Wonders of the World

Hey Blue - great idea - here is one from Key West -

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Valerie

Blue thank you sooooooo much for creating such a beautiful thread.........what a great idea.........you are just too wonderful.......Bren, Valerie and Blue such wonderful pictures....since I will never be able to afford to go on vacation this year this is the next best thing..........you girls are the best..........this just feels so safe...............and Blue I just don't know how you do everything you do.........not only surviving bc but living with Parkinson's and doing it without the least bit of complaining..........so glad you have created such a warm and inviting place for us to come and do a little bit of day dreaming...............that's it day dreaming.........ok chicas will be watching and waiting for the next picture.........you girls are the best............Love Shokk

OK, I have never been there, but after searching a bit, I have decided this is where my destination for the week-end will be.  Here is a picture of Byron Bay! 

Nicki - Byron Bay is beautiful. It looks cold, though! Maybe not - it's in New SouthWales, AUS

You read right, it is Big Sur, but this was actually taken looking South, though I was driving North. We had stopped at Julia Pfieffer State Park, I believe, and in the early morning, getting ready to set out for a day hike along the coast and in the adjacent Los Padres National Forest, this was our vista at dawn (or soon thereaffter, it was vacation, after all!)

Lisa

OK Great!  I choose a destination and they are in the middle of their winter lol. 

Your right.  I am a kook.

Nicki

What gorgeous photos! While my background is not as majestic, how lovely is it to see a dog totally immersed in being a dog, doing his favorite thing, swimming and running through the water.

haha Shokk!!! Yes, the driving, swimming and, at all other times, sleeping, Lab.

Raye

Shokk:  That video cracked me up.

Raye:  That might just be one of the cutest pictures I have seen.  Cute, cute dog.

Of course then there is MIster - my dog.  Who is half black lab, half border collie and wont get his paws wet.  

Nicki 

Hi Nicki,

 Mavericks is up north.  And yup .. been on lots of surfboards in CA, Mexico and HI. 

SDLisa ... more pics from home ... please!!!

 Raye - My lab/retriever won't go near the water!!  I have a pic of an old friend surfing with his dog Leroy on his long board.  Going to see if I can find them. 

SDLisa .. do you remember Skip Frye?  Well Donna (yes, the almost mayor) and I were best friends for many, many years.  I've got pics of Skip with Roy on his board with him at PB Point!!!

 I love the central and Northern CA coast.  Gorgeous pic's.  It's fun to watch the otters play in the water!  And the elephant seals! 

No vacation for me either this year ... so keep the pics coming!!

Val, I love the black and white photos.

SDLisa - Do baby pugs swim?????

             Could it be the Cats?

Something struck her as unusual almost immediately. There were practically no dogs in Kairouan.  She'd been there a month, and the only dogs she'd seen were two mongrels, one a female who'd recently had pups, the other an older male, both guarding a furniture warehouse in one of the so-called industrial zones outside the town. At night, before sleeping, she'd sometimes hear the lonely yelps of someone's guard dog, doubtlessly freed and allowed to roam the yard once the family had retired. But local children didn't beg for a puppy to play with; nobody walked dogs down the street on leashes.

Shortly after she noted the absence of dogs, she realized she'd seen no birds since she'd arrived in town.  Being a dog lover with two dogs, both mongrels, in her home country, she quickly noted the absence of dogs. But it took a few weeks to realize she never saw a sparrow on a balcony, never noticed a city pigeon pecking on the street. Telephone wires in Kairouan were bare, slumping to the ground, swinging listlessly against the sun-dried walls of ochre houses, the absence of perching birds depriving them of a reason to stay taut.

One of the few restaurants in town, the Sabra, close to the Hotel Splendide where she had first stayed when looking for an apartment, had a small yellow canary in a rusty cage. It sang merrily all through lunch and dinner, apparently never missing the company of other canaries. The first time she heard its chirping she was new in town, had just driven the long sandy road from Tunis, and didn't pay much attention. Instead, she listened in an absent-minded way while picking lamb out of her couscous, believing the singing came from birds in trees outside. When she finally noted the absence of birds in Kairouan, she grew intrigued by the little yellow soprano at the restaurant, and wondered at its high spirits and apparent robust health.

