times the Bergenaars were led by the Kok family.

In 1795 the British took over control of the Cape from the Dutch and, in the early 1800s, Dr Philip of the London Missionary Society ceded the land north of the Orange River, now known as the Orange Free State, to the Bergenaars. The Bergenaars under the leadership of Hendrick Hendricks, Adam Kok's son-in-law, began to exterminate the Bushmen in the Orange Free State. When Rev. John Campbell visited South Africa in 1812 he renamed the Bergenaars and called them the Griquas (derived from a Cape Khoikhoi tribe called the Grigriqua.) This part of the Orange Free State became known as Griqualand West.

Meanwhile back in the Cape colony, the first major uprising by the Dutch, now known as Afrikaners or Boers (the Afrikaans word for "farmers") in the Cape came in 1815 when the British government decided to conduct all government business including the courts of law in English and banned the Afrikaans language. The second Boer rebellion, and main reason for the great trek by the Afrikaners northwards away from the British colony, was because of the Boers refusal to accept the abolition of slavery in 1834.

During the 1830s large communities of Boers moved onto the Griqua lands. In the late 1840s conflict between the Boers and the Griquas over land was reaching a critical stage. At this time that the Boers established the independent Afrikaner republic of the Orange Free State north of Philippolis.

Then the real troubles started. Diamonds were discovered in the heart of the Griqua lands. At Hopetown, the famous "Eureka" and "Star of Africa diamonds" were found. The diamond mine at Kimberley resulted some years later. The Griquas have always claimed that the land that Kimberley stands on today was once part of their territory - a claim the Afrikaner Boers disputed at that time. In 1859 the boers gave Adam Kok the ultimate choice - sell up your lands to the Boers or fight - knowing that the Griquas had no chance of winning a war against them.

In 1861/2, most of the Griquas gathered at Philippolis were forced to sell out to the evolving Afrikaner republic in the Orange Free State (Griqualand West.) They moved to NO MAN'S LAND so named as it was largely devoid of people following the massacre by Chaka's Zulu warriors of the black people who had earlier lived there.

While many Griquas remained around Philippolis, most decided to take the perilous journey to NO MAN'S LAND or Griqualand East. This area was settled by Adam Kok III and 2,000 Griquas who followed him over the Drakensberg in 1861. The Griqua there were largely absorbed into the local Xhosa population of the Transkei — there have been suggestions that Nelson Mandela may have had some Griqua ancestry.

Khoi hunter













Khoi cave-painting

















Khoi man and woman













Khoi man

















Griqua man












Mandela


















To show the difference between the Khoisan people and the Bantu - here is a picture of Goodwill Zwelithini, King of the Zulus

Sunday pictures and poem

Another poem by my favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Top pic: the last rose of summer

Bottom pic: Digby and Saffie at their favorite place in Robin's Wood, the creek

South African Pictures

Here are some of my pics from South Africa.

Pic one: The Marine Parade (known as the Golden Mile) in Durban at sunrise. (The sun rises over the Indian Ocean.) I was born in Durban which is the largest seaport in Africa.













Pic two: Durban at sunset. In the distance is a hilly peninsula jutting out into the ocean called the Bluff. The lights at the foot of the Bluff are on the North Pier which leads into the harbour.


















Pic three: Isipingo, a small fishing village on the coast of kwaZulu 13 miles south of Durban where I was raised. Isipingo is on the hills behind the airplane runways. This pic was taken in the 50s when this airport was first built to accommodate the Mirage fighter jets which South Africa bought from France. (It is now an international airport.) At first, they used to fly right over the village and smash all our windows when they broke the sound barrier. Then people complained and they started flying over the ocean. In 1963 when I was 17, the white people were kicked out of Isipingo and it was given to rich Indian businessmen. We had to move to Durban.















Pic four: sunrise over the tidal pools of Isipingo Beach.













Pic five: A black and white pic from the 50s of Durban City Hall which was designed by the British architect who built all the civic buildings in Calcutta and New delhi in India during the British Raj.













Pic six: Another B&W pic from the 20s of a Zulu rickshaw. The rickshaws were the original taxi drivers in Durban but they have lasted and are still used to this day but more as a tourist attraction.


















Pic seven: A color pic of a Zulu rickshaw to show how colorful their get-up is. They leap up and let the back of the cart drag along the road with your head only inches from the pavement while they are up in the air flailing their feet - all in fun to make the tourists scream.

















