In Memory of Mat

My cousin Matilda was 8 years older than me. Growing up she was an exciting, awesome figure in my life. I didn't get to see her but every couple of years, but each encounter was fraught with significance. She was smart, funny and sassy and I admired her enormously.

I have a number of extremely vivid memories of Mat from childhood.

One summer when we were all together in our parents' childhood home of Troutdale, Virginia, Mat (then a young teen) took a whole troop of children including me and my little brother Charlie as well as several local children on a hike down to the creek and the swimming hole, without telling the parents where we were going. We came back hours later, hot, sweaty, sunburnt, our legs scratched from the brambles, and deliriously happy with great memories of water striders, newts, crawdads, and wading in the cold stream. I think the grownups yelled at Mat for scaring them.

A couple of years later, also in Troutdale, I remember Mat showing me how the neighbor's baby goats like to climb on things by getting down on the ground and letting the goats climb on her back.

When Mat was 18 (and I was 10), she had a VW Beetle - a convertible VW Beetle! This was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. This was about the same time that I learned that Troutdale a little town I knew and loved was in located in "Appalachia" - a place that took on mythical proportions in the early 1960's. I made a vow about that time in my life that when I grew up, I was going to be a school teacher in Appalachia and have a VW Beetle (maybe even a convertible!).  It was by no means an accident that my first car (in 1975) was a VW Beetle, and I drove it all over Appalachia while I researched my Masters Thesis and Dissertation.

One of my best Mat memories is from when I was 18 (Mat was 26) and I graduated from high school. I had my very first trip on my own as an "adult" to visit Mat in San Diego where she was a Navy nurse. She took me all over San Diego, to all the tourist spots (Marine World, the San Diego Zoo, etc.), in her sporty little MG convertible. The best part of the trip was the party she and her roommate threw: they invited not only their nurse friends but a whole bunch of young Navy men! Men, dancing and beer! How could one not idolize a cousin like Mat.

As we got older the age difference mattered less. We became friends, who wrote, called, and visited. Mat's the reason I got on Facebook, she kept bugging me because she wanted to share pictures. Another way that we were able to keep touch with each other.  I will miss my cousin Mat. May she rest in peace.

mind of the universe

It came to me in the early morning hours as I lie there trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or to get up, that it was an enormous human conceit not to believe in god* or at least not to believe in the existence of a mind/an intelligence greater than our own encompassing the universe. Moreover, that it is a western human conceit to believe that foraging humans like the Mbuti (pygmies) are wrong when they believe in the Forest as a living entity with mind/consciousness to whom they give thanks and offer prayer. 

We rational, scientific, folks of industrial societies don’t actually know why we ourselves have a mind (as opposed to just a brain), so how can we discount the idea that other organized systems (bees, dolphins, forests, planets, universes) composed of organic and inorganic materials just as we are, could not also produce minds and thought. 

Since we aren’t particularly good at understanding other human beings, why should we expect to understand the working of the mind of the universe/god? 
___________
*this is not to imply that any particular human conception of god is necessarily correct.

Color view of M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy), with M32 (a satellite galaxy) shown to the lower left. Credit and copyright: Terry Hancock. https://www.universetoday.com/33986/messier-32/

How my life has been enriched by "mansplaining"

These days one frequently finds complaints by women about "mansplaining" - especially those truly annoying experiences where a man with little knowledge explains (often inaccurately) something to a woman who is a verified, recognized authority and expert in that very subject.  This is especially likely to happen to women who are authorities and experts in fields viewed by the backward among us as "masculine" like technology, science, medicine, engineering, politics, and many others. Women are also understandably and reasonably annoyed when men start to lecture them about the nature of women, women's biology, psychology or life experiences, especially when the man's ideas are contradicted by women's lived experiences. So just to be clear, I'm not denying the reality of the problem of "mansplaining" as experienced by all too many women today.

However, an enormous amount of the knowledge and skill I have today comes from being a willing listener to many men, who over the years liked telling women about some interest or passion they had. Sometimes the things men told me were things I already knew, but if I hadn't sat through that part of the explanation I never would have gained the additional knowledge or skill that they had to impart that I did not already know.

