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10/17/25 02:57 PM #16359    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Celebrate The Beauty of Nature 

My goal in outdoor photography has always been to visualize and capture the glory of God's biological, zoological, botanical and otherwise natural world. As cities encroach on many of these areas it becomes more difficult, but also more important, to save such places and elements.

Just in the almost half century that we have lived in Colorado there have been many changes to the landscapes that have been altered by nature and by man. That is the price we pay for business, transportation, housing and "progress". And all of us are beneficiaries as well as victims of those factors.

The world changes and we all must adapt to that over which we have no control. 

Jim

 

 


10/17/25 05:59 PM #16360    

 

Michael McLeod

breathtaking, James. So wish i coulda been there. 


10/17/25 06:35 PM #16361    

 

Michael McLeod

Dave: that's the fresh-air, hard-core charm of golf at work, and you couldn't have picked two better warriors to illustrate it.


10/17/25 06:47 PM #16362    

 

Jeanine Eilers (Decker)

I was at the first No Kings protest and I will be there tomorrow.  Must admit I'm glad it has cooled off a bit since the first one.  It was a bit toasty in Phoenix.


10/17/25 07:27 PM #16363    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.,

That photo is from one of my favorite areas, Guanella Pass, which peaks out at 11,669 feet above sea level. Since timberline is about 11,500 feet I took this particular shot from probably about the 9500 foot level. 

Since you live in Florida, "breathtaking" would most likely be also physiologically correct at that lower altitude! 😯

Jim


10/17/25 09:22 PM #16364    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Interesting that the people who think Trump is the authoritarian dictator are the same people who voted for the party that skipped the primary, crowned Kamala without a single vote, and tried to erase Trump from the ballot when all of the legal warfare against him failed. 


10/17/25 10:02 PM #16365    

 

John Jackson

MM, there are no constitutional rules about how parties nominate their Presidential candidates – parties are free to choose the procedure and Kamala was duly (and legally) nominated at the 2024 Democratic convention.

I guess you think it's no problem that  Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election stolen and tried to overthrow the results (on Jan. 6 and by trying to get Georgia's Secretary of State to invent enough votes to have him carry the state).

Trump is also deeply indebted to a Supreme Court that slow-walked these cases until he was elected again and immune from prosecution.

The Dems' nomination of Kamala was completely legal and in no way comparable to Trump's outrageous lie about a "stolen" election and and his refusal to leave power peacefully.

False equivalence is the lifeblood of the right wing. 


10/18/25 12:46 PM #16366    

 

Michael McLeod

great minds think alike Jim.

I saw all those trees in the photo and immediately recalled what it's like to be among stands like that, breathing in the elevated oxygen level in a richly photosynthetic environment.

I'm not sure "photosynthetic" is a word but what the heck.


10/18/25 02:05 PM #16367    

 

Harold Clark

i have an obsevation about republicans---there are three kinds---all covered by the term cultist---1st the stupids, example, josnson, who once claimed that a raped woman doesn't have to have a baby by the rapist.  women have a way to turn that off if they want.  or tuberville, too many examples to list  2nd closet queens, examples,  maga mike, josh howley,lindsy gram.  no one cares that they're gay---but their base does.  balckmailable.  3rd pedophiles.  trump's own spritual advisor just pled guilty on a pedopile charge.  they are also blackmailable.  they kowtow  to the party line, not becsuse they fear being primaried, they fear being exposed...ask their god king about epstein.  


10/19/25 10:03 AM #16368    

 

John Jackson

Speaker Mike Johnson, citing as his reason the fact that the House is not in session due to the Government shutdown, refuses to swear in Democratic Arizona Representative Adelita Grijalva, who was elected more than three weeks ago to serve the remainder of her father’s House term after he died in office. It just so happens that once she takes her House seat she will be the 218th and final vote needed to pass a resolution requiring the full release of the Epstein files. 

But speaker Johnson, who never passes up the chance to remind us of how pious and God-fearing he is, swore in two Florida Republican congressmen who won special elections in April when the House was also not in session.  He justified this contradiction by saying that the families of the two Republicans had come to Washington to attend the swearing in ceremony and he did not want to disappoint them, but he wanted Democrat Grijalva to enjoy the "full pomp and circumstance” of being sworn in before the full House.

Which brings us to the latest Borowitz report:

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—On Friday Prince Andrew announced that he was moving to America, hailing it as “a country whose government protects pedophiles.”

