Of Park Visits and Teepees, Fultondale, Alabama

Sometimes things are proceeding as ordinarily as possible...until they're not. There are Sunday afternoons when you've gotten home from church and have enough time to go to the park with the dog for a while before the Braves game comes on. At the park, all is normal. The dog plays in the creek. You and the dog play fetch, but the Retriever doesn't retrieve, so you keep have to chase the ball down. The dog chases you in circles around the batting cages. And then you have some extra time, so you take an unkempt trail that isn't really a trail but an old, forgotten rail bed. And everything is normal there too. Weeds, bees, trees, and a teepee. A teepee. Then seemed less normal and ordinary. And I could envision how Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might play this thing out. But the dog and I kept walking. There were "No Trespassing" signs.

Fiery Shades of Sunrise, Fultondale, Alabama

Fiery Shades of Sunrise in Fultondale, Alabama

This and other photos taken on my iPhone can
be found in the gallery "Fun with Instagram".

Billy Goat's Ruff

There have been more than a couple of occasions in the past year-and-a-half that I've been all but certain that although we believed ourselves to have have purchased a Golden Retriever, we came a away with some hybrid creature that is half dog-half mountain goat.

Never have I beheld a creature more determined to crawl, scramble, leap, or climb on any object that requires such an action, inclusive of boulders, fallen trees, and picnic tables.

Of course there may also be some billy goat mixed into the breed as well, because I have lost count of the myriad foreign substances (some of which were unidentifiable) which Darby has ingested, and somehow managed to survive.

So between now and the time that she does something truly harmful, I will continue to be in awe, horror, dread, and bemusement at her curious ways, sometimes experiencing all of those things concurrently.

This and other photos of Darby and her escapades can be found on her Gallery, here.

Bottlenecked Rainwater Runoff, Gardendale

The loveliness of this small waterfall created by significant runoff from 

excessive rainfall recently is hampered by this bottle, among other litter, flippantly

discarded by passers-by near Newfound Creek in Gardendale, Alabama.

Monochrome Morning over Birmingham, Alabama

Monochrome Morning over Birmingham, Alabama

Product of the Kodak Pony 135 Model C

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a recent flea market find, a couple of Kodak Pony 135 Model C cameras (here). After arbitrarily choosing one to run a roll of film through first (because there's only one good film door between the two of them). I put the Pony in my car with guarded optimism...but even that was too much. Something appears to have gone awry with the focus mechanism in the last 50+ years. So film has gone into the second of the two Ponies...with dwindling hope.

Pond in Gardendale evidencing the focus issues exhibited by the first Kodak Pony 135.

NEEDTOBREATHE, Boutwell Auditorium, Birmingham

NEEDTOBREATHE in the first week of its 2013 Drive All Night Tour

at Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 5, 2013.