11/30/2009

The End of the November Road

Nevada Image © 2009 - Michael A. Pancier, All Rights Reserved
Please visit my website at www.michaelpancierphotography.com
Valley of Fire State Park - Nevada

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest
--- James Morrison

11/27/2009

And So It Begins ... Black Friday 2009

Image Canyonlands National Park © 2009 by Michael A. Pancier
Please visit my website at www.michaelpancierphotography.com

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.
- Bob Dylan
11/26/2009

Happy Thanksgiving - 2009

Male Anhinga - Everglades National Park
© 2009 by Michael Pancier Photography
Please visit my website at www.michaelpancierphotography.com

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln


11/25/2009

Vultures are Lurking

© 2009 Michael Pancier Photography
Visit My Website at www.michaelpancierphotography.com



Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row
-- Bob Dylan
11/24/2009

Be Wary of Snakes

Image of Serpent © 2009 Michael A. Pancier

Please visit my website www.michaelpancierphotography.com

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And dropping a bar bell he points to the sky
Saying, "The sun's not yellow it's chicken"
-- Bob Dylan
11/23/2009

The Feeding Begins

Image ©2009 by Michael Pancier Photography
Please visit my website at Michael Pancier Photography

"Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian” -- Heywood C. Broun
11/22/2009

God's Greatest Gift

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
© 2009 Michael Pancier Photography

Please visit my website at www.michaelpancierphotography.com

"The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed." -- Dante

11/21/2009

Good Tidings from Shenandoah National Park

Image © 2009 Michael Pancier Photography
Visit my Website at Michael Pancier Photography
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."
-- John Muir, Our National Parks , 1901
11/19/2009

Landscape Poetry

Image © 2009 Michael Pancier Photography, All Rights Reserved
Images and Prints Available at MichaelPancierPhotography.com

This T.S. Eliot poem came to mind as I took this photo in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

T.S. Eliot - East Coker

11/18/2009

Happy Birthday Olga - First Birthday in Heaven

Today would have been my mom's birthday. This is the first year I celebrate it without her. Many miss her music, and her joyfulness, and her laughter and humor. I do too. But I can't tell you how much I miss talking to her and hearing her words and her motherly advice and wisdom that she gave me until the end.

I know in her way she is there watching over me and her grandchildren along with my dad. When our mothers pass on, I think they become our guardian angels to watch over us and protect us from harm and to help guide us in difficult times.

She is enjoying her first birthday party in Heaven. I'm sure she and her friends will be having a wonderful time with plenty of music and laughter. Some of it will be heard here on Earth. I am hearing it now.

Love you always ...

Your Son Michael
11/17/2009

Words from George Washington

Images and Prints available at michaelpancierphotography.com

Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation.
- GEORGE WASHINGTON
Image © 2009 by Michael Pancier Photography
11/16/2009

My Course in Good Water

© 2009 Michael Pancier Photography

“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.” -- John Muir

Please visit my new photography website here.
11/14/2009

Leave it as it is


"In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country - to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.
* * *
Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see."

-- President Theodore Roosevelt, Grand Canyon, Arizona, May 6, 1903

Images & Prints Available at Michael Pancier Photography Official Website
11/13/2009

The Desert Is Calling and I Must Go



Zion National Park - Utah

Images and Prints available for sale at
www.michaelpancierphotography.com
11/12/2009

All Things Must Pass

11/09/2009

A Sad Truth



"The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual." --- John Muir
11/04/2009

Words to Live By


Image of Everglades National Park (c) 2009 by Michael A. Pancier


"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." - John Muir