Category Archives: Photography

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Flowers! Just because….

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The sun peeked out today for the first time in about a week. Cold, gray, snowy, icy, cloudy, foggy Wisconsin tends to get me down. Getting up in the dark, working through a sunless day, and then going home in the dark seems to pull all the shape out of life. And the news is even more depressing. So, I’m injecting some color and light into things with this post. Enjoy!

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Repurpose

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I love this theme! The mission of getting stuff out of the garbage system and back into useful circulation is part of the vision of Scholar & Poet Books, our home business. We don’t sell just used books but lots of other things we’ve picked up at estate sales and other places along the way. Valuing these castaways goes along with having an endless curiosity and a passion for treading lightly on the planet. You might say that we look at these things as artifacts, the world as a huge museum. 

But for clever, I have to defer to my daughter. She and her husband are proud nerds and bibliophiles. She decided to make some of the flowers for their wedding decor and bouquets out of the pages of well-used books that had lost their covers. 

paper rose

The overall effect was perfect, and perfectly suited to them. 

Remember: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Re-purpose, Refuse! (for more great information about reducing waste, see The Story of Stuff Project).

Repurpose

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Nature of Grace

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This is the challenge of a lifetime. Grace is my middle name – for reals! I have been striving to live gracefully ever since my parents explained to me what that name means, hence the blog motto above. I find subtle differences in the nuance of the definition now that I’m learning Buddhism and leaving the Christian world view that I was raised with in my background.

There is something of elegance, but not a worldly elegance. 

warm-rose

There is an element of casual generosity, an unearned favor and abundance.

lilacs

The Buddhist perspective lends the flavor of ego-less-ness to it; it is beauty without attachment, as ephemeral as frost.

now 2

To live a life of grace is to open yourself mindfully each moment to being in the flow of the kindness of the Universe, in a way. To walk in harmony with my surroundings – people, places, things – and to be a living benediction is my aspiration. It sounds pretty lofty and ethereal, like a cloud, and I don’t claim to be doing the metaphor justice. But I might as well aim high in my practice. 

graceful-cloud

 
Graceful

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Ambience (or Ambiance)

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This week’s challenge reminds me of that old joke, “Why are there no restaurants on the moon?”

“No atmosphere.”

So, what’s my ambience? or ambiance? (seems there are two acceptable spellings). It’s Wisconsin. It’s January. The light is distant, southerly, and often behind clouds.arboretum in winter

The air is dry, sharp, and very cold (even in my living room!).  frosty-window

The mood is stark and immediate, like survival, but it brings a certain excitement to the senses. We are alert, light on our feet. 

driveway

There’s a certain pride in the folks who are out and about in this weather. febThey are hardy and happy, eager and resilient.

There’s something in the silence of snow – in the wide, white spaces – that brings out a solitude from which we derive a certain strength.

Welcome to Winter Wisconsin. I find it refreshing. snowy emergence

Ambience

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Names

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“What’s in a name?” Some symbolism, some ego, some remembrance…

A name is just the container, perhaps an identifier; it is not the Thing. The reality goes so much deeper. The story is so much more than the title page. The columbarium 

Names

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2016 Photo Calendar

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As a positive-thinking person, I am sad to hear so many people saying that 2016 was a bad year. So, I decided to go back through my photos of the year and pick just one from each month to remind myself what I was focusing on and maybe get an idea why it wasn’t so terrible, horrible, no-good and very bad after all. Here are my monthly picks:
January – 

optimistic 2

February – 

feb

March – 

march

April – april

May – may

June – MKE flower industry

July –

monarch

August – edge-2

September – droplet

October –october

November – 

magic-mist

December – dec

I don’t want to say that the year was without disappointment. At the beginning of 2016, I was also campaigning for Bernie Sanders by phone and door-to-door.

victory 2On the last day of November, I suffered two losses that hit me very hard: my boss resigned and a dear pet died. I guess my point is that perspective is still up to me. Where I give my heart, where I direct my eyes, where I train my efforts and thoughts is still up to me. And no system can take that away. 

May all beings be happy in 2017; may all beings be free from suffering in 2017. Thank you for visiting my blog!

victory

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Resilient

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Resilient: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

rose-snow

“Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snow lies the seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the rose.” – Amanda McBroom

To all of you who hold a seed deep in your heart – a seed of peace, of love, of tolerance, of equality, of community, and of hope – I give you my warm wishes for a wonder-filled New Year. To all of you who shine love on the seed that is deep in my heart, I give you my undying gratitude for your support. 

Resilient

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Path

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I can totally relate to Cheri’s picture of taking a boardwalk path through a fragile eco-system. 

I can also relate to my personal path changing dramatically in 2016. I, too, moved to a new place – to be closer to my job – and then experienced an abrupt twist in the path when my boss resigned.  Paths can always lead to the unexpected, even a path you’ve traveled many times before. 

Humans have a strong tendency to try to control and predict, to make crooked paths straight, to eliminate as much random chaos as possible. And that means we can often be frustrated, disappointed, or anxious on the path we’re traveling.  But we don’t have to be. We can be delighted, wonder-filled and accepting. The path is what it is. How you travel and with what baggage is up to you. 

PG hiking
Path

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Wisconsin Wonderland

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If I want to see the magic of a winter wonderland, I have only to step outside my door. No need to represent it inside my home. No need for a “holiday tree” when you have a holiday ecosystem! I only wish I had a fireplace…

I’m grateful for the world as it is. It may seem harsh, but it is home. Chickadees and sparrows and cardinals and juncos are at the feeder. Deer lie under the trees at night and walk away during the day.  Somehow, they live on in the darkness, in the cold, without complaining.

I have a lot to learn.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Anticipation

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One of my favorite Advent anthems I used to sing with our church choir was titled “Anticipation”. It was a jewel of tight 20th Century harmony supporting a beautiful poem whose author I cannot find. It goes something like this:

The sky is black
The dawn is but a promise
and here I wait
impatient for the light.
My dearest friend is coming back
Tomorrow.
Anticipation fills the endless night
and soon the sky will fill with golden sunlight.
The day will break with joy beyond compare, 
and I will fly…I will fly…
to meet him in the air. 

I haven’t got the music or the lyrics to cite the source, but it haunts me in these long nights of darkness waiting for my dearest friend, The Sun, who warms me and enlightens my soul. Soon we will celebrate the Solstice, the return of the Sun, and days will lengthen steadily. That is a hope and a joy to anticipate! 

mystery

foggy-sunrise

arboretum in winter

 

 

Anticipation