October 28, 2024 a thought for today, It's never too late to mend. English Proverb

The first challenge upload for yesterday was “a flower macro”. These were some of the roses in the altar flowers at church. 

The next upload was “golden tamaracks”. I don’t think these trees are grown in our city but this is the closest I could come. (Tamaracks-is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and also south into the upper northeastern United States from Minnesota to Cranesville Swamp, West Virginia)

The last upload for yesterday was “moon”. This one I captured without the “astrophoto” feature on my phone. I used the night filter. 

Life today. Life is so full of surprises of one kind or another. Today is no different. It started out nice in that I “over slept”. It felt good. I didn’t have time sensitive projects for today. I had the usual bulletin on the agenda. Of course my personal projects of the day with the letter/bulletin and photos. Other than that it was a day of manageable chores to get done. Then Sweet Pea and I went out for a photo safari. Things changed then. There was another person in my life who backed out of a driveway and didn’t see me. He hit me. He was apologetic, unlike the one who backed out into me a couple of years ago.  My fender suffered a fair amount of wrinkle along with a door that quietly groans to open. We exchanged insurance information and phone numbers. When I got home, I called his insurance company. They took my information and said they would get back to me. So now we wait. 

The first photo challenge today is the first in my next five day series “trees”. I like showing the patterns in the now bare limps of the beautiful mature trees in the neighborhood. 

I got back to the normal projects for today. I’m having a bit of a problem focusing as I should be but things are getting done. I have the bulletin done and the letter for the day started. I have the photos in the “darkroom” to be prepared for upload.  I still have the Sunday School upload to Instagram to put together. Then to finish the photos. 

So Monday started out as a bit of a bummer. It could have been much worse. In all it was another lesson of some sort.  Maybe a lesson in deciding not to leave the house? .....hardly. Time will reveal what the actual lesson meant.

The next upload today is called “boo”. There are a lot of these little guys of all sort in the neighborhood right now.

The word today is object. The object of the superior man is truth. Confucius.  The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. Thomas Jefferson.  An object in motion tends to remain in motion along a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. Isaac Newton.  I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire. Ignatius of Antioch.  There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe. Walt Whitman.  Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort. Epictetus. An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit. Pliny the Elder. Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise. Novalis.  There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. Abraham Lincoln.  Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation? Thomas Carlyle.  To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us. Charles Caleb Colton.  

The last upload for today is “spider web”. I could readily find any real ones today but there are plenty of the home made kind around right now. 

Article: I guess I am stuck on animal articles. This one sounded interesting. I have a soft heart for bats in general not necessarily those of the particular vampire species. They are all so homely I feel sorry for them. Maybe a little more information will show their natural and positive attributes. This article title is an invitation in that direction: “Vampire bats – look beyond the fangs and blood to see animal friendships and unique adaptations”. It was written by an aspirant professor Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Vampire bats are often “favorite subjects for movies or books”. According to the article there are 1,400 species three of which “are known to feed on blood exclusively”. The most common of the three is “most abundant” and live in the forests of Central and South America. They “feed” on livestock and wild animals. The bats have “heat-sensing receptors on their noses help them find warm blood”. The article goes on to say that the chosen animal is “unsuspecting” of the bats feeding. Vampire bats help each other in this way “if a bat returns to the roost hungry, others may regurgitate a blood meal to get them through the night”. This occurs between family members such as mother and offspring. Bats form relationships in much the same way as seen in primates. They reciprocate in activities such as “cleaning and maintaining the fur....(and) sharing food”. When one bat is sick there is a “form of passive social distancing where sick individuals reduce their interaction with others”.  According to the article “it’s comparable to someone infected with the flu”. A major problem with a vampire bat population is that “can transmit the deadly rabies virus to livestock, which can cause quite significant economic losses”. An increase in livestock brings an increase in “vampire bat populations”.  Some farmers use a “topically applied poisons called vampiricide, basically a mix of petroleum jelly and rat poison”. This poison is applied to the fur of a bat who has been trapped. Then it is carried back to “the roost, where others ingest the poison”. More recently “focus has started to shift toward large-scale cattle vaccinations or vaccinating the vampire bats themselves”. The article closed with “you’re looking at a complex network of individual friendships between animals that care deeply for each other.” In the beginning I was looking for “natural and positive attributes”. I’m not sure if that’s what I found in this article. I believe all creatures, great and small, were created for a very definite purpose. I don’t propose to second guess that purpose whatever it may be. Just marvel at the creation.

It’s going to be something from the freezer for dinner. 

Joy

      the attraction is the age, and the art in the lines and shapes and patterns