The last couple of days have been really nice. Summer has decided to commence here in western Washington, and I’ve been out and about.

Some people wonder why I live here. Well…

(Yes, a digital photo of digitalis.)

The first pic is from Golden Gardens park, which is a big beach on Puget sound. The others are at O. O. Denny park, near Juanita. Denny park is along the riparian zone around Denny Creek, and down to a broad expanse of picnic area where it meets Lake Washington. The county park system couldn’t afford to keep it up, so the local residents all pitched in to preserve it, and keep it from becoming developed. It’s a lovely place.

Just after I took the foxglove picture, an older gent came around the bend and said hi. He must have seen me as a receptive listener, because he went on for a half hour about how he has a hobby of ‘planting’ fingerling fish in alpine lakes throughout the Cascades. He said he had a friend who’s been planting fish for 82 years, and went on: “I’m older than he is, but I haven’t been doing it as long.” He hikes the 3 miles up and down the creek, and back to his house, every day.

Update: It’s a parabolic reflector at a nearby park. You sit on the rock and face the black part, and you hear the reflected sound of the nearby stream as if it were in front of you.

There’s a big copper sun sculpture near the stream, and it’s what reflects the sound into the parabola.

I love that it’s 9pm and still dusk.

I love the dusk. The word ‘dusk,’ too. Just say it out loud: Dusk. Dusk is the day coming in after working in the fields, slapping the dust out of its clothes, gulping down water from a ladle, sitting on the porch while the sun sets its golden sideways striking the waves of wheatfield.

As the earth spins around, the dusk transforms from sitting on the porch to a walk in a dark forest, a ravine, a cave. The mysteries encroach and overwhelm, shadows hanging from every surface, diluted dark watercolor growing more opaque until it becomes thick black ink. The sun’s true power is in going away.

Random linkage:

DIY biodiesel.

Did you know that George W. Bush keeps Saddam Hussein’s pistol in the oval office? The one that was found with him when he was pulled from the spider-hole.

The problem with the gun is this: it ain’t about the fuckin’ gun. Well, it is, and it isn’t. It is in the way that Bush gets a war trophy for a war that’s a disaster, as if he is a soldier, when if a Marine took a pistol from the enemy as a trophy, he’d be prosecuted. And it’s about the gun in that it just seems one step removed from the behavior of tribes in Conan the Barbarian or something, where the head of the conquered king is displayed for all to ooh and aah over, for all to believe that the one who has the trophy is the true and bloodlust-filled warrior, when, in reality, this trophy-keeper, this Bush, is just a pussy in a blue tie.

More rabble-rousing autism linkage:

No Autistics Allowed: Explorations in the discrimination against autistics. Michelle Dawson catalogues Just What’s Wrong.

I got to this site through a notice posted to an email list. The notice brought attention to this article in particular, which raises a ruckus about autistic people being shut out of a major policy discussion about autism in Canada. It paints a picture of an insane scenario where the people most effected by the discussion are disqualified from the discussion because, well… they’re autistic.