On Just About Everything
The Great Sand Dunes National Park is just north of Alamosa Colorado. I guess formed because of it unique environmental conditions. It is a very interesting place to visit. They say the night sky is some of the most wondrous in the country. I wish we had taken the time to see it. Click on any picture below to see an enlarged slideshow… Continue reading Great Sand Dunes National Park
I am one who rails against anyone who insists that I know my place. That is that I keep within my sphere of life. The British have always been more in that mode that we Americans. The Royal Family with all it kings, queens, dukes, arch-dukes and all that is about knowing your place. They are the privileged ones and the rest are surfs doing their biding. I just can’t abide by that. But in some ways we all must come to realize just where we have landed in our society. If you haven’t noticed by now my moniker for … Continue reading I am a TWiG on the Tree of Life…
Let’s go back to the small town of Antonio Colorado for a visit to the home of the town eccentric. Some of us, myself included, are eccentric to one level or another but there are not many people who are … Continue reading Eccentricity is What it is…
There are thousands of small towns still around in America. Antonio Colorado is somewhat typical of many. They have survived and even that says a lot about them. Antonito, Colorado was formed, like many other Colorado towns, from the Denver & … Continue reading Antonio Colorado…
I am keeping a daily watch on my two containers of tomatoes. Maybe it is like the old saying “A watched pot never boils”. The plants are absolutely beautiful but there just aren’t many tomatoes on them. Maybe too many frogs and chickens watching them. :) Continue reading Tomatoes, tomatoes…
Time for some more story tellin here. I think it would be boring (at least for me) to try and tell my story in chronological order so I am gonna skip around some. All my life I have had a hankering to grow stuff and several times during my life flow I have been fortunate enough to do just that. There is just something about watching something grow from practically nothing into something magnificent. Some of my earliest memories are of Mrs. Forrester’s flower garden on Park Ave. She lived next door to us in a very densely, you might say … Continue reading Growing Stuff..
The 5-foot-4, 100-pound Madison designed the intellectual framework for the Constitution, including federalism and the so-called Virginia Plan — the blueprint that determined the structure of our government that emerged from the Constitutional Convention, with its strong executive, bicameral legislature and independent judiciary. He was a strategist who helped assemble the alliances and map out the plan necessary to the Constitution’s implementation, including the campaign of editorials later known as the Federalist Papers, the battle to ratify the Constitution in the crucial state of Virginia and the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1789. But despite these nation-shaping accomplishments, … Continue reading James Madison, My Hero…
New Mexico is fast becoming my favorite State. I love all the mountains and even the arid landscape but especially the adobe houses and buildings. In the future I will be including many of the towns and such but for this post it is all about the countryside. Click on any pic below to see a larger version slideshow. Continue reading New Mexico Countryside
I know the title to this post probably invokes a vision of a complete idiot so maybe I should complete the sentence up front. I try not to think about the dark side of life. That is quite a chore since there seems to be so much of it in the world today. I could tell you what I mean but then I would have to think about it and thus break my own rule… I have vowed not to think about things I get depressed over. I try to only think of pleasant things. I know I sound kind … Continue reading I Try Not To Think…
I found these marbles in the Prairie Museum in Colby Kansas recently. I lost my marbles years ago… :) Continue reading Have You Lost Your Marbles??
Santa Fe – Museum of International Folk Art I have always been a fan of folk art so when we were in Santa Fe recently we had to visit the Museum of International Folk Art. It was quite a place. … Continue reading Folk Art..
I am trying container gardening for the first time with tomato plants. Here is a macro-photo of the first tomato hidden deep inside the caged plant. Hopefully many more will come in the weeks ahead.. Continue reading First Fruits…
This post is a continuation of my story about my father and his early years. I know there there millions of families that have been seriously affected by all the wars we have been involved in during my lifetime. Some grievously damaged, some to a lesser extent. I see too many people who are still living with the wounds of my generation’s war and that is Vietnam. They can’t let go of their feeling and seem to live them almost daily. To what extent my father’s war time experiences effected the family is hard for me to grade. Dad graduated from … Continue reading War and Families…
Sometimes being out of focus is a creative thing. When in focus this flower is a beautiful thing but out of focus it becomes a play on colors. I love the combination.. Continue reading Out Of Focus…
I was so excited to see that Woody Guthrie finally had his own museum I couldn’t wait to visit. Here is a gallery of pictures for … Continue reading Woody Guthrie Center – Tulsa OK
This emblem I found on a 1953 Ford tractor at the Antique Tractor show is indeed a work of art. How come we don’t see things like this anymore? Continue reading Industrial Art..
