Saturday, January 28, 2012

Hanukkah Lights - Illustrations by Jiří Běhounek










Jewish Tales - Second Light. About kings David and Solomon
1. The riddles of the Queen of Sheba
2. Solomon and Asmodeus

Jewish Tales - Fourth light. About powerful sovereigns and famous rabbis who once lived in the Holy Land
3. Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa
4. Honi Hameagel
5. Rabbi Ishmael and the Oneiromancer

Jewish Tales - Fifth light. About Sephardi Jews living in Orient and South Europe
6. A Son warned
7. A Real dream

Jewish Tales - Sixth Light. About Ashkenazi Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe
8. How Rabbi Loew created the Golem
9. Pinkhas and the Count

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The trees have risen one more time - Photographs by Robert Adams













1. Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon.

2, 3. Sitka spruce, Capo Blanco State Park, Curry Country, Oregon.

4. Fort Columbia State Park, Pacific Country, Washington.

5. Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon.

6. Clatsop County, Oregon.

. . . the trees have risen one more tìme

and the night wind makes them sound

like the sea that is yet unknown

the black clouds race over the moon

the rain is falling on the last place

W. S. Merwin


7. On Humburg Mountain, Clatsop Country, Oregon.

after an age of leaves and feathers

someone dead

thought of this mountain as money

and cut the trees

that were here in the wind

in the rain at night

it is hard to say it

W. S. Merwin


8, 9. An eroding clearcut, Pacific County, Washington.

Erosion is an inevitable consequence of clearcutting. No people in history have clearcut without damaging the soil. If one turns a globe—China, India, the Near East, Europe, the eastern seaboard of the United States, the upper Midwest—one is reminded that some degree of long-term deforestation has been the rule with clearcutting, and that this in turn has resulted in the diminishment of whole societies. Significantly, China has recently "stopped clearcutting native forests" and has "subsidized retraining of hundreds of thousands of loggers". The Oregonian, January 25, 2004.

10. Clatsop Country, Oregon.

Jellied gasoline (napalm) is sometimes used to speed the burning of waste.

11. Coos Country, Oregon.

Occasionally a tree will grow on top of an early stump. Here the second tree has itself been cut.

12. Harney Country, Oregon.