28 August - Après le Déluge



We got a fair amount of rain and a capful of wind around 2 in the morning, and the electrics went off for about a minute. Some damage to the trees - above, a young oak down in the park (

27 August - Current Conditions at 1600 Hours



A little rain, a little wind, beans in the oven.

27 August - The Dream of Feline Aeronautics



Here's another charming ex voto involving

The virgen del Rosario borrows me each night a cuple of wings and also she do that for my cats and this way we can fly and feel as birds or angels and we fly over the villages and the fields and I left my problems behind down there and they look so small and silly in fron of all that inmensity, and now I wake up more happy in the mornings I thanks for this happiness.

27 August - The Fog Before the Calm Before the Storm


Fog on the old B & O Metropolitan Line in 3D

We procured a case of wine, a half-gallon of rum, and a cured pork butt. I've started a pot of beans and roused out

23 August - Quaked



Worried Janus Museum staffers loiter about after the Museum was evacuated following today's

21 August - Sino-Charcuterie



I'm not really what one might call an ardent worshipper of the Cult of Bacon, but I was pleased to find that the recently opened

16 August - A Heron From the Files



Sorting through some obscure files earlier; found this nice shot of

15 August - John



Here's to my old friend John -

14 August - Distillation of a Summer Day



Here is an epitome of a hot summer afternoon in Washington Grove: a diptych in which we observe a sleepy cat lazing on the porch (played to perfection by Cat Leroy), and a dew-specked bottle of

14 August - The Snow Plows of August



Just looking at a snow plow in August makes me feel a bit cooler. This fine Oshkosh plow (possibly Army surplus) showed up at

13 August - Alabama Jubilee



The Southern Wisconsin Old Time Fiddlers' Association (

12 August - Vesuvius, 1872



This is the latest from the top of the scanning queue - a dramatic carte de visite of the famous eruption of Vesuvius, April 26, 1872, photographer unknown. Here's

Numbers of visitors, attracted by the splendour of the lava streams of the preceding night, which they supposed still continued, soon arrived [at Palmieri's observatory], but, finding them exhausted, were for the most part conducted by their guides to see the one still flowing... I endeavoured to dissuade those who wished to visit it at night from the attempt, but set out myself from the Observatory at 7 p.m., leaving my only assistant there. The instruments were agitated. After midnight the Observatory was closed, and my assistant retired to rest. Late and unlucky visitors passed unobserved with an escort of inexperienced guides; at half-past 3 o'clock in the morning of the 26th they were in the Atria del Cavallo, when the Vesuvian cone became rent in a north-westerly direction, the fissure commencing at the little cone which disappeared, and extending to the Atria del Cavallo, whence a copious torrent of lava issued. Two large craters formed at the summit of the mountain, discharging numerous incandescent projectiles with white ashes, and glittering with particles of mica, which frequently recurred.

A cloud of smoke enveloped these unfortunates, who were under a hail of burning projectiles and close to the lava torrent. Some were buried beneath it and disappeared for ever; two dead bodies were picked up, and eleven grievously injured, one of whom died close to the Observatory. He alone revealed his name, Antonio Giannone. I learned afterwards that he was a fine young fellow, and Assistant-Professor in one of the Universities. [A total of twenty spectators were killed.]

Assistant-Professors Signor Franco, who is a priest, and Signor Francesco Cozzolino, a priest also, entrusted with the festive mass for the Observatory, hastened to assist the dying. On my own return thither, the sad spectacle of the dead and dying awaited me; the former were conveyed, through the assistance of the municipal officer of Resina, to the Cemetery, and the latter to the Hospital. But we must leave this scene of grief and sorrow, and return to the eruption...

The lava of this eruption, meeting with this said excavation, flowed into it, instead of pursuing its road over the lava of 1855, and thus invaded highly cultivated ground and towns of considerable value, extending to the very walls of a country-house belonging to the celebrated painter, Luca Giordano. This lava stream, having surmounted the obstacles which the heaps of scoriæ in the Atria del Cavallo presented to it, ran with great velocity (notwithstanding its being greatly widened out in the Fossa del Vetrano), so that between 10 a.m. and 11 p.m. it traversed about five kilometres of road, occupying a surface of five to six square kilometres. If it had not greatly slackened after midnight, from the failure of supply at its source, in twenty-four hours more, by occupying Ponticelli, it would have reached Naples, and flowed into the sea...

On the night of the 26th April, the Observatory lay between two torrents of fire, which emitted an insufferable heat. The glass in the window-frames, especially on the Vetrana side, was hot and cracking, and a smell of scorching was perceptible in the rooms. The cone, besides being furrowed by the lava streams just described, was traversed by several others, which appeared and disappeared. It seemed completely perforated, and the lava oozed as it were through its whole surface. I cannot better express this phenomenon, than by saying that Vesuvius sweated fire. In the day-time, the cone appeared momentarily covered with white steam jets (fumaroles), which looked like flakes of cotton against the dark mountain-side, appearing and disappearing at brief intervals.

7 August - Panorama Before the Rain



Hey, look - a panorama made with my mobile phone cam. Three shots, stitched up with

7 August - As I Was Going Down Grove Road



Here's a nice looking chap I met on Grove Road a few minutes ago, an Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) - escorted him back into the woods, for to preserve him from the traffic.

7 August - Piratical Spit-Take



Continuing our sporadic survey of cinematic spit-takes, we present Neddy Teach, AKA Blackbeard (played by

6 August - Bloom Time



Cat Natasha has a distinctly Pre-Raphaelite air as she contemplates the Belladonna Lilies (Amaryllis belladonna), also known as Naked Ladies. If you have your red/blue glasses handy, you may also enjoy the scene

5 August - The Latest Pickelhaubiana



Here are the latest acquisitions in our burgeoning

5 August - I'll Have What She's Having



This superb ex voto,

One day, while I was cooking, I began to rise from the floor and to float by the air. And after a lot of time I went down to the floor again. I was very afraid I prayed to San Pascual because that began to happen to me every day. Then the saint illuminated me and I found out that the effect was provoked by the mushrooms quesadillas that I like so much and that he frequently ate and probably there were some hallucinogenic mushrooms mixed with the others. I no longer eat mushrooms quesadillas and everything returned to the normality. I thank to San Pascual because floating I can not cook.