Category Archives: Family

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Gone, But Not Forgotten

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In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Gone, But Not Forgotten.”

Well, this is an obvious one.  After all, I am a widow.  How can I forget the love of my life, my one and only husband, the father of my four children and the man who bought me my first Canon (an AE-1 for Christmas when I was 17)?  I am in a wonderful relationship now with a new partner, Steve, and he’s featured in many of my posts.  But Jim is my first love, the man who was beside me for 30 years, from the time I was 15.  So much of my adult formation took place in those years, even though profound change has happened since.  Shortly after Jim died, I became an empty-nester, I sold our home, and I stopped practicing evangelical Christianity.  Gone are my ‘suburban mom’ characteristics…the van, the mortgage, the disposable income, the salaried position with a Christian company in my home town, the prayer groups and Bible studies, the daily involvement with my kids.  My life is definitely different.  I am much more independent and self-reliant now.  But I haven’t forgotten how well loved I was, how dedicated Jim was to taking care of me.  As his best friend said at his memorial service, he was a Prince of a man.  And he was definitely Charming. 

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Weekly Photo Challenge & Photography 101: Triumphs Converging

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Yesterday was a wonderful day, a triumph of change, of many changes coming together.  Thanksgiving is Steve’s favorite holiday, and what’s not to love?  Fall colors, harvest time, lots of great food, a crisp chill in the air, wood smoke, and an all-pervading sense of gratitude for the process of life. 

triumph 2We’ve hosted Steve’s family for dinner at our place for the past 4 years.  “Our Place”, however, is not just a home.  It’s an online book business, which means that our inventory is stored under the same roof.  That roof was replaced this year, bringing inches of old cedar pieces and dust down on top of our piles of books.  It was a mess.  The clean up and resorting was enormous.  But Thanksgiving was the deadline: we wanted to host as usual.  Piles of books, CDs, video tapes and packing materials carpeted all the rooms and stairwells in the house.  We literally had to pick our way through for months.  Steve took infinite trips up the narrow, steep stairs to the attic, laden with heavy boxes and stacks.  But yesterday was a triumph!  The place was clean, the table glistened, the food was colorfully delicious, and everyone had a great time.  And Steve got to put his feet up and read aloud in Italian.

triumphWe are really getting good at team work.  The next triumphant convergence will occur tomorrow, when we get together with all my children and their ‘significant otters’ for a holiday which we call ‘Galassoween’.  Five couples, two generations and as many various lifestyles merge to create a feast of conversation and edible togetherness.  And it will take place in the house that my daughter and her fiance have rebuilt. (see this post, “Harvesting Hope”)  I’m looking forward to it!  (but first, I have a lot of dishes to wash…)

triumph 3

 

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Photography 101: Home

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I’ve found another Word Press Photography challenge!  Joining my pals Jeff Sinon and Mariah of Great Follies, I am going to see if Photography 101 helps me to get better at picture taking.  The first assignment is ‘Home’. 

I have was born on the East Coast (Salem, MA) and lived on the West Coast for 15 years, but the Midwest is where I’ve spent most of my life.  I raised 4 kids here and brought myself through elementary school and mothering years by staying connected to woodlands and prairie.  I photograph the land quite a bit.  But home is movable.  I love to travel and feel at home in lots of places.  Where my heart is vulnerable and needs sheltering, centers around the table. 

When I share a meal, I am inviting you into my deepest home.  I am offering care and sustenance, as I need to be cared for and sustained.  The people who eat at my table are family, whether by blood or by honor.  We create Home together in mutual covenant.  It is a sacred space.  

photo by Steve
photo by Steve
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Saints, Souls and Scorpions

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What are we, really?  What is our essence?  Is it distinct? 

What a burning question!  How we long to know that we are special, unique, inimitable and eternal in some way.  Our egos seek definition, boundaries and refinements.  This is me!  That’s not me! But is that really how the Universe is made up?

Carl Sagan says that we are made of star stuff.  Ah!  What a beautiful idea, connecting us with the cosmos, the eternal past and the eternal future.  Thich Nhat Hahn says that we are ‘continuations’, the recycling of energy into life.  Environmental education seeks to instill the understanding that we are a part of, not apart from, the natural world. 

