Snowy Woods / More Than Just A Game?

Snowy Woods

Last Thursday afternoon we got a few more inches of snow, just after the last snow had all melted. Not quite as much as before, but still enough to close schools on Friday. Which made all the students and teachers happy. By Friday morning, the clouds had moved out, and the sky was a beautiful blue. So we went outside to walk around for a while, eventually deciding to walk through the woods.

The post with the orange top in this picture marks the back property line in our woods. This was our first time to see it in about two years. It seems the only time we walk through the woods is after a snow, when the snakes and poison ivy are sure to be gone.

Photo location: Our house, Williston, Tennessee
A three-exposure (-2, 0, +2) HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, edited in GIMP

More Than Just a Game?

Last night, the local news reported that in Memphis in the last week, there have been two separate shootings over dominoes.

Yes, that’s right. Dominoes. That game involving black rectangular blocks with white dots on them. Apparently, they weren’t just setting them up in fancy patterns and then knocking them over, either.

When interviewed by News Channel 3, a friend of those involved in yesterday’s shooting said, “Sometimes a game ain’t just a game. Sometimes it turns deadly.” Okay, so that’s not how I have ever played dominoes.

I’m guessing that there must be more to it than just a heated argument over Chicken Foot. Maybe “dominoes” is just a metaphor for something much, much deeper, like class struggle between those with a lot of dots and those with very few. Or maybe those playing the game just really don’t like each other.

Either way, I think the area retirement home administrators should keep a close eye on their residents for a while. Because I hear they play a lot of dominoes there, too.