Category Archives: blogging

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh

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I so wish I had a photo of someone doing something cheeky, but as I’ve admitted before, I tend to have still life and landscape photos and not much photojournalism-type shots with people in action.  “Fresh! *slap*” is the first thing that came to my mind.  The second is my daughter’s quizzical expression, “What fresh hell is this?” (Which my mother reminds me is Dorothy Parker’s line; Susan lifted it from The Portable Curmudgeon.) Again, a dramatic scene to be pictured.  Ah, well.  Perhaps more boring, but nonetheless colorful, is this collection of purchases from a fall Farmer’s Market.  Enjoy! 

Fresh

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Golden Hour

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The first and last hour of sunlight in the day is what photographers often refer to as “The Golden Hour”.  I am not the dedicated kind of hobbyist that will actually go out looking for that kind of light specifically, but I do sometimes find myself with my camera out on a hike or an outing that lasts until near sunset.  A serendipitous meeting might then occur, and I’ll get a great shot.  Here’s one of which I am especially fond: Enjoy!

Holy Hill

Holy Hill

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Wordless Wednesday: My Father

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July 10th.  The anniversary of my father’s birth.  A man I was close to for 48 years, but whom I was just getting to know when he became wordless.  He wrote his memoirs just before developing Alzheimer’s disease. (see this post for a more complete story)

What I wouldn’t give for a few more words…..

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Comments accepted and appreciated: no verbal restrictions there!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgic

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Oh, boy.  It’s a dangerous thing to invite a widow and empty-nester to post a blog on the theme Nostalgic!  Contemplating the past can lead to maudlin stretches and lots of used Kleenex, even if I don’t have a glass or two of wine first.  I don’t think that would be at all edifying to the blogging community, so I’m going to try hard to steer away from that.  I hope to write and show something that is true about a time that has come and gone. 

Life is characterized by impermanence.  Our kids don’t stay little; our loved ones don’t stay alive forever.  What we live is present moments.  If we try to hang on to them and make them more permanent or attach our happiness to them, we are in for a world of frustration.  As we get farther away from present moments, it’s hard to remember what they were really like.  We lose perspective.  That wonderful family outing…did I yell at the kids that day?  I don’t remember.  I probably lost patience at least once.  Did my kids remember that?  How did they feel?  How did they heal?  Or is it all, as my mother often puts it, ‘a merciful blur’? 

Brookfield Zoo dolphin show, August 1991. Jim (RIP), Emily, Josh, Becca and Susan (bride to be in 3 weeks!).

Brookfield Zoo dolphin show, August 1991. Jim (RIP), Emily, Josh, Becca and Susan (bride to be in 3 weeks!).

In my current life, I see a lot of families on outings with their children, since I work at two different family museums.  Families interact in all sorts of ways.  I try to look at them with compassion and tolerance remembering what I can about how challenging it is to raise 4 kids at one time.  The important thing is to BE KIND in the present moment.  With your kids or someone else’s.  If the world is to be a good place to live, it’s important that all 7 billion of us humans remember to BE KIND.  And this is not a glib solution.  If you think deeply about being kind, you’ll see that it is a profound power in the universe.   BE KIND to your fellow humans.  BE KIND to every living thing.  BE KIND to yourself first, and feel what that is like.  It is peace.  It is well-being and health.  It is life.  Don’t settle for feeling nostalgic about a time when you felt the world was a kinder place to live.  Make it a kinder place to live this very moment by acting kindly!

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An Abecedarius Award!

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I have been given another award! *smiles like a 6 year old*  Many thanks to Sally from Lens and Pens for this honor!

This one looks rather fun: it’s called the Awesome Blog Content award and comes with a kind of game to play.  I get to go through the alphabet and choose a word or phrase that describes me.  Ready, Campers?!  Here goes:

A – Appreciation and Awareness

B – Bio-luminescent

C – Cheerful

D – Discovery World

E – Elephants!

F – Fantasy

G – Galasso (duh!)

H – Heigho (possibly obscure to those who don’t know me well…)

I – Intelligent

J – Jim

K – Kappa (as in Phi Beta)

L – Love, love, love

M – Music

N – Nurturing

O – Old World Wisconsin

P – Priscilla (again, duh!)

Q – QI

R – Renewal

S – Sincere

T – Truth

U – Universal

V – Vulnerable

W – Widow

X – Extraordinary

Y – Young at heart

Z – Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Now, instead of nominating other bloggers for this award, what I’m going to do is link you to my favorite post of this morning.  Into the Bardo, A Blogazine features a post about a discussion of language and play which I found very interesting reading.  Check it out!

Anyone else who reads this and wants to do the ABC word association game in a post, just for fun, can consider themselves awarded!  Go ahead, post the logo…it’s like sewing another patch on your Girl Scout sash!

