Me taking part in other people's conversations

 

The annual children's art show

 

The first descent of shadow falls creek

 

This creek has fascinated me and clerkmanifesto for several years now. I have obsessed over its water and shown perhaps far too many close ups of its churning falls and currents. My native scenic shots of it and its tumbling water, its wild animals, and its strange seasonal phenomenon, soon graduated to Eeyore grazing by its shores and tigers prowling its banks.

I'm just saying that besides being a little secret world I love to visit, it has also been one of my chief photography laboratories from the last five years.

I'm not sure I was able to push the boundaries of that mission as far as I wanted to today. I think the small, almost playful size of this tiny creek has always caused me to play with its scale, or to want to, and with my history of canoeing and kayaking it was not much of a leap to imagine myself on a tiny boat racing along on its currents. Trying to capture that in my photos with my newly appearing cartoon representative was harder than I hoped it would be. To be fair this early Spring moment may be the least flattering one for my creek, bare and full of dead leaves and mud, but every AI I have ever used has struggled with alterations to scale as well, and placing a tiny boat in the stream was an uphill battle. Nevertheless, I don't feel my attempts were entirely fruitless, and so I would still like to show them to you and let these pictures fall where they may.

And with that, I present to you some brief shots of the first descent of Shadow Falls Creek:

More more me everywhere!

 

Our vending machine has recently stocked sardines and a small toothbrush/toothpaste set. But as a matter of health and principal I don't buy things out of our vending machines. Nevertheless, I have to admit that these ones are pretty tempting!

Our puzzle exchange

 

Just to make you feel better about the world again

 

New perspectives

 

More me everywhere!

 

Just to make you feel better about the world

 

My second favorite music video:

The magnolia tradition

 

Magnolia season is fleeting.

This morning I took pictures of the early magnolias blossoming on the trees. I do this every year. As one of the first flowers of spring it is irresistible to me to take pictures. I liked my pictures as they were today, but I messed with them anyway. So these are altered, but also the same. The same blue sky, breaking buds, the same flowers in the background like stars in the day. 

That's what new magnolias feel like to me: 

Daytime stars.

I wanted to show you these pictures right in the heart of the season. I am at work now and look out the window on the same day I took and made these pictures, and it looks like Winter out there. But nevertheless I saw this tree today, full of magnolias. We are on the edge of a wonderful explosion! But I have been making so many things to show you lately that my magnolias have to get in that long line. When you see this almost a week will have passed. So if you're in Saint Minneapolis this all is last week's news. The magnolias are ripe and even rotting on the branch.

But hurry outside.

New wonderful things are coming!

One more nature hike

 

I'll confess it's still a little early for me to be bidding a wistful goodbye to Saint Minneapolis and to the things I have loved here. But as I walk or travel around town, with my darling wife or alone, the feeling of nostalgia and departure has started, nevertheless, on occasion, to come over me.

This morning I went to one of my haunts on the Mississippi River, and though I will surely be back many times before our departure at the end of Summer, I still felt an almost comical affection and sense of impending farewell.

I have new tools now to show how it feels for me going on these walks. And though there is comical exaggeration to the experience, these strange, AI infused photographs, are what my walks feel like in a way that I'm not sure any other pictures I've shown quite expressed.

This is my world.

Not that I'm comparing

 

Book covers galore

 

Reflections on cartooning

Today we are featuring a cartoon with me and Doris, though I am still struggling with my chat gpt (who sometimes reminds me of Doris) to get her to look right. This cartoon is roughly based off of one of my old cartoons from 30 years ago. It hasn't gotten funnier, but I don't think it has gotten less funny either.

 

In Tortilla Flat

 

In our sad little world

 

While working at the front desk of my library tonight, two women in jackets with identical red shirts under those jackets approached me. They needed to be let into our locked community program room. Their group "Moms Demand Action" had booked the room from six until eight. That's what their shirts said: Moms Demand Action.

What kind of action do they demand?

What kind of action do they demand?????

It could be good action.

It could be bad action.

It could be very bad action.

Once upon a time I might have wanted to know either way.

Now? 

Now, I think maybe I'm better off not knowing.

Epilogue:

I looked.

Clerkmanifesto simply cannot operate in darkness!

And...

Moms Demand Action is for gun sense in America. 

Whew.

Though I might like to say: We have bigger fish to fry right now. But, okay. Gun sense in America is okay. 

I'll wear the shirt. 

A tree grows...

 

My book about me

 

This title is a reference to an old Dr. Seuss book called "My Book About Me", a book where one pasted one's own picture to the cover of the book and filled in information inside the book. I really liked that book.

So I have been pasting my image to the covers of books lately!

So to speak.

You'll see.

I didn't want to make a big thing of it, or even make a proper daily post out of it. I thought I'd just scatter them about here in the afternoons when no one is looking until I get tired of making them. There's just one for you now, and future ones will come without commentary.

The return of god

 

Despite it taking a few hours of work to resurrect my cartoon character of god, I slipped him in rather incidentally to my Condeluded Ride post yesterday.

But it is nice to have him back. Sort of. My AI robot picture generating friend occasionally tries to give him a face, probably because robots don't understand that one should never look upon the face of god. And my god character still yells a lot.

Here are a couple of cartoons for you featuring god. We more or less picked up where we left off thirty years ago with him.

He doesn't change much, but there are new modern references!