It started with my father. Sometimes I would take one of my math homework problems to him, even though I already knew how to work the problem because after he had explained my assignment to me, he would go on and show me something from his college homework. As a result, I learned about powers, roots, and logs at an age when my peers had just learned long division. If I went to him with a question about geography he might start telling me things about air travel and aircraft and the airline industry.

In school, I quickly figured out that boys and later men liked to show off to girls, to explain things to them, and that this became even more important in college with men explaining things to women. I only took one science in college - general biology - but I learned a lot about chemistry and physics from getting young men to explain and show things to me. I also learned about wine, gourmet food, about classical music, folk music, foreign films, motorcycles, race car driving, ten-speed bicycles, sports cars, fencing, the printing industry, modern art, audio equipment, electronics, broadcasting, existential philosophy, psychology, British culture, and a hell of a lot of other things. Many of the things that I learned from all these men eager to explain things to women helped me get and advance in jobs after college.

I became a safer, more skilled, driver because one of my boyfriends in college had been a race car driver, and I was a willing listener and student. I can get into and out of tight parking spots that flummox other drivers. I still, to this day, can out drive most people on windy mountain roads because of those lessons.

I'm not saying that everything a man every explained to me held information of value. Nor am I saying that I did not also learn much from women. What I am saying is that my life and my career as a sociologist and college professor, has been richer and held greater depth, because of many things I learned from men - boyfriends, friends, friends fathers, acquaintances, strangers at parties and many other places - who wanted to explain something to me.

I suck at Yoga and that's a wonderful feeling!

This is not bragging just a realistic assessment: I am a person with multiple intellectual and artistic talents. There are not many things that I have tried in life that I could not learn to do moderately well with a modicum of effort. 

There were two negative consequences to that: First, because I could do many things pretty well with a little bit of practice (like playing piano, or  understanding mathematics) with a few exceptions I rarely put in the kind of concerted, long term effort it takes to get really outstanding. I've been content with being above average on many things but not really excellent at anything.  Second, on the rare occasions that I encountered something at which I truly sucked (like playing guitar), I very quickly gave up. 

So yoga is a whole new experience for me.  I'm over Medicare age, morbidly obese, with extensive osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis; my disks are deteriorating, my rotator cuffs in both shoulders scarred from multiple injuries, and while my knees and hips aren't ready for surgery yet, it may not be long before they are. I haven't tried any exercise beyond walking since 1989. So I truly suck at yoga.  

My first yoga lesson (four weeks ago) was nearly my last. By the end of the first lesson, when I couldn't come near doing any of the exercises or postures - except for the breathing - I felt I had no right to take up space in a yoga class or the time of the yoga instructor. At the end of the class feeling depressed and humiliated I went up to the instructor to apologize for my miserable existence and say that I would not be back. But before I could get the first word out, the instructor (a truly amazing young woman) put her finger over my mouth and said "NO! Stop! You are NOT allowed to criticize yourself here." I don't remember everything she said next, but I left that room knowing that I would keep coming back and that it didn't matter if I continued to suck at yoga for years to come, as long as I got some benefit out of it. 

The incredible thing is that even though I still can't do anything at all the way it's suppose to be done, I can see tiny improvements and I feel so good at the end of each lesson, despite sucking so completely. It feels like a huge life victory to keep doing something even though I'm terrible at it.  

In Memory of Friends Long Gone

Twice in the week I've had reason to think a former student and long time friend Bradford Clay Jones who died twenty years ago this spring. First when the Supreme Court announced their decision on same sex marriage last Friday and  then again on Monday when I learned that the community college system that I serve (KCTCS) had nominated me for a state-wide teaching award (my academic dean says I've "won" it, but officially I've only been nominated, and I like to hold off celebration until things are official).  Both times when I heard the news I thought of Clay and wished that he had lived to see it. 

Clay was a student in my SOC 101 Introductory Sociology course at the University of Kentucky in the spring term of 1981. Clay had come to UK from Russellville, Kentucky a small farming community in the western part of the state. He came with his best friend, a red headed freckled young farmer, whose name I sadly can no longer remember although I can see his face as clear as it was yesterday. They joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity together, took their general education classes together including sociology, but had different majors and different career/life paths. Clay was brilliant, articulate, wild, crazy, daring, fun, charming. He was clearly a leader among his fraternity brothers.   Clay got his degree in education from the University of Kentucky's department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion.