I love that today is a day for celebrating those connections.  All Saints’ Day, Dia de los Muertos, Steve’s Birthday, my sister Dharam’s Birthday, all of those holy notions come together today.  We ‘inter-are’, we interconnect, we are interdependent with all forms of life.  It so happens that those born on this day share the zodiac sign of Scorpio.  That reminds me that we are interconnected with forms of life that are not human.   And somewhat scary.  I saw my first wild scorpion in Texas one week ago.  He was promenading around in the light of the bathroom facility at Guadalupe National Park’s Dog Canyon campground in the middle of the night.  I was making a night visit without a flashlight but aided by the starry host. Had he not been directly under the security light, I would have missed him.  He was pale and small, and I walked right past him in my drowsy stupor.  It wasn’t until I was ensconced in the bathroom that it dawned on me.  “That was a real scorpion!” By the time I emerged, he had moved on.  I was sorry I missed a better look.  And I wish I had a photograph. 

The manifestations of star stuff that we get to see are fleeting and fascinating.  Enjoy them.  Look long and hard.  Take pictures if you like.  You may never see this combination again.  And you will see other combinations to delight you instead.  What a thing to celebrate!

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Photo Challenge Substitute: Dress Up

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Now that I’m working from home, I find myself waiting on the Weekly Photo Challenge from WordPress like it’s the only thing I have to do.  Not so: there’s bread to bake, a pot roast to get into the slow cooker, and much more.  So, rather than stall my day, I’ve decided to come up with my own Halloween Photo Challenge.  My favorite part of Halloween has always been the dressing up.  Yeah, I worked for a theater company for 7 years.  I love costumes & make-up!  But I’ve matured beyond the days when I helped my 4 kids transform their ideas into actual outfits (‘an explosion’ is my all-time favorite) and dressed myself up for parties.  I did work as a costumed historic interpreter for the past 3 years, though, so the thrill hasn’t completely died.  My village decided that Trick or Treat day was going to be last Sunday, and I was driving from Texas to Wisconsin at that time, so I missed it.  I’d love to see some creativity in dress!  Here’s what I’ve got on file:

Handcrafted T
Photo credit: Carol Toepke
photo credit: John Meyer
photo by Steve
photo by Steve
photo credit: Kim Schultz
Tenebrous at the Fairie Festival
Not a costume nor an actual pirate. Diabetic retinopathy for reals. Still, we tried to have fun with it.
photographer unknown
photo by Marni (RIP)

What have you got in yours?

Nov. 1 addition — My sister Sarah just sent this, so I thought I’d share:

Sarah as Dr Who

And just as I post this, Word Press comes through with their challenge word….Descent.  Stay tuned!

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Harvesting Hope

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I have just finished reading a very informative book by Jane Goodall on the subject of Food.  Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating has led me to reconsider the way I buy and cook and eat food.  Much of it is based on common sense and natural practices (What would a chimp choose to eat?  Have you ever seen an overweight chimp in the wild?), and much of it exposes the insanity that is our factory food production here in the “civilized” world. How civilized is it to cram thousands of chickens together in a cage, remove their beaks so that they can’t peck each other to death, pump them with antibiotics and force them to cannibalize their own kind by giving them non-vegetarian feed?  And then to slaughter them, ship their polluted flesh over thousands of miles burning fossil fuels, and eat it?  I was not thinking about that when I bought Super Saver packages of chicken breasts at my local super market.  I think about it now.

And here is the surprising gift of hope: my children have been thinking about this for years.  I didn’t lead the way. 

Here is another arena of hope: reclaiming, salvaging and recycling living space.  My daughter and her fiance purchased a home that had been severely water damaged and mold and mildew infested.  The inhabitants had moved out to hospice care and died; the house was abandoned, but the water wasn’t shut off.  In the winter freeze and thaw, the pipes broke and flooded the place.  What a mess!  But Joe comes from a family line of carpenters and construction wizards.  He has completely re-worked the house: plumbing, electric, heating, floor plan and surfaces.  He’s gotten neighbors, friends and family involved in the labor and in donating fixtures. The final step will be relocating the back yard garden.  You see, this house is just a few doors down the street from the one they’ve rented for the past 3 years.  So, by their wedding date one year from this month, they will have their own home and garden.  They are marvelous role models for sustainable living, and I am so proud of them! Yesterday I went down to visit and take pictures.  They sent me home with a bunch of produce from their garden.  I am so grateful and awed by how life unfolds.  The next generation is certainly capable of taking responsibility and working hard in a sustainable direction.  Let’s just hope many of them choose to!