Pic eight: A married Zulu woman. Married women wear that conical head-dress which is made of grass and clay.















Pic nine: Another married woman with the beautiful Zulu beadwork.


















Pic ten: Married women must cover their breasts (unmarried women must leave their breasts bare) and wear fewer beads than unmarried women. They have adopted some western clothing such as the undershirt and sneakers.


















Pic eleven: A Zulu village with the typical beehive huts made of water-reeds. The women with bear breasts are not yet married.













Pic twelve: A Zulu tribal chief standing in front of his house which is much bigger than regular folks' houses because he has many wives and children.

The biggest man-made hole in the world

When I was a kid, my parents took me to see the Big Hole in Kimberley, in the Northern Cape Province. (There is a picture below. Give it time to download. It's worth clicking on to view the full size.)

The Big Hole was the first diamond mine in South Africa. It was mined to a depth of 215 metres, (700 feet) and with a surface area of about 17 hectares (42 acres) and a perimeter of about 1,6 km, it is the largest hand-dug excavation in the world. On 14 August 1914 work on the mine was suspended. By that time 22,5 million tons of earth had been excavated, yielding 2 722 kilograms (3 tons or 6,000 pounds) of diamonds.

The diamonds found here were formed in vertical pipes. The circular pipe reaches the surface on the farm which two Dutch settlers bought in 1871. The two brothers called Johannes Nicolaas and Diederik Arnoldus de Beer soon discovered the diamonds on their ground. This lead to a diamond rush, which made it impossible for them to keep the land. They were not able to protect it from the growing tide of intruders, so they sold it. And although they did not become the owners of the mines, one of the mines inherited their name and until today the diamond trade is connected with their names.

The history of the town of Kimberley started with the first diamond finds in South Africa in 1867. The farm boy Erasmus Jacobs had discovered an unusually glittering stone and brought it home for his sisters to play with. His parents had it analysed and identified as a diamond. But the big diamond rush only broke out three years later, when a whole handful of such stones was found on the farm Zandfontein, owned by the De Beers. More than 30,000 people came to the area, and the de Beers were happy to sell their otherwise not very profitable farm for 6,300 pounds.

Everywhere people feverishly started to dig for diamonds. The richest finds were made on the Colesberg Koppie, later the site of the Kimberley Mine. The hill, which had contained the first finds, was soon excavated and the prospectors had to drive a shaft into the earth. So, over the course of years, the deepest hole ever dug by man took shape.

The miners staked out claims and started digging but as they dug deeper into their separate holes, the earth began to collapse around them. Eventually they realized that they were undermining their own claims and they began to sell their stakes to Cecil John Rhodes and Charles Rudd who merged them, forming De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited in 1888. De Beers is the company which today controlls virtually all diamonds on Earth.

Sunday pictures and poems

I just found this quote by Alexis de Tocqueville on Super Hip Grandma's blog:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

These are two of my favorite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins who lived from 1844 to 1889. He is one of the great unsung poets, virtually unknown in his lifetime. We have his poetry today only because it was collected and published by his friends after his death. He was very spiritual and religious from an early age and converted from the Church of England to Catholicism when he was 22. He then joined the Jesuit order and became a priest. Later he realized that he was homosexual but it was too late as he had already taken his vows and chosen a celibate life. He spent his last few years in a bleak depression.

Although his poetry is fairly typically Victorian in it's ornateness and sentimentality, he was in some ways far ahead of this time and invented "sprung verse." He is seldom taught in schools and I only discovered him when I went into a monastery. "Pied Beauty" was the first of his poems that I read and I was hooked from then on. "Inversnaid" is my favorite because it it so musical. Read it aloud and you will hear the sound of the water rushing down the brook.

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.


Inversnaid


THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Top picture: I have to cross this beautiful bridge twice a day to and from work.

Bottom picture: the last of the amaryllis belladonna (South African lilies known as "naked ladies") which are now at the end of their blooming season.

Why I do not agree with "gay rights"

Most of my regular readers know that I am homosexual but I seldom blog about "gay" stuff mostly because it is not all that important to me. It is actually the least interesting part of who I am and there's much more significant stuff to write about than what I do in private. Also most people find the subject boring or distasteful but, whether we like it or not the "gay rights" agenda has raised it's Hydra head.

