My grandson is now into volcanoes for some reason. At five years of age the volcano is still romantic and exciting in his mind and he loves the hot lava.
This image above is a scan from a slide that I took back in the early 1980's. The mountain in the far center is Mount Merapi. The photo was taken from an open area at the top of the house where I lived in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. 'We' hung laundry there. (As an aside, laundry was not done by me...it was done by my babu cuci or laundress. All laundry was done by hand and therefore had to be done almost daily.)
There is/was a public park on the side of that volcanic mountain with a children's playground and picnic area that we walked to just off the roadside. We drove up there every once in a while to get out of the noise and dust of the city and to enjoy the slightly cooler mountain air.
As you most certainly know, and can see, this mountain is volcanic, and currently very active. It has erupted several times recently even causing the early departure of our President on his recent fall trip. I imagine the area is filled with chaos and refugee activity these days as people living close to the eruptions flee their villages for safety. My heart is with them and hopefully things will settle soon. We were reminded of the volcano's angry energies when we lived there because we got earthquake reminders which I once wrote about here.
Do you miss living there?
ReplyDeleteYou certainly give us little tid-bits of your life as offerings to tantalize...on golden plates perhaps.
Perhaps your grandson is destined to be a geologist. Sometimes those childish fascinations never go away, and I think it's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI used to see smoke coming out of mountains in New Zealand when I was a kid. I was interested, and am still interested in geology.
Thanks for sharing. I smile as I look back at each of my grown children and what interested them when they were young.
ReplyDeleteMy son who is in Thailand wanted to be a fire man at the age of 4 :)
He loves the hot lava?
ReplyDeleteSorry to be picky, surely 'the thought of hot lava'?
He won't have experienced any himself, I hope?
Correction, Friko, he loves the excitement of what he thinks hot lava would be...
ReplyDeleteTabor,
ReplyDeleteYou really have many interesting adventures in your life. And you transmit it to your grandson. Just amazing!
You with all your talent just start. Photoshop Elements is what I use, and no I don't really know how to use it. It has all the features that any of the editors have, only it does everything better. Photoshop is the industry standard.
ReplyDeleteInstead of processing and printing my photos at home, I use HP's Snapfish as my photohost, and I buy the best shots from them. I spent a wild 4.50 on photos for that last road trip.
I buy a cheapie album. Plain white pages in a standard format that I use every time. Ross has some particularly ugly albums this time around for 7 bucks. I'm going to have to recover the one I just bought.
I buy extra pages for the album at Office Depot or Staples. They are expensive.
That's how I start. Does that help?
I can understand your grandson's fascination with volcanoes. I know the devastation and destruction they cause and yet I find the smoking peak to be lovely. Beautiful image.
ReplyDeleteIt's terrible to be affected by natural disasters. Your photo is stunning and you've obviously looked after it well. My scanned-in slides are rather old and full of bits of fluff. I hope you are sharing your love of photography with your grandson too. These modern-day children are going to have so many skills. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in 50yrs or so to see what it is like.
ReplyDeleteVolcanoes do grip the imagination of little ones, kind of the same way that meat-eating dinosaurs do. Now that I live within a few hours of Mt St Helens I look at them in a little different light than when I was a child!
ReplyDeleteCool (or hot) that his grandma lived near a volcano and can tell him about it and show pictures. Have you tried making the school project volcano with baking soda and something else? I do love the word LAVA.
ReplyDeleteYour over the mountain as a grandma and that's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to your grandson. I find volcanoes infinitely fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI have been fascinated with volcanoes for many years. I walked on Mauna Loa in Hawaii and flew over Arenal in Costa Rica, but my dream would be to fly over an erupting volcano!!
ReplyDeleteCan understand the kid's fascination with volcanoes but when one thinks about the impending destruction... well, that does it for me.
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