Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Snow
Our backyard takes on a new life whenever winter storms blow this way. The first blast of the season left ten inches of snow this week. It’s fast melting today, but I wanted to share some of these wintry scenes with everyone particularly our relatives and friends who live in the balmier parts of this…
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The Power of Petroglyphs
I’ll admit this. Before I went to Albuquerque in 2006, I did know about the images and designs carved on rocks centuries ago, I just did not know that they were called petroglyphs. Now, it’s one of my favorite words – PETROglyph, petroGLYPH, PETROGLYPH! Our recent visit to Taliesin West reminded me that I’d written this after a trip…
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Taliesin West
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” Frank Lloyd Wright The desert has a voice. And Frank Lloyd Wright heard it a long time ago. He arrived in Scottsdale in the 1930s and ten years later had built Taliesin West as his winter residence, architectural studio and campus. Taliesin…
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“Big Bugs” – Big Buzz!
Never imagined I’d look admiringly at a praying mantis, but psstt! that’s an old thought. It’s actually the first insect one sees on entering the Desert Botanical Garden in Scottsdale, Arizona where there’s a “Big Bugs” exhibition on until Jan. 1, 2012. We all came away excited with these oversized, sometimes whimsical wood sculptures of…
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Crazy for Lighthouses
I have always been drawn to these beacons of light on rocky shores. While their purpose is critical to seafarers, it’s their location that always attracted me. I must be a real romantic at heart. The salt sea air, pink granite rocks, brooding fir trees, craggy cliffs, an imminent sunset – cast your cares to…
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London calling….
The final leg of the trip to Europe was in the UK. Here too gracious friends – Anne and Richard Baillie – provided lodging, were our guides, but most important were warm companions. I also got to visit my sister and her whole family in St. Albans. Here is a photo album of the visit.
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Geneva Rendezvous
Late in June, Bob and I met up in Geneva. But we stayed in a small village in France just across the border from Switzerland with our friends Wendy and Bernard Pope. During our stay we went back and forth between Switzerland and France exploring Geneva and its famous lake, and the surrounding villages and…
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Concerning CERN
I never imagined that I would write about scientific experiments in my blog, and much less visit the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Left to my own devices, I’m more about nature, food, architecture and people when I travel. But what has stayed with me and awakened my long inert science nerve from this recent…
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Happiness around the world
I’m still waiting for warmer weather, so I’m not too happy at the moment, but Bob has some good observations to share about the subject of happiness. Here’s his input 🙂 Recently, I attended a lecture about the distribution and causes of happiness around the world. The speaker was Ed Diener, a psychologist who has…
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