The Cover

Fall 2014

A country road, a moment of peace, and a chance to stop the car and walk the dogs. Snap a photo then Photoshop adding the oil painting filter to get this effect.

 









Summer 2014

This beautifully iridescent shell of the Floater mussel was found on the Little Walnut in El Dorado, Kansas. The White Egret who live along the creek had just eaten.

Beauty exists, you just have to look for it.

Floater mussel with Egret feather on the Little Walnut

Fall of 2013

In the Federal Courthouse in Fort Scott Kansas is Oscar E Berninghaus's 1937 mural titled “Border Gateways.” The mural is large stretching across the entire back wall of the courtroom. Once upon a time, it must have impressed lawyers and citizens alike, it is tucked away on the second floor in decommissioned courtroom now used for storage.

Explore Kansas

Fort Scott Federal Courthouse Mural by Oscar E. Berninghaus

Born in 1874 in St. Louis, Berninghaus was largely self-taught, but also attended night classes at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1899, he took a train west and, on a lark, stopped in Taos, New Mexico. During his 8 day stay, he met and befriended Bert Phillips, another artist who had taken up residency in Taos the year before. Berninghaus would return to St. Louis to resume his commercial work, but he continued to return to Taos in the summer to pursue his interest in fine art. In 1915, he became a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, along with his friend Bert Phillips and four others.

The image is mine and as such I hold a copyright. The painting is not. As a U.S. Government work there is no government copyright. Copyright and Fair Use, Stanford University Press.








Summer of 2013

The old man picked this copyright free image of a dun colored horse from the Caves of Lascaux because it demonstrates that man has been expressing himself symbolically for tens of thousands of years.

 Learn more, visite de la Lascaux Grotte.

The Lascaux Caves, near the village of Montignac, (department of Dordogne, region of Aquitaine), in southwestern France, are famous for their Paleolithic cave paintings. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old. One wonders what life was like for paleolithic man and woman. When they looked up at night into the heavens, what questions did they ask?

One more thing, the paintings remind us that some things survive over time. The natural destruction of things through decay and erosion proves lifes's fragility. Moreover, natural calamities destroy much of what mankind has created. Then there is man himself, the most destructive force, who has destroyed through ignorance and malice much that is good.

It is amusing to think that far less than 600 lifetimes separate today from the painters of Lascaux, for if one takes 17,300 years and divides it by 30 years (an average generation), one gets the number 576 lifetimes.

We, the survivors of time present, merely need to close our eyes and reflect on the images, and, for the moment become time travelers,  transported magically to another place and time.