Recently I discovered that there are quite a few conservative gay blogs. Some call them themselves right-wing Libertarians and others say they are Republicans. Many are patriotic and support the War on Terror. Some are pro-Christian and anti-abortion and believe in old-fashioned morals. When I first started reading them, they were a breath of fresh air to me after being surrounded by the America-hating, anti-Christian, communist gays in San Francisco BUT I soon realised that I part company with most of them because nearly all of them are proponents of "gay rights" and "gay marriage" and I am not.

I read and comment on several of these blogs and have tried to explain why I don't believe in "gay rights" but the leftists start in with their usual collectivist nonsense and skew the whole debate to their paradigm. It is impossible to make oneself clear because the gay commies have created the playing field and have made the rules for the past 20 years. Even the socalled conservative gays have been suckered into thinking like the leftist gays.

One of the "conservative" gay blogs recently wondered if Harriet Miers is "gay-friendly." I commented that I did not care as long as she was anti-abortion. If Miers is anti-abortion, I trust her to be sane on other topics. Some leftie took umbrage that I was only concerned with Miers' stance on abortion. I replied that I was also concerned about her stance on the Second Amendment but that I could not care less about her stance on "gay rights" because there is no such thing as "gay rights." I said that I thought that the arrogant demand for "gay rights" had actually done more harm than good. I bowed out of the debate when someone started using the fallacious comparison between blacks and gays. That exchange triggered off this post.

Let me digress for a bit: I have known from a very early age that I was homosexual or bisexual and soon realized that it was not accepted by society. But I also read a lot and discovered that I was not alone. The ancient Greeks laid the foundations for Western civilization and practically invented philosophy and democracy yet many were homosexual. (Most Greeks were not homosexual - they were bisexual and practiced homosexual pederasty just as the Cretans did before them and just as they do in Papua-New Guinea to this day. However there were many adult homosexual relationships that were recorded.)

The lovers, Aristogeiton and Harmodius, were glorified for overthrowing tyranny in Athens and bringing about democracy. Orestes, the hero of the Oresteia cycle, and Pylades were such a devoted couple that there names were invoked by the Greeks to exemplify loyalty and life-long commitment. Lucian writes in his "History of Orestes and Pylades": Phoeis records from ancient times the history of the love between Orestes and Pylades who, calling on God to be the witness of the passion between them, sailed through life together as though in one boat....When it was decided that one should stay behind to be put to death and the other should go to Mycenae to take a letter, each wanted to remain for the sake of the other. Each thought that saving the life of his friend was more important than saving his own life.

The story of Damon and Phythias has a similar scenario. The two men lived together and had their possessions in common. They were such faithful lovers to each other that, when Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, intended to execute Pythias, Damon gave himself up as a pledge of his friend's return because Pythias had been allowed to first go home and arrange his affairs before his death. When Pythias returned to be executed, Dionysius was so moved by their loyalty to each other that he remitted Pythias' sentence of death.

I need not say much about Alexander the Great and Hephaestion because their devotion to each other has been more thoroughly documented and speculated upon in non-academic circles than the aforementioned (including in the latest Oliver Stone clunker of a movie.)

Another example of a long-term adult homosexual relationship is that of Philolaus, a lawyer in Thebes, and his lover, Diocles, an Olympic Athlete. Epaminondas, who led Thebes in its greatest days in the fourth century, saved the life of his life-long lover, Pelopidas, at the battle of Mantinea. They belonged to the Sacred Band of Thebes which was an army composed of pairs of adult male lovers.

Plutarch wrote in his "Life of Pelopidas:" It is stated that [the Sacred Band] was never beaten till the battle at Chaeronea: and when Philip, [Alexander the Great's father] after the fight, took a view of the slain, and came to the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers, he shed tears and said, "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base."

Plutarch adds: It is a tradition likewise that Iolaus, who assisted Hercules in his labours and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that, even in his time, lovers plighted their faith at Iolaus's tomb. It is likely, therefore, that this band [of Thebes] was called sacred on this account; as Plato calls a lover a divine friend.

Plato wrote: Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love - all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce."

Yes, I read a lot. By the time that I was ten I had read all the children's books in the library and asked the librarian (the wife of my Scout master) if I could read the adult books. She gave me permission and so began my life-long love of literature. Even before I read the ancient Greeks, I found that some of the men I most revered were homosexual or bisexual such as the Renaissance artists, Donatello, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio; the composers Brahms and Ravel, Aaron Copeland and Cole Porter; the playwrights, Shakespeare and Marlowe; the poets, Byron and Gerard Manley Hopkins as well as my favorite writers during my late teens and twenties, D. H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster. I could fill a page with the names of great fags who inspired me.