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Companion

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I spent the last 8 hours in the delightful company of my firstborn child.  We spent the day making paper roses out of pages of an old copy of The Lord of the Rings for her wedding bouquet, trying out hair-dos for the wedding, and talking heart to heart. I am so grateful that the years we’ve spent together have produced two women who have grown to be great friends.  You can read all kinds of opinions about whether your children are supposed to be your friends, but in the final analysis, if you both live to be adults at the same time, you can have a friendship that is richer, deeper, closer than any you can imagine.  My daughter was born when I was 22, and in many ways, we grew up together.  We read together, learned together, laughed together, cried together, explored different roles and ages and stages in each others’ company and discovered that we really like each other.  We’ve always been very honest and good communicators.  So, I sincerely want to say,

“Susan, thank you for being my companion for 28 years (so far)!  I love you very much.”Companion

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Shine On!

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One of my followers has awarded me with the Shine On! Award, so I am gratefully acknowledging this compliment with an extra post this week.  The Soul Driven Mind strikes me as a very earnest blog by a man who seems to walk the intersection of hard core systems like the Air Force and IT while keeping his head outdoors or on Mars.  I applaud him for challenging himself to widen and deepen his vision, to keep in touch with his natural, creative self and to let that place speak freely and inform him on a regular basis.  Whether that routinely clashes with his profession, I’m not sure, but I can imagine it would sometime.  I wish him great courage and fortitude in his quest and the ability to make the tough choices with joy!

I am to state 7 things about myself, so here’s what comes off the top of my head:

1) I am currently very excited about my oldest daughter’s wedding next month, and by excited, I mean a little out of my depth and emotionally charged in many ways.  If her dad were still alive, the social roles would be much easier to figure out, and I would be guided and shielded by his very confident, extroverted personality.  As it is, I am forging a new path on my own, not always predictable.  I cry, feeling sad and angry that he’s not present.  I put my own quirky self out there, vulnerable and honest, and wonder if that will be acceptable and satisfying to myself and my family.  But these are people whom I deeply love, and to give myself, however frightening that may be, is the best I have to offer.  So, it’s pretty thrilling all around!

2) I am hatching a huge creative project.  I just bought a 5 subject notebook at Walgreen’s yesterday, and I plan to fill it with all kinds of brainstorming notes.  I don’t want to reveal just yet what it’s about, but it’s an embryo that gives me a secret glow.

3) I ordered a dress from India to wear to the wedding.  It’s waiting at the Post Office for me to pick it up.  Does every woman have fantasies about being radiant for some occasion and fears about being merely ordinary?  What is the Middle Way of beauty?  Seeing myself as lovely and alive and sacred but no higher than any other creature on the planet, I suppose, even the graceful little mosquitoes who may show up at this outdoor event!

4) I love the smell of Wisconsin in the summer: that humid, earthy, rain-soaked fragrance of Girl Scout camp makes me feel like I’m 8 years old again.

5) I love children’s books, and I looked very much like Sal in Robert McCloskey’s books “One Morning in Maine” and “Blueberries for Sal”.  Bobbed blond hair swept to the side in a barrette, jeans with an elastic waistband at the back, sneakers, sweatshirt.  Pictures of pre-school me growing up in Massachusetts are an uncanny likeness of her. 

6)  The last movie I watched was “A Wedding”, the Robert Altman film starring Carol Burnett, Desi Arnaz, Jr., Mia Farrow, etc.  A comedy without a laugh track, satirical and ambiguous.  We don’t have TV and don’t feel interested in the movies that are being made these days, but there are lots of good films in the archives to provide social commentary and philosophical and psychological fodder for conversation and introspection.  Taking on weddings and family dysfunctions seemed like a good project for this week. 🙂

7) I love good food.  I went to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday and bought a pint box of Sugar Snap Peas.  They are so fresh and sweet, all raw and fertile, that I wish it were summer all year so that I could enjoy them more frequently.  But then, I suppose, I would stop paying attention.  The habitual way of putting calories into my mouth is so uninteresting.  I like focusing on something unusual and life-giving.  The last meal I really regretted was a Culver’s butter burger basket.  So much grease!  Never again….

This last part is always the most difficult for me.  I’m supposed to nominate 15 other blogs for this award and link to them and notify them of the award requirements.  First of all, I don’t follow very many blogs because I simply haven’t the time to read them.  The ones I do follow, I’ve already given awards to (if they even accept them).  I also refuse to tell anyone that there’s a requirement for receiving an award.  My appreciation is offered without obligations attached.  That said, I will share the new blogs that I’ve been following:

Jeff Sinon Photography: Nature Through The Lens

Steve McCurry’s Blog (you know the guy who photographed that iconic Afgan woman with the haunting eyes for the cover of National Geographic?  Yup, the same man.)

Into the Bardo: A Blogazine (I’ve actually been added as a contributor to this one, and all the contributors are people whose work I would recommend.)

I hope the short list doesn’t disappoint anyone.  Thank you for contributing to the expressive community of artists, thinkers, and humans that make this blogosphere so interesting and worthwhile!  I am pleased to be among you!