What will you do when the wind blows hard against the wood of the house you live in?

You thought because the wind had been so quiet for so long, that you were safe.

Instead once you had clear cut the timber,

once you had cut down the mountains for coal,

once you had warmed the earth with your industry,

you had simply just removed all the barriers that had stopped the wind before.

What will you do when the wind blows,

blows so hard it levels everything and everyone you ever knew?

“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

12/25/16

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2016

We all know that moment, when we are going in a certain direction,  or on a certain path, when either quickly, or slowly we say,  that’s far enough, time to turn around. It’s interesting to see it reflected in physical reality.   What happened? Why the change? The mystery abounds.

1-29-17

© words and picture by Dan DeMarle 2017

There’s a message here. Yesterday we had just a very light dusting of snow.  Our bird feeder is near our driveway.  All the snow was removed from around the car, but left under the car. The birds love to hide under the car as they dart back and forth to the feeder. After I moved the car, I found they had left lots of prints. I think there is a message here, but I don’t read bird.

1-29-17

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2017

My wish. I live in a neighborhood and in a City where I am surrounded by people of every color, race, creed, and religion. I am able to spend time and benefit from daily interactions with people of all faiths and races. Just yesterday, I was able to buy beef from my whole grass farmer, honey from a farmer in the Finger Lakes, travel to buy bacon from my German Butcher, get lunch from a Spanish restaurant, sit with my rainbow colored neighbors to hear two RPO cellists at my local library, and celebrate the lunar new year with neighbors at a neighborhood Asian restaurant. Today I was able to protest with Rochesterians of all colors, races and religions, and hear my black female Mayor talk about how my city will stand together and continue to embrace all of our residents. This diversity does not weaken me, or my City, it strengthens it and me.

As Americans we have so much, but we let people make us feel so afraid. Maybe we are afraid because we don’t want to share what we have. Maybe we have been sold a vision that we must have more and more and more. But really and truly in America we have enough.  It is certainly not evenly distributed, and it should be.  The problem is because we have it, and because so many of us don’t travel, we don’t appreciate what we have.  The vast majority of us, have things that many, many people in the world do not have. We have housing, and public housing, we have roads paved and otherwise, we have running water, we have public schools, we have a functioning government, and we have a court system.  

But we also have this fear.  Between this fear and the fact that most people don’t live in communities like mine, we have become soft as a nation and we have for to long let politicians and others tell us to be afraid.   Too many of us live in communities that are monocultures. It is as if we live in a giant field of tulips, just tulips everywhere.  While that is beautiful, a garden, a rich, and varied garden is healthier and ultimately more beautiful. No matter what the season, there is beauty and growth.   My wish is that my fellow countrymen could spend a week with me, and see what I see everyday, and not be afraid.  Not be afraid to be with others that do not look and believe just like them. Not be afraid to not have what others have. Just not be afraid. If we could, then you would see my world, and your world, as the beautiful garden, that it really is.

“But it is growing damp and I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising.”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

1/22/17

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2017

“Jim said he believed it was spirits, but I says: no, spirits wouldn’t say “dern the dern fog”.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1/22/17

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2017

“One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, “We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I’ll make one. I’ll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I’ll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.”

The Fog Horn blew.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Fog Horn

1/22/17

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2017

“The air, the water, and the ground are free gifts to man, and no one has the power to portion them out in parcels. Man must drink, breath, and walk – and therefore each has a right to his share of earth.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie

12/16/16

© words and picture by Dan DeMarle 2016

In the winter the days end early, the sun shines, and the shadows fall.

1/1/17

© words and pictures by Dan DeMarle 2017