After graduation Clay entered the Air Force  as a 1st Lieutenant and began corresponding regularly with me. He wrote long chatty letters about work and life. He loved serving his country and was posted on first at Dover, Delaware and then near Kansas City. His job involved providing healthy exercise and activity programs for people stationed at the AF Bases. 

Clay also had an active personal life outside work. He participated with local community theater groups in the communities near the AF bases where he was stationed. I remember how much fun he had with a production of Oklahoma! Although Clay had explored and experimented with his sexual identity in college, it was not until more than a year after graduation that Clay finally "came out" to himself and to friends and family, but not of course to the USAF. This was well before "Don't ask, Don't tell."

While stationed near Kansas City, Clay met the love of his life Gene and entered into a committed relationship. A local minister officiated at Clay and Gene's vows which they considered just as binding as if they had been legal. Rather than face being separated from Gene by the Air Force posting him outside the U.S. Clay allowed the Air Force to learn of his sexual orientation and discharge him in 1984. 

Clay entered the Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management at the University Missouri, Kansas City and received his MPA in 1986.  In 1989 he became the Executive director Kansas division American Cancer Society.

Diagnosed as HIV positive in the late 1980's Clay maintained his health for a number of years.  He advocated for AIDS research as a board member of the Kansas City AIDS Research Consortium. In the early 1990's his HIV infection became full-blown AIDS. He suffered among other things from a histoplasmosis infection that spread from his lungs throughout his body. In June of 1995 I received the sad news from Clay's spouse Gene that AIDS had taken its toll and Clay died May 1, 1995. 

I wish that Clay had lived to see same sex marriage legalized across the nation; for him and Gene to have had the full legal rights of married couples. They were married for a decade before Clay's death and yet Gene received none of the benefits a married person should have on the death of his spouse. 

I also wish that Clay could have lived to see me receive this state-wide teaching award for "inspiring" Kentucky students to become contributing members of society. Clay was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of my teaching career.  I met him while I was still an "apprentice" graduate student instructor, and his friendship over the next 14 years was very influential in my development as a teacher.  By no means the last student to become a life-long friend, Clay was the first. 

Thanks for the memories, Clay. 

A January of Small Stones 01

January 1, 2014

tiny cat snores

emanate

from some hidden nook

enveloping my desk

in warm, somnolence.

sgreerpitt

Live Each Day

Dropped in on Facebook this morning to find a lot of my younger friends were wishing their lives away:  "How I wish this day were over;" "If only this day would end;" "Pray for this day to be over."  I thought, how sad this is.  When you get to my age time moves so swiftly...reminds me of a song lyric from Eric Anderson in the 1970's "Time like a freight train..." Days, weeks, months, even years are gone before I realize it.

Whether one is faced with the problem of moments that drag or moments that vanish to quickly the solution is the same: work on being in the moment, noticing and experiencing life as it is happening to you. Not that this is at all easy. But it does not mean working all the time or being "on" all the time. Some times the best way to be in the moment is to relax, practice deep breathing, a quiet moment of reflection, a brief walk to the window or door, even take a nap (albeit few people have the luxury to nap at work).

{time out for a stroll to the mail box and a lawn mowing break and the sweet, sweet smell of morning grass, mixed with the pungent odor of gasoline from the mower; unaccustomed muscle use, sweat, and heart rate elevation!}

 I wanted to extend this thought to several people I know in a gentle non-judgmental way. I know their work is not always full-filling, their days often tiresome. I've noticed that people often respond to what I call "bumper stickers" on Facebook--images with meaningful statements on them--much more readily than direct advice. So I crafted the message above and floated it out into Facebook land.  I'm happy that it seemed to reverberate with a number of people, and has been "shared" repeatedly. I know I've going to post it prominently somewhere to remind myself of one of my better thoughts and try to put it into practice more often.

pivotal people

I love Facebook. I know that not everyone does, but I do. I love that I have been able to build new ties and bonds with people I've met strictly through the Internet (initially by blogging). I also love that I have a richer connection with the people that I work with and the students that I teach, learning more about their families, their interests, their hopes and fears. But I especially love that I am able to reconnect with people from my past, all the way back to grade school.

