Correct me please if I am wrong, but this photo used in this video of Matt Volla's "Planted Photographs" show at Southern Exposure sure looks like an "Erased MacLeod" to me....

http://www.xaul.com/VIDEO/planting/1.html

(Video takes a little while to load)

Watching that gives me a strange feeling.

And now that you are there, be sure to check out the rest of Matt's work:

http://www.xaul.com

Our neighbor Mr. Lloyd Kelly was eulogized today at Hudson's funeral home & laid to rest in the new VA cemetery in Dixon. I'd never seen a photo of him as a young man before. He looks confident & optimistic in the one above & from all the evidence, it seems like he was a good man who lived a good life. He served as a demolitions expert in the Pacific during World War 2, then worked at the Naval Weapons Station for 30 years, the State of California for 10 & in the private sector for another 12 before finally retiring just a couple years before I met him.

He had a sharp sense of humor, didn't mince words about other people's foibles & often made me laugh. Somewhere along the line he lost a leg, but that didn't seem to slow him down much.

He was 83 when he died, so he must have been 76 when I first met him. This photo below shows him with his wife (of 52 years!) Marion Louise Millon Kelly, and was probably taken when he was about 80. This was the Mr. Kelly that I knew.

The new VA cemetery has only been open a couple of years & is still a very bleak place. The photo above makes it look sooooo much nicer than it really is. Eventually it is supposed to be large & verdant & peaceful, but right now it is just a hot, dusty lot with inadequate facilities. The soldier who played "Taps" did a very nice job of it though.

The sole "shelter" that's available for final services & military honors is barely larger than a bus stop.

Mr. Kelly's coffin being carried from hearse into the shelter.

Here's another one of me & Jakub having lunch up at Conness Lakes. You can see that there's hardly anything left of the glacier.

Jakub called me from Yosemite to tell me there were no mosquitos & I should come up. Job-hunting during this weird holiday week wasn't likely to be too fruitful so I drove up on the 5th. We were in Tuolomne Meadows campground, right next to the river.

Jakub had scheduled some rock climbing all day Friday, so I went on an 11-mile hike up Murphy Creek & over to May Lake. I almost crossed paths with a wolf, but it ran away before I could get a picture.

Up & up.

Looking back down towards Murphy Creek.

May Lake.

Saturday morning before we headed home we decided to go up to Saddlebag Lake & hike into the Conness Lakes. Above is a picture looking back at Saddlebag Resort from the water-taxi that gets you over to the Hoover Wilderness & various trailheads. No one up here has ever seen Saddlebag Lake this empty. The water level is usually near the top of the dam, which is on the right, above. Right now the water doesn't even really reach the bottom of the dam.

Looking up from the north end of Saddlebag towards Mt. Conness. The Conness Lakes are up in that bowl between Mt. Conness & the smaller peak to the left.

The view in the other direction, from the same spot, looking back towards Saddlebag Lake.

I'd been up to Saddlebag before, with Petr Maule, but I'd never made it to the Conness Lakes. Here is photo of the lower lake, where we had lunch & a short nap, taken from near the middle lake. Jakub's down there in the middle, just having woken up from a nap.

Jakub: always fashionable

Me: not

Not everything works out the way you think it should.

Our neighbor across the street Mr. Lloyd Kelly died at 6:15 am this morning. He'd come home from the hospital yesterday & the doctors were not expecting him to last more than 24 more hours. He was sleeping comfortably when it happened. It was expected & he went without inconveniencing his family any more than possible, but he will be missed. He was a good & decent man & I will miss his sharp sense of humor.

On the way back from the farmer's market, we stopped by this estate sale where there were about three dozen church-lady hats. Marsha Vdovin would have shot extreme closeups & posted them on her blog. I wasa tempted but I'm not Marsha. I was horribly impressed by the vinyl covering of the chair in the photo above.

Our neighbor Tanya likes to wear a bit of flash when she goes to church, so we told her she should go check these hats out. She did, & she bought the lavender one above, the peacock one above, the dark blue one below & she was thinking about the white one below. She also bought a black one that she ended up wearing when she officiated at Mr. Kelly's funeral a few days later.