Oh those clouds
After I’d explored the wildflower-strewn Prairie View Cemetery in Briggs for a good while on April 13th we continued north on US 183 to Lampasas, where I kept taking photographic advantage of the great shape-shifting clouds that had continued since our time at the cemetery. The first picture is from my “real” camera, the second from my iPhone 14.
Upon leaving Lampasas and heading south on US 281, we hadn’t gotten far when I pulled over to take even more pictures that played up the drama in the sky.
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Watching the breakdown on American college campuses in recent days, I can’t help thinking—like almost everyone else—what went wrong?
These beautiful institutions, such as Columbia and Yale and Harvard, used to be places of learning. How did they end up being the American epicenter of Jew-hate and everything else that is moronic? How could a place of learning become a place where automatons shout and repeat phrases just taught to them, and think that screaming the same thing over and over is any kind of persuasive tactic?
Such actions are, in fact, the antithesis of what the university is meant to be about. One reason that intelligent, educated, civilized people do not spend their spare time screaming the same slogans over and over is that it is the opposite of intellectualism. It is the opposite of dialogue, inquiry, and rationalism—all things that the universities were meant to encourage.
How did this happen?
That’s from an April 28th article by Douglas Murray in The Free Press. You’re welcome to continue reading and find out how he answers his own question.
© 2024 Steven Schwartzman
Thank you, Steve, for the beautiful study of the clouds and sky!
I agree with your words on the madness on the campus! Same here, as stupidity is highly infectious!
Joanna
gabychops
April 30, 2024 at 5:14 AM
“Infectious” is a good way to describe it. I’d rather contemplate clouds, but there are things that need to be said.
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 6:46 AM
I would rather concentrate on nature too!
Joanna
gabychops
April 30, 2024 at 7:04 AM
That’s what I did here for a decade, until things got so crazy in 2020 that I felt I had to speak out.
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 7:07 AM
A lonely voice in the desert?
gabychops
April 30, 2024 at 7:10 AM
Not entirely lonely. Fortunately I’ve been able to link to many other voices that have a lot more reach than mine does.
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 7:13 AM
That is a winning formular but only a time will tell if there is a way of return…
Joanna
gabychops
April 30, 2024 at 7:17 AM
We’ve had the wind, but unfortunately we’ve not had such dramatic clouds. Here at the coast, our strongest southerlies often arrive with gray skies, and that’s how it’s been. You certainly found some interesting forms. In the last photo, the clouds suggested flames to me.
shoreacres
April 30, 2024 at 7:21 AM
There were plenty of times in the past month when the wind was a nuisance; at least on some days it made up for that with good clouds. I agree with you about the flame-like forms of the clouds in the final view. I did plenty of takes during that stop, in some using Engelmann daisies on a roadside embankment as the contrasting foreground subject
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 7:53 AM
Oh those clouds indeed!
As for human stupidity I believe it was Einstein who said… it is infinite!
marina kanavaki
April 30, 2024 at 7:21 AM
How fortunate I was to have excellent clouds—which of course kept changing—for several hours. I came away with many pictures that day, both of the clouds as a good background for other subjects and also in their own right.
You may be interested in the history of the quotation you alluded to:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 7:59 AM
Dreamy clouds!
Eliza Waters
April 30, 2024 at 9:33 AM
Like the photographer.
Steve Schwartzman
April 30, 2024 at 10:22 AM
Great dynamics in the last shot; also from the trees. Love it!
harrienijland
May 1, 2024 at 1:09 AM
Thanks. The clouds shown in the last picture struck me as so dramatic that I just had to take advantage of them. Sometimes it’s hard to find a safe place to pull over but I fortunately soon found one. Even so, I had to walk back a ways on uneven ground to get in a position where I could play the dead tree off against the clouds in a dynamic (to use your word) way. On the same stop I managed to play a line of wildflowers off against a different portion of the dramatic clouds; while that vertical take pleased me too, I felt I should show one or the other but not both in the same post.
Steve Schwartzman
May 1, 2024 at 7:03 AM
👍 Looking forward!
harrienijland
May 1, 2024 at 9:04 AM
Love the last picture. It’s as if the clouds give the skeletal trees a new foliage of white which is blowing around in a wind.
Ann Mackay
May 5, 2024 at 4:57 AM
I like what your imagination did with the last picture, casting the wispy clouds as new white foliage.
Steve Schwartzman
May 5, 2024 at 7:43 AM
🙂
Ann Mackay
May 5, 2024 at 11:35 AM
Wonderful skies ….
Julie@frogpondfarm
May 9, 2024 at 2:25 PM
They sure were. They’ve been mostly blah since then.
Steve Schwartzman
May 9, 2024 at 3:26 PM
That’s cool! The branches and clouds have similar designs.
denisebushphoto
May 15, 2024 at 9:14 AM
Yes, that’s what intrigued me: similar designs, one in white and the other in black.
Steve Schwartzman
May 18, 2024 at 2:47 PM