If there were no birds, what had happened to them? How can one canary in a cage thrive in an atmosphere that apparently prevents others of its species from nesting on rooftops and shouldering up to one another on telephone wires? The atmosphere was hot and still in Kairouan, laden with dust and hovering flies. Public dumps on street corners wafted odors of fresh sheepskin and decaying onions with every belch of heavy air.

Maybe birds can't thrive here, she thought; possibly they suffocate from lack of fresh, clean breezes and fall helplessly to the ground. Or maybe they escape to the coast to build nests and hatch their young in trees bent by salty currents from the sea. She much preferred the second answer, so decided she would believe that.

One day she realized that in contrast to the missing dogs and birds, cats were everywhere in Kairouan. They peeked from under parked cars, eyes glowing in the golden dusk; regally patrolled the corner dump, eating fresh entrails and curiously rolling empty tin cans down cracked sidewalks. They played hide and seek around corners, and chased one another, tails pointed skywards, over, under, and around the stalls of the Medina.

One night she discovered that the man who lived in the apartment across from her own had cats. He spent days and nights on his balcony, lying on a padded chaise lounge, facing the long road to Sousse. He wore sunglasses even at night, never turned his head right or left, and always had a sprig of fresh Kairouan jasmine behind his ear. He smoked cigarette upon cigarette, Turkish tobacco, so strong and rancid it masked the smell of camels tethered at the butcher shop next door. He regularly filled the glass on the railing with steaming tea from a kettle at his side. He wasn't blind, as she first had thought. She'd see him sometimes on the street, a flat loaf of caraway-studded Arab bread tucked under his arm, walking slowly towards his flat.

This man had at least three cats living in his apartment, maybe more. She took to studying him every evening before she went to bed, and then again in the morning when she first awoke. She stood off to the side by her window, half hidden by the Venetian blind, trusting in the sun's reflection on the pane to keep her presence unknown.

In the evening she could see the vague movements of his brown arms, partially illuminated by the tall streetlight, as he petted the cats.  In the early mornings when the butcher shop was still closed and before the air revved up with heat, the cats paraded up and down his out-stretched body, nuzzling him under the chin and trying to squeeze into the space between armpit and side. Day or night he stared straight ahead while stroking the cats.  She felt like a voyeur, observing a solitary Arab male showing tenderness to pets when he though nobody was looking.

One day at the Medina she saw a cat run away with a plastic bag full of meat. It crawled under a table where it was joined by another cat. At first she thought the first cat had stolen the bag; then realized one of the rug merchants had tossed it to him. Maybe the meat belonged to a rival rug merchant; it might even have been his lunch. The man who'd given the meat to the cat shook with laughter, and a tourist hunkered down to photograph the two cats happily shredding a large lamb kebob. Others, including the rival rug merchant, joined in the laughter, so apparently the cats were welcome to their feast.

There was a restaurant in town, not the one with the canary in a cage but another, one that cooked and served rotisserie chickens to tourists and other hungry passersby. The chickens turned and sputtered from early morning until late afternoon, basting in their fat, growing golden and crisp with the passing hours. There too she saw men sitting at tables, hand-feeding slivers of meat to sleek, healthy-looking kittens and cats. She never saw a thin cat in Kairouan; they were healthier than those who came begging at her back patio in her own country.

One day she asked the owner of the butcher store, the man who kept bleating sheep and sobbing camels tethered on a public street all night before their execution, about the absence of birds in Kairouan. She didn't ask about dogs, because she knew dogs are unclean to Muslims. The last thing she wanted to hear was what happened to dogs abandoned by tourists, or about the fate of puppies born to a worn-out bitch at a furniture warehouse in the industrial zone outside the city.

 But she did ask about the birds. After all, how many horrors can one hear about birds?  The butcher didn't appear to understand what she was asking; it was as though the concept of birds was unfamiliar to him. Maybe he'd never known a town where birds chirped on telephone wires and pecked crumbs from the street. Perhaps no bird in his memory had ever sung free in Kairouan. Or maybe he knew that birds in Tunisia are found only on the coast, nesting and hatching their young in trees bent by salty currents from the sea.

Or, she thought, it could be the cats. Yes, possibly it's the cats.