The Gay Spade

I love this

Large pumpkin carved with a four masted, steel hulled barque sitting all lit up on a deck with purple lights behind it and a bulging eyed skull beside it.

Large pumpkin with a really bright light in it carved to look like the movie Halloween image. It sits on a deck made orange by this pumpkin glowing like it's irradiated.

Picture of a very large tabby all spread out in his fat gloriousness on newpaper lining the floor. he sits next to a large stainless bowl with pumpkin guts in it, and beside that the hat of a pumpkin and a large pumpkin barely visible with a hand holding as it is carved out of picture.

My kid and i carved pumpkins tonight. His was Halloween themed, and mine is the Peter Iredale before she became one with Clatsop Spit. I had to use comical (and comically hard to make) waves to maintain the space between the sails and the hull. Howard, the tabby, helped. #PeterIredale #Shipwreck

What Portland is really like, taking care of folks.

Okay, I was talking about Cabin Creek Falls in the post but this is actually Hole in the Wall Falls, which i always enjoy getting in to in the summer on a hot run. Picture is of the bottom portion of the water fall, and the falls take up most of the top half of the photo, centered and surrounded by greenery and basalt, very lush, very wet from a recent rain. The water hits the small pool about mid photo, making a white mist, and then the shallow pool has that clear creek brown color before tumbling over large rocks. In the bottom half of the photo are these rocks, basalt, and slick as heck, also a large log traverses the from center left to the lower right corner, and is surrounded by leaves in all the fall colors, that have gathered in little pools, floating.

The west side view of Cabin Creek Falls. Not a lot of water coming off this one, mostly mist and a thin sparse sheet at this level, seen from the side, floating over and running down the rock face of the hill wall. Moss and greenery surround it. The pool at the bottom half of this photo is filled with chunky blocks of basalt and fall leaves.

This monolith sits at the bottom of Cabin Creek Falls, kind of blocking the falls from the highway path. It's a biggun, and this picture only captures a portion of it, moss and lichen covered, a lace of bright green leaves lit with sunlight float in the air in front of the big old rock

Cabin Creek Falls from the rock over hang shelf that goes almost behind the falling water. In the top left of the photo is the ceiling of the rock over hang, and the left bottom is the dirt floor. The rest of the photo is the scrim of water droplets falling down, adn the greenery all around and beyond, the blue sky in the upper right.

Ran the Columbia Gorge Trail. Usually it's busy, so I don't spend much time at the waterfalls, but this day I was nearly the only 1 there so I had myself a good time at Cabin Creek Falls, going up to the rock overhang that sneaks almost behind the falling water. That was neat #TrailRunning #oregon

Happy to see this. Can't stand Bentz. He's a coward and a liar and bad for Oregon.

It’s day 29 of the shutdown and SNAP is set to stop next week. Food banks are already being overwhelmed. If you can, please donate to your local food bank 🍽️

💵Because food banks can purchase food at a discount, donating money goes further than donating food

📋If donating food, check for a wish list

HAPPENING NOW: Portland Police Commander Franz Schoening testifies that federal officers on Oct. 18 barraged protesters with crowd control munitions — not because of any violence but because another federal officer accidentally shot tear gas onto the roof of the ICE facility.

OK folks, here's the deal. Spotify is running ICE recruitment ads and has ignored asks to stop. It's time to tell them we won't stream fascism - by cancelling our subscriptions. Here's how to get started: indivisible.org/cancel-spotify

I’m going to be elevating Chicago reporters for follows this week as they’re doing an excellent job reporting on and investigating the abuses and falsehoods of ICE and CPB - much better than national press I hate to say. Today I urge you to follow @tinasfon.bsky.social at the @chicago.suntimes.com.

landscape view of the Deschutes River in fall when it's low. The bottom third of the picture is a rocky expanse of strangely jointed basalt in all kinds of weird formations suggesting some wild ass volcanic activity some millions of years ago. It's got some low dead grass on it, and is fringed with low trees at the water line. The water is a narrow swift and a bit turbulent gap and on the other side the canyon wall rises swiftly up.

Close up of the first picture shows just how wacky this jointing is. These are small columns, really small, and they go every which way, like wonky teeth, and they sometimes swirl and circle around. Just amazing to look at and usually this is hidden by running water or shallow pools.

Picture of a rock wall that the trail cuts through, just a little blue sky visible at the upper left. Like the other pictures, it shows the basalt jointed in swirls and columns and rosettes, like a work of art made of cooling rock. Just magnificent. I come by here often, and I always say, no more pictures, and i always stop for more pictures.