Today, I received a friend request from a former student, from my years in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - my first full-time teaching position. We had not lost all touch, corresponding at irregularly for the past 24 years. But now I will finally get to see photos of her husband, her children, her cats, and share more frequently everyday thoughts. Eve mentioned telling her son - now almost college age himself - about me as a pivotal person at a pivotal time in her life. People often speak of teachers and advisers as pivotal, or influential. But as I think about Eve, I realized that she was a pivotal influence in my life at a pivotal time for me.

I was trying to figure out what kind of professor I was, what kind of teacher, what kind of advisor. Eve let me into her life in a way that influenced my ideas about myself as a person and as a professor. She made me feel like I was doing something valuable, because she let me know that I was helping her in her life and career path.

Eve is not the only student to have touched me and influenced me, but there has always been something special about her. Maybe it's because we shared a love of cats (she used to come to my house to visit with my Maine Coon cat Melvin), or because of how courageously she dealt with the internship from hell, or just because she's a wonderful, smart, caring, fun person. I'm so glad that Facebook is allowing us to reconnect on a more regular basis.

new year reflections

Not going to "resolve" anything this year, but rather reflect and respond.

I'm so pleased that Fiona Robyn created the "river of stones" challenge for January. It is just exactly the creative shove that I needed. 2009 was a very creative year of poetry and painting. Last year just seemed like a year that I was always scrambling just to get by. The last three months were simply devoured by the process of purchasing and moving into a new house.

With the new year, we feel "moved in," and a bit less stressed. Not that the moving process is fully completed -- lots of odds and ends still in the old house that need eventually to be sorted through, thrown away, sold, given away or stored. But life is slowly getting back to normal, and an important part of that normal is writing.

I've let my blog languish. Been a poor blog friend - failing to visit any of my friends blogs for months.

This year more time will be allocated to reflection, reading, writing, and responding.

grace



Like the gentle rain now falling on our dry autumn forest, the grace of friendship renewed my life this morning.

I turned on the computer to find heartfelt comments from former students and other Facebook friends to my previous post "fear."  For a while the waterworks inside rivaled those outside. This momentarily dismayed my husband, who like most men, just doesn't understand that women cry when they are happy as much or more than when they are sad.

Moreover, I was reminded once again, by the comments here on the blog and on Facebook, of the grace of others with much greater burdens to bear than I have, who take the time to support a friend.

Katrina Remembrance

Professional photographer Virginia Hart (a high school friend from California) took photographs of conditions on the Gulf coast in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina for the Red Cross. Below is a collection of moving images to mark the fifth anniversary this August 29th.


YouTube - Katrina Remembrance

Please watch!

today while the flowers still cling to the vine...

The first line of my favorite song from childhood "Today" performed by the New Christy Minstrels. Through the power of my iPod, I took a wonderful mental trip back through childhood, while enjoying the mountain scenery on my hour plus drive to and from in-service this morning.

Songs recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, the New Christy Minstrels and Pete Seeger, that my brothers and I sang in the car on family trips, like "If I Had a Hammer," and "Little Houses made of Ticky Tacky," and "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." The version of that song on my iPod is from a live album, and features hundreds of audience voices joining the performers on repeated verses. And I was transported for a moment, to a day, when United Air Lines celebrating their first jet passenger planes from McDonnell-Douglas, had invited all San Francisco Maintenance Base employees and their families to a huge party in a cavernous hanger, with music by the New Christy Minstrels. I tell you, you have not heard anything until you hear 5,000 people, young and old, singing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" inside the acoustic miracle of a jet hanger. It was, and continues to be the most awesome musical experience of my entire life.

owning our choices

Earlier this afternoon I enjoyed a long phone conversation with one of my two best friends. She reads my blog sometimes, so my apologies dear, for appropriating a piece of your life to make a point about my own.

My friend has what I would consider (and I think she also considers) the workplace from hell. It is not her own position per se which is so dreadful, but the larger conditions of the institution for which she labors that are so problematic. It is an institution that appears to be run by the worst assemblage of leaders, managers, and administrators of which I've ever heard. Every few months my friend regales me with fascinating stories of venal, callous, petty, and sometimes even Machiavellian machinations on the part of the decision-makers at her workplace.

