It's Monday For All of Us

I chose today's post title because I marked my Thursday post last week as being my Friday. We flew over to Shreveport, LA, for my first cousin, Lewis' funeral. You can read his obituary here. It was a nice service and there were so many people there. I was surprised (let me amend that to say I am not surprised he touched so many people). I imagine his longtime work as Treasurer for Shreveport Kiwanis Club probably helped. Anyway, the interesting part about funerals is the family comes together and you see some members that you may not have seen in a while. And of the 16 first cousins in our family, two are deceased (Lewis and his sister), five were absent, and nine of us made it to say goodbye to Lewis. That was nice. Lewis, I am glad you are out of pain and together with your father and sister in heaven.

I just returned from the 44th poorest state in the USA. Well, that's according to a ranking published by Yahoo this morning. Wonder where your state falls? You can find out here. Maryland came out on top, and the rest of us fell somewhere in the middle.

What caught my eye in this next story is NOT that Olive Garden sold 2,000 Pasta Passes last Thursday. It is NOT that 2,000 people were willing to cough up $100-$300 to eat unlimited amounts of food at Olive Garden for the next seven weeks. It was the fact that these passes (2,000 of them, remember) sold out in UNDER ONE SECOND.

I am not finding much to share today, so I am reaching into my 'keep these in case you need them for the blog' file. Here is a story about a school in Biloxi, MS, that painted their lockers to look like book spines. I have read 4 of those depicted, and watched one of them on TV.

One of the challenges I give myself is to try and make photos in public spaces like this look like they might have when the place was built, or at least to exclude as many people from the shots as possible. This actual trestle leading over to an old mine mill is one of those attempts. The public pathway runs under this bridge, so I minimized intrusion by selecting this view and making sure there was no one under it or that they were passing behind an obstruction before pressing the shutter button.

And another shot of the town buildings taken to make it look abandoned.

I had this shot ready, but a woman stepped out just as I was clicking the button. I could probably remove her using Photoshop, but I am not sure I want to spend the time. See her there on the left?

OK, let's finish today on a high note. No, instead, let's finish with today's Clarity of Vision comic. Have a Magnificent Monday.