Here is a little piece of Smithfield Reservoir north of Kansas City, Missouri. I wanted to do this in black and white, which is something I don’t normally do, because color just didn’t do it for me. I beefed up the contrast 100 percent and cropped out the extraneous part of the photograph that I originally thought more highly of. I believe I sharpened it just a bit also. I hope you enjoy it.

Smithfield Reservoir, north of Kansas City, Missouri

There’s been a lot of weird cloud formation ever since H A A R P started messing with the ionosphere. Here are a couple of them.

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Back yard facing west – June 13,  2013

Back yard facing north
June 3, 2014

Ghosts of Children

 

Wherewith hath come

The screeching wind

That withered frame

And emptied rooms,

That sent mice racing

To their holes,

While ghosts of children

Play in the grass?

 

Oh, the times they change

But life moves on,

Yet their skeletons

Stay behind

With stark remains

Of joy and pain

While ghosts of children

Play in the grass.

 

Cris Coleman

August 15, 2015

 

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You’re welcome to visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can register for free and upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other related items.

The night has been unruly: where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatch’d to the woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamour’d the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
(Macbeth, 2.3)

Angels symbolize all things good to me. While typically thought of as female in the modern age, and even in the middle ages, they were male in the Bible. At least, I’m not aware of any female angels in the Bible. I could be wrong, however, as I haven’t read the ENTIRE Bible yet.

If there is anything honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, hopeful, virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy, we may attribute these qualities to angels — male or female. It is these qualities we must strive to obtain if we are to reach our highest reaches of humanity.

Angels are also protectors and providers of and for those who seek to do God’s will. At least, there are many examples of this in the Bible. And we certainly hear of many contemporary anecdotes of angels coming to the assistance of people in need in many different ways.

“Thou madest him [man] a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands.” (Hebrews 2:7.)

Now, what it means to be “a little lower than the angels” I am not prepared to say, only that with a little effort and a lot of help from God, we can perhaps obtain these qualities that would put us in the presence of angels and make them our friends.

Link back to Weekly Photo Challenge: Symbol

You’re welcome to come visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other related items.

Angels we have heard on high

Downtown Altamont, MO is almost a ghost town, although the village itself sports a population of (I think) 209. Yet, the only business it has is a towing service, which has an old tired/retired gas pump out front. The village also has a post office that was almost retired by the USPS, but instead, it was relegated to a part-time service. It also has a fire department.

Altamont had a tire repair/sales business run out of someone’s home, but that has recently retired. If there are any other business goings-on, I am not aware of it.

These old doors were once part of (presumably) two thriving businesses located next to each other, kitty corner from the towing service. One was a grocery store. I am not sure what business the other door belonged to. If I remember correctly, DOOR #2 was the grocery stoer.

Link back to Weekly Photo Challenge: Door

You’re welcome to come visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other related items.

What’s behind door #1

What’s behind door #2

Old barns are my first love. I always keep running back to them, although it’s getting harder and harder to find new ones in my immediate area. And it’s not like I can just hop over a barbed wire fence to go onto the property to get different views of them. I’ve already had a truck-load of rednecks (no offense to rednecks) chase me down the street because I was perfectly legally taking photos of a barn from the street apparently belonging to them. No shotgun so far, but I’m not going to press the issue.

The first barn below is one I took a couple of years ago, maybe, followed by two that I took earlier this year after a very powerful flat wind came charging through the neighborhood last summer. These are followed by two photos of a rather neglected old barn somewhere south of Blanchard, Iowa, just into Missouri.

Link back to Weekly Photo Challenge: Muse
You’re welcome to come visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other related items.

Pre-flat wind barn

There wasn’t anything at left of the barn after it was visited by a very powerful flat wind, I believe, last year.

Take 2

South side

North side

©2011 Cris Coleman

Foggy Morning by Cris Coleman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

I live on top of one of a multitude of hills in NW Missouri. Looking north, this is how it often looks after a warm, nightly rainfall. Sometimes the fog even appears during a rainfall. It’s interesting to drive in, especially at night.