Blog Archives
Barn Quilt
Several groups around the state of Wisconsin have been involved with barn quilt projects. The quilt blocks are aimed at increasing tourism in rural areas of the state.
This exerpt from the Green County Barn Quilts website:
“Quilts, always a beloved symbol of comfort, family, heritage and community will provide a warm invitation to the rural countryside of Green County. Vibrant quilt patterns will be painted on pre-built 8’x8’ wooden squares. Each quilt will be painted by a team of volunteers and will require a willing barn owner to donate hanging space on their building. Making these quilt squares will allow volunteer groups from churches, schools, 4-H, scouting, HCE, and other community service groups and even families the opportunity to create and paint their own quilt square as a group project. The square that is chosen may represent a family pattern from a beloved quilt or perhaps a new favorite.”
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© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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Barbaric Black and Burning Gold
Deep with divine tautology,
The sunset’s mighty mystery
Again has traced the scroll-like west
With hieroglyphs of burning gold:
Forever new, forever old,
Its miracle is manifest.
Time lays the scroll away. And now
Above the hills a giant brow
Of cloud Night lifts; and from his arm,
Barbaric black, upon the world,
With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled
His awful argument of storm.
What part, O man, is yours in such?
Whose awe and wonder are in touch
With Nature,–speaking rapture to
Your soul,–yet leaving in your reach
No human word of thought or speech
Commensurate with the thing you view.
- “Sunset and Storm” by Madison Julius Cawein
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© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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A Hole in the Sky
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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I’m looking through a hole in the sky
I’m seeing nowhere through the eyes of a lie
I’m getting closer to the end of the line
I’m living easy where the sun doesn’t shine
I’m living in a room without any view
I’m living free because the rent’s never due
The synonyms of all the things that I’ve said
Are just the riddles that are built in my head
Hole in the sky, take me to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly
- From “Hole in the Sky” by Black Sabbath
Sunrise at -6º
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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’Tis morning; and the sun with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon: while the clouds
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev’ry herb and ev’ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o’er the field.
- From “The Winter Morning Walk” by William Cowper
Grieve Not
Via Flickr:
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
Grieve not that winter masks the yet quick earth,
Nor still that summer walks the hills no more;
That fickle spring has doffed the plaid she wore
To swathe herself in napkins till rebirth.
These buddings, flowerings, are nothing worth;
This ermine cloud stretched firm across the lakes
Will presently be shattered into flakes;
Then, starveling world, be subject to my mirth.
I know that faithful swift mortality
Subscribes to nothing longer than a day;
All beauty signals imminent decay;
And painted wreckage cumbers land and sea.
I laugh to hear a sniveling wise one say,
“Some winnowed self escapes this reckless way.”
- Walter Clyde Curry, "Grieve Not"
Fall Above
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
“I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Badfish Goodnight
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
The Badfish Creek in southern Wisconsin was originally named Waucoma by the original Native American inhabitants.
This account of how the Badfish mistakingly got its name comes from the Cooksville Blog:
“The name, “Bad Fish,” appears to have been applied, perhaps mistakenly, in late 1833, when the U.S. government land surveyors were moving through the Wisconsin part of the Michigan Territory from the east and the Rock River to the west past the Yahara (Catfish) River and on further west in Rock County (then part of Brown County), through a “Rolling Prairie,” as their sketch map called it. When the surveyors came upon a large creek in the northwest corner of what is now Rock County, they apparently thought they had reached a part of the Bad Fish River (later the Sugar River) system.
The Bad Fish River was the name of the upper branch of the Sugar River at that time. The land surveyors presumed, mistakenly, that the little creek flowing from that direction was a small tributary of the Bad Fish River. Thus, they named it the Bad Fish Creek.
For whatever reason, the name “Bad Fish Creek” was recorded in the early 1830s survey.”
The Badfish Creek is now a favorite paddling destination in the Madison – Oregon area.
