A Great Pumpkin

      

 Edgar Allen Poe and Raven

were taken with this pumpkin

 (see the Oct. 19 post),

 a round straw bale

 fancifully transformed

 into a pumpkin

 to let people know

 about Duncan’s Corn Maze along the Robesonia-Bernville Road.

 Ingenious, honest solution to the problem. Happy Hallowe’en!

Picket Charge

   For the Fourth, Warrior and Edgar visit a painted picket fence with artwork in lieu of fireworks. Free admission.

Warrior

 

I heart USA.

ZizzyphuZ

tree with Z

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What starts with a Z

and ends with a Z?

Zee Sky

SPOTTED: The Wash Me Variations

Spotted

   

Seen in Pottstown, PA:

DRIVE ON

THE RIGHT.

PASS ON
THE LEFT.

 

 GET OFF THE

#@*!

CELL PHONE!

( Panel truck driver/calligrapher embellishes  “dead air” area on rear doors).

Weekend Warrior: Straight Through Gibraltar

  

Weekend Warrior, Eddie, Raven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Update:

 Have you ever gone straight through? Jabal Tariq, it was. Tariq’s Mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warrior and Edgar Allan Poe and Sizzy journeyed to Gibraltar.

 

Gibraltar, PA. U.S.A.: a village of  apparently few inhabitants and no official population count.  Just the straits, ma’am.

The township population is 6,869 and 97% white (2000 Census figures).

Main Street Gibraltar

Eddie thought he saw a sign for Elf-Storage, so we stopped to see what they had on the shelves. It was Self-Storage. We were locked out :(

Elf Storage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A faux topiary elfin Mickey Mouse posed with Eddie, Raven and Warrior.

mouse elf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eddie found a tell-tale heart in the asphalt topping:

 

Tell-Tale Heart

 

We drove under the fire station sign:

Fire Station Sign

 only to find a sign at the fire station:

Any Volunteers?

Is this the shooting gallery?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No wonder the place is deserted.

Evidence of Shooting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did the January 18 Shooting event go, we wondered?

We wandered up the street to ask someone. 

Oh. Dessert!

Dessert! Sweet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 They have chocolate mint chip. Have they any catnip?

in the knife throwing gallery

Guess not.

Enough! Nevermore!

Lincoln logs

Enough of this Lincoln Log sort of thing!

 

Any ideas? How about Aqueduct in time for the daily double?

Aqueduct sign

This state-owned site is on the National Register of Historic places and is vacant.

It is an architectural and engineering marvel by Beecher, Ephraim, Pettitt and Kimber.

1800-1824 Aqueduct

Here ARE the Rocks of Gibraltar!

Hello World!

I wish Thomas Jefferson could be here.

On a Rock of Gibraltar

    

We left town as we had found it.

bench, red/green

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 including these rocks:

Hard Rock Gibraltar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next drink is on us!

 

Seven-Up sign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or, us in the drink.

sea you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum: edited and revised from The Volume Library, 1977:

on Gibraltar the British Crown Colony, to reflect Gibraltar village 2009:

Gibraltar has no natural resources [once an iron furnace] and no useable farmland  √[check], and the colony village depends heavily on tourism, the fire company, transit trade, its two traffic lights, and its excellent citizens harbor and drydock facilities. A British naval base Turkey Hill convenience store and pump station contributes heavily to its economy.

travel

Please Inflate Me, Let Me Roll

   Can rubber do that in this weather?  The tires of the Sizzyphus excursion module feel transmogrified into squares, turning, almost limping, with a bump-bump-bump rhythm as we first drive away from home this morning.
  The world seems moonscapish. The salt and brine treatments on the roads and the monochromish landscape radiate a lunar effect – minus the large rocks, the planting of the flag and diminished gravity.
   Make more than one small step upon the towpath today. Register less than the usual mileage. No birds means suffering birdlessness.
   A post pre-owned car lot, AKA  salvage/junkyard has left  its wreath linked in, weeks after the December holidays, when this photograph was taken. Its bare naked creativity and spirit  amused me then, still does.  Hip, not  square.

Salvage tire wreath

Come to: the Fork in the Road

   Three miles from everywhere, in the middle of nowhere is a real, BIG fork in the middle of the road. Warrior and I made our way here because the white plastic fork was gone from the walking trail this morning and there were zero herons.

