Wild, wild horses -- we'll ride them someday

With the country growing progressively more insane by the hour, I find this picture of a wild horse wandering along the top of a ridge in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota very calming.

Just for fun

I took this picture at a rest stop somewhere in Minnesota: Doritos in mustard, ketchup, and pickle flavors. I've never seen these in New York—or the taco pizza, baby back ribs or fried pickle ranch potato chips in the next aisle—so I had not realized how much American ingenuity goes into coming up with new kinds of junk food.

The highway convenience stores in the Midwest are quite an experience. Some of the bigger ones have a hundred different kinds of prepared food, as well as the packaged stuff, but even the smaller ones have an amazing variety of different flavors of chips, cookies, beef jerky and candy, while those of us hoping for something slightly healthier are limited to a few shriveled salads dying of loneliness at the far end of an aisle that might as well be labeled Afterthoughts.

I have been to 7-11's in Tokyo that had candy offerings in some truly unexpected flavors—and colors—and in the UK you can buy crisps (potato chips) in roast chicken or steak, ale and caramelised onion flavors, but I think the United States remains the undisputed junk food capital of the world.

Sunday, oops, Monday bird blogging

A snowy egret wading in San Francisco Bay.

I really did mean to post this yesterday, but the amount of work after the first class of the semester is not much smaller than the preparation before the class. I have to grade the assessment tests and the writing samples. I have to post all the class materials in Google Classroom. I have to send followup emails to the students who registered but didn't come on Saturday. I have to verify all the email addresses and phone numbers and create a WhatsApp group. I have to crop and label the photos I take of each student so we can all learn each other's names. I made a good start yesterday, but need to finish up today. This week I have two tutoring sessions, several appointments, and a professional development class, and, oh, I also need to finish prep for the next class.

I love love LOVE this job, but it is part-time only in theory.

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam

Classes start on Saturday, so I'm buried in prep. My theme this semester is folk tales and folk songs, so I've found myself walking around singing Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo and Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strummin' on the old banjo. I don't know if kids even sing those songs anymore, but I still remember all the words.

I don't have any pictures of deer handy, but here's a buffalo and an antelope, home, home on the range of Custer State Park in South Dakota.

Sunday bird blogging

A California towhee enjoying the sun earlier this summer.

Saturday reflections

I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

Black and white Black Hills

 

More Black Hills woods and water

The Black Hills

Since I was looking at South Dakota anyway...

The Black Hills are a national forest rather than a national park. I was expecting some interesting geology, because I never knew that the “black” in the name refers to how the hills are so covered with trees that they appear black. (Well, if you say so.)

But it is quite beautiful, and very different from the eastern half of the state.

Long ago and far away

That's how it feels, anyway. But this was less than two months ago, in South Dakota.

This is Spearfish Canyon, in the Black Hills. The waterfall was a short hike through some beautiful forest.

Saturday reflections

Here's something more recent and local for a change: cars waiting for a light on Walker Street in Lower Manhattan on Thursday.

I had just had my annual eye exam, and with my eyes dilated the patterns on these windshields looked practically psychedelic.

Teddy Hall

Continuing my peeks through the porter's lodge gates at some of the lesser-known constituent colleges of Oxford, here is St Edmund Hall, rather charmingly known as Teddy Hall.

This is one of the older colleges, dating from sometime in the 13th century, and alumni include Keir Starmer and Terry Jones. That large tub of flowers in the middle of the lawn is actually a medieval well (obviously.) I believe that the newer building you can see behind the quad is student accomodations; I like that while the gable shapes on top echo those in the quad, it looks modern and practical and comfortable. Much as I love staying in Mob Quad, you can get a little tired of the 14th century.