The point of this digression is to show what I grew up thinking homosexuality was. To me it was about passion, romantic love, loyalty and devotion.

When I was 19, I was introduced to the "gay scene" in Durban. It took me all of two "gay" parties to realize that I hated it and would never fit in. I decided that I was not "gay" but bisexual and, in my twenties, embarked on a string of long-term love affairs - three with women and two with men and eventually married and fathered my son. When my marriage broke up (because I joined a guru cult which my wife despised) I decided to stop being bisexual because it was not fair to whatever woman I was with and it was making me crazy and neurotic. I began to hope that I would find one man to whom I could devote my love. I was lucky to find that man 24 years ago and we are still together.

Now compare this with what we know as the "gay life-style" with its malignantly narcissistic drug-fueled "circuit parties," sleazy "gyms" and the predatory promiscuity of anonymous sex arenas (which at least have recently re-labelled themselves more honestly as "sex clubs" rather than the previously euphemistically named "bath-houses.") These "bath-houses" and "sex clubs" are basically abbattoirs where the steer paid to be killed either by syphilis or Aids. The "gay life-style" is a culture of death. If disease doesn't kill you, psychopathic criminals (as in the case Versace) or meth-crazed murderers (as in the case of Matthew Sheppard) will.

The word "gay" was first used in Victorian times as a euphemism to describe the low-life subculture of drug-takers, barflies, prostitutes and other assorted hustlers and thugs. "Going gay" meant slumming it in the world of whores (of both sexes) and crooks, conmen and drug-addicts. It still has exactly the same connotation today. The "gay life-style" as it is practiced in nearly every city in the West is still a world of drugs, predatory sex and whores (both unpaid cheap sluts and expensive "escorts.")

For anyone with children, the whole question of "gay rights" is problematic, especially if you want to raise your kids as decent, polite human beings who retain some childlike innocence at least until puberty. It's particularly difficult if you want your kids to revere the Bible, (preferably the King James version) Shakespeare and Mozart instead of becoming brain-dead automotons listening to the tone-deaf psychopathic cacophony that has been mislabelled "music" for the past few decades, reading airhead Hollywood celebrity magazines and cruising inane internet chatrooms full of predatory pederasts and other assorted perverts, liars and conmen.

Who wants their kids to be exposed to that kind of heavy, egotistical self-indulgence? They have to face enough heavy ugliness anyway thanks to corporate sleaze in the business world and Hollywood insanity and immorality. Any parents who want to perpetuate the beauty and wisdom of Western civilization do not want their kids growing up to be slaves to their own lusts, selfishness and shallowness and that is what the "gay life-style" is all about. That's the way the majority of gays live. Most sane parents pray that their kids will not grow up to be gay.

Before I go any further, let me say that I am just as disgusted by the behavior of heterosexual "swinging singles." In fact, I'm probably more disgusted by straight promiscuity. While I have come to accept that many men are pigs when it comes to sex, I'm old-fashioned enough to be shocked that women can also be sexually narcissistic and irresponsible. I guess that's because I was already an adult before the Pill was invented and female promiscuity in pre-Pill days was associated only with those women who were too dumb or too reckless to care about unwanted pregnancies. I am especially revolted by the young women who behave like Maenads at the drug, booze and sex orgies known as Spring Breaks. The modern TV dating games (have you seen one lately? - they're sick) are not quite as disturbing because you know that the young women are being paid and are basically exhibitionistic whores. And (now I'm really showing my age) I really get angry when I see how young men treat women in this arena of straight promiscuity. But promiscuous straights are in the minority and so far they have not begun making demands for special rights because they are sexual perverts. If straight debauchees started demanded "debauchee rights," I would treat them with the same scorn that I reserve for those demanding "gay rights."

Also, it needs to be noted that there are plenty of homosexuals who plod along in obscurity either devoting themselves to their loyal partners or wishing for the love of their lives just as we all do. They are mostly decent, kind, considerate friends and neighbors. Some of them are even conservative and patriotic. Quite a few are parents too and deplore the "gay life-style."

Oops! Am I being too judgemental? No, I think I've got my judgementalness in the just the right proportion. Judgementalness is what got civilization going. Without judgementalness we'd still be living in caves eating dirty, unrefrigerated food and dying young of horrible diseases. Judgementalness is what makes us prefer comfort and cleanliness to hardship and squalor. Debauchees, liberals and others who subscribe to "moral equivalence" have succeeded in making judgementalness a dirty word in order to divert attention away from their own filthy behavior.

