Category Archives: Photography

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Valentine’s Day is For The Birds

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Our first Valentine’s Day together, Steve and I attended a presentation on raptors at the Volo Bog Nature Center.  We got to hear about and see up close some beautiful birds of prey and learn more about their habits and how they differ from what the presenter called “sissy birds” – birds who migrate to avoid our Northern winters.   Then we went and had sushi at a nearby restaurant.  The next Valentine’s Day, we went to a presentation on animal mating habits at the McHenry County Conservation District education center.  They provided some great chocolate snacks, warm drinks, a slide show on various courtship behaviors, and a candlelit ski trail hike.  They played a recording of coyote calls to try to entice some real responses, but there were none.  Still, the eerie, cold hillside was suitably mysterious and romantic for those of us who are simply in love with nature.  This morning, we took off from Milwaukee to Madison for our weekly Naturalist Enrichment course at the Arboretum of UW Madison.  We heard a professor from the zoology department give a presentation entitled “Why Do Birds Sing?”  One of the main purposes for bird song is, of course, to attract a mate.  Thus, the Valentine’s Day connection was made again.  Steve asked a question of the presenter to try to find some explanation for the early morning activity of birds in our neighborhood. “What’s the best time of day to sing a love song?”  Several audible chuckles and giggles were heard in the audience, which is predominantly silver-haired and female.  The presenter talked about the morning chorus and the ability for sound to be carried further in the chilly predawn air.  I smiled down at my notes and pressed my knee against his leg.  After the talk was over, a nice lady with short, white hair and a thickly knit sweater came over and leaned across me.  To Steve, she said, “You can sing your love song ANY TIME you want!” 

I love hanging out with retired professors! And I love that my daughter lives just a few blocks away from the Arboretum and invited us over for “breakfish” afterwards.  Valentine’s hugs all around and more conversation about her upcoming wedding.  Very satisfying way to spend the day, indeed.

Nerd love and natural love to everyone!  What a wonderful world!

cardinal

Did I mention it's still cold here?

Did I mention it’s still cold here?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

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Home

Home.  A weighty concept in some ways, but also tending toward the sentimental.  It can connote fortification, shelter….and yet, homey can be quaint and trivial.  We invent and reinvent our relationship to home throughout our lives.  A place to go to, a place to run from, a place without, a place within.  Maybe the truth about ‘home’ is that it is changing and fluid.  That’s what I want to illustrate. 

This photo was taken out of my bedroom window, from within the warm nest where I find safety, comfort, and respite.  And yet, the window is transparent.  It doesn’t completely shield me from the cold visually, nor does it keep me from feeling it (it’s an old drafty house, not well insulated at all!).  It lets me come face to face with the physical realities of frost and even pulls me beyond the immediate perimeter of my house, across the street, up into the trees, and all the way out of the Earth’s atmosphere to the Moon.  And still, this is all my home, too.  The Universe is where I live.   Home is near as well as far.  And why should I not feel safety and belonging in all of the world’s manifestations?  Cold and death and distance and infinity do not annihilate me, nor do they exalt me.  They are familiar and comforting, too.  I do not control my home as I do not control the weather…I live in it.  And life is bigger than most of us imagine.  

For another picture of home, mundane and temporal but nevertheless real and interesting, my last post was about our home business, Scholar and Poet Books.   Please click here and take a look!

 

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Scholar and Poet Books – Announcing Our E-Bay Store!

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sbp3

Our online store is up and running with over 200 items — finally!  Check out the link in my sidebar to visit the site and find out what I’ve been photographing.  Our Rocky Horror Picture Show Scrapbook is up for sale for the next 6 days.  Buy It Now or give us your Best Offer…the perfect Valentine’s Day gift!  Or check out our Vintage Toys and Games & Puzzles.  Our first vintage toy sale was a thrill for me.  He was a little Schuco wind up toy, a clown faced monkey that played the violin and shuffled around in a circle, made in US zone Germany right after WWII.  He was in his original box and in excellent condition.  We asked what we thought was a reasonable price after having researched other items of the same ilk…and there weren’t many!  Within a few hours he was snapped up by a buyer in Braunschweig, Germany.  It made me very happy to think the little guy was going back home!  We shipped him off and just received confirmation that he arrived safe and sound and is making his new owner very happy.

