Brad Sondahl's blog

Brad's Blog

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Nov. 3
The old saying about " You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." has been atrributed to Abe Lincoln but apparently they were fooling... Anyway the "half the people all the time" thing seems sadly true currently.

Nov. 4
Here's the sunset from the bridge in Priest River over the Pend O'Reille River...

Nov. 14
A lot of things seem on hold lately when I check the news, like Covid-free life and a final determination of the next president, or the final shenanigans of the present president.
The weather has been moving towards winter, with 5 inches of snow one day, melting to 3 inches the next... But here's a picture of Spirit Lake from last week:

The mill pond is mostly frozen over so this is along the beach looking up the lake... There are a lot of buffleheads and hooded and common mergansers lately, but my photos leave much to be desired with the low light being common these days...

Nov. 17

We can always hope there's light at the end of the tunnel...

And a turkey for every pot (or backyard)

And weird circles in the ice on the Mill Pond reminding one of crop circles or pagan fertility figures...

Nov. 18

Mountain chickadee on the stand for the feeder, awaiting its turn...

It was sunny this morning so I went to the lake:

Hooded merganser, male

Female lesser scaup with female mallard, for size comparison. Also they seemed to be hanging together, although the scaup is a diver and the mallard a dabbler...

Finally a decent kingfisher pic--I hear them all the time down there but they flit about a lot...

Nov. 21
It was cold enough to frost last night, yielding great patterns in the local mud puddles. Nearly every photo was a winner, without editing...

Some of them seem to have depth although they are flat

The key was to catch the right angle, generally with gray sky reflected, but the pines made their presence known also...

These grew on hexagonal axes like snowflakes (about 8 inches across)

Nov. 25

This is our Covid Thanksgiving table centerpiece. The baby shoes are coincidental, from possible use for making other centerpieces. We have about 15 table graces we rotate between, with the one that happens to be showing common among Lutherans. It was the harvest themed mask that inspired the photo.
Meanwhile, winter is still threatening, with sleet and snow and fog:

books read

Battleground by Jim Butcher. It had some of the feel of a comic book mashup ala Avengers or Justice League of America, and some of the weaknesses inherent in that. I did like it overall, although my enthusiasm was dampened when I set it on a burner I thought I had shut off, and burned the back cover of the new library book. Given the magical theme, it might have been better if it had left 666 or a pentagram on the back cover instead of a burner spiral...

Bob's Saucer Repair by Jerry Boyd. Although this book delivers what you'd expect from a B movie title like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and has shallow characters, silly puns and obscure pop references, it was fun. But then I like B Sci Fi Movies. (This is a free Kindle read on Amazon Prime)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. A classic from the 1930's. No I didn't guess whodunit, even though I probably read it 30 years ago.

A Choice of Gods by Clifford Simak. Rereading this book reminds me why Simak was one of my favorite SciFi authors. Nature. theology, robots, teleportation, and aliens...

The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson. A clever and sympathetic look at time traveling for good instead of evil.

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