Roxborough Park once more

My son and I took a two-hour hike in Roxborough Park.  The day was sunny and the early afternoon was somewhat hot for October.

There has been no frost yet, and the landscape is still a cheerful green.

Eric Hoffer and Life Purpose

 I ran across this precept about life purpose from Eric Hoffer:  

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

Return to the Groovy

I have been reading Where The Wasteland Ends, written by a young academic named Theodore Roszak (1933 - 2011) back in 1973.  Roszak was a leading intellectual of the counterculture then, and is actually credited with coining the term "counterculture."

Alas, the book has not aged well.  

The labored references to Friedrich Nietzsche and William Blake seem now to be pretty thin stuff -- some baubles to impress undergraduates with, perhaps, but nothing much to offer any serious student of either history or modern society.  And Roszak's random potshots at straw-man burlesques of capitalism and Protestant Christianity seem like nothing more than paleo-wokeness: virtue signals to his free-thinking tribe of liberal arts professors, coffee house Marxists, hippies, and true-blue George McGovern believers.

All the same, one still has to admire Roszak's vigorous prose.  Here is his colorful denunciation of modern life, as seen from the ivory tower:

For most people, work is a bore and a burden; it is done for other people's profit and to other people's specifications.  It is done for money, rarely for love.  So of course everyone rushes to unload their labor on to the machines and the big systems.  These in turn justify their existence by grinding out the swanky garbage which the official economics tallies up into a statistical mystery called "the standard of living." And the void that is left behind when the machines have taken over the drudgery that no one ever wanted to do in the first place is called "leisure" -- a vacuum rapidly filled with cheerless, obsessive getting and spending, with idiocies like pre-packaged tourism (the chance to make an international nuisance of oneself), or with pure boredom.

I was so delighted with the phrase "make an international nuisance of oneself" that it redeemed my slog through these hundreds of pages of academic claptrap.

However, I worry that I am being too hard on Mr. Roszak.  Decades ago, when I was a college student, I myself was intrigued by countercultural ideals of peace, love, Woodstock nudity, self-actualization, and vaporous spirituality, with a dollop of yoga and Transcendental Meditation as a chaser.  I was even invited (even pressured) to join a commune by a vivacious coed.  

But now I am old and fully molded into my niche in the military-industrial complex.  Perhaps my skepticism concerning Roszak's manifesto is merely evidence that I have lost my grooviness.

In Search of Plump Women

The Denver Art Museum is running an exhibit called "Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools - 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks."  Their advertisement prominently displays a painting by Peter Paul Rubens featuring a sailor and a plump woman.  The sailor appears to have the determined focus of a heat-seeking missile.

 

And so, off I merrily traipsed to the Denver Art Museum to see other Rubens masterworks.  Alas, I was to be disappointed.  There were only three paintings by Rubens out of the sixty paintings on display, and only the picture above and his mythological painting "Diana Hunting with Her Nymphs" showed any hint of Rubens's virtuosity with the ample female form.  The chaste goddess of the hunt is a sturdy girl, built more like a linebacker than a ballerina.

The only other painting that might be considered modestly rubenesque was "The Serenade" by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), ca. 1640-1645.  The young Jordaens occasionally worked for Rubens and was strongly influenced by Rubens's techniques (and taste in models).

Jordaens painted himself into this picture.  He is the middle musician, apparently engaged in mortal combat with the Flemish pipes, a member of the bagpipe family.

The rest of the exhibit consisted of Biblical or mythological subjects, portraits, and nature scenes -- all of them interesting in their own right.  There were a few plump women scattered about as scenery in some of the mythological pictures.

I was intrigued by the dog in this boyhood portrait of William II, Prince of Orange, by Anthony van Dyck.  The dog has a strangely elongated and supple neck, allowing him to look behind himself like a goose.

 

Patriot Hike

Today's hike at Roxborough State Park yielded snapshots that were red, white, and blue.

The red and white were associated with rock formations.

The blue was associated with the mountain jay, who unfortunately turned away from me at the last second.

Official change of the season

There are various ways to mark the change of seasons.  Some rely on equinoxes and solstices.  I, however, use two indicators, both of which were evident today.  The first is the maximum colors of trees before the leaves begin shedding in earnest.

I saw these wonderful colors on a casual stroll around the neighborhood: maroon, red, orange, and rainbow.

The second indicator was the sight of the city workers beginning to drape Christmas lights on trees in the boulevard.

Autumn Flowers

A great advantage of living adjacent to an office park is that the flower beds are refreshed up until the first hard frost.  When a particular bed gets a bit tired looking, the groundskeepers replant.  Here are pictures that I took while walking for a block this afternoon.

 

The Old Ford Garage

I stopped in Julesburg on my way back from the Midwest and took a look at their Old Ford Garage.  The garage held Fords ranging from 1914 to 1930.  An old Buick and an old Dodge Brothers car were also exhibited.

 

My favorite Ford Model T was a 1923 Doctor's Coupe, a very upright and dignified vehicle.

 

By 1930, Ford had produced the much more stylish and powerful Model A.  What a beaut!