“My bags are packed for Washington, D.C.,” the disgraced royal told reporters at Heathrow airport. “If you’re a pedophile, it’s a sanctuary city.”

“If the federal government has a list of pedophiles—poof—it vanishes into thin air,” he said. “And I’m told there’s a chap named Mike Johnson whose entire job is to protect blokes like me.”

Despite such lavish praise, the Trump administration gave the news of Andrew’s relocation a chilly response. “President Trump has never met Prince Andrew,” said newly-appointed White House press secretary George Santos.


10/19/25 10:29 AM #16369    

 

John Jackson

In other news, our local No Kings event yesterday went well - my tiny town (Pennington, population 2400, one stop light) joined with another nearby small town (Hopewell, population 2000) and more than a thousand people showed up (to be fair, some came from the rural township that surrounds both towns).  It was so great to be there enjoying the company of other, in speaker Mike Johnson’s words, America Haters.  I thought you might enjoy the photo above of some of my fellow “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals” (Trump press secretary Karoline Levitt’s description of those who would attend the demonstrations).

In a non-political vein, there’s lots of history in this part of New Jersey.  Pennington is about four miles from the place where Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776 (in the photo above I’m guessing the guy with the sign in the foreground is one of the many re-enactors in our area).  When I first moved to New Jersey in 1970, I rented a one-room apartment in Hopewell and I could look out my front window across the main street to the town cemetery and see the tomb of John Hart, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. 

Hopewell also has some tragic history - Charles Lindbergh lived on the outskirts of town when his infant son was kidnapped. The baby's body was found in a wooded area less than a mile outside of town and the trial of Bruno Haptmann, the kidnapper, was held nearby at the county seat in Flemington. 


10/19/25 12:25 PM #16370    

 

Joseph D. McCarthy

Just wanted to pass along a saying that was forwarded to us recently.

 

33" 'Do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, 34but treat them just as you treat your own citizens,  Love foreigners as you love yourselves, because you were foreigners one time in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God.'


10/19/25 01:45 PM #16371    

 

David Mitchell

Amen Joe


10/19/25 02:14 PM #16372    

 

Michael McLeod

Still going through my old clips, assembling a scrapbook for my kids and my own sentimental bemusement.

This story is so dang out there I thought you'd all enjoy it.

You'd think I would remember writing it, but I don't.

it was privilege to have a job that involved talking to people you never in a million years thought you'd wind up talking to. I was as surprised as any other cityfied midwesterner might be when I first got down here and realized there were ranches and cowboys in the central reaches of the sunshine state. This is a story involving one such ranch -- and by golly I got a chance to check in with some real-life cowfolk.

 

 

 

By Michael Mcleod | Orlando Sentinel

UPDATED: October 25, 2018 at 2:16 PM EDT

Once it gets south of Kissimmee, Canoe Creek Road doesn’t take long to straighten out into two straight, flat, open-country lanes, cutting through miles of scruffy cattle grasslands and cypress domes. Nothing much to keep you company out here unless you count the eagles gliding overhead and the buzzards convening on the berm for the latest freshly runover snack.

Just before Kenansville, there’s a barn, a corral, and a fence line across the grassland that slopes toward the shore of Lake Marian. This place is a wildlife sanctuary, of sorts. Nothing endangered or exotic here. Just distant clumps of horses and bulls — wild ones, all.

The 1,600-acre spread, an old ranch owned by the Silver Spurs Rodeo, serves as the year-round home for the rodeo’s “rough stock.” They are the animals used in bull riding, bareback riding and saddle bronc riding competition — always the highlights of the rodeo, which is going on this weekend in Kissimmee.

Most rodeos get their bucking animals from stock contractors, who bring the bulls and horses in from miles away. But ever since its first go-round 59 years ago, Silver Spurs has been a self-contained, volunteer operation.

That includes the rough stock. The rodeo maintains its own herd of bucking animals, roughly 40 bulls and as many horses. Most of them are owned outright by the rodeo, but a few others are on loan, having been “discovered” by Central Florida cattlemen who saw a promising spiritedness in one of their own animals and volunteered it for a life in the rodeo.

Animals are unpredictable, and the vast majority of rodeo recruits, no matter how much fussing and kicking they did around the barn, are a flop in the arena, bucking half-heartedly, or not at all.

But every now and then a superstar comes along. Such is the case with Cold Cold Heart.