The Deschutes was pretty low, giving me an exceptional view of some of the river bed geology. 1st two pics are on the exposed bed and 3rd pic is of the rock wall on the east slope above this river bed formation. This is one of my favorite places in Oregon to look at weird rocks. #Oregon #Rocks

Shot from the east side trail on the slope of the canyon walls looking down onto the Deschutes. The slope begins mid picture on the left and goes sharply down to the river which appears dead center and runs blue, reflecting the sky to lower right center. On the other side of it the canyon walls rise up again all yellow with the autumnal grass. There is a line of red from some scrubby trees that start mid left and take the same steep angle of the slope and the river in this picture, ending bottom right. The top third of the picture is all blue sky and wispy clouds. Except for the Ochocos, there is no sky prettier than the one here on the Deschutes and I'd be boggled to tell you why

I take this picture almost every time I go on this trail. Most of the rock features are on the east side of the east side trail, but this one, near the beginning of the trail lies between the trail and the river, and is a pipe of basalt with an arch beside it, and the arch makes a picture window that frames the river. It's big enough a few people could sit under it for a lunch or something. This picture shows the rock arch filling the picture starting lower left and curving its way to the lower right, with just a patch of bare ground in the lower center, and then the window under the arch showing the river and some of the far bank. A boat of fishermen speeds past caught right in the center of the window.

Haven't run the Deschutes River trail since spring. Was saving it for a longer run, but wanted to see it in fall and the day was nearly without wind so I couldn't not give it a whirl. For most of this run it was just me and a whole lot of fishermen. One of my favorite trails. #TrailRunning

Sign on a cross post reading: Welcome to Hunt Beyond this Point, Hunting Seasons and Area Regulations Apply, No Shooting Toward Developed Areas. This is surrounded by dead grass and beyond that the high buffed hills of the canyon near the mouth of the Deschutes.

Sign on a post saying SLOW Slick Surface. It's near a gravel road where a spring runs across prit near all year, and behind it are the sides of the trail, brown with fall dead grass

Signs along the Deschutes River trail. I try to avoid hunting areas during hunting season, but you also just get used to running into men with long guns and chatting them up. #TrailRunning

This video from Portland is a metaphor for what is going on in America. ICE trying so hard to get Americans to cross a line and if they don't, dragging them across the line and violently attacking.

I just read an incomprehensible (to me) post, and looked at the comments to try and gain some context, and one of them simply said, "pardon?" and for some reason, I find that funny as hell. Like, unless you are French or a cowboy, that is funny as hell and i love it.

I love these little birds so much.

Public servants do just that, serve the public. It’s in our character. Thank you, furloughed Feds, for continuing to give back.

“We don’t have illegal aliens… the legal term for my people were slaves….”
🚨This is what leadership looks and sounds like in 2025.✊🏼

Starving?
-Food Bank

Medical debt?
-GoFundMe

Migrant?
-Gulag

Representation?
-On vacation

Infrastructure?
-Lol

Natural disasters?
-Blue states fuck off

Our Fed Tax dollars are actively working against us & with what’s left we’re forced to help each other

Why fund the Fed Gov’t at all anymore?

I love the seasonal changes.

dear US friends, when a sitting president (re)builds the seat of government, it almost always means the president has no intention of leaving at the end of term. your African friends with decades of experience

Here are the companies destroying the east wing of the White House

Deep purple red mums in a star form, very little center showing, green mum foliage background.

Button mums in bright yellow all clustered together, very little greenery in the background for all the yellow.

Mini daisy mums in a pale lavender pink color with yellow centers, up close with a bit of green foliage in the background.

Peach colored daisy mums busy with native bees, pale dusty orange with yellow centers, a whole thick cluster of them as viewed by the side sort of.

This has been a shit year, but not for mums. The mums prevail. (For context, our falls don't usually favor mums so I don't usually see this sort of display from them.)

Long tall white slender mushroom leg grows emerges from rough gravel near a couple rocks, the cap is a button of light brown surrounded by a charcoal black melty blech goo. The base is surrounded by a thick lava like puddle of this same goo.

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I meant to get a pic of this mushroom when it was less melty, but I forgot. At first these guys have very tall narrow caps, like gnome hats, but with a rough brown texture like a dirty heel. Then one day they just melt into dark goo. These are big. #mushroom #fungi #SurpriseGoo

Picture of a red table weathering with a small scalloped white bowl on it, and in the bowl are the reproductive parts of fall crocus as well as some of the purple petals because I am kind of lazy and not very careful. It's saffron.

It's that time of year; picking the saffron.

Some new ICE recruits have shown up to training without full vetting The recruits have had criminal backgrounds or failed drug tests or were unable to meet physical or academic standards, raising concerns about the agency’s rush to hire immigration officers, sources to...

NBC News finds that:
-- ICE has shortened its training from 13 weeks to six.
-- Nearly half of recruits couldn’t pass an open-book written exam.
-- Recruits "are supposed to attest" they can pass the physical-fitness test, which requires them to run ... 6 mph.

www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

Merkley: "What we've seen is that democracies no longer die bc men w/guns go in and take it over. Instead, it's electeds who erode the separation of power. If you have a rubber-stamp Congress & courts that deliver more power to the executive, suddenly you have an authoritarian state. It's here now."

A middle finger to erasure.

More of this, please. Now do Black Lives Matter!

Applause on the Senate floor for Sen. Jeff Merkley D-OR, as he wraps up after over 22 hours. That will be the fourth longest speech in Senate history.

Thank you Senator Merkley, takes strength of all kinds to do what you're doing. Thank you. thehill.com/homenews/sen...