Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Mo Nunn in the pits at the 2001 CART race at Portland International Raceway. Although Mo had a long career in motorsports, I first became aware of him when he worked for Chip Ganassi’s racing team. He later started his own team and in 2001 ran two of my favorite drivers, Tony Kanaan and Alex Zanardi, so I was thankful to get a picture of him during the race weekend.
Tony Kanaan in the Mo Nunn Racing pits on the weekend of the CART race at Portland International Raceway in 2001. The race didn’t go well for TK but he went on to win the championship in 2004 and the Indy 500 in 2013, so I’d say the young man did well for himself.
I don’t think so pup.
A young katydid nymph looks over the edge of its home, a rose blossom beside our house. At this age it has no wings so it walks everywhere it goes.
Ellie and I meander on our walks around our neighborhood, within limits I let her choose which streets we walk down. There’s only one place she always wants to visit on her long walks, without fail, and that is the house of Steve (I think his name is Steve, I asked once but I forget names as soon as I hear them). He lives on 8th Avenue at the southern end of Irvington, almost as far south as we go, and is frequently sitting on his stoop. He’s an animal lover at heart, feeding not just his cat but the neighborhood crows and squirrels. And he always has dog treats in his pockets and eagerly hands them out to pups who wander up to say hello.
Our pup always wanders up to say hello. His house is her pilgrimage.
She starts looking for him the moment his steps come into view and starts pulling on the leash as soon as she sees him. On days he’s not there she just stares at the steps, trying to work out how to summon the giver of treats. On this winter day with the neighborhood still buried in snow and ice, Ellie took an unusual path south and I thought she was having so much fun in the snow that she was going to forget about Steve. But as we walked further south she suddenly veered back to the west and I knew where we were headed. I warned her that he wouldn’t be out on such a cold day but doubts do not pass the ears of the faithful. Her faith was rewarded for there he was and they spent a moment in mutual worship.
I don’t know if they’ll cross paths again, Ellie has rarely been up for walks long enough to visit Steve the past few months, but it’s hard to say how much of that is from advancing age and how much from hot weather. Should they never meet again I’m thankful for all the times they did, a neighbor’s love and a dog’s devotion.
Yum Yum has adored Ellie since her family first adopted her and always wants to meet us when we walk past. As a pup when she knew Ellie was coming she’d pretend she had to go the bathroom so she’d be let out and could come say hi but you can see how eagerly her tail is wagging even after several minutes of affection. The light was a little odd on this evening from the smoke of distant forest fires. The picture below from a different evening was taken with a wider angle lens so her head seems unusually large, but it does help convey how enthusiastically she greets us every time we meet, no matter that we have met many times.
Is Ellie posing beside a massive old tree near the dog park, or did I perfect my dog-shrinking ray?
I washed my wife’s car on Monday morning, its lovely green paint shining in the sun, but this is how it looked Tuesday morning. A bit of a bloom from the crepe myrtle above the driveway had fallen onto the hood, where it was surrounded by the charred remains of trees in the Columbia River Gorge, ash that had been drifting down throughout the evening and night. A fire started on the Eagle Creek trail over the Labor Day weekend, possibly by teens setting off fireworks, and with high winds and a parched forest it soon spread to other parts of the Gorge, including several areas I’ve been hiking this year and will be back visiting soon. Walking to the train this morning in our Portland neighborhood the sun was deep red even well after sunrise but by evening when I returned home you couldn’t even see the sun so thick was the smoke in the air.
It’s too soon to know the extent of the damage to the forests and the trails as the fire is still raging, but this is the sort of area that is burning, looking down into the Oneonta Gorge, taken on a hike in the spring when everything was a luscious green. Move away from the mountain streams and much of the surrounding forest is not so damp, especially not after such a hot dry summer. My thanks to all the firefighters trying to contain the blaze and protect the historic structures and the small communities in the area, and who led about 150 people trapped on the Eagle Creek trail by the fire to safety.
An adult fork-tailed bush katydid nestles in a blossom of one of our rose bushes.
Look at the sort of dangerous animals I have to walk past just to get home!
Boolie 