I can already hear the commies screaming at me: "You hate sex. You're a prude."

That's not true. I have enjoyed sex since the day I discovered it (when I was initiated at the age of seven by an eleven year old girl) and I even went through my own period of promiscuity in my twenties. My sex-addiction was fueled by drugs. When I stopped using drugs, I started getting sex in proportion - it's a pleasurable but very small part of ordinary everyday life. Even in my sex-addict days, sex did not take up more than the smallest fraction of my life and it never consumed me to the point where I started spending every waking moment obsessed with sex or defining myself by my sexual proclivities. But, that's what gays do. The "gay lifestyle" is fueled by drugs and booze. Gays suppress their God-given modesty and natural inhibitions by using alcohol and drugs like crystal meth. They drown their shame as if it was something evil when shame actually is nature's way of steering us away from anti-social and solipsistically irresponsible behavior. Isn't it funny that the ancient Greeks had a goddess of shame whose name was Aids?

Plato condemned the sexual predators of ancient Athens and since then we have used the phrase "Platonic love" to mean sexless love. That's not what Plato meant. Plato, like most ancient Greeks, accepted sex (both hetero and homo) in a fairly matter-of-fact way. What Plato condemned was the predatory pederasty of his time. He despised men who preyed upon and corrupted young boys but he praised romantic love; love that was not driven by lust and hubris. (Hubris came to mean arrogance and egotism but orginally meant rudeness and disrespect.) Plato saw adult homosexuality as a divine and sacred love. That is what is meant by "Platonic love." It does not mean sexless love but it also sure does not mean the type of predatory sexual promiscuity and that one sees among modern "gays." Plato's "Symposium" is set in the house of Agathon who was an Athenian dramatist well-known as a homosexual. At the party Pausanias, Agathon's lover, gives a long speech about homosexuality which shows that he did not approve of pederasty and thought that homesexuality should only be between adult males.

So, what do you call yourself if you are one of those men (or women) who throughout the ages have been romantically attracted to members of your own sex? The word "gay" to me means those who are not romantic or loyal but shallow and predatory. That's why I prefer to call myself "homosexual" and not "gay."

But the predatory promiscuity of gays is not the only reason that I loathe the gay life-style and refuse to call myself "gay."

The word "gay" has also accrued to itself (thanks to "gay activists") a particularly virulent and subversive leftist political connotation. Gays are proud to call themselves the new "blacks" and try to cloak their basically silly and vacuous agenda of getting special rights for their sexual proclivities with the gravitas of "civil rights" when ironically many blacks (most of whom who are old-fashioned, God-fearing church-goers) despise them and think of them as immoral. A black skin (which was once a serious handicap in a negrophobic world but no longer is among civilized people) is not the same as homosexuality.

Now, if gays had been created bright green by God or had penises sticking out of their faces where their noses should be (as many would no doubt like) and if their greenness or their odd organs were the objects of bigotry and were therefore an obvious handicap, I might say that it would be fair to give them special rights. But "gays" do not have any God-given visible handicap. If a gay tells me that he is "handicapped" in the same way that blacks once were, I'll tell him that to stop waving his willie around in public and keep his sex life private because his only handicaps are his big mouth and his undisciplined dick. Why do we need to know about anybody's sex life? Why would we be interested? Gays don't seem to realize that most people are not interested in other peoples' sex lives. Well gays don't seem to realize that there is a whole lot more to life that sex.

The commonest argument for comparing "gay rights" with "civil rights" is that there are prejudices against gays (just as there were against blacks) which have to be legislated away. "Gay activists" point to the anti-sodomy laws which they claim were enacted to "persecute" gays. That's not true; they were enacted to protect society from what was percieved (and still is perceived by the vast majority of people all over the world) as immoral and unhealthy behavior. Society also disallows incest, bestiality, pedophilia and prostitution for the same reason. Society regulates sexual behavior for the health of society as a whole. The AIDS epidemic in the West was a direct result of relaxing societal taboos on homosexuality. It started with promiscuous male homosexuals and spread from there. Only with hindsight do we see that gay "bath-houses" were breeding grounds for disease.