   “Would you like to go for a drive?” I said to Warrior. “I know where to find a real fork in the road!”

    He said sure, so this afternoon we journeyed to Centerport. For your viewing pleasure:

Centerport fork

Warrior wanted to pose at the base of the fork:

Warrior on location: fork in the road

While I was shooting this, a man named Joe came out of the bar to satisfy his curiosity. He had left his drink at the bar, he said, and offered to take my picture, thus cropped:

Chief Fork inspector Warrior

Also at this time a policeman was stopped across the road writing a ticket. We remained focused on our main objective, this found-in-the-middle-of-the-road object. Please note the interesting background detail of the cab of a truck, in the bed of a truck, behind. When they say pick up truck in these parts, they mean it.

   Did I say big? I mean elephantine.

Three miles, fork, truck

Path-ology

Tortoise Shell

   What is the scientific study of paths? Pathology tells us so. Iter, from the Latin “way” is the root word of itinerary, a travel plan, a route, a line of travel. ” When we travel we may plan an itinerary, from Point A to B and then on to Point C, at such and such time. Where are you headed?  The best path, the smoothest center, a dead end, a fabulous destination, a complete circuit.

   And if one isn’t travelling the best course, one is on a rough road, what better way to describe it than by pathology, it’s disease, a suffering feeling. How do we divine what is the best path for ourselves? “What’s my line?” or,  ”Does this path have a heart?” Or, as the acor says, “What’s my motivation?”

    Among the feaures in the landscape we discussed yesterday is a cassette book of four tapes, eight sides containing 118 poems, the group entitled I Remember, I Remember.  Our exhibit today shows a newspaper clipping mounted inside the back cover of a bible or hymnal. The text is arranged in tree shape, and contains measureable, measured facts about what the Bible contains. It is called the Tree of Knowledge, and, as if Arthur Koestler’s Roots of Coincidence had come alive and popped off the shelf, the middle verse of the Bible is the 118 Psalm, line 8.

midsection

 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. Psalm 118 line 8

The Tree of Knowledge, as found

 

   The ear is to the body as the (career) path is to one’s life, one’s body of work. We hear, we travel. As in poetry, when read or heard or constructed, our lives have a spatial sequence, where cadence and modulation occur and if we are lucky, resonate well. To plan those rhythms is to influence the line of one’s life. We are the poets of our own lives. Would the same text as above, written in standard paragraph form, have anywhere near the same impact?

   Feng shui teaches us that water is the element of the first bagua, the path or career sector of life. The course each life takes can be compared to that of a stream, and our actions, water-like. To follow the path of least resistance is water’s way, yet water can do so many things. It can drip relentlessly, it can ebb and flow and flood and freeze and boil and condense and bide its time and rush forward backward and all around. Chemically water can be hard or soft. As an element, water can be gentle, water can be hard as a brick. Water is smooth, water is rough. Water is glassine, water is choppy seas. It’s a kind of mixed martial arts.

   James P. Carse, in Finite and Infinite Games, part three “I am the Genius of Myself” writes of the relationship between illness and one’s ability to function: ” To be ill is to be dysfunctional. To be dysfunctional is to be unable to compete in one’s preferred contests.”

   “One is never ill in general, ” he continues. “One is always ill in relation to some bounded activity. It is not cancer that makes me ill. It is because I cannot work or run, or swallow, that I am ill with cancer.”

 The ancient Chinese divined from tortoise shells. What modern forms do we divine from?

Heart sign

Hug Those Curves

     Genie in the garage. Road sign: bridge. Road narrows. Hourglass on orange.

    Couple of weeks ago, the tires on my truck need balancing. So I take it in for service. I wait.

   Jonathan, the owner of the shop that takes care of my wheels lets me know the truck is ready, all set to go.

   “Now you can really hug those curves!” Jonathan says with smile.

   And for some strange reason my mind goes immediately 

 here, 

 stays:

 

Shake.

 

Photo courtesy of bitemyhorse.com Allison Huyett

Aim True

Let me draw a bead on you.  Oh! to be between a rock and a hard place! Suspension between horizonal points of helios. Today’s the day.