STAIRS IN BUTTE
Stairs making me laugh this morning!! Sort of like the stairs to enlightenment…travel upwards then sideways up again…then sideways…up…sideways….
YELLOW TRUCK IN BUTTE
I always like to get away from the tourist sections of towns…I love the nitty gritty of life. It seems to me that one could do this with the spiritual life…there is a duality and one we view as good the other as bad but there is always the talk of this “middle” path where one doesn’t over react or judge what is before them. But I see the nittygritty the urban decay as beautiful and stunning…and that was not always the case.
I wonder if God sees the nitty gritty of the human heart as a beautiful creation…all to often we condemn the politicians…the criminals…those who offend us so greatly. Of course certain behaviors and offenses should carry a consequence either natural or imposed but along with forgiveness and recognition for each person no matter how unrecognizable it is to us
All too often this is mostly what we we recognize as beauty..
DECONSTRUCTION IN BUTTE, MONTANA
This sort of resembles me….my mindset in life….things that were built are being removed…the roof has come off the panes of glass long gone…but the walls still intact and the last to go…
The blog is going through many changes and most of the Native American issues will have a new home. This blog will house my art and more of my personal issues. This is a difficult time right now…my family has many issues that take precedence in life and my apologies for not posting regularly…it has been all I can do to get pictures up! Never mind scanning the new photos. I have had a nightmare dealing with HP in the last few months and have finally quit using it altogether. HP was causing many problems with my Vista and startup repair was necessary almost every morning. Now I am using Picasa which for the last three days has been a dream!!! And FAST!!! Being so traumatized by HP I am reluctant to start over organizing ….waiting for crashes….I have over a thousand photos on my computer….or I used to I recently did a great purging of bad photos…no reason at this point and as I get better and better I will be compelled to delete those that do not have personal meaning to me!
December is going to be a tough month to organize things the way I want them and I may have to resort to recycling some older posts as I did when I was on vacation!
I hope all of my readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that your holidays are BLESSED and filled with JOY and PEACE!!!
Falling away
Falling away
Falling away….
BERKELEY PIT COPPER MINE
In Butte, Montana there is a copper mine…literally in the city the town was built on the West side of it. At one time Butte was the most prosperous small towns in the United States. In 1982 the copper mine shut down and at that time Anaconda Mining Company also shut down the pumps that dewatered the mine and thus 1,800 gallons of water per minute…2.55 million gallons of ground water flow into the pit each day! Please read more it is quite interesting and there are photos of what the pit looked like before it started filling with water…it is part of the Federal Superfund for environmental cleanup.
You can pay 2 dollars to see the pit… which I did…I hope it goes to the clean up!!! Out side the pit the have recently added this garden
From Wikipedia:
For more than a century, the Anaconda Copper Mining company mined ore from Butte and smelted it in Butte (prior to c. 1920) and in nearby Anaconda. During this time, the Anaconda smelter released up to 40 short tons (36 t) per day of arsenic, 1,700 short tons (1,542 t) per day of sulfur, and great quantities of lead and other heavy metals into the air (MacMillan). In Butte, mine tailings were dumped directly into Silver Bow Creek, creating a 150 miles (241 km) plume of pollution extending down the valley to Milltown Dam on the Clark Fork River just upstream of Missoula. Air and water borne pollution poisoned livestock and agricultural soils throughout the Deer Lodge Valley. Modern environmental clean-up efforts continue to this day.
My favorite photos were these with the barbed wire….I guess that people not wanting to pay the two dollars to see the pit would crawl down the slope?? or maybe for insurance purposes?? anyway it is the barbed wire around the tunnel.
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF BUTTE
More photos of Butte…..
one of many historic buildings
There is a big copper mine (another post… later) in Butte and I guess this building (seniors center) is a tribute since it pretends to be copper!
How cool is this screen?
No city can be complete without a Masonic Temple…
Masonic temples were not put on this earth for me to understand…I don’t think I ever will….Maybe Tiffany will read this and tell me if there are Masonic temples in Australia and Spain or is the United States the only country afflicted with this silent epidemic. I detest organizations that keep secrets! Have secrets ever done anything but cause trauma and repression?
My nephew’s name is Gus!
Houses in historical Butte
This is a lamp post? in front of a theatre
I hope they don’t just perform sad orphan stories….
mining decorations on light posts!
while Butte doesn’t look so great in this photo I took it because of the mountains. They are beautiful and surround much of the city. There is a giant statue on these mountains called The Lady of the Rockies and it glows at night. You can take a bus to visit it but I hear it is a long scary road…I was told it takes several hours so I postponed the trip until I moved there.
I did not take this photo…
Check out their website OURLADYOF THE ROCKIES. She blesses all women regardless of religion.
BUTTE ALLEYS AND A FEW ADS
Art by nail gun on a lightpole in an alley I wonder if someone added the whiskers later?? Must be a pole cat!!
Not sure what the purpose of putting that lock there….so people like me would wonder??
I wonder what what was graded how many boxes could be stacked up?? I love stuff like this! It could just be a balcony with a door but this is far more interesting.
Just in case…
BRICKS!!!!
You know how I love my brick…most of this brick is from Butte
although the next two are from Wallace, Idaho! the latter being from a restored bordello!
from an alley in Butte
I love the various degrees of disintegration of the brick
I found this to be quite interesting the photo doesn’t show the depth of that line that curves across the brick but it isn’t a gouge or scrape in the brick but one side is actually a great deal “higher than the other…kind of like a plateau. Maybe something in that shape kept some of the brick from being eroded? (Now you see how curious I am! I wonder about EVERYTHING!!)
Lots more brick to come gotta think about work sometime today!!!
CHURCHES AND CROSSES
I loved all of the old churches in Butte and Helena but the light wasn’t always right and a lot are on film which I didn’t get around to taking in today….I didn’t see a lot of Helena because I wanted to get back in time for a football game and I wanted to be able to leisurely pull over and take photographs if there was any exciting scenery. Most of the landscape photos are on film.
The photo below is actually a theater now and resides in Butte.
This is a very cool black steeple I saw only the top in the distance and was immediately reminded of all the talk of the black Madonnas on Ordinary Sparrows blog…it seemed terribly mysterious and I hope the film captures it.
This is a church in Helena taken from the art museum. The church sort of looms over Helena I’m not sure if it is oppressive…I was in awe of it and took many close up photos.
This little church was in Butte and this is the side the sun was shining on. I loved the boarded up window and of course the white brick!
This was a work of art in the museum in Helena loved the shadows
On top of a Catholic school in Butte was this artwork…I love how they did the brick!
Recent Comments