LINES--FRIDAY MY TOWN SHOOTOUT

LINES...
I wonder if we realize how much lines affect our lives.  We follow lines, reach the end of the line, avoid crossing the line, line-up, go to the end of the line, avoid crossing  the yellow line and keep within the lines. 

I perhaps could have been a little more creative with this week's prompt except for the fact that my laptop died last week and I have spent hours and hours (under-LINED, please note) setting up Windows 8 and Microsoft 10 on my new one.  Why do these people have to keep 'improving' their products?!!!  Windows 8 is a pain!!!

Now that I can at least find my photos and they are in some semblance of order I can actually meet the dead-LINE for FMTSO -- this, after five or six hours a day for a week!  UGH!

So my first  LINE photo is to show the importance of lines up at Lake Powell, which is so large that it actually spans two states -- Utah and Arizona.  Even so it dramatically impacts Southern California where I live.  I took these photos a year ago and things are no better today, probably worse. 

These photos illustrate the problem. It is the low water level in Lake Powell, a major water reservoir on the Colorado River.  It is about 12 feet below what it should be.  This affects my town because much of our water comes from the Colorado River which snakes its way down through the Grand Canyon and down to Yuma, Arizona.  The water from the Colorado is then piped across the desert to feed the San Diego area.  Our area is geographically a desert area with a rainfall of ten inches or less per year.  I think it is now the third year in a row since we have had drought conditions.  Fortunately, we also are fed by the rain and snowfalls from the mountains that is piped down to us from the Los Angeles area.  Even so the whole of the west coast is now considered to be in drought conditions.

This third photo is a bonus.  Not only can you see the water level deficit, but some wonderful erosion 

lines that make this whole area so spectacular.  If you're visiting the West, Lake Powell is a 'must see'.

This is my contribution to Friday, My Town Shoot-out. We have a good group of photographers who always produce something interesting, so why not pop over to this LINK and perhaps even think of joining us.  

FRIDAY -- MY TOWN SHOOTOUT -- Faraway Places.....

I have always loved open space.  I love to sit on the cliff top and gaze out to sea. When we chose this house a year ago, although it is smaller, having plenty of space around us was very important to me.

When we had time to travel, I chose 'Faraway Places' to visit. Alaska, Norway, and the tip of South America were some of the places I have been privileged to visit

But first, looking far out to sea from Carlsbad, with nothing between us until Hawaii. The stormy skies just add to the adventure of it.

Next we go to northern Norway. We traveled all the way up the coast until we came over the top to Russia.  The single tree gives the effect of loneliness I think.

To be honest I'm not quite sure where I took this photo.  I think it was somewhere down the west coast of Mexico or somewhere between there and Peru.  I love the outlying islands, and of course the sunset doesn't hurt.

Here I am at the city of Ushuaia, at the southern most part of Argentina, not far away from Cape Horn.  The sense of adventure and 'far-away-ness' is intensified for me because I learned about this in school and never dreamed I would visit there.

So these are my contenders for the FRIDAY - MY TOWN SHOOT OUT meme with the theme Space.  Wide, open, faraway spaces have always been a part of me.  Please click HERE to see what others have contributed to this week's topic.

FRIDAY, MY TOWN SHOOT OUT

RUSTIC DETAILS
...things that are really old in my town or the history of my town.

(First a word of explanation.  My laptop is  out of commission and I am using our big PC  and it doesn't have all my 'stuff ' on it so I am a little limited as to what I can accomplish at the moment.
Looks like I will have to replace my beloved laptop as it is 10 years old, so a big transfer of info is in the offing).


The original inhabitants of my town are the Luispeno Indians. They lived in villages along the North San Diego coast and to about ten miles inland.

One of their villages, Paalimay, was located exactly where my park is located, that is between the Agua Hedionda and Buena Vista Lagoons. They were living here when the Spanish came and they were given their tribal name in honor of Saint Louis King of France, though they called themselves the Payomkawichum. In 1960 it was estimated that there were at one time 10,000 of these people in this area. Many are still located here and many are associated with the Harrah Casino, located inland from here.

At the southwest end of our park, out by the tennis courts and the RV parking/storage area a pile of rocks is located. They are known as the Indian Rocks. So my sister and I decided to explore there last week and see what we could find.

They really do look like just a pile of rocks until you move in closer.

