I'm back -- sorta

Which is to say that my trusty, not-so-reliable iMac is in the hospital. As I said earlier, I am working on a loaner, with neither DVD player nor PhotoShop. Please come up with some friendly, encouraging vibes for the ailing hard drive with all my pictures on it; I could lose a year's worth! Forgive any slight (or major) tilt you might see in my pictures, since I don't have the capability of remedy.

The question, of course, is "what does this picture have to do with any of these travails?" Let's see if I can explain. The pic, of course, is not of a deliberate sculpt, but rather, an abandoned equatorial mount for a telescope. LH built the very solid stand at the back of our house not long after we moved here; he was excited to add the scope and take his first pictures. But, OOPS! All the stars had little squiggly tails. Apparently this ever-so-solid platform had been erected smack dab on what is probably a mini-mini fault, common in the hills hereabouts.

Why would I surmise that? Because you can't land in Arizona, where the earth's skeleton is exposed to view without getting into geology, Big Time. Of course we located a geological map of Yavapai County forthwith, which showed faults all over the hills.

Plus: I used to serve as my mother's travelling companion on summer escape flights to and from Phoenix and her sister's house in Victoria BC. This took me many times over Nevada and desert Oregon, which is an absolutely amazing terrain. Thus I came to read Basin & Range, by John McPhee. All about the Nevada landscape and how it came to be. A must read for any Westerner. Bro, who had been a petroleum geologist in his career days. picked up my copy while he was here visiting & found it both entertaining and educational (his degrees dated from the days just prior to the plate tectonics revolution).

Which led to buying him the complete McPhee treatment of geology across the USA along the 40th parallel. And an extra copy for good measure, namely me. It's called Annals of the Former World. I've been reading it steadily for a couple of days. It's fat. It's fascinating, if bewildering at times; I'm in California -- about finished. That's how I've spent my enforced vacation!