Hubbard, Oregon

Way back in 1983-1987, we used to live in the town, in this little house:

Where we used to live in Hubbard, Oregon

Since it’s in the Industrial Park, I’m kinda surprised it’s still there and in use as a private residence. In fact, the mailbox I put up is still there, now in rusty glory:

Our mailbox in Hubbard, Oregon

They’ve got a nice park. Maybe our family will go there for a picnic this summer:

Hubbard City Park

Ruby and I were in Hubbard this morning on a little Let’s Get Reacquainted expedition.

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Unsophisticated and Unscientific

And quaint, too.

Day before yesterday I heard a Weather GuessCaster speaking of the sun setting and rising.

What’s with geocentric weather forecasters?! 😯

Do they also believe the earth is flat?

Imagine that. Unsophisticated, I say. And unscientific and quaint.

(I wonder if that forecaster mocks the Bible’s use of that kind of Language of the People.)

Dandelion Eradication

Dandelion
Eradication
And
Destruction

Because I want them DEAD.

This year we’re doing something different. We’re picking off the tops. That ought to do it.

This morning I picked the ones that were visible. And took them on a walk. Down our driveway to the highway below. Now they’re DEAD.

I even took some photos with my cellphone. Because of image quality issues, I didn’t make the images below Clickable-Into-A-Bigger-Size.

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Morning Hike

Late this morning, our youngest-but-already-fifteen son Andrew and I went on a one-hour hike. Just here on our home place.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you already read this:

Sitting in sun on tree root by tiny babbling waterfall in little creek in back 40. Peaceful!

I posted that to Twitter from my cellphone at 10:52 this morning. (For a practically-fifty-year-old, that’s pretty amazing stuff even yet!)

Anyway, this is where I was when I Twittered that:

Mark Roth, roosting on a root.

Mark Roth, waxing meditative by a creek

Sitting there in the warm sunshine listening to the babbling waterfall was therapeutic, relaxing, and conducive to thinking thoughts.

Then I looked to my right and my thoughts became less meditative and more contemplative. “If he becomes territorial and aggressive, how long will this little creek delay him?”

Alert for the bull, who's keeping an eye on me

After eyeballing me a couple of times, he ignored me in favor of keeping his attention focused on the grass.

So I turned my attention upward:

Looking over my head from my perch on the root over the creek

Then zoomed in on the left-most branches:

Still looking overhead from over the creek, but zoomed in

A very nice place to be. Oh, hey, I just remembered I have an aerial shot:

Our place from space

The tree I sat under is in the tree line to the right of the five-sided field at the right edge of the photo. 🙂

What Is Man?

Amazing Images of Shuttle and Hubble Transiting Sun

No, these aren’t sunspots finally appearing on our currently quiet sun. Check out these great images taken by NASA photographer Thierry Legault. The “spots” are actually the space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope transiting across the sun! Legault’s website says these are the only images ever taken of a transit of a shuttle and the HST in front of the Sun. Legault was in Florida at the time he took this image, about 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis.

Space Shuttle Atlantis and Hubble Space Telescope against the Sun

For further perspective, consider this. The two man-made objects are roughly 375 miles away. The God-made object — 93,000,000 miles!

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

(Psalm 8:3,4)

Oh, and here you can see Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station against the Sun.

Above all, love God!
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