 

This Dodge Brothers car from 1927 is peeking shyly from behind two vintage gas pumps (Skelly and Texaco) that were used in Julesburg gas stations in bygone days.

Check it out!

September Wetlands Walk

I took a short walk in the nearby woods.  The trail ran past some wetlands filled with cattails.  A peaceful wetlands scene is shown in the photograph below.

Apart from the cattails, the only other things of note were scores of grasshoppers -- many large ones hopping and an similar number of small ones lying squashed on the trail.  The abundance of little squashed grasshoppers is a mystery.  As I lack the photographic skills and artistic sensibility to capture the pathos of squashed grasshoppers, no photograph is shown.

Another Look at the 1923 Kissel Gold Bug Speedster

During my recent excursion to the Forney Museum of Transportation, I took a side-view snapshot of Amelia Earhart's 1923 Kissel Gold Bug Speedster.  The snapshot didn't do it justice, so I am including two internet pictures of a 1923 Kissel Gold Bug Speedster from better angles.  It's a gorgeous automobile.  Note the suicide outrigger seat, presumably designed to transport a passenger one is not particularly fond of (meddling mother-in-law? sulky offspring?).

The Forney Museum also has a sister automobile, a 1924 Kissel Brougham Sedan, which has its own dignified beauty.  (Pardon the blurry picture.)

 Here is a 1923 Kissel Bougham Sedan that has just won a prize.  The red wooden spokes are a delight.

New September Flowers

I live near a large business park whose landscaping staff is given a generous budget.  Flower beds are dug up and replanted with new flowers every month or so during the summer.  

The most recent replanting features kinds of plants that tolerate cold snaps well.  The contrast between the light green and the reddish plants in the foreground is striking.  I think that they are called Coleus plants.

Labor Day 2022 at the Forney Museum

To add some interest to my idle Labor Day hours, I roused myself and visited the Forney Museum of Transportation.

From the Forney Museum website:

The Forney Museum of Transportation is a one-of-a-kind collection of over 800 artifacts relating to historical transportation. It began 67 years ago with a single 1921 Kissel, but soon expanded to include vehicles of all kinds. Today it includes not just vehicles, but also buggies, motorcycles, steam locomotives, aircraft, carriages, rail equipment, fire apparatus, public transportation, sleighs, bicycles, toys & diecast models, vintage apparel and much, much more!

Our collection highlights include: Union Pacific 'Big Boy' Steam Locomotive #4005, Amelia Earhart's 1923 Kissel 'Gold Bug',  Forney Locomotive, Colorado & Southern Caboose, 1923 Hispano-Suiza, 1913-53 Indian Motocycle Collection, Denver & Rio Grande Dining Car,  Stutz Fire Engine, 1888 Denver Cable Car, 1923 Case Steam Tractor, 1817 Draisenne Bicycle, 500 Piece Matchbox Collection, and more!

I was interested in the chronology of early automobile development.  The museum had several examples of primitive cars from about 1900 that were little more than wooden buckboards with a small gasoline motor bolted to the back.  They looked neither stylish nor comfortable.  

The first car that looked appealing to me was the 1909 REO Runabout.

 

The Forney Museum had a Ford Model T of similar vintage that one could sit in for a photo shoot.  Here is a front view and then a view from behind the wheel.  There was barely enough floor space to accommodate my large feet.

 

Design sophistication made a big jump in the next nine years.  Here is the 1918 Buick.

 

The gem of the museum was a sporty 1923 Kissel owned by Amelia Earhart.

A few years later came the stately 1927 Ford Model T, right before the transition to the Model A.

Advances in car design continued into the Depression.  Here is an appealing 1932 Plymouth.  I would like one for my birthday.  Then all I would be lacking would be a picnic basket and a debutante (or the age-appropriate equivalent).

Leaping ahead a generation, here is the 1957 Chevy.  My father owned a beautiful turquoise-and-white six-cylinder version.  This was a great upgrade from his first car, a bulbous 1949 Chevy Fleetline.

Wetlands Preserve

One of my favorite walks is the Wetlands Preserve at the nearby state park.

 

A peaceful forest path runs through the preserve, offering a shady respite from the August heat and glare.

A creek meanders through the preserve.

A typical sight along the path.

Splashes of Color

My apartment complex must have changed its landscape company.  The new company favors splashes of bright color around the property.  Here are photos of the flowers behind and to the side of the sign at the entrance to the complex.

Flowers can even make the humble fire hydrant look decorative.

Unretired again

I recently found an engineering position and I am back in the labor force.  I am a contract worker on a one-year contract.

At my age, any time that I quit a job, I just say that I am retiring.  Then the company throws me a party and people line up to say good things about me.  It's wonderful!  There is no reason not to keep replaying this process into my dotage.

Hike at Stanton State Park

My younger son and I took a pleasant 7-mile hike today at Stanton State Park.  We hiked to the quiet waters of Elf Falls Pond, lorded over on the far bank by a rock formation reminiscent of Jabba the Hut.

Here is a picture of a rock cliff through the trees.

I haven't hiked much this spring and am now suffering the consequences (i.e., "old man" legs).