What's outside of your picture window today?

@artist01 and all...Wow, that's a horrid list of tragedies. Thankfully, you are safe and sound. That's a lot of rain. As one who's been in floods, I can understand the fears. anxiety. I hate anxiety!
be well, my friend. blessings and I fully understand your current situation. I'm meeting with my antique/furniture and stuff friend on Tues to go through my storage unit costing a monthly fortune. I'm selling, ridding myself of the heavy feeling on my shoulders from all the things I hold on to. I also asked for a referral to someone to hire to be my 'assistant', pack up and help me go through everything in my home. to keep, sell, donate, toss. I'm doing it, the next to final time, I suppose. Feels good, doesn't it, Laurie. It's a mental thing. Once you make the decision to do the downsizing, really make a decision, the emotions lessen and logic takes over, some. Good luck, enjoy lightening your load and get it done. I'm with you in spirit...blessings and stay focused! elizabeth.

@jakedduck1, @loribmt, and all...NO! Say it ain't so...Why can't the Cal and Fed gov;t do something to get the fire situation under control?????? burning the brush to prevent lightning from starting the big ones....I'm must be naive and uninformed, but there must be something to do to stop this! Geez...Louise.............elizabeth

Good evening Elizabeth. I so understand the frustration about the fires. I lived on a mountain in Southern California for 23 years and was evacuated 3 times. There are a couple of realities that don't fit the norm. The ones that upset me most are those fires started by human beings. Our most damaging fires were set by arsonists. One set fires at all three exit roads to get off the mountain. Another practiced for several years setting small fires and wasn't caught until one of his fires killed five young Cal Fire men with families in our village. The worst one was a 30-year-old who threw flares out his car window as he drove up the mountain. That one really did me in. Billions of dollars in damages and firefighting efforts. Animal habitats destroyed. Recreational areas destroyed.

Wildfires create their own weather systems. So you will see what looks like a tornado and is filled with burning wood chips that then fall and get scattered all over roofs, porches, and decks. I miss my beautiful mountain home and the neighborly folks who try to keep it safe. You are right.....Geez,
Louise!

Chris

@loribmt, @joyces, @ess77 and all who love trees. I'm a rampant tree hugger. My entire career as a professional artist focused on the environment, climate change and the destruction and ultimate disappearance of pristine wilderness.
In 2004, when the ranchers and all other citizens in Big Horn Country, Alberta, contacted me to literally beg for my peers and I, as artists, to help them to somehow influence the government to stop the clearcutting practice in their area, I organized a group of 26 artists and we mounted a huge art exhibition dealing with the clearcut issues in their part of paradise. The show was held at the Red Deer Art Gallery and Museum in the centre of the Big Horn Country. 3500 people, a huge number, attended the exhibition during the three weeks it was up. I'm attaching an image of one of my three paintings juried into the show. The painting is 4' x 4', acrylic on canvas, entitled "Clearcut/The Rape of a Mountain".
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Well, folks, I tried to attach the image, but I've failed (again). I'll try again.

@loribmt, @joyces, @ess77 . Sorry. I'm not able to attach the image. I'll never learn. 😔

Laurie, what a fabulous opportunity to use your gift of art for helping the cause and hopefully getting the message out that once our pristine forests, wilderness and wetlands are gone, it’s not reversible. We’re all seeing the horrible outcome and side effects of clear cutting!

Please try one more time to upload the pic! I’d love to see your powerful piece!

What a terrific idea: an art show about the destruction of clear cutting!!! The west side of the Coast Range along the WA and OR coasts is one of the best carbon sinks anywhere, but the Doug Fir forest is being sliced down everywhere, leaving ugly bald patches and resulting in winter floods and lack of water every summer: every little coastal town suffers from insufficient water every summer now. The water that is left is too warm to be comfortable for salmon and steelhead. Oregon's Water Resources Dept. (OWRD) set up a huge pilot program about the future ways water should be used, and Lincoln County is the one example of, get this, "urban" water usage. That's pretty laughable in a county where the largest town has a little over 10,000 people! Because this pilot project had attention from the legislature, all state resource agencies, and the Governor's office, I thought it was an opportunity for great change. Hah! OWRD soon declared that industrial forestry, where the land is clear cut every 35 or 40 years while the trees are still very small was off the table for discussion, due to JOBS. Of course, this totally ignores all of us who rely on healthy fisheries for our jobs in the sport fishing industry, and tourism in general. Still, there is a groundswell of objection to having our forests mismanaged this way, with aerial spraying of the chemicals in Agent Orange following clear cutting. That means that the water coming off the clear cut area is full of contaminants and silt, so that it can't be used for domestic water without expensive treatment plants. I've monitored wild winter steelhead in a wild little stream on the north coast for 29 years, and we have the data to prove how bad the lethal combination of industrial timber management and climate change can be. When we started our data collection project, we couldn't conceive of the wild fish being threatened since the run was so strong and there was little human influence in the extremely rough country surrounding the Salmonberry River--but we're now seeing temperatures too high for steelhead for miles up the river, for long periods every summer.

I'll try a different painting that was also in the exhibition. This one is 27" x 63", Acrylic on canvas. Can't recall the title, but it's an actual site I visited, pristine and breathtakingly beautiful, that was scheduled for clearcutting.

P.S. Be sure to scroll down! The painting is long and skinny - 27" x 63".

I did it. What a great way to waste a boring day! Lol.

"Clearcut/ The Rape of a Mountain", 4' x 4', Acrylic on Canvas.