Category Archives: humanity

B&W: Ghosts of Battery Russell

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Unrest amidst these recent ruins,
abandoned shells of concrete rooms;
gray walls, gray clouds, gray misted woods,
dampened air of palpable gloom.

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Who walks along these musty halls?
Whose shadows flit across the walls?
A voice from sometime far away…
whose name is it he softly calls?

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Whispered tales of haunting ghosts:
a soldier loathe to leave his post,
a submariner from World War Two
who shelled this battery from off the coast.

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Strange sightings, chills, and eerie sounds.
Some say a night watchman guards the grounds,
an infantryman from the Civil War,
lantern swinging as he makes his rounds.

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Whoever within these walls abide,
be they visiting spirits from the other side,
or mere figments of imaginative minds,
I leave it for you to weigh and decide.

Battery Russell is located in Fort Stevens State Park on the Oregon Coast. For more information about the history of the fort, please visit the Friends of Old Fort Stevens website.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge

Just a Line

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“I can’t draw,” you say.
Drawing is just lines.
Line up your lines
until they look like
what you see
in your mind.

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 “I can’t write,” you say.
Writing is just lines.
Line up your words
until they say
what your thoughts
have in mind.

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“I can’t dance,” you say.
Dancing is just lines.
Lines of movement
drawn with your body
until they portray
what you feel
in your soul.

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“I can’t” is just a line
we tell ourselves
when we’re afraid.

(Extra)ordinary Construction Worker

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I was having some windows installed in my home last week, and one of the construction crew members, while walking through my living room, stopped and pointed to the wall behind me.

“What’s that?” he asked in a way that made me wonder if someone had perhaps snuck in a boar’s head and mounted it on my unsuspecting wall. I turned to look. Oh, that.

“It’s a dulcimer,” I told him, and proceeded to answer his questions about the instrument. Where it originated, what type of music one played on it, etc.

“Wow!” He continued to stare at it with that boar’s-head-on-the-wall type of fascination. “That’s a real conversation piece!”

This week’s Daily Press photo challenge asks, “What’s mundane yet meaningful to you? What’s a beautiful everyday thing?”

I guess my dulcimer would fall into that category. I think it’s beautiful. It does carry special meaning for me. And yet – to me – it has become rather “mundane.” I see it hanging on my wall each day. I dust it occasionally (okay, rarely). And very rarely, I take it down and actually try to play the darn thing.

It’s interesting to think about how the term “mundane” is such a personal concept. It’s quite possible that I could walk into that construction worker’s home and see a boar’s head hanging on his wall. My reaction would likely be, “What’s that?” and he would reply, “Oh, that’s Reggie. Or what’s left of the little tyke. He was one helluva pig.”

So if you’re looking through the other entries to the photo challenge and you come across a picture of a boar’s head mounted on a wall, it’s probably a photo of Reggie that my construction worker posted on his blog.

I just hope my construction worker is as good at installing windows as he is at photography, blogging, taming wild boars, and taxidermy.

Wow! He’s a busy guy! I guess it’s no wonder he never found time to take up the dulcimer.

Weekly Photo Challenge: (Extra)ordinary