The bathroom tile looks great even if the photo doesn’t
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The Old Homestead

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Back in August, I did a blog post about Steve’s childhood home and his mom’s move out.  You can see that post here.  At the beginning of September, I traveled back to California to see my mother’s new digs and how my brother has renovated the old homestead and made it his own.  Our mothers are only 3 weeks apart in age, both are turning 80 this December.  This seems to be a rite of passage – relinquishing home ownership and the mental and physical effort it requires.  I’m happy to say that both our moms have found communities of vitality and interest and that they are enjoying new friendships, new activities, and comfortable surroundings.  Here’s a photo gallery of the Los Gatos trip (mostly for the edification of my kids who haven’t been there in a while). 

Living and dining
The artist’s studio
The Meadows’ dining room (where I used to work)
Her piano
Her books
The view
Her bedroom
The church
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Nighttime

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I gotta admit, my first reaction was something along the lines of “WTF?  Who takes photos at night when there’s no LIGHT?!”  But this is supposed to be a Challenge, right?  (an aside….Steve mentions in passing that he’d be great at making up one word photo challenges.  “Yeah, like what?”  “Crouton,” he said, not even skipping a beat.  I am glad that “Crouton” is not this week’s theme.  I have zero photos on that subject.)

Recently (well, almost 2 months ago now), we had a marvelous nighttime adventure in Chicago with my youngest, Emily.  We went to Ravinia, the outdoor musical festival, for a Brahms concert.  We bought only lawn seats, not the more expensive Pavilion seats.  It rained all day, not too fiercely, but fairly steadily.  We found that we were among the few diehard music fans that did not let that deter us from setting up a picnic on the wet lawn and dining happily under our umbrellas.  When the music started officially (after a brief practice during our picnic), we packed up the food and huddled beneath the umbrellas.  The rain was falling in earnest by then.  At intermission, an invitation came over the loudspeaker for anyone on the lawn to move into the pavilion, as most seats were empty.  A kind man handed us tickets to a box seat well under the shelter, and we moved in to warm up and dry off.  It was a thrilling evening, being out in the elements, listening to live music played by real, live, dedicated musicians from Germany…and the occasional roll of thunder.

But my photos from that evening did not come out as I expected.  Trying to adjust for low light is very tricky.  Still, the sparkle and color and blurry atmosphere is rather fun. Pretend you’ve had a few drinks before you look at them. 🙂

BTW – on the menu: 5 different kinds of cheeses,  3 salads, handmade chocolate-dipped strawberries (thank you, Emily!), a light Chardonnay and the best beer on the planet (from Belgium – Maredsous). 

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Wilderness Week continues!

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September 3 marked the Golden Anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act into law by President LBJ.  I posted a kick-off essay about a recent trip to a designated wilderness preserve here in Wisconsin for The Bardo Group.  Subsequently, members of that blogging community posted essays, videos, poetry and photos on the wilderness theme.  Check out the daily posts beginning that week by clicking here.  Favorite pieces gleaned from that site include How Wolves Change Rivers, The Carpathians – “Europe’s Only True Wilderness”, and In Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World.

Just after my kick-off essay went online, I headed to northern California to visit my family and explore some of the natural places unique to that area.  I felt the presence of my father as I re-visited trails we had walked together and that he had walked after I moved out.  A quote that I had read somewhere kept surfacing: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”  Baba Dioum included this thought in a speech he made in 1968 In New Delhi, India, to the general assembly of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  

My father was a teacher of Math and Science professionally.  He taught Religion as a volunteer in the church.  He taught me many things, but in his teaching about Nature, he was less didactic and more mystic.  He simply wanted to be there and to introduce me to a living thing which he loved…the planet. 

Camping in Alaska the summer after his senior year in High School: 1951.

My Dad in Alaska the summer after his senior year in High School: 1951. (photographer unknown)

Some of the things my father introduced me to:

California sea lions
Coastal redwoods – taller but not as big around as sequoia gigantea
Pinnacles National Park

September 21 is the date marked for the People’s Climate March in New York City.  The United Nations Climate Summit is two days later.  Please consider what your part may be.  What do you hope for our planet?  How do you want those hopes represented by our nations’ leaders?  How can you contribute to the teaching, the understanding, the loving and the preserving of our mutual home?  Thank you for doing your part, whatever that may be.

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved