Snapped with an OK due to sign language!

Excited to be in Las Vegas for the first time, I eagerly looked out the window. I saw this young woman and waved. She waved back. I held up my camera and pointed at her and back at it. She shook her head OK, smiled and posed two thumbs up. I took the photo and gave her two thumbs up as a thank you. So neat to see a Southwest Airlines employee willing to work for us, out there in that awful heat, so that our luggage could get off the plane and into the terminal.

Vacation, Day 1, 10/21/2009, Part 1

Before we flew out at 6:15 a.m.--she looks great for having been awake since 3:20 a.m.


The Iceman cometh, thank goodness, to de-ice our plane's wings in Denver, our place to change planes.






Our lunch--ha, ha! We did just fine on it, too!


We've landed!


And now I have to report that I will be away from the World Wide Web for a whole week!

Mama's staying with Aunt Baker and Uncle JL, and I'm off to Talladega with our friends Milton and Kay!

You know I'll return loaded with pix! In fact, I've already got almost 1000 to go through from Wednesday through Sunday--surely some of them will be worth sharing with y'all.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's not the swifts, not yet anyway.

Please scroll down for today's dahlia, Mango Madness, from Swan Island Dahlias.

A couple of other interesting things happened at Swift Watch 2009.

A flock of Canada geese flew by, headed sort of southeast, I think. I wonder if they're on their way to join all of those Canada geese at the Ross Barnett Reservoir north of Jackson, Mississippi? When Mama and I lived at the Timberlake Campground on the Rez, those doggone geese walked all over the grass, eating and pooping. The flock looks pretty in the picture, but I wonder if they poop while they're flying, like some other birds do, witness many a windshield.


A little while later this Southwest Airlines plane flew overhead. Mama and I are flying Southwest to visit family and friends in Mississippi later on in October.


I promise the swifts did come to roost in the chimney. I'll show you tomorrow.

Today's dahlia, Mango Madness. Facts from Swan's Island Dahlias--Bloom: 11" Orange, Bush: 3 1/2'

The Marquee Says It All

I bought my first books at Powell's in June, 2004, when Mama and I first came to visit my sons, Lamont and Leland. I rode the No. 20 bus after walking over to Burnside from the Benson Hotel, my rolling suitcase in hand. Those books about Eudora Welty and Willie Morris flew home to Mississippi with me on Southwest Airlines. In June, 2006, they rode 2,500 miles back to Portland, in the back of the UHaul truck Leland drove. Right now they're on my 85x32-inch, three-shelf, unfinished pine bookcase in our top floor apartment in Portland's Alphabet District, eleven blocks from where I found them in 2004. About the bookcase, Mama just asked me, "Is that your library?" Brilliant lady.

At www.powells.com, you can find out all sorts of info about Powell's, including the store in the photograph, the City of Books. It takes up the entire city block, bordered by NW 10th and 11th Avenues to the east and west, W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets on the south and north. You're looking at the corner of 10th and Burnside here in the photo I took after work yesterday.

I can't resist giving you a few tidbits of information:

Powell's City of Books is a book lover's paradise, the largest used and new bookstore in the world. Located in downtown Portland, Oregon and occupying an entire city block, the City stocks more than a million new and used books. Nine color coded rooms house over 3,500 different sections, offering something for every interest, including an incredible selection of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles. ... Every day at our buyers' counter in the Orange Room, we purchase thousands of used books from the public. Powell's purchases special collections, libraries, and bookstore inventories as well.

A few facts about the City of Books:

68,000 square feet packed with books
we buy 3,000 used books over the counter every day
approximately 3,000 people walk in and buy something every day
another 3,000 people just browse and drink coffee
our parking garage provides space for 40 cars (ok, so there are bigger parking garages)
we stock 122 major subject areas and more than 3,500 subsections
you'll find more than 1,000,000 volumes on our shelves
approximately 80,000 book lovers browse the City's shelves every day, in Portland and via the Internet. So is our mother ship the world's largest bookstore? Heck, it may be bigger than your whole town.