Talking with an artist friend this morning, I admitted that the images that draw me to them with camera in hand are not easily explained.  Sometimes at the end of the day when I go about the task of editing the photographs and making some sense of them in writing, I don’t find a unifying theme.  On the other hand, I admit that I have no idea why something like the bark on trees, all kinds of trees, makes me want to look carefully.  I tried to say this morning that bark on trees is like fingerprints on people.  I’m not sure of this, but I’m guessing that forensic scientists would agree that no two sections of tree trunk are exactly alike. I find myself wondering if somewhere out in the Cosmos there is planet with trees... and if there are trees, do they have bark... and if they have bark does it serve the same purpose there as bark serves on trees on my planet... and is every square foot of bark on every tree on every plant different from every other square foot of bark on every tree in the entire cosmos, if entire is an appropriate qualifier to use with the word Cosmos?

...And I confess that I am fascinated by writing and other markings  on pavement.  Sometimes I drive by or over, or ride my bicycle by or over, the word stop; and I remind myself that I will someday stop and take a picture.  One such STOP is the one in this day’s photo du jour.  It appears nervous, tentative, to me.  It’s near a coffee shop where my artist friend Clyde and his partner Dave and I chatted this morning.  I rode over STOP on my bike at seven A.M. and thought as I headed for the coffee shop that today I might stop and get the picture.  On my way home, I noticed that somebody, likely a child, had lost a ball which was resting irresistibly on a patch of grass right by the nervous STOP.  The ball got me thinking about planets. I took a picture, but I didn't take the ball. I hope the child came back and found it.

Oh, almost forgot.  I also admitted to Clyde this morning that I’m always on the look-out for black holes... not out in the Cosmos, but right here on Earth. A black hole in a wall almost always leaves me wondering what’s behind it, where it starts, and why some seem to serve a purpose and some none at all.  

...and streaks on surfaces, like walls and streets, made by water or some other liquid... The randomness of the streaks fascinates me... and I start thinking about how perhaps nothing is ever random, that everything can be explained if all the facts are available and understood.  

...and I end a day like today hoping nobody demands that I explain anything...or prove that I know anything for sure...

Oh, another thing:  How about that astrophysics professor, Richard A. Muller, at the University of California who changed his mind about global warming?  Remember?  For a long time he has been insisting regularly in speeches and in essays that global warming isn't real. Now he says unequivocally that it is indeed real and that humans are almost entirely the cause.  What was that about in the first place, and what does his change of mind mean?  I’m guessing the billionaire Koch brothers aren’t happy with him any longer.