Month: July 2015

Cliffside Palace

Cliffside Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado

Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. It protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites in the United States.

The park was created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. It occupies 52,485 acres (21,240 ha) near the Four Corners region, and with more than 4,000 sites and 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archeological preserve in the US. Mesa Verde (Spanish for “green table”) is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

The Mesa Verdeans survived by utilizing a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa’s first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe.

Jody Samson

Jody Samson:  Acheron Leaf Blade:  Limited Edition of 100 Pieces Worldwide.

Hand ground from high carbon steel, hand heat-treated.
Hilt components cast from original waxes by Jody Samson, hand finished and darkened. Leather wrapped grip.
Overall length 35 ¼ “
Blade length 28 ¼”
Weight: 2 pounds 11 ounces
$800.00

Jody Samson has made his permanent residence in New Glarus, Wisconsin, working with Albion. Jody maintains a large studio in the Albion facility, personally supervising the making of the Conan™ swords, and creating a line of knives and swords for Jodysamson.com.

Game of Thrones: House Stark Theme

Game of Thrones: House Stark Theme

When winter comes for war,
You shall hear no Lions roar.
When winter forces you to yield,
No Stags shall graze upon the field.
When winter creeps upon you from the shadows,
No Roses shall bloom from the meadows.
When winter wreaks havoc on the land,
You can bet there’ll be no Snakes in the sand.
When winter brings to life all it finds grim,
The Krakens will freeze where they swim.
When winter sets and the land begins to shiver,
The Flayed Man will start to rot and wither.
When winter fights to the last sliver,
No more Trouts shall swim in the river.
When winter ravages and all despair,
No Falcons shall fly high in the air.
When winter shows you what happens when snow falls,
Not even Dragons Breath shall warm you in your halls.
When winter comes with all it’s might,
Only the Wolves shall howl in the night.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

The Rambling Man

Photographer Unknown, (The Rambling Man)

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

― Ray Bradbury