Cold Cold Heart is an 1,800-pound, chocolate brown, 7-year-old, crossbred Brahman bucking bull owned by prominent Osceola cattleman Doug Partin, 64, one of the descendants of the venerable Osceola County ranching clan. Its scion, “Geech” Partin, was a founding member of the riding club that helped start up the rodeo 59 years ago. For the past 30 years, Partin has been a key rodeo volunteer, taking care of the rough stock and scouting for promising buckers to add to the Silver Spurs herd.

“He’s come up with some doozies,” says fellow volunteer and rough stock manager Kevin Whaley.

Cold Cold Heart is a doozie.

 

The bull has yet to be ridden for a full eight seconds, the time a rider must cling to a bull to score points. Dozens have tried, and dozens have failed. The longest any cowboy has stayed on Cold Cold Heart is four seconds.

But it’s more than his unbeaten record that makes Cold Cold Heart a local livestock favorite. It’s the ostentatious nature of his debut.

Three years ago, Cold Cold Heart did something that a bull is not supposed to do, something that local rodeo enthusiasts regard as a freakish athletic accomplishment along the lines of Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game or Don Larsen’s World Series no-hitter.

In a rodeo that was held at the Kissimmee Silver Spurs Arena 2000, Cold Cold Heart bolted out of the chute, bucked off a rider with one arching jump, ran 50 yards across the arena, gathered himself just before reaching a 6-foot tall fence, and jumped over it like a thoroughbred horse clearing a hurdle.

“It was entertaining,” says Osceola rancher and Silver Spurs committee member George Kemfer, in a typical measure of contrified understatement.

Bulls are not sleek and angular and mobile in the way that horses are. Horses are quarterbacks and wide receivers. Bulls are offensive linemen. Horses are sculpted out of wood. Bulls are poured from cement, powerful in a pile-driver sort of way, big square compressed slabs of muscle that can corkscrew and shimmy and plunge.

Next time out, Cold Cold Heart did the same thing. Rider — gone. Fence — cleared. He also charged straight through a chain-link fence outside the arena and narrowly avoided steamrolling over a rodeo hand and a spectator or two as he tried to circle back to the holding pen to rejoin his fellow bulls.

Handlers finally broke the bull of his steeplechase ambitions by clustering a few of Cold Cold Heart’s fellow bulls together inside the arena and in front of the fence whenever he jumped, so he wouldn’t feel the need to go looking for his friends.

But he remains a formidable animal.

“He’s just a kicker. He jumps awful high. He’s got a lot of drop to him,” says Partin.

Raising good bucking bulls has become a big business in some parts of the country. Some bulls sell for tens of thousands of dollars. But Partin won’t get much of anything besides bragging rights out of whatever success Cold Cold Heart might have. All Silver Spurs rodeo proceeds go to charity.

Partin watches over the rough stock for the love of it. He is encyclopedic in his knowledge, serving as the one-man, institutional memory of the herd, ticking off where each colt came from, which bull just came up lame, how that mare always favors her right hind leg.

You do not generally expect people to be sentimental about a big, mean animal with horns and hooves. Partin has cause to be particularly attached to Cold Cold Heart.

The animal was picked out when it was young by Partin’s only son, Chris. Chris was killed in 1995 when his pickup truck caught the shoulder, spun out of control, and flipped over on one of those lonely stretches of Canoe Creek Road.

It’s partly because of that attachment, says Doug Partin, that he wants to see Cold Cold Heart succeed.

But in the bucking business, there is a fine line between good and too good. Cowboys like to have an aggressive bull to ride because the harder it bucks, the more likely they are to get a high score if they can ride the bull for the full eight seconds.

On the other hand, as Cold Cold Heart’s notoriety has spread, more and more cowboys have refused to ride the bull, assuming that it’s a waste of their time to even try. Partin lent Cold Cold Heart out to a Louisiana stock contractor, James Harper, in the hopes that Harper could get the animal in a rodeo somewhere where an ambitious cowboy could stay aboard for the duration.

Still no luck.

“That bull needs to be ridden,” says Partin.

We shall see. The next cowboy to give it a go will be Chad Lovern, of Philadelphia, Mo., who drew Cold Cold Heart in the first set of bull rides scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

 

Originally Published: February 15, 2003 at 12:00 AM EST


10/19/25 05:08 PM #16373    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Fall Color

Sigh.....

Gee, John J., that picture you posted of autumn in the eastern part of America (Post #16369) wasn't quite what I was expecting in my Post #16348. 