P1060543

This is the latest adjunct to Steve’s online book business which he’s been running from this location for about 5 years.  In the process of buying books from estate sales, he’s also been in the position to pick up other items as well.  He used to rent an antique mall booth to display and sell these things, but now we’re doing it all online.  I am his new business partner, and so far, I’ve been “specializing” in Children’s Books, Toys, Games, Puzzles and Hobby Kits.  That means I get to research where all these curious things originated and when they were manufactured.  I tell you, I’m learning a LOT!  Frequently, it’s a LOL experience, coming face-to-face with humorous cultural idiosyncrasies and fetishes.  There’s a lot of history thrown in as well, which I find fascinating. 

So pop on over and satisfy your curiosity.  There’s much more to come!  Haven’t even begun to list the German LPs, stamp collections, and QSL cards…

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

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I really like the photo posted on The Daily Post at Word Press today for the photo challenge.  The single, blooming red tulip in a field of budded yellow ones is an immediate visual image of what it means to be unique.  Outstanding in your field, the only one of your kind, different from all the rest.  Snowflakes.  People.  We’re all unique like that…so does that make being unique – not so unique?  Tricky concept, really. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time this week photographing vintage games, toys, and books from an estate and putting them up for resale on e-Bay.  Part of that time has also been spent researching the object to find out if other people are selling it and for what price.  Manufactured goods are not so unique.  They’re usually mass produced.  But after 50, 60, or 70 years, they begin to be more rare.  Others of their kind have been destroyed or lost for good.  They begin to show wear in unique ways: non-duplicated tears, rubs, bumps, scratches.  But usually, there is another one of that item’s “siblings” out there, somewhere.  I guess what I’m learning is that differences and similarities are rather fluid.  We are the same AND we are different at the same time.  We are connected in mass and atom and substance in numerous ways that we only dimly understand.  Categorizing and separating is something that we like to do because it narrows the overwhelming complexity of the world into an order that our little brains can comprehend.  But it’s all a game, really.  The truth is closer to wonder, the moment when you see something and exclaim “Look at that!” not because it’s necessarily different or special or anything else but just because it IS!  Wow!  There it is being the way it is and isn’t it marvelous!! 

Okay, with that in mind, here’s something I picked up at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and I didn’t know what made it the way it was, but it seemed familiar and strange at the same time. 

unique

My best guess is that these leaves are from the tulip poplar tree.  The lobes are not formed in the typical way on these individuals.  Mutants?  Perhaps.   I only found one that was like a perfect heart.  The yellower one was a relative, sort of the link to the “normal” tulip poplar shape.   I examined the edges very carefully to determine whether someone had shaped them on purpose.  They appeared to be completely natural. (oh, and the acorn is just for composition and because it had a really sexy luster!)

Variety, diversity, uniqueness.  “And I think to myself…….what a wonderful world!”

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

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Gaaauugh!  Why’d it have to be LOVE today?  Being in a couple relationship is a whole lotta hard work.  Honestly.  Hearts & flowers & violins just aren’t on the horizon here today…did you have to remind me?!  Okay, I’m gonna take another tack completely.  Here it is, my interpretation of love….this is me and a Ponderosa pine in New Mexico.  They smell like vanilla in the sunshine.  Warm, honest, natural love without that mess of human complication: I give you TREES, ladies and gentlemen. 

love

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

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Do you have a photo which invites the viewer to look beyond? Are there hidden depths in the background? Is the focal point just a framing for the rest of the picture? If it’s not clear why we should look beyond, tell us! Lead us through the story in your photo.

December 22, 2012,  just at dusk.  I am upstairs, in bed, cold, alone.  The world did not end, even though the sun is far away.  I feel disconnected from warmth.  I look out my window.  The neighbors advertise their jolly associations, but I do not belong to that club.  I look beyond…the sky is aflame, fire licks around the turquoise expanse of our atmosphere, the sun invites me to the outer edges of my vision.  There is the belonging, there the community, there the warmth.  Beyond.  The Universe is bigger than we imagine, and so are we.

