The Old Barn

This old barn in located near Portage, Wisconsin. It has been a landmark for me in my lifetime of memories of traveling through Wisconsin and I stopped to take pictures because I am afraid it does not have many days left.

even the road and the mail box are being 'naturalized'

Cezanne's Mt St Victoire

Cezanne's Mt St Victoire




These are my photos of the mountain that the artist made eleven oil paintings and  seventeen watercolors of.

The Miners Angel

I have often driven past the sign on the highway in central IL near Mount Olive that says 'Mother Jones Memorial'.

I knew that Mother Jones was the name of a magazine, but I had no idea what the memorial was all about, so while traveling through with my dauther and grandson, I took the time to stop.

I found the following info on a site called 'Americans Who Tell the Truth"

Mary Harris began life near Cork, Ireland, grew up in Ontario, and then came to the United States, where she worked as a dressmaker and a schoolteacher. In 1867, her husband George Jones and their four children all died in a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, so she moved back to Chicago where, four years later, she lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire.

Following these twin shocks, Jones spent the second half of her life involved in the labor movement. From the 1890s though the 1920s she worked tirelessly as a political “hell-raiser,” advancing social and political causes such as the abolition of child labor, and organizing the United Mine Workers. In 1905 she helped found the International Workers of the World (IWW).

Coal miners and their families called her “the miner’s angel” and, after she began referring to the miners as “her boys,” she took on the nickname ‘Mother’ Jones. A charismatic speaker, she was adept at staging public events to get publicity for striking workers, and her physical courage was legendary. Opponents called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” but when she was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate as “the grandmother of all agitators,” she said she hoped to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators.

Mother Jones, honored today by the political magazine that bears her name, lived in a time when women were not allowed to vote. “You don’t need a vote to raise hell,” she said about that. “You need convictions and a voice.” She perhaps is best known for her saying, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Mother_Jones.php

It is said that the song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain' was written about Mother Jones.

The Provencal Colorado- France

Not far from Apt, at the foot of the Plateau of Albion near the village of Rustrel is an astonishing open ochre quarry. After driving through the vineyards of the Luberon, I felt as if I had suddenly been transported to the American west!

Ochre, ranging in color from ivory to brick red was collected from this site beginning in 1871 and supported many area families, but now only one company, the "Societe des Ochres de France" is still gathering ochre here as most colorings now come from chemicals.

Today the area is enjoyed by day visitors and hikers who are following the GR6 hiking trail, but remnants of steel pipes and an old gas driven pump remind you of the days when this area was being mined.

At the peak of activity in the late 1920's the ochre industry produced 40,000 ton of pigment, and a considerable amount of it came from Rustrel.

Chiminees de Fees ( Fairies Chimneys)

Ochre is used in the building industry for coloring plaster and cement, decorative tiles and roof tiles. Industrial and artists paints also contain ochre.

A bit of Old London in sunny Arizona

Engineer John Renni designed London Bridge and the official opening took place in 1831. Made of Haytor granite, it was 928 feet long and 49 feet wide and King William IV and Queen Adelaide attend the opening in a pavilion erected on the bridge. The recently constructed HMS Beagle was the first ship to pass under it.

In 1968 Rennies bridge was sold to Missouri entrepreneur Robert MuCullouch of MuCulloch Oil for US$2,460,000. It was reconstructed in Lake Havasu, Arizona andspans the Bridgewater Channel canal that leads from Lake Havasu to Thomson Bay, and forms the centrepiece of a theme park in English style, complete with a Tudor period shopping mall.

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We spent a lovely morning there, before the shops opened, enjoying the old bridge, being by the water and taking pictures.