Sue Perry's Blog: Required Writing, page 14

Exercise Your Blog Voting Rights

What are you doing here? Perhaps you have asked yourself that question. Perhaps you have an answer. If so, please share it in the poll over thataway —-> in the right-hand column.

Blogging 201 recommends that I use a poll or survey to find out what ya’all like about this blog. In principle this is a great idea, and I think polls are fun. Only problem is that the poll results are unlikely to influence future posts, because I can only post what I feel like posting at the moment. So I will be quite interested to learn what you think, however your vote will not lead to any real change.

I assume it is clear that I am not a politician.

Alert: If your browser is not open fully the poll may not appear. If you are on a phone, you must scroll for frigging ever to see it fleetingly. I’m sorry. Discouraged, I am unwilling to check iPad performance. In case you wish to vote semi-manually, below is a snapshot of the poll. You can enter your vote in a comment here. 

Tagged: blogging, blogging_201, poll, poll results, postaweek

And With the Storm Came Irony

No doubt this boat’s name invoked fewer jokes before a big storm beached it in Santa Barbara, California. After the storm, for days gawkers like me circled it taking pictures.

It was one of several boats that snapped anchor lines and rammed the sand.

Before the storm, these boats were moored offshore, like those on the horizon, which survived this patch of weather.

The rain and the waves remodeled the cliffs, too. All the plants draped over these rocks used to grow on that bald patch of hillside.

The sea wall, a long inverted V, was already so eroded it was unaffected.

I love the patterns as the surf flows over that wall. I could watch it for hours, to my daughter’s dismay.

The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is “Letters“.

Tagged: boats, photography, postaweek, Santa Barbara, storm, Weekly Photo Challenge

Letter Art

My son gets it. The power and beauty of letters. He used letterpress and song lyrics to make this print. I see something new every time I look at it and I’ve looked at it a lot.

By Lars Huston

This post brought to you by the Proud Mom Society (a rather large organization) and the Weekly Photo Challenge topic: Letters.

Tagged: art, letterpress, mothers and sons, Weekly Photo Challenge

*EVER YOU ARE, WE’RE AL*

One night this business was here, the next night there was no sign of it. (Insert Twilight Zone theme song here.) Okay, maybe not the very next night. Maybe several months later. Anyway, the point is, when I took this picture, I didn’t notice the phrase underneath. Now I’m trying to see the ends from the middle. *EVER […]

Give Me An E! Give Me An S!

You know that feeling after a car window shatters and deposits a bizillion bits of glass on the concrete, then you walk across the glass in your steel-soled shoes? Worse than fingernails on a blackboard, huh? Well, that is what these signs do to me.   The WP Weekly Photo Challenge is Letters. Tagged: humor, photography, postaweek, […]

If You Want a Life, Don’t Read This

Among all the rabbit holes on the internet, there are a few I find especially deep. If you are looking for ways to consume hours with no sense of time’s passage, I recommend that you: subscribe to daily emails from Open Culture, which will notify you about a vast amount of tantalizing free content on the web: […]

A Floating Rorschach Test: Mud On the Move

Near my house is a place called La Tuna Canyon that has nothing to do with fish. I’ve lived here for a decade but never wondered how that name arose, until I began this post. I want only the best for my readers so have now investigated. Turns out La Tuna is “Spanish for, among other […]

Responsive At Last

I can be incredibly unaware of my surroundings. I can walk through a place I have lived for years and think, “hey, is that light fixture new?” and of course the answer is never yes. If you aren’t like me, you will have noticed that I have changed the look of my blog. I am happy with this new […]

Watching the Ground Shift

I love survey monuments (aka markers, aka marks). They get planted in the ground so that surveys can be done from exactly the same spot, at different times. If you measure from the same place over time, you can detect changes in ground position by comparing the surveys. If you don’t use the same place, you get bupkis*.

Walking the dog, I discovered that a neighbor has a monument on his property:

Wait – is that a survey monument?

Interesting! According to the inscription, at one time the City of Los Angeles held sway over this area. (No longer.) And I didn’t know they printed the elevation on the monuments back then. Fancy!

“Elevation 1716.15 feet above sea level”

I wonder if the neighbor got special instructions when he bought the house, forbidding him from messing with the monument. I wonder if that irritated him – gub’ment can’t tell me what to do! – or maybe he’s like me, and enjoys the connection with local history. Whoever first planted the monument is surely gone by now, the monument has been there for generations. Not all the monuments have led such sheltered lives. Monuments about a mile east got buried in a 1934 debris flow:

 

Photo from Mike Lawler, Crescenta Valley Historical Society

Admittedly, most surveys are done for boring reasons like defining property lines. But they can also reveal a region’s geology, its ground deformation - I love that term! – the movements related to earthquakes, subsidence, landslides. Given enough time, this monument will have quite a story to tell. After all, it’s because earthquakes are shoving the mountains skyward that I have a mountain view from my house:

 

Mountain view courtesy of earthquakes.

Obviously I am fascinated by these hazards but it would be fine with me if, during my years in this house, I experience no geologic drama.

* Looking up this spelling, I discovered that bupkis means goat droppings! One really can learn something new every single day!

A recent WP Weekly Photo Challenge wanted to see a monument.

Throw Your Two Cents Into the Ring

 Over the next whenever*, I will be changing the look of my blog.

Now would be an excellent time to let me know what you wish I’d change or hope I’ll keep.

* I won’t specify a time frame - I don’t want to annoy the free time gods. They are vengeful gods.

I am excited to try something new. It may turn out to be a makeover. Or a touch up. A sandblast. Or an unfortunate detour.

Photo by D. Saville for FEMA.