My friend who is now past full retirement age and already receiving social security, has been talking about retirement for sometime. So each time we connect I ask if she's notified those above her that she is retiring. And each time we talk she has a different, well thought out, reasonable explanation why it is just not yet the right time to announce her retirement.

We've had nearly the same conversation now every few months for more than a year. But this time, as I listened to her, I realized that as dreadful as this institution is, as many horror stories as she has told about it, there is a deeply embedded part of her that loves working there. In that toxic environment someone who is a compassionate, carrying, principled and decent as my friend makes an enormous difference. She is a bastion of integrity, a protector of the weak and defenseless. This gives her work and her life meaning in a way it would not have in a more benign environment.

Just because it seems to me as a caring friend that she would have a more pleasant life away from that cesspool, does not mean that she should leave. If this is where she finds purpose then perhaps it is not time yet for retirement. I'm sure that there are many other ways that she could and would contribute if she did retire, but there's no reason to retire if she's full-filled where she is.

It is easier to have insights about other people's lives than it is about our own. My friend does not seem to realize how much value this workplace has in her life, and does not understand why she is so reluctant to leave it, having spent so much time over the past few years complaining about the conditions there.

As I drove to the store reflecting upon my friends situation, I began to realize that I too spend a great deal of time complaining about the very things that give my work and life meaning. My favorite phrase is "too much work, too little time." Yet I'm always accepting new assignments, choosing to take on additional projects.

Being "too busy" is what makes me feel needed and necessary, gives my life a sense of purpose and value. It makes me feel important to complain about how busy I am. It gives me an excuse not to do things I don't want to do, because "work comes first." Although that's not really true -- I find time for the things I really value, like talking to my husband, reading mysteries, taking care of my animals.

I think from now on, I won't complain about "too much work" but rather brag about it -- that's what I've really been doing after all. I won't be "too busy" but rather "wonderfully busy," or "blissfully busy."

long LOST love

Other than to say that last night's final chapter of LOST has left me with a sense of quiet, peace and satisfaction (Namaste to you too), I'm not quite ready to blog about the final episode yet. I want to dwell in that place of peace and light for a while longer.

However, I did spend a short while this morning reading the blog posts and commentary articles of folks who had similar reactions to the ending of our favorite series. Among the comments on those other blogs and articles I did find one type of posting that I found disturbing.

Several folks commenting, who were unhappy about the way the series ended, complained about being tricked into investing their energy for six years into something that was not "real." These commenters appeared to think that having any portion of what they had viewed for the past six years take place after the characters had died negated the realness of the conflicts the characters faced and the emotions the show stirred in those of us who loved it.

Leaving totally aside for the present issues of 1) when the characters died (at the very beginning or as they appeared to, through out the show and some even after the death of Jack at the very end), or 2) whether or not one believes in purgatory, the guff or even heaven, the aliveness or deadness of the characters has no relationship to how real the issues and conflicts are, and how real the ideas they got us to think about.

So I am left wondering, what makes things "real" to the people who complained about the ending invalidating the reality of the show? How odd to think that one could readily and happily invest energy in a show about time travel and disappearing islands, mythical research projects of the 1970's, smoke monsters, and pockets of electromagnetism great enough to grab airliners out of the sky, and yet the loss of corporeal status is the one thing that makes everything unreal.

Are we humans nothing more than physical beings? I say not. We are spirit, we are hopes and dreams, we are ideas; the "I" or "self" that each of us is encompasses the physical body and physical experience, but transcends it to be so much more (a key idea of one of my sociological idols,George Herbert Mead).

Some believe that such self can also transcend the death of the physical body. But you don't have to believe that to recognize that what makes us human goes far beyond mere matters of physical survival of individual corporeal beings. As humans we create families, communities, societies, nations, cultures, that last far beyond one frail human life-time.

the lessons of the wisteria

The beautiful pale violet flowering vine above is wisteria (this one is along a neighbor's fence just before the turn off to our lane).

Wisteria is a plant that does not bloom until it reaches maturity (which can be a few years for the Kentucky Wisteria that I see all around me, or more than a decade for the Chinese variant). Even then wisteria does not always blossom until it has experienced some type of distress -- like blows, explosions, and fire damage to the main trunk, shock to the roots (like extended freeze/thaw cycles), or drought. Clearly something about the last year, especially this past winter, created exactly the right conditions for wisteria, because it is more abundant in eastern Kentucky than I have seen in 14 years I've lived here.

