Limestone, quartz, juniper, crinoids, canine teeth, heartwood. [Photo 
Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
Devils Backbone
What kind of world is being born?
Excerpts from a Christmas essay titled “What Kind of World is Being Born?” written by Vinson Cunningham, featured in the December 25, 2025, New Yorker magazine newsletter. ” . . . All of us are surfing events, responding to tectonics deeper than we know. Only time will tell what we’ll be forced to sit and think through and attempt to describe.
[Continued . . .]
These days surrounding the winter solstice are dark, dark, dark. Nice time to think about what we might make together when the light returns. Merry Christmas, no matter how sharp the birth pains. Fear not!“
Sly Stone – I want to take you Higher
Saigon, Vietnam, 1970. U.S. Army Spec4 Vollmer, sitting in the dark before the big screen dressed in standard issue U.S. Navy blue bellbottoms and white t-shirt from the PX in the Cholon District . . . wanting to be somewhere else. Sly and the Family Stone took me there for all of 3 or 4 minutes. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Warmth on a cold night
[Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
celestial Transients
Happy Solstice! As good a day as any to talk about ” . . . Celestial transients, which are astronomical objects that appear suddenly from nowhere and usually disappear soon after, that contradict the standard truth that the universe changes predictably and slowly over billions of years. They include what the typically staid National Academy of Sciences called “the most catastrophic events in spacetime.” [Quote from a Scientific American newsletter article titled, Mysterious Bright Flashes in the Night Sky, December 16, 2025, by Ann Finkbeiner and Clara Moskowitz, Click on image to enlarge].
This is a relatively long read, but well worth the time it takes if you are feeling self-important at the moment. Prepare to be humbled by the immensity and the mysteries of the cosmos. Astrophysics is experiencing a golden age, thanks to the tools . . . orbiting telescopes, ground based radio telescopes, stellar and interstellar probes, etc., and the ever greater computing power available to process data. Of still greater importance is the international cooperation of scientists made possible by the World Wide Web.
Go to www.scientificamerican.com to sign up for the free Today in Science newsletter. You can then choose from specific newsletter topics like: Mind & Brain, Health & Medicine, etc.
Oregon Mozart Players – Candlelight Concert
I’ve volunteered for the Oregon Mozart Players off and on for over 25 years and was happy to usher once again for this year’s Candlelight Concert. Beautiful music for the season. The program included Alessandro Scarlatti’s Christmas Cantata, as well as a Concerto Grosso by Archangelo Corelli, and Suite III from Ottorino Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. Even their names are musical. My favorite piece, however, was a 20th century Christmas Suite by English composer, Alec Rowley, based on traditional English carols. [Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
Monkey Balls
That’s what we called the Sweetgum seed pods when I was a kid.
[Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]
The Elephant man – David Lynch
From an article titled 2025 Was David Lynch, by Jessica Winter in the December 12, 2025, New Yorker newsletter comes the following in a discussion of the Lynch film, The Elephant Man. “[Lynch] was not an empathic director but, rather, an uncommonly compassionate one. The word compassion comes from the Latin for “to suffer with”; it means to be present in another’s suffering, which is, in essence, the experience of watching “The Elephant Man.”
[Continued . . .]
In Catholic theology, to be present in another’s suffering is a means of breaking down false divisions between people. Love and community are inconceivable without compassion, and a void of compassion made possible the sadness, despair, and horror that shaped this past year. That void makes our humanity feel contingent, negotiable. Are you an animal or a human being? Am I a good man or a bad man? In the film, Lynch dissolves the scene before the question is resolved. Outside the film, no one who should ask is asking.”
The traveling wilburys – End of the line
George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
On the West Bank Trail – August and december, 2025
The photo above was taken in August, but I walked the Willamette River Trail from Skinner Butte to this spot and beyond again today in 60 degree weather and full sun. The message is as clear as ever. [Photo Max Vollmer, Click on image to enlarge]