I guess our ideas of fun in the fall 🍁 are slightly different. 🤔

Jim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


10/19/25 06:48 PM #16374    

 

Janie Albright (Blank)

Harold, I don't know if you've read this but I found it enlightening. On the one hand MAGA is very anti LGBTQ+ but on the other hand apparently many of Trumps top appointees are gay. As you said, I don't care but I wonder what his base has to say about this? But then again the MAGA news outlets don't mention it. And they don't read the NYT. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
 

 


10/19/25 07:43 PM #16375    

 

Harold Clark

janie, thanks for responding to my post.  i posted an obsevation of mine, it is controversial.  did you you notice that none of the regulars even seemed to notice it at all?  i enjoyed the article you suggested.  thanks.


10/20/25 11:00 AM #16376    

Joseph Gentilini

 I just wanted to say I am enjoying all of the stories that have been posted lately and all the photos also. I really like this forum that keeps all of us connected to each other. I doubt other classes do it this well!  joe


10/20/25 01:33 PM #16377    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Early Morning Gathering at the Lagoon Saloon

"Where are the peanuts?" 

Caught these five enjoying an October sip a few years ago at one of several reservoirs on the slopes of Pikes Peak.

Another "wish I could be there today" moment😢.

Jim


10/20/25 01:57 PM #16378    

 

Michael McLeod

maybe it's the time of day and the shadows playing with the light but those early risers sure look scrawny, Jim.

something tells me I'm more used to seeing well-fed livestock as opposed to their wildlife brethren out there makin' it on their own.


10/20/25 02:46 PM #16379    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.

Probably these were yearlings. Also, built for speed.

Jim


10/20/25 04:48 PM #16380    

 

Michael McLeod

Pumped for "Deliver Me From Nowhere" -- the movie based on Bruce Springsteen's personal battle and rise to fame. Not a documentary, a movie.

It's being released next week. Be forewarned. I'm likely to subject you to a review.

You know in those old frankenstein movies when the mad scientist sends a jolt of electricity into the creature to make him come to life?

That zap reminds me of what I felt like when Bruce Springsteen came along, with him playing the mad scientist and me being his zombie.. 

Nothing before or since compares. Saw him in concert as often as I could. If you asked me to pick the performer who meant more to me than any other I'd say Bruce without batting an eye. 

The Beatles were sublime. Springsteen was like lava. I think the simplest way of putting it is that listening to his music and embracing the excitement and joie de vivre in it installed that joie de vivre in me. Maybe I'm better off sticking with the mad doctor image. He was the mad doctor and I was a zombie come to life thanks to how his music made me feel - then and now.

I have a suspicion the movie is more mellow than raucous. I'll find out soon enough. Tune in next week for a review of my own 'cause I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from writing one up. 

or check this out

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQXdM3J33No

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


10/20/25 05:44 PM #16381    

 

Michael McLeod

and then there's THIS guy,

speaking of brilliant, and a generational voice.

 

https://www.facebook.com/JamesTaylor/videos/1578934965955910/?fs=e&d=m


10/20/25 07:26 PM #16382    

 

Michael McLeod

It's just so damn hard to digest, Harold. Frightening is the word. Anarchy is another one that comes to mind. Internal anarchy. Or infernal anarchy. Take your pick. Maybe people aren't chatting about it 'cause it's so damn disgusting. And dangerous as hell. 


10/20/25 11:13 PM #16383    

 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

So the same party that...

Locked kids out of school for nearly two years

Forced experimental jabs just to work, eat out, or serve in the military

Ignored immigration law to allow 10 million+ illegals to pour into the country

Sued to remove President Trump from the ballot

Tried to imprison President Trump for 700 years

Tried to bankrupt President Trump for successfully paying a bank loan

Worked to disbar lawyers who defended Trump against Democrat lawfare

Spied on US Senators in Operation Artic Frost

Spied on Catholic Churches with Latin Mass

Investigated concerned parents at school boards as "domestic extremists"

Rewrote Title IX to force schools to let men compete in women's sport

Coerced social media companies into censoring the origins of Covid-19

Recruited over 50 former intel officials to say Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation

Couped a sitting US President

Crowned Kamala their new candidate without a single primary vote

Weaponized the DOJ against grandmas who took selfies inside the Rotunda on J6

Issued ~100 national injunction against the Trump admin ( versus only ~ 15 against Barack Obama)

Forgave $ billions in student loans even after SCOTUS declared it unconstitutional...

...has the audacity to call President Trump a tyrannical King?


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