I’lI try not to do it too often but I am gonna get kind of philosophical here. I ran across the following quote from my hero Woody Guthrie a while back. Ever’body might be just one big soul. Well it looks that a-way to me. Woody wrote thousands of poems in his life. Some he called lyrics and some he didn’t. This one, whichever it is, got me to thinking pretty deep. With ISIS and all that other terrorist stuff going on it seems like a big part of the world problems today is one religion fighting against another or … Continue reading One Big Soul…
A Snippet Here, A Snippet There.. Just a quick post this morning to give you an interesting picture of some pueblo art I found recently in … Continue reading Pueblo Art
A Snippet Here, A Snippet There.. I have a daily ritual that seems to be pretty constant. After I do my “morning business” I spend an hour or on the Internet to see what happened in the world in the last 24 hours. I am now pleasantly cruising over all the political news and most of the stuff from the Middle East. That stuff only gets me depressed… But one part of the morning exercise that I enjoy is reading all my blog friends posts. Unfortunately most of my buddies from the last half dozen years are no longer around … Continue reading I Miss You…..
Lillies are one of my favorite flowers and these are out early this year. Continue reading Lillies..
Last week I showed you the art that I found in the Oklahoma State house. This week let’s look at the architecture and statues. I was surprised to see all the native American art there. Native Americans do make up … Continue reading Oklahoma State House Again..
This is another story about my dad in his early years. This one is about his brothers and sisters and his relationships with them. When starting these stories one thing that became glaringly obvious was there is really no photographic record of the Walters clan. I don’t have any pictures of my aunts or uncles or even grandparents for that matter. They just didn’t seem to do pictures in those days. Maybe they were just too expensive? I inherited all the memorabilia of my parents and included in that was just a handful small photos and few legal documents. So, these posts on … Continue reading Sonny and His Sisters and Brothers
One of my favorite snacks is Halo oranges. They are tasty and easy to peel. It seems that all of them that I peel result in the rinds as shown above. I guess I am a creature of habit but it does have some creative aspects. In my mind it looks like an orange swan…. Continue reading Creative Peeling….
During our trip to Santa Fe this Spring we managed to get to the Oklahoma State House for a visit. They proved to be the most stringent of all the state houses we have visited about taking pictures but I … Continue reading Oklahoma State House Art…
If you are a “wise” guy you can look back on your life to see where you have been and to learn lessons from past successes and especially the mistakes. This is one of those posts. I don’t think I am your typical senior citizen if someone like that even exists. I have been kind of a misfit at many times in my life. For one thing I am a pretty liberal guy where most “old people” I come across these days seem to be of a very conservative slant. As kids we are always asking “why”, why this, why that. Most of … Continue reading I Am A Rock, I Am An Island…
I lived in New Jersey for four years and visited there for thirty before that so diners were very familiar to me. When we lived there they became a regular eat-out place. We make an annual trek to a town near Indy to buy our Spring flowers and discovered this “new” diner near there. It is nice to see that the old is new again. Continue reading Ode to the Diner
The annual antique tractor show was this past weekend in our small rural town. Here is some photos to give you a peek. Continue reading Antique Tractors..
They called my parents the Greatest Generation I guess because they grew up during the Great Depression and were steeled by World War II. This post is going to tell you some stories about my dad. My dad was born in 1923. I’m sure he never traveled further than Indianapolis, which was forty miles away, during his first eighteen years. As mentioned in a previous post his father was a pig farmer and that was probably dad’s total life experiences through his high school years. Belle Union where he grew up is almost non-existent today and was not much even in dad’s … Continue reading The Greatest Generation…
I just ran across this picture in my Lightroom database. It was taken about twenty years ago but still one of my favorites. It was taken in my backyard from three houses ago. Continue reading Foggy Morning..
