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Great Blue
Heron
I was walking yesterday around the
Lafayette Reservoir when a little girl pointed to something she saw
in the trees to her father. It turned out to be a beautiful Great
Blue Heron sitting in a tree looking for something to eat most likely.
What a treat! I love seeing these majestic birds! BTW, the
reservoir also hosts the a lot
American
white pelicans from Salt Lake this time of year.
Great Blue Heron on the beach at Point Lobos State
Preserve
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]
Yosemite in Art
Scientist John Muir preferred black and white photographs to paintings of
Yosemite, but these paintings mostly by
Albert
Bierstadt are gorgeous.
Also, for about 9 years, I lived only a stone's throw from John Muir's
residence in Martinez, CA and passed his house on the way home from work.
I had an excellent view of Mt. Wanda from the cottage I was renting.
I didn't know until after I read this book that Wanda was the name of
Muir's oldest daughter. In addition, one of my favorite places in the Bay
Area is
Muir Woods (I
even have a framed poster in my dining room), but I really didn't know
anything about the man or life of John Muir.
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir - Glacier Point Yosemite
(1906)
Donald Worster's book does an excellent job of chronicling John Muir's
life from his Scottish roots in Dunbar and the influence on the Romantic
Movement had on him via Robert Burns and William Wordsworth to his
remarkable life in America.
Worster for example covers John Muir the engineer, who invented the alarm
clock bed. The contraption would throw Muir out of his bed every
morning! Muir could have easily ended up in manufacturing but one
day he had an accident in Indiana which almost blinded him and during his
recovery Muir decided that he would pursue his first love of botany and
nature.
The rest is history.
Muir was an environmental, conservation and scientific visionary who
loved nature and all it's creatures and was very influential in creating
national parks and Yosemite in particular. Although he had many
friends in high places, he was not an elitist and many friends from all
walks of life. Muir was not very political and remained a pacifist
throughout his life.
One thing that I thought was funny was that originally some Marxists
proposed naming the General Grant Tree (the biggest tree by volume in the
world) the Karl Marx tree. Thank God that didn't happen or Joe
McCarthy would have chopped it down in the 1950s!
I also really enjoyed the Alaskan story of John Muir and the dog Stickeen.
In short, I really enjoyed this book from start to finish and heartily
recommend it for all those interested in Muir's life.
I now consider John Muir as a hero of mine and one of my favorite
Americans up there with A. Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain.
Little Walter -
Juke (1952)
This song has Little Walter (Jacobs) on harp; Muddy Waters and Jimmy
Rogers on guitars; and Elga Edmund on drums. Not too shabby, right?