For the first time it is impossible to miss the wisteria on my drive to work. In addition to lanes of redbud and dogwood this spring, I pass a half dozen places where wisteria has taken over an entire hillside. In each case, in the center of the massive cascades of wisteria, are the collapsed, shattered, rotting remains of a house, often barely visible in the vegetation.

Wisteria is a very long lived plant, an invasive plant that climbs walls, covers buildings, chokes giant trees -- luckily its a relatively slow growing plant (unlike kudzu). Home owners fifty, sixty years ago or even longer, planted wisteria near their homes. The home owners are long since gone, the houses decayed into near oblivion, but the wisteria has thrived and taken over the entire former homestead, climbing 80 foot trees, cascading down hillsides creating magical, fairy bowers.

There is something inspiring about a plant that blooms its best when damaged and distressed, and which creates its most beautiful landscapes on the bones of abandoned homes.

Monet's 1925 painting Wisteria at Monetalia.



My photo
Wisteria Wall by sgreerpitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sunflowerroots.blogspot.com.

spring has sprung

While I was laid up with the flu for five days--and deprived of access to the Internet at home--the outside temperatures have been rather more summer than spring (86 degrees F at the present moment) resulting in blossoms busting out all over.

On my first day back to work yesterday I stopped on the way in to Whitesburg to snap my favorite spring views.

It is always miraculous to me, that I can rely on these beautiful things happening every spring. That the yellow of the forsythia along the old high schools retaining wall will always be the exact same, in-your-face electric yellow, and the ornamental pear trees will always be heavenly clouds of pristine, creamy white. It is the glorious precision of nature, that the colors are always perfect, always the exact same, always vibrant, clear and true.

The photographs are always just a pale representation of the original. Over the winter, the colors fade in my mind to the dull approximations of the photographs. So each spring, when the flowers return its amazes me all over again in its brilliance. It is an annual miracle, that restores my faith, my soul and heart once again.

spring will come

Funny thing, I started out about an hour ago to write a post bemoaning about all the stuff getting me down. For every complaint I listed, I could think of a dozen or more people within my immediate interaction circle, and thousands of people in the wider world (like Haiti, Iraq, Chile, etc.) who have much bigger problems.

I really hate it when people who like me, are basically healthy and more or less financially secure (if not necessarily affluent), and live in safe communities and societies, make all their conversations and communications about the little problems and adversities of their lives. I'm not talking about the occasional gripe session, but folks who never seem to have anything to say, but a litany of complaints about life.

I especially hate it when people with all these advantages start talking about how depressed they are because of all the bad things happening to other people whether the others are their friends and neighbors or strangers in Haiti. It's one thing to feel empathy for people with problems, and to take action to help others, it's totally a different thing to be so absorbed by the woes of others that one become paralyzed by depression.

So on second thought, my life is good. I have love and friendship, interesting worthwhile work, reasonably good health, and the snow won't last forever -- spring will come.

Photo taken 20 years ago after a late March snow storm.

starting the new year right

It is said that what you do on New Year's Day is what you will be doing for the rest of the year. So with that in mind I decided that I ought to spend part of the day working on a painting that I'd been thinking about for months.

One of the things that I did with the money I got for painting the mural was purchase an easel from Dick Blick. Lack of an easel has always been one of the obstacles standing between me and painting. But even though I got the easel in August, I hadn't done any painting since I finished the mural Labor Day Weekend. There always seemed like there was something else that was more urgent.

It's hard to remember that some things that aren't urgent are actually more important than the urgent things. Urgency often comes from other people, while importance comes from within us.

I have a lovely little snap shot of my husband John snoozing with Rosie dog and felt that it would make a good painting. So I started this at about noon, and what you see is about three hours worth of work. I have quite a bit more work to do on Rosie dog and John needs his glasses (yes he was sleeping with them on) and his watch.

winter wonderland

First snow.

take my breath away

I stepped out to let the dog out and saw this, and it did just what my title suggests.



Both photos taken by sgreerpitt this evening (©December 2, 2009) just before sunset.