Prairie violets central Oklahoma

The Manzano Mountains are one of the easternmost north-south running ranges in this part of New Mexico. So, once you move east from there, it’s pretty much Great Plains from here across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, etc. In other words, the next mountain range east of the Manzanos’s is the Appalachians. Put another way, our property, in the Manzano foothills, is right on the dividing line between the Mountain West and the Great Plains.

if i lived in the Oklahoma panhandle id definitely have a superiority complex over the fools in the bucket section of the state

Neighboring States Want to Stop OKC Record Tall Skyscraper

Residents of Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Missouri Sue Oklahoma to Stop Proposed OKC Skyscraper Because They Don't Want To Look At It.

"Our states are just too dern flat," said Amarillo Tx. resident Roy Holstein. "If I stand on my porch I can spot a prairie dog stickin' its head out 18 miles away. You think I won't see lights from that Okie steeple? You betcha I will."

Residents from other states expressed similar concerns about light pollution. "There's nary a bump nor hill between OKC and Wichita," complained Mary Smith. "All that light's gonna keep me and my cats awake all night."

Filing an amicus brief in support of the project is the state of New York that believes the structure will give terrorists something to target outside of New York.

Lemoyne Eastern Riverboat Company

I am yearning again

This high plains mild winter

Beckons me to dangerous places

Aerial view of center-pivot (or circular) irrigation farming just east of the Rockies on the Great Plains… I think I calculated that each circle has a diameter of 1/2 mile (about 1 km)… amazing view from the air!

Grain elevator by Kyle Wasielewski

Westward settlers during America’s 19th century expansion were told that Rain Follows the Plow: the arid land they settled would become fertile. This was obviously untrue, but was it an honest mistake, or a deliberate lie?

I'm tired of "Forest Medicine". I'm tired of the "Generic Green". I'm tired of "Nature" only being images of dense green Forests and Mountains- and of the only alternative people thinking of on the flipside really being Deserts.

Where is my Prairie. Where are my sweeping hills and plains. Where is my humming, buzzing, and rustling so soft you can barely hear it until it becomes a sudden cacophony. Where are my gentle Bison, and my stunted Junipers, and my gnarled Osage Orange?

Where is the medicine of being the only dot on an open expanse of nothingness, and how soul-opening it is to realize how small you truly are in comparative to the Earth. Not because things tower over you, but because you are nothing compared to its sheer vast unendingness.

This account is run by a Dual Faith «(Converting) Masorti Jew + Traditional NeoWiccan» & «Ancestral Folk Magic Practitioner» with 20+ years of experience as a practicing Pagan and Witch. If that bothers you, don't interact.

driving across Nebraska last summer

🎶=Low Hum

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

North America has already destroyed more than 60 percent of its native prairie. We’ve plowed the sod, left the topsoil to blow away, traded wildflowers for row crops, switch grass for suburbs, hay meadows for Home Depots. We’ve cleaved it apart with freeways, transmission lines, irrigation canals and oil pipelines. And now the Eastern redcedar tree is hungry for what’s left.

Thanks in part to roughly 100 years of fire suppression on the Great Plains, this drought-tolerant native tree — once primarily confined to river bottoms and rocky outcrops — has crept from the gullies to the grasslands, from the humid East to the arid West from Texas to South Dakota, and is now dismantling what little remains of one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world.

Between 1999 and 2018 alone, tree cover increased across 44 million acres of the Great Plains. Imagine the entire state of Oklahoma, from the Panhandle to the Ozarks, strangled in cedar. Picture so many prairie chickens dancing. Now picture them gone. The bobolinks, too. And the meadowlarks. And many other grassland species, avian and beyond, that have evolved over thousands of years not just to survive, but to rely on the open country. The black-footed ferret. The American burying beetle. And, of course, the grass itself: the side-oats grama, the big and little bluestem that bewildered the novelist in its galloping abundance.

Sunday Afternoon in Blackwater

(to me it looks like they all just got out of church)

(also the 'ENLARGEMENTS' sign is for a photo studio)

(usually I use my own custom preset for screenshots but I used this Western Movie Look preset [with some tweaks] because I think it really suits the Great Plains region)

11/18/23.

I'd heard of Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments (Columbus, Ohio), but never listened. I got an email from Goner Records announcing a huge sale. And "Bait and Switch" was one of the LPs available for $9.99.

So, I headed over to Bandcamp, and was literally blown away. Snotty and aggressive almost aren't fair descriptors of this garage punk. Ron House (formerly of Great Plains) and his crew are here to wreck you. This reminds me of a bloozier Mclusky. Or a rougher Pere Ubu. Or a sloppier Black Lips or The Replacements.

The version at Goner Records is the reissue on Dot Matrix. This was originally issued on Onion Records.

Red Cedars on the Move, Eating Up Grasslands. 

One of the biggest threats to Great Plains grassland ecosystems today is woody encroachment by invasive redcedars. Once grasslands are converted into woodlands, prairie wildlife species are lost, along with grassy areas for livestock grazing. As new woodland bird and wildlife species move in, they eat and expel the powder-blue cedar berries—and seed the advancing wave of cedars across the prairie. From left to right: pronghorns, Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlark, cows, Burrowing Owls, Greater Prairie-Chicken, American Robin, Cedar Waxwings. 

Illustration by 2023 Bartels Science Illustrator Maria Klos.