For some odd reason I am particularly attracted to old large group pictures and boxes. Here are some boxes from the Patee House Hotel Museum in Missouri. Continue reading Patee House Hotel Museum – Boxes
My month-long hiatus from blogging a while back was more than just blogging. I pretty much ceased all my normal daily activity in favor of just doing what I felt like doing. Some days it was vegging out and some it was all day in the barn working on my micro-RV project of the last three years. And of course given that it was Spring, which is my favorite time of year, it was about sitting on my “mountain” and enjoying the view. One of the primary things I gave up during this period was keeping lists of my activity. … Continue reading No More Lists…
Got a new macro lens for my DSLR today. Its going to be fun learning this new photo technique. I have had a book entitled Understanding close-up Photography by Bryan Peterson for a while now. Got it dusted off and ready to jump in with both feet. I seem to always be a both feet type of guy… Continue reading Keeping Things In Perspective…
I recently make a second trip to Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico and appreciated it as much as I did the first time. Similar to Mesa Verde in Southern Colorado, it is a mystical place. Click on any … Continue reading Bandelier National Monument
I just ran across a very creative team at Creative Arts, Unlimited Inc on the History Channel. The work they do is amazing. If you get cable or satellite it is well worth the time to watch them. Their creativity is truly inspiring. And they get their projects done so quickly it is hard to believe… Continue reading Museum Men…
The Great Salt Lake in Nevada is an impressive place. We spent a couple of hours walking its shoreline. It is impressive and at the same time depressive. We came into Salt Lake City via the west and it was … Continue reading The Great Salt Lake…
The title of this post was written by my folk music hero Wood Guthrie many years ago but that is not the topic of this post. Instead it is to say so long to a fellow Hoosier Dave Letterman. Although I was not a regular late-night TV viewer in any form I did catch Dave’s show on occasion. I have a certain kindred relationship with Dave even though it is assuredly one-sided. Dave is a younger fellow than me by almost six months. I think he was born in the same Indianapolis hospital as I was. I almost took a … Continue reading So Long, Its Been Good to Know Yuh…
I find Native American art to be some of the most creative around. I found this one at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque NM a few months ago. Continue reading Native American Art
I can’t get very far along with this new blog before I bring in the folk music category. Folk music, particularly Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, PP&M, is what formed many of my attitudes toward life and made me realize that I am to some degree an empath. But it was not until I discovered Woody Guthrie that I came to see the true origins of folk music. When I recently visited the Wood Guthrie Center in Tulsa Oklahoma I was totally struck by the breadth of his talents. I am now reading a book entitled Bound For Glory which is … Continue reading Bound For Glory
The main thing that brought me to the Brady District in Tulsa OK was the Woody Guthrie Center. I’m glad I found it. Neat stores, restaurants, museums. Continue reading Brady District – Tulsa OK
Let’s take a whirlwind trip through St. Louis via Interstate 70 today. These pics were taken about two months ago. Continue reading A Quick Trip Through St. Louis…
Maybe the title of this post is a little over-inflated :) but I am going back as far as I know about family. My mom never talked about her family and I only met a brother once so I can’t say much about that side of my family. Much more about mom in that regard in incoming posts. The only experiences with family was on my dad’s side. Grandpa Walters was a pig farmer and I believe his father was also a pig farmer. It is what he did. He had a farm of about forty acres near Belle Union Indiana. … Continue reading In The Beginning… About The Grandparents
I found this interesting place recently in the panhandle of Texas. I guess it used to be a gas station of sorts but that was likely years ago. It is now surrounded by wind turbines. The old and the new fit nicely together.. Continue reading Old and New..
Being part Native American I always plan of visiting Native American centers throughout my travels. This one is in Albuquerque NM. We visited there this Spring. … Continue reading Indian Cultural Center – Albuquerque Gallery
I am back from a six-week hiatus here at InSearchOfAmerica. I wanted to take this time off to thoroughly enjoy the beautiful Spring season here in the Midwest. While I was gone from daily blogging I worked on some improvements to the site. Since pictures are at the heart of this blog I brought up a new “Gallery” option in the header menu. I also categorized and tagged the posts to be easier to find just the info you want. It feels good to be back but I did come to some decisions about my blogging future. While I will … Continue reading New & Improved…
According to my camera gps this shot was taken in Groom Texas along Interstate 40. I don’t understand why it says Britten but if they don’t do something soon I expect that some of the people of Groom will be without water for a while. Continue reading Leaning Tower of Britten?
