All That Aside...

The state of our "leadership" in this country is so dismal and so hopeless...if I allowed that to become the overarching theme of my life, I'd have to jump off a bridge. 

That said, I've been experiencing an aching need to be in the outdoors with the wild things.  Honestly, I'm having trouble adjusting to the lack of choices of safe places to go, just me and my camera, around here in the Eugene area.  I had developed quite a roster of parks and trails in the Portland metro area, places that I could actually get out of the car and walk around without fearing for my safety.  Then again, I lived in the area for 18 years...  I've only been here for a year.  So I'm sure I'll find more to add to my list...but right now, Finley Wildlife Refuge is my only choice.

And I miss Sauvie Island so much some times, I want to cry. 

Between too much rain and struggling to get this house into a shape I can live with, I haven't got outside anywhere near as much as I'd like.  Even so, I've been out to Finley four times in the past two weeks. And actually brought my camera along, determined to get back to that thing that I enjoyed so much in the past.

I got some (bad) pictures...but there were a few that were tolerably decent.  Good enough to post here, anyway.  Can't be all gloom and doom all the time, or I'd go nuts(-er than I am already...)

Great blue heron, Northern shoveler, and tundra swan...for your (well, MY) enjoyment...

 

 

After the "Acquittal"

In 2008, it seemed that the US had risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Bush Administration--its lies, its money-grubbing, its pro-1% economic policies that nearly ruined the rest of us--and embraced "hope and change" by electing our first black president.  A Harvard grad.  A constitutional scholar. A happily married family man of high moral values, with a vision for a hopeful future.

Somehow, we even brought him back for a second four years, in spite of the fact that he hadn't accomplished any of the change he had so wanted for this land.

 

When he finished his 2nd term and had to relinquish his position to The People's next choice, chaos reigned.  The 2016 election was a dumpster fire, and out of THOSE ashes rose the ignorant, vain, trash-talking, misogynist, racist bully who was, evidently, The People's answer to Obama's ideals of hope and change. 

>We have struggled, deteriorated and tumbled backward for three years under the despotic rule of a failed businessman-cum-reality show host.  Hatred has piled upon hatred.  The People have sunk their teeth into their neighbors' jugulars.  The ideological divide in the country has widened exponentially; there is no bridge to span it...nor is there the will on either side to even attempt to build one.

If "hope is the thing with feathers," this is what hope looks like in the US today:

I have two things to say about the State of our Union in January 2020:

And this, a desperate cry from the depths of my soul: