this week's concerns, along with streaming the natural way

post #374
       The following paragraph is all about what I often try to make sense of but don't usually put on my blog. Feel free to skip over it if you have had enough of your own concerns about the world! I'm simply not willing this week to be silent after so many travesties, piled up on one another, during a single week:

        Some week. A crusading, progressive Pulitzer winning (in 2017) newspaper in West Virginia -- The Charlston Gazette-Mail -- has had to declare bankruptcy, and a very pro-coal impersonal newspaper chain is preparing to take it over. There was the shootings in a Florida High School where 17 died, and where, since then, the students have spoken out forcefully about the travesty of their state's complete disregard to basic gun registration and background checks. We will hear more from them. (Why do we not treat guns as carefully as we do cars?)  Thirteen Russians were indited for trying to mess with American elections, sowing discord, and yet this is not evidence enough for our elected president to show any concern about their activities the last few years -- and what might be in store in the future. (What is he trying to ignore and hide?)  The DACA young people are now left completely hanging because a bunch of grown-ups can't think big enough to overcome a few people's fixation on an ineffectual wall. (I'm old enough to remember the Berlin Wall and its ultimate defeat. Can't we learn anything from history?) Also I can't forget that there's talk about a one day military parade where the cost of putting it on would be over 3 million dollars. And it would not improve our nation's problem solving capabilities one bit. Or our image to the world. We can be proud of our military without resorting to propaganda. What about 3 million to spend on community colleges scholarships. Or what about helping our citizens in Puerto Rico rebuild a working electrical grid after a devestating natural disaster.  What about setting up a sane system to provide oversight for who buys what gun and not selling assault rifles in the first place. Just saying. How much backbone and resolve do we have as a nation?
           note: here is the link to the WV newspaper article.

        Following what I shared last week about coal, I had originally planned to share today about the process of getting the stream saver rule established -- years and years of work -- and then it became one of the first attempts to negate an Obama legacy by being closed down. I intended to share some of my stream photos over the years, since clear water is so important to life on earth -- and so beautiful.  But now, today, a compromise -- just the photos without the full story, since I have already spent my allotted time on this post for today... Here they are:

A shadow in the rain, of a bridge being torn down, making way for a new bridge: 

spring on Carter Ford in Elliott County, Kentucky:

 Elliott County, Kentucky, creek, one during a dry spell and the other looking more like usual:

Two from Harlan County, Kentucky, creek, at Pine Mountain Settlement School: 

other times of the year: 

 

 

  

spring showers bring rushing water, with a joining:

 This last photo is a version of one of my better known images, of our creek in springtime:

         OK, this is my idea of streaming, and I do it as often as I can... let it go, let it flow, honor the place these streams play in the daily well-being of humans, animals and plants.  Take care for them. As I have written other times, we all live down stream. 
        It makes me happy to be able to share these photos today. Thanks.