Daily Prompt If you had to choose between being able to write a blog (but not read others’) and being able to read others’ blogs (but not write your own), which would you pick? Why? via Morton's Fork.
Morton’s Fork
To blog or not to blog;
that is the query.
Reading, writing,
either way
Our butts are sedentary.
Spray paint artists have expressed themselves all over the old bridge.
I solarized and intensified the colors and flipped it to make it harder to read, but you can still find a vulgar word in the paler version.
I wish I could make it bigger, but I lost the original and these edited versions won’t enlarge for reasons beyond my ken.
Weekly Photo Challenge Express Yourself.
A word of caution to tourists: Keep your windows rolled up when driving through the countryside to avoid contracting the bucolic plague.
The first symptom is mooing out the window. See a doctor if you or a loved one exhibits this symptom.
Daily Prompt
Sounds Right This is clearly subjective, but some words really sound like the thing they describe (personal favorites: puffin; bulbous; fidgeting). Do you have an example of such a word (or, alternatively, of a word that sounds like the exact opposite of what it refers to)? What do you think creates this effect?
via Sounds Right.
Daily Prompt Climate Control.
How does the weather affect your mood?
Dark, dreary days can make me feel gloomy and bored; especially if it’s too dark out to take pictures. Why go outside if you can’t take pictures? I’ll just stare at the computer or the television and be inert.
Unless there’s a rainbow. Rainbows perk me up.
On bright, snowy days, even if it’s below freezing outside, I feel ambitious. I can’t wait to get out for a walk or to shovel snow; anything to burn some calories and get some sun. 
Unless it’s windy. Wind makes my ears ache and my nose runs and my eyes water so I can’t see the birds and I can’t see to take pictures. I don’t like windy.
When it’s windy and sunny I’m tricked into thinking It’s nice out and I start making outdoor plans, until I see the grasses bending flat down and and the windicator standing straight out. Wind makes me crabby.
Hang on little buddy!
Unless it’s a dust storm. When the farmer’s freshly furrowed dirt is blowing away in clouds and the wind is howling it’s kind of exciting. I like to hunker down and watch a storm; as long as I don’t have to hang wet blankets over the windows like they did in the dust bowl days.
Hot weather makes me feel lethargic and lazy. Hot weather drives me to drink.
On perfect spring days like today I want to be outside all day; working or playing, it doesn’t matter which. I can’t sit here, in front of the computer when skies are blue. That would be a waste of sunshine.
Therefore, I bid you a fond adieu.
How now, down cow?
A bucolic scene from the countryside.
Well, what was I to do? I had to take the photo! The truck has such a nice patina.
Weekly Photo Challenge:On the Move.
The return of the blues is a sure sign of spring,
as well as the greening grass
and the poor, unwelcome dandelions.
Catkins are a sure sign.
Mothers, tending their nests are a sure sign of spring,
and farmers, tending their fields.
Spring is calving season.
And nothing says spring like butterflies on bear poo.
Here’s wishing you a happy spring!
Weekly Photo Challenge:
Spring!
Weekly Writing Challenge:Student, Teacher.
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
The words were unfamiliar and puzzling. Even after Paul repeated the phrase for me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember it. I needed to see the words spelled out in order to look them up, but the conversation had evolved past the point of asking. It was Darwin Day and my secular humanist group was discussing the documentary we’d just viewed: The Tree Of Life.
I’d understood, based on the context of the conversation, the gist of what Paul was saying: that the development of the individual repeats the development of the species, but I didn’t know the words he’d used and it bugged me. It stayed in the back of my mind for weeks, popping to the fore every now and then: What did he say?
Is that weird? Would that bug you?
I could always ask Paul again, at the next meeting. Let’s see, how would I word that? Hey Paul, remember that time you said something I didn’t understand and I asked you to repeat it and I still didn’t understand? Would you repeat that again? I imagine he wouldn’t remember. Yeah, that would be awkward.
Then, reading in bed one night, Bernd Heinrich solved the mystery for me. I was reading his book, “One Man’s Owl” when I saw the phrase Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.
Eureka! I’ve found it! That’s the phrase Paul had used. Thank you Bernd! Now that I’d seen the words in print I could look them up. I’d remember them. My inner geek felt so relieved.
Once I got the words in my head they took over like a catchy tune: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. I said them in my head and aloud, to myself. I looked them up and learned about Haeckel’s Theory of Recapitulation; that is, the development of the individual repeats the development of the species.
(pic from Wikipedia)
The next time biogenetic law and embryological parallelism come up in conversation, I can nod, knowingly. Ah, yes, I’m familiar with Haeckel’s largely discredited theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
It’s funny to think that subject would ever come up in conversation again. What kind of people am I hanging out with anyway?
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/charles-darwin-tree-life/
In the old days before there was such a thing as a bus pass or a kiosk or a debit card, we paid for a bus ride with coins dropped into a fare box; a quarter for Mom and a nickel for me. They made a lovely jangling sound, tumbling down.
Downtown there were special sidewalks that lit up when you walked on them. It was a mystery, when I was little. How did they do that? I was a bit disappointed when I figured it out; all I was seeing was light from the basement level of Meier and Frank’s.
Daily Prompt:
Overcoming Bloglessness 