Beyond

Beyond

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Illumination

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“Lights are functional — everyday objects in our rooms and on our streets. Yet lights can be powerful symbols: signs of life, curiosity, and discovery. ”  So goes the challenge description for this week.  My first instinct was to think of the photos I took New Year’s Eve of candlelight at the table.  I’ve been experimenting with low key lighting and how to bump my camera settings to accommodate that.  But I’ve already posted some of those.  My next thought was to post one I took yesterday, and I think it’ll be my choice.  True to my own natural preference, the light I’ve chosen is the very essence and source of life, curiosity, and discovery – the Sun.  At this time of year, we drift farther away from our sustaining Star.  A gauzy shroud interferes.  We are in a state of indirect, ethereal contact.  Our longing is enhanced and unsatisfied.  We pause to ponder the diminishment.  Physically, we may suffer on a cellular level. Emotionally, we may avoid or embrace this spiritual journey into greater darkness. 

I was walking through the Arboretum at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  I came to the crest of a hill from the north and descended towards the Visitor Center when I saw this tree lit from the south by the winter sun.  I hope you like this interpretation of Illumination:

Winter illumination

Winter illumination

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Making Good the Resolution

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Yesterday’s post was about the weekly photo challenge prompt: Resolved.  I stated that land use research and getting outside were goals for this year.  Yesterday afternoon, we ventured into moraine country and found a preserve managed by the Nature Conservancy.  I’m excited about this discovery as a place to revisit in the different seasons and a starting point for understanding what preservation, restoration, and conservation mean to a particular area.  Here are some photographs, then, of the Lulu Lake preserve outside of East Troy, Wisconsin:

They might be giants

They might be giants

Steve pointed out this small formation for me to photograph

Steve pointed out this small formation for me to photograph

Invitation to walk on water

Invitation to walk on water

 

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Resolved

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When Steve asked me on Sunday if I’d made New Year’s resolutions yet, I grumbled at him, “I don’t jump on that bandwagon.”  I had a sore throat that turned into a head cold and was definitely sending out the “leave me alone!” vibe.  I make resolutions to do better every single day of my life, and it often becomes an exercise in self-flagellation.  Someone I admire does this kind of thing much better than I do: visit her New Year’s post here. (plugging my daughter’s blog – I typed ‘blugging’ first; suppose I can coin a new word?)  

Actually, Steve and I had spent quite a bit of time last week discussing and deciding on goals for this new year.  We call it “pointing our canoe”.  One of the things I put on my list was to submit something to a publisher every month of this year.  Another thing on our mutual list was to plan a weekly field trip to learn and research and engage in our love of the land (land ethics, land management, environmental education) and to get outside every day for a walk.  I skipped the first two days of this year with a head cold, but I’ve managed in the last couple of days to walk to the car repair shop, the grocery store, the bank, and the cafe where we breakfast with his mom.  Now, this might not sound like a big accomplishment, but let me add one bit of info – I live in Milwaukee.  And this is what is forming outside my upstairs window:

tri cicle

That, my dear readers, is a tri-cicle (three-pronged icicle; just coined another word – where do I collect?) photographed through the screened window.  The center section of this bad boy is about 4 feet long now.   This is what outside is like here, and this is where I want to be every day.  I don’t want to make it more comfortable, I don’t want to avoid it.  My resolution is all about facing the world as it is and appreciating its wonder as a thing that I don’t comprehend or control.

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Happy New Year 2013

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The bottle of champagne remains unopened. 

New Year's 2013

Steve had a headache; I have a head cold.  We talked about celebration and seriousness, listened to Medieval motets and re-read John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes.  We watched The Apartment again, and fell asleep shortly after midnight, listening to music.  Thich Nhat Hahn talks of birthdays and other milestones simply as “continuations”.  Life goes on; time is our own invention.  There will be another occasion for champagne.  Today we slept and listened to our bodies healing.

NYE table

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

from In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
blogged by thousandfold echo