I love how time imparts a patina to objects. I don’t always appreciate it when I acquire patina, but iron becomes positively sculptural the older it gets. Recently saw this kettle outside an antique store in West Asheville.

Since coffee is a passion, I always have to try every local coffee shop/patisserie/brew shop. Lately I’ve been unafraid of sticking a camera in the face of the barista making my brew. Maybe everyone does this, since they never bat an eyelash as they dump out the espresso and reload it. A couple of recents:

I challenged myself to write a 200-word story in ten minutes. Voila.

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The pretty young woman had to walk past the fortune teller’s door 3 times before she got up her nerve. She paid her $20 and sat across the table from the gypsy, a woman still young but haggard, worn down by the world. Too many children, too little money, too many predictions of love for others.

Together they gazed into the depths of a citrine crystal on the blue cloth covering the round table. The gypsy murmured chants and incantations, and images began to form in the golden depths of the crystal. The young woman gasped as she saw herself, in the arms of a loving husband, two happy and healthy children scampering at their feet. She felt that a blissful destiny was a missile hurtling towards her.

The images faded and she chattered happily, leaning over the retrieve her handbag. Strong, dark and sexy, can’t wait until I meet him, she chirped. I’m going to have him buy me a citrine engagement ring!

So caught up was she that she didn’t see the pistol. Her last sound before death was a rasp of surprise.

Through her gritted teeth, the gypsy woman breathed: that was MY husband.

Two windows on North Lexington.  Where else can you find such a wide spectrum of all tastes, points of view, priorities, and passions?  Barbecue, Vegetarianism, Anarchist book festival, punk rock, and … flower arranging.  Not to mention graffiti and an outcry against genital mutilation.  It’s not all ganja and tie-die here, folks. This is some serious stuff. Get involved.  Get passionate.  Get your point of view out there. You have to CARE about something. Believe in it. Be willing to express yourself.  It’s always a risk but what’s the alternative? Letting someone else be the one heard and you being silenced.

We have had torrential rains here in WNC, not record breaking, but substantial. Flooding and landslides are apparently nothing unusual here, although everyone is getting a little tired of it by now. The upside is that it affords one an opportunity to take pictures of my favorite subject – water. Lots of it. Here is a quiet little stream in the Green River Gamelands. I shot this with my Sony RX100, cropped in Photo Toaster with the Vanity Fair filter.

Since I have such a strong investment in tiny house living, my husband and I made the trip to Morrisville Tennessee for the Memorial Day Weekend tiny house jamboree at Incredible Tiny Houses. While the festival itself was mildly interesting – perhaps 15 different tiny houses to walk through – what popped my eyes and dropped my jaw was the location. It took place in a large dilapidated warehouse. Deep puddles had formed from the torrential rain on the leaky roof, requiring one to practically wade from house to house on the cracked concrete floor. All the food trucks had moved inside and the air hung low and heavy, rancid with bacon fat, smoke, and a good dose of carbon monoxide. There was little natural light; all the tiny houses were dim and depressing, their floors caked with mud and grime from people’s wet shoes.

Outside the rain stopped, leaving a stunning sky. The area had once been a thriving area of factories, warehouses, wholesale businesses. An apparently recent fire had devastated almost everything, leaving behind destruction and wrecked businesses. Wrecked lives. The lot itself was paved with a wide variety of tiles: Mexican saltia, black and white bathroom tiling, white subway tiles. I presume that what I could see through the accumulated mud and water was a former showroom.

The smell of burned and scorched wood still hung over the area. Visitors to the Jam had found places to squeeze their vehicles between piles of rebar and cracked concrete.

I wandered around and felt the contrast between the beauty of the day and the wreckage, now ignored and forgotten, something to overlook on the way somewhere else. I was able to use the pictures I took with almost no editing. The colors and textures come through without the necessity of enhancements.

The lightning raged against its imprisonment in the clouds.  It crackled and struggled, coiling in the gathering vapor, swirling faster and faster to antagonize the cloud.  When it finally broke free, it surged deep into the welcoming earth, vowing to never be trapped again by the gods of the sky.

This is based on a true story, told to me by an insensitive colleague about her trip to Yosemite.

A hiker fell to his death off Half Dome, attempting to hold tight to the steel cables.  I don’t want to go up there, he pleaded with his wife, I’m so afraid. We’re going, she said.  Just don’t look down.  But he was compelled by the swirling void beneath him.