We get winter too

Here in coastal South Carolina, we get winter too. This is the inlet marsh in February layered with ice, which hung around until the sun rose to 10am high.

Okay, it's not much winter, but shoot, it is enuf for me.









See, it's not all fire and brimstone in the deep south, there's a few progressives too, which I guess might explain the ice. See, hell did freeze over! Whoops, weren't supposed to announce that one. My bad!

How to keep from screaming during these difficult time - get a real hobby

A good hands on hobby will help during difficult times, and just for relaxation. This is one I especially enjoy.
http://tinyurl.com/c9aw26


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Red rose of spring

Southern Rain

Late last summer after a long dry spell . . . relief!

Singing Mockingbird

The pic part of this video is not cool, but it's the song that counts.

Snowy Egret in flight

Yeah, I know, who cares. What does it matter if there is anything but humans alive on this planet. Like one Republican congressman said last year about trees: "Who needs them? They don't do anything."

Animals can't text, don't rely on cell phones, twitter and the rest. So who needs them right? They don't do anything.

Well, not to worry. Global climate change will eliminate the problem for you in your lifetime.

Endangered Woodstorks feeding

This was shot behind our house in a semi-protected inlet creek along the South Carolina coastline.

Copyright property of L F Schliessmann

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Cancilleri's Law excerpt

Cancilleri's Law



Waxman swore she lived, but you would be hard pressed to prove it to me. I saw no sign of breathing, not a twitch of muscle. Not once during the long hours I sat and watched from across the primitive wood-slab table, did she blink. A rough, hand woven scarf shrouded her lower face and hair -- part of her period costume, Waxman had told me. The material's color matched her crystalline blue eyes.
Unless I touch her, I thought, despite my knowledge of her situation, how can I be certain she's real?
She stood poised in a half-squat of indecision as if trapped before her thoughts had time enough to sift evidence. Her room was constructed from pale gray sound-deadening plastics. Light strips around the baseboards subdued the space into the dusk of her original departure.
The furniture, one table and chairs padded and upholstered in dark ruby velvet, sat on a floor carpeted with a thick pile, blood red synthetic both soft and resilient -- except where her feet touched bare earth grown over with knee high wheat or barley.
I stood and went around the table. She did not move. By then, I wanted to believe I witnessed a mirage, a holographic prank. I could still hear my mates at the Advanced Chrono Sciences Lab laughing at my naiveté when I had announced I would be the one, the person to bring her the rest of the way through.
However, the woman was a frozen mannequin, incredibly life-like and frighteningly human. The briefing data provided by the Loyal Order of the Keepers had not exaggerated.
I rounded the table's corner to close the distance between us. I could smell her, but could not identify the sweet sickly aroma.
Her unblinking eyes remained fixed on the place where I had been sitting. I studied my hand as I reached to touch her, and stopped. Will she suddenly come to life and attack me? Will she scream? Or will nothing happen?
I lowered my hand, and decided to stare directly in her eyes before I touched her. I could only see shadows below her scarf; the highlights across her cheekbone, the swirls of her right ear, and of course her eyes.
The briefing data said her life span had reached thirty years when the accident occurred over two hundred years ago; she had not and would not age.
I moved closer and saw strands of blue-black hair poking from beneath the scarf. The woman was stunningly beautiful. I felt there was something hauntingly familiar about her, which increased her mysteriousness. I wondered, maybe she's ... Then thought, No. It's not possible.

As Helpless as Beached Dolphins

I’ve often beaten the bushes trying to understand concepts and ideas that once were logical but now seem less so. The internet, for all its promise, has become a cyber world of scammers for whom logic is a means to an end only. Their ends, using us for its means.

The old time snake oil salesman lives on. Anything and everything you might find interesting, is now laid out like an autopsy. Why bother investigating, researching, and truly learning a subject when with a click or two all of what you would’ve learned through meticulous and careful observation, is there before you. Forget about the journey of learning or the disciplined thought acquired through old fashioned education.

Oh, that’s a good thing? Is it really? Can one actually learn and retain details using this method? (Right, bookmarks, I forgot) Do you still get the thrill of success you would’ve received doing research the old way? (Oh, yeah, bookmarks) Is instant satisfaction really satisfying? Or is it merely instant gratification? The type one might need from the first drink after a day of cubicle living.

The exponential expansion of online life, devours time, and erases days while never quite filling the needs we might’ve once felt were there to answer some basic questions such as what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What are we supposed to accomplish while we are?

I know, sex, eating, talking, texting, chatting, tweeting, and oh, yeah sleeping. Did I say eating? As in pigging out? Oh, and working too, I forgot. Full days ahead. Whoopee!

Internet living deletes those questions with its quasi-reality of just out of reach promises, and the more massive this new “world” becomes, the more likely we are to be absorbed, ignored, cast out, and forgotten. Kind of like yesterday’s news only the modern version of yesterday lasts 15 microseconds.

In the same way that religion replaced addiction for some of us, so does the internet for others, cell phone communications for many. How much time do you truly spend alone in your own mind without any type of outside interference or interruption?

I imagine the answer is very little. Who among us can afford to live that way? We are so linked in to technology that we know we cannot live without it. In another decade, will any of us care?

That will be the time that the plug gets pulled leaving the majority of us as helpless as beached dolphins.

For more and better information about this, go here: http://tinyurl.com/cwt2th

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A Progressive Democrat living in the Deep Sourh

A Progressive Democrat living in the Deep South

Typing that felt weirdly satisfying. Since moving to Coastal South Carolina in 2000, I’ve slowly found myself withdrawing from public activities. No joke. It’s downright, well, otherworldly to hear people discussing Jesus at lunch while they gorge themselves with enough food to feed a starving family of four for two days. Of course they bow their heads and recite prayer first. Then, they leave their server with a miniscule tip of less than five percent.

It’s as if the version of the New Testament I read while a child and their version are totally different.

In 2004, I won an International writer’s award and did book signings. When I sat to sign books at a local Books-A-Million, I confronted a few radical right Evangelicals who not only expressed what was wrong with Science Fiction, but that the founder of the contest, L. Ron Hubbard, was the Devil’s agent.

Yikes! What the heck do you do with statements like that? Shoot (as they say down here versus what we’d say in NY which starts and ends the same letters but with only 4 total) I don’t even believe in the Devil and Hell. I think people like the ones who made the “informed” statements, are an example of hell on earth, but that‘s another matter entirely.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m walking through an Evangelical version of Disney World. The Appian Way lined with crucified Progressives. The Believers’ golden road to their version of heaven. Yes, they do think there are angels playing harps for God’s entertainment. Wonder what happens if they miss a note?

So, I decided I needed to blog this since so much of my time and mental energy has been entrapped by a religious philosophy I cannot entertain as applicable to my life; one that is twisted off the parchment and tangled into tall tales of loathing. Evangelicals seem to despise, or worse, every person who does not conform to their standards. Yet they all walk around babbling into cell phones and forget about their driving skills. It’s do or die!

I really am uninterested in spending time wading through other people’s spiritual dilemmas. Hence my posts on spiritual belief.

Naturally, any Evangelical who reads this post will advise me that if I don’t like it, I should move back to New York. A tongue in cheek method of proving my point and the true reason that Christianity is a failing religion. Intolerance, exclusion, and even violent behavior towards those who disagree with them.

My response to them? Well, bless your heart!