Then you can see what looks like  the remains of a wall.

Moving closer still you can see many examples of pestle and mortar grinding holes.
These rocks are the grinding rocks where the Indians ground acorns and seed into meal. Over the generations deep holes were ground into the rocks.

These are quite deep holes, so I imagine the Indians lived in this particular area for many centuries. It is an ideal area for them, providing flat land, trees shrubs and water and of course rocks. The water would bring many kinds of animals for the Indians for food -small and large. We know that bear used to be found in this area and we still have mountain lions, deer and coyotes as well as numerous small mammals.

This must have been a fruitful and safe haven for the Luiseno Indians.

Perhaps on a different level, we who now inhabit this area have much in common with these Indians. We certainly have all our needs cared for and enjoy much beauty surrounding us.

This is my contribution for Friday, My Town Shootout. It isn't what you would call rustic, but it certainly is historical. To see more historical information about where others in our group  please click HERE

FRIDAY, MY TOWN SHOOT OUT

WINTER IN MY TOWN...
So far we haven't had any winter yet.  The temps have been in the upper 60's and lower 70's for weeks.  Next week they are forecasting low 80's!!  We have had only three showery days since March and we desperately need rain.  But people such as my sister who has come down here to escape the deep freeze of  Toronto are truly rejoicing. -- and so are we if we don't think about the rain.

All these photos were taken in the last week.

I found a few trees which have now lost almost all their leaves:

If you look carefully at the lower branches of this tree you can see how some of us decorate for Christmas

This one shows both bare trees, some with all their leaves and the beautiful date palm, so typical of Southern California.

This is our ice plant that blooms thickly in the spring.  The warm weather has brought it out so much earlier than usual.  The ice plant is spectacular when in full bloom -- just a mass of vivid color.

Bouganvillea that has never stopped blooming.

A neighbor's spectacular plant is blooming beautifully.

The creek has nearly run dry, just the water from sprinklers are keeping it flowing.

And look what I found up by the lake all sunning themselves on this rather small slab of cement.  I had no idea we had that many turtles in the lake.

So come on by and stop for a cup of tea on the porch!

This is my entry for FMTSO.  Come and visit others who are showing their town in winter, by clicking HERE

ABC WEDNESDAY: Z IS FOR...

...ZOILUS, or ZOILIST

PREPARE TO BE ENLIGHTENED !!!

To give credit where credit is due, you have to know that I picked up this word from Bill O'Reilly of Fox News.  If you're not a fan of his it doesn't matter, because it is the word that I am using for today, not the man.  Interestingly enough, while researching this word I found its definition on the website called Worthless Word for the Day!

Well worthless it may be, but in its time it meant trouble for some people.   Zoilus was a Greek Cynic philosoper -- a classical Greek grammarian to be exact.  I've no idea what a Cynic philosopher is and how they differ from any other kind of philosophers of which there are many varieties apparently.  Even though I did at one time study New Testament Greek, ancient Greek history and classical Greek literature are way beyond my depth!  So I had to do a little research and filter down what I found, to something understandable and hopefully of some interest.

ZOILUS is remembered by some (not too many actually), for being a relentless literary critic of  Homer, the author of The Iliad and The Odessey.  It seems he wrote quite a few papers on the topic of Homer's inadequacies.  Sorry, I can't get into what those are right now though I'm sure you're dying to know!  So our first piece of useable information is that Zoilus was famous for being highly critical of Homer.

From Zoilus the word Zoilist was derived and came to mean 'someone who indulges in nagging, carping criticism'.  Although Zoilus lived approximately 400 B. C. , during the 17th century a group of French scholars became known as the French Zoilists who I gather were actually continuing the arguments Zoilus began so many centuries before. Not sure what became of that.

In all this checking,the only other worthwhile piece of information I found was that there is an old disused proverb which says, "Every poet has his Zoilist".  Which means that if you are a poet, you're bound to have someone who will negatively criticize your work.

Finally, the Urban Dictionary defines a Zoilist as  "a rude, nasty, or dishonest critic that enjoys finding faults in others."

SCROOGE

The only person I could think of who might merit the description of being a Zoilist is Scrooge.  I wonder if you can find a better example.

