the kids are all fine
but mom is still vigilant 
the black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax
hf country lane
"a wise man never ignores the simplicity of a child" 
"He who wishes to attain the profoundly marvelous must free images from their conventional associations, associations always dominated by utilitarian judgment: must learn to see the man behind the social function, break the scale of so-called normal values, replacing it by that of sensitive values, surmount taboos, the weight of ancestral prohibitions, cease to connect the object with the profit one can get out of it, with the price it has in society, with the action it commands. This liberation begins when by some means the voluntary censorship of the bad conscience is lifted, when the mechanism of the dream is no longer impeded. Magic ceremonies, psychic exercises leading to concentration and ecstasy, the liberation of psychic automatism, are so many means capable of refining vision through the tensions they induce. It is a means to enlarge faculties: they are ways of approach to the realm of the marvelous."
the practice of leaving
mammatus over brooklyn
stopped in for a budweiser with the regulars at the Liffy II Bar 
all photos by blackberry
Nervously, and without any real need whatever, Franny pushed back her hair with one hand. "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!"
