Tonka

This is num­ber three hun­dred for Bend Light. I started this about a year and a half ago. I pub­lish about every three to four days now. I made all the pic­tures except one. It feels like a life­line to me. I say it feels like one because it isn’t one. I won’t die with­out it; but within me is a part that is more alive with it. Can I be more alive, less dead? I think I am either dead or not, but I can be more alive. Bend Light stokes the fire of alive.

Not an insignif­i­cant part of the juice I get is you. Would I still do this if you didn’t read it? I would like to think so, but I am famil­iar enough with my ego to know it would quickly bore from look­ing at itself and espe­cially at look­ing at the part of itself that tries to be free of the ego. Writ­ing that makes me think of “Leggo my ego”. Sorry. Any­way, I like that you and I look at one another in this cyber place. I hear less from you than you do from me and my ego seems to tol­er­ate that ok – it is that enam­ored with itself I guess. I would like to hear from you more. To that end I am going to look for a way to make the com­ments fol­low directly under the post so that dis­cus­sions might arise with­out leav­ing the page. This may require a new theme, etc, yawn. In other words, I want to hear from you and really some of you should meet each other. You are great peo­ple who read Bend Light, don’t you think? Thank you for read­ing and shar­ing Bend Light. For lots of rea­sons it means a lot to me.

As part of my cel­e­brat­ing three hun­dred, I would like to ask you to invite your friends to Bend Light. I want more read­ers. I like the con­nec­tions. Send the link along if you fell inclined. I am shame­lessly ask­ing you to help me pro­mote the site here. Check out blogs I like on the blog roll to the right. These are qual­ity places to visit. 

You can sub­scribe to the blog in sev­eral ways so you don’t have to keep remem­ber­ing to come back here. On the side­bar you will find an email sub­scrip­tion. You put your email in and you then receive an email that has a link you click to con­firm it’s you. You can unsub­scribe any time. You can also find Bend Light on twit­ter @bendlight. On Face­book, you can find a Bend Light page, although I think FB is kind of a drag, but it’s there if you want. My pho­tos are on Flickr under sb archer. If you click on the photo you go to Flickr. If you click on the blog title you go to that post’s own page with com­ments. You can “like” posts, retweet posts, tweet thoughts about the post all from the side panel there. You can Stum­ble posts even. If you like a photo and want a print, con­tact me. I’ll make one for pretty close to cost plus ship­ping. I am not look­ing to make money on this site. If you have a blog reader add Bend Light with the RSS but­ton. If you don’t have one, get one. If you have ideas for the blog, let me know. I would be hon­ored to have the feedback.

For today’s photo, I would ask you to fill in the blanks. If the word Tonka evokes for you mem­o­ries the way it does for me, you will have a great set of sto­ries to revel in. You can write one down here if you like. Oth­er­wise, and/or if the word Tonka means noth­ing to you, that’s ok. I think it’s still a cool moment as the dusk sweeps across the wheat fields, the smoke from a for­est fire under Mt. Wash­ing­ton roils through the sunset.