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So there you have my scintillating words of wisdom for the last letter of our thirteenth round of ABC Wednesday, the letter Z.   Thank you to Mrs. Nesbitt and Roger Owen Green as well as their trusty team of cohorts for their masterful leadership of this meme.  If you would like to see more entries inspired by the letter Z, please click HERE.

Y is for YOU

Yes YOU !
Without YOU how could we play ABC Wednesday?  You are what makes it work.  Without YOUR effort in finding something interesting to say as well as some thing to show, what would we have?


Then there are the comments.  Your comments are what give the rest of us the impetus to keep posting.  When YOU post a comment, we comment right back.  That's the fun of it all.  I can't tell YOU how many wonderful people I have met through ABC Wednesday and how many fascinating things I have learned just because YOU took the time to participate regularly and enthusiastically.

Apparently in 2006 TIME magazine portrayed their Person of the Year as YOU.  (The gray square was silvered like a mirror).  This was to acknowledge the enormous part that YOU, (and me), the online community, contribute to the internet  by means of blogs, You Tube, Wikipedia and other user generated information pages. At the time,there were some people who thought TIME did a giant cop-out in not coming up with a real person of the year.

Interestingly enough there are still a good number of folk who do not use the word 'you ' in their everyday conversation.  They regularly use, thou, tha,  thy, thee, or thine instead.  This is particularly prevalent in Yorkshire. in the U.K.  The village where I grew up on the coast of East Yorkshire used this dialect.  At school the children soon learned the correct usage of 'YOU' but effortlessly became bilingual , slipping into the old usage of 'tha' as soon as they were at home or with friends.  Because I was actually born in London and didn't move to Yorkshire until a few years later, I never picked up the northern usage, but never questioned that that was the way my friends spoke.  I understood them and they understood my 'posh' English accent usage of 'you'.  In my mind there was no stigma to the broad dialect.  That was just the way my friends talked and it was fine with me.

A common way of expressing their dialect would go something like this:

        "Didst tha remember to bring tha Dad's paper? Tha'd better go gerrit afore he comes           home.  Tha'd forget thee 'ead if it were loose! " 

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Now all that is left for me to do is to wish YOU and YOURS  ---

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR !

May the Lord bless you with good health, happiness and blessings beyond that which any of us deserve, because He is good all the time.  All the time He is good.

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday , begun by Mrs. Nesbitt and continued by Roger Owen Green and his worthy team of helpers.  Please visit the many other who contribute to this amazingly successful meme, now coming to the close of its 13th round, by clicking
HERE

FRIDAY MY TOWN SHOOT-OUT

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

The main holiday tradition in our house now that our children are grown and we are retired, is the Christmas Dinner, usually served around 2:00 p.m. on Christmas Day.

MENU:  Roast Turkey, with roast potatoes and whole carrots, roasted around the turkey.  Then there are the side dishes of dressing (or stuffing), green bean casserole, marshmallowed sweet potatoes and cranberry/raspberry jello salad.  Then the most important item of all -- the gravy!  My husband's Grandmother taught me to make this and it is an absolute must with any roast dinner.

Dessert -- a little later comes Tollhouse cookie chocolate chip brownies - -- again a 'must' at Christmas and Thanksgiving.  If that is too much sugar, there are also Harry and David pears, sent to us every year by a favorite friend of ours from our church.

At least one of our two sons and their girlfriend/wife will join us.  In this photo, son #2 from Boise, managed to include himself in the photo because of the mirror in the background.

There is another tradition at Christmas at our house, because Christmas Day is also my birthday.

You can see my birthday cards on the hutch.  

In this photo you can see our 'Charlie Brown' Christmas Tree, which is actually quite pretty this year, the mirror behind it enhancing the lights.  Gone are the days of 7 foot Christmas trees! After 54 years of decorating the tree we not only down sized our house but also our tree and decorations.  My birthday cards can be seen to the right of the tree.  I turned 76 this year and I received 16 birthday cards!

Another tradition  we used to have was that of including a chocolate birthday cake for me, but in the end we had so much food it just seemed unnecessary, so we haven't done this for about the last ten years.

However, all of these celebrations are preceded by the Christmas Eve Service at the Carlsbad Community Church, where my husband served as pastor for 28 years before retiring in 2001.

These are just some of the traditions at our house at Christmas.  There are more traditions  that are important to other people, to be seen by visiting FRIDAY, MY TOWN SHOOT-OUT.  You can easily visit by just clicking HERE.