Sure, gays are born that way and cannot change themselves but does that mean that they are therefore entitled to "special" rights? That is like arguing that epileptics need special rights and that society must adapt to them. (I deliberately chose "epileptic" because it is a condition with which one is born just like homosexuality.) Does this mean that we have to change the whole of society to accommodate the "special" needs of epileptics? If so, we will have to ban strobe-lights and anything else that would trigger grand-mal seizures and we would have to make all dangerous machinery "epileptic-proof." And what about sociopaths and psychopaths? Some psychiatrists theorize that even they are born that way. Would we need to allow them to commit rape and murder?

Gays are not discriminated against because of some obvious condition as skin-color. It is not only fallacious but dishonest and manipulative to compare "gay rights" to "civil rights" (or less euphemistically - "black rights.") You can't change the color of your skin but you can be polite and not wave your willy in peoples' faces the way the arrogant espousers of "gay pride" do. Gays are discriminated against because of behaviors that are not essential to the survival of the human race or Western civilization. Sodomy is regarded by 90% of the human race as not only being unessential but detrimental. It is out of civilized tolerance and kindness that such unessential behavior is tolerated by society (as long as it is not unhealthy or harmful) and gays will simply have to achieve acceptance the way everyone else does - by becoming responsible valued members of society. Then they may politely ask for tolerance of a behavior that most human beings abhor. That does not mean they they should not insist on their individual rights to pursue happiness in the privacy of their own homes but they need to bear in mind that to most people, concerned with survival, protecting their families and waging a war on terrorism, the demand for "gay rights" seems a bit like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I've survived and prospered and been trusted and respected all my life by nearly everyone I've known in spite of being queer - and I've been open and honest about it ever since I figured out that I was homosexual or bisexual at the age of fourteen. The arrogant "gay pride" willie-wavers have done me no favors and I think that the angry, petulant demands for special treatment by "gay activists" has done more harm than good.

Yes, I despise the leftist political agenda of the "gay activists." Most gays have joined the "Hate America Club" and seem to think that European-style statism and socialism is better than individual sovereignty and responsibility. Gays have chosen the left fork in the road of political and cultural evolution. Instead of chosing cool, calm, logical, Lockean liberal individualism (the epitome of which is the American Revolution) they have chosen the collectivism and class-warfare mentality which brought about the horrors of the French and Russian Revolutions.

All important cultural and political advances made in the past 400 hundred years come from the Scottish Enlightenment - the classical Locke-Smithian liberal tenets of individual rights, individual sovereignty and individual responsibility which brought about the American Revolution and are enshrined in our Constitution. Socialism and leftist ideology comes from The French Revolution and the counter-Enlightenment and is based on group rights and collectivism. The muddleheaded notions of "fraternity" and "social equality" were reactions to the class divisions that were entrenched in Europe and which were destroyed by the American revolution. Yes, we may have been created equal and have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but, in a free society, everyone ends up different owing to their choices. The concepts of "equality," "fraternity" and class rights or group rights like "gay rights" are destructive unenlightened Marxist nonsense. Any protection that we need to survive, thrive and be happy is guaranteed by our Constitution's emphasis on individual rights. There is no need for group or class rights in the USA and they are in fact destructive of individual rights.

I don't mind if gays want to politicize their sexual preferences and turn it into a collectivist agenda and try force cultural change through politics. It's none of my business. Just as it is none of their business if I prefer to deal with my homosexuality privately and hopefully change hearts and minds through my character, my usefulness to society, ordinary common courtesy and good-neighborliness. Decent, modest homosexuals who have gone about their lives being good neighbors and productive, trustworthy members of society have quietly changed peoples' hearts and minds more than the noisiest and most aggressive "gay activists" ever have.

Sunday pictures and poems

Last week I told Andy that my favorite hymn was the Church of England/Anglican masterpiece, "The New Jerusalem." Here is the poem by William Blake which provided the words for that rousing song of faith in Jesus the Christ.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my charriot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Here are two poems by the Irish mystical poet, George William Russell, who lived from 1867 to 1935. He published his poetry under the nom-de-plume of "AE."

The Great Breath

ITS edges foam'd with amethyst and rose,
Withers once more the old blue flower of day:
There where the ether like a diamond glows,
Its petals fade away.

A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air;
Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows;
The great deep thrills—for through it everywhere
The breath of Beauty blows.

I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her by deep and deeper breath,
Near'd to the hour when Beauty breathes her last
And knows herself in death.


By the Margin of the Great Deep

WHEN the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam,
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight's dream.

When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.

From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love
Stray'd away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.

Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primæval being as o'erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.



Top: A sea-stack near where I live along the southern Oregon coast.

Bottom: In the Cascades of Oregon. I don't know which mountian or lake this is.