Category Archives: Photography

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Soaring Hopes

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What is it in the air?  That scent of wet earth, that change in light and warmth, that lengthening of days, that springtime feeling that quickens the pulse, that vitality?  Dare I call it ‘hope’?

My definition: n. A kind of trust or confidence…but not necessarily about a specific future outcome.  It points to a relationship and carries a sense of intimacy.

Why today?  Because my son is coming to visit me for a few days.  My only son.  He’s about half my age now.  I remember writing a poem about this kind of surging feeling when he was about 7 years old.  “A brilliant day in April…” it began.  I saw him walking home from school, baseball glove on hand, tossing a ball in the air and lazily catching it while his white-blond hair sucked a sunbeam into his entire being.  What was I feeling?  Pride?  Joy?  Awe?  That womb-love from the Hebrew scriptures?  Yes.  Absolom, my son, my son.  Coming home to me.

Ah, progeny.  How we load that concept with cultural baggage.  What is the reality of this young man’s life?  That’s what I want to learn.  The economy sucks.  Student loans suck.  Losing your father sucks.  Growing up is difficult.  And the world is a wonderful place.

What can we make of this visit?  While I wait for it to unfold, I will make chili and a clean place for him to sleep.  And I know he’s bringing his fabulous camera.  It’s a place to start.

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Down By The Riverside

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Gonna lay down my burden…

I ain’t gonna study war no more.

Gonna lay down my sword and shield…

Took a walk by the Mukwonago River yesterday.  Heard lots of geese honking raucously, actually ridiculously.  “Sounds like a barnyard!”  I said, imagining donkeys braying and cows lowing.  Actually, there was a barnyard of sorts across the river.  On the slope leading to the water there were about a dozen white domestic geese.  All along the waters edge, there were wild Canada geese splashing about, enjoying the sunshine.   I wonder how they size each other up?  I wonder what their honking was all about?

We watched a video from the “Life” series, narrated by David Attenborough (our hero!) that featured footage of killer whales and leopard seals hunting.  I had seen a clip on the internet somewhere of killer whales tossing a seal around and many people commented about how cruel it was that they were playing with their unfortunate victim.  David Attenborough, narrating the scene of a leopard seal eating a penguin, described how it has to fling the body away from the piece its teeth are holding in order to rip off a manageable chunk of meat.   That made a lot of sense to me, and it dawned on me that the killer whales were probably doing the same thing.  Are non-human animals ever cruel, I wonder?   I’ve seen a real game of cat-and-mouse, but I’m not sure that’s about cruelty.  Then again, we have bred animals to demonstrate cruelty.  Fighting animals and hunting animals who attack other animals for reasons other than their own survival can be said to be cruel, I suppose.   Is it a human notion to cultivate violence for other ends, like status, power, sport and such?  Or do animals have that trait as well?

As I am typing this, a hawk has come to perch in the maple tree outside my bedroom window.  He is probably waiting for the sparrows and squirrels and cottontail rabbits that come to my garden chair looking for bread crumbs and popcorn kernels.   Here’s a shot I just took through my dingy window:

He’s still there, swiveling his head about, looking with his sharp eyes for his next meal.   It isn’t about war, it’s about food.  He takes no more than he needs.  What about us?  When we take more than we need, are we at war?  And what do we really need?

A sheltered place to bed down for the night

 

Fresh water, clean air, plants and sunshine

I don’t want to be burdened with war, status, power, ego or contention today.  I want to live like they live “down by the riverside”.  It seems peaceful and natural.  I could just watch this hawk all day….

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While the gettin’s good…

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All of our snow seems to be falling on Europe this year, so we’re going to seize the opportunity to do some spring hiking in February!  “Let’s get while the gettin’s good!”, as they say.  (They who?  Not really sure who says this any more…)

Here are some early spring photos from my walks this weekend:

First robin in a ginko tree

Red-tailed hawk feathers

Fertile farmland

Blue and gold (for Helen)

Enjoy the white stuff, my friends across the pond!  I’m going mud walking!

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Photo Essay: County Grounds

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The Milwaukee County Grounds are steeped in civic history.  The insane asylum, the poor farm and the tuberculosis sanatorium were all situated here in the early 1900s.  The government took on some additional responsibility for “the poor, the destitute and the marginalized” by creating four cemeteries in the area, alternately known as “The Poor Farm Cemetery”, “The Almshouse Cemetery” or “Potter’s Field”.   Today, the buildings are crumbling, the cemeteries are marked with plaques, and the grounds are frequented by hikers and dogs.  There is a monarch butterfly trail that has been carefully maintained by volunteers and the park district has taken over one building there for offices, but the future of this area is uncertain at best.   There is talk of power lines and park development as well as commercial development.   The land lies adjacent to a 6 lane freeway, the medical center complex, and a water reclamation plant.   For now, it is the only open land that I can walk to from my house, yet it maintains a ghostly connection to its civic past.  I often try to overlook the traces of the human community there and photograph only wildlife.  Yesterday, though, I decided to open my eyes to whole of it.  Here are some visuals:

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Trees’ Company

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I took a walk yesterday; it’s still un(r/s)easonably warm.   One thing I like about this little residential cell in greater Milwaukee is the number of trees.  Here are some shots:

From the ground up: roots...

...trunk...

...branches.

 

Sadly, sometimes all that’s left of a great tree is a footprint.

Have you hugged a tree today?  Thanked one for matching breaths with you?  Photographed one for Earth’s Family Album?

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Unbelievable, Unseasonal

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So, here it is, the last day of January in Wisconsin, and the temperature is….53 degrees Fahrenheit?!

Global warming is no hoax.

One of my Nature in the Parks programs for tomorrow was postponed because parents felt that the first of February would be too cold to send their darling children outside for a field trip.  They re-scheduled for the 29th of February.  What do you want to bet that tomorrow will be about 20 degrees warmer than the temperature by the end of the month?  Of course, you never know.  But don’t you think kids are resilient enough to be allowed to go outside every day of the year?  They pull on their snow pants, and they’re as protected as if they were wearing bubble wrap!  And they love it!  They dive headlong into any accumulated snow just so that they can bounce back!

Today’s group at the Wehr Nature Center didn’t go outside because they were doing the Skylab unit under the big inflated planetarium dome.  But I went out on the trails.  Here are some shots:

Mirror, mirror, on the lake

 

Sky Jellies

 

Grandmother Willow

 

Snow Boardwalk

I’ve been on the phone and on the computer for about three hours now, doing some “business”.  It’s time to go back outside, before the sun sets!

Toodles!

 

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Let’s Make Tracks!

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It was tracking day at the Wehr Nature Center for a group of 24 third graders.  They made plaster molds of animal tracks and then went outside in the bright sunshine to find some animal evidence.  Those hearty species who stick out the Wisconsin winter without migrating or hibernating include squirrels, weasels & mink, deer, raccoon, opossum, fox, skunk, cottontail rabbit, pheasant, and a bunch of birds (cardinals, chickadees, woodpeckers, doves, nuthatches).  Of course, we didn’t see all these, but we did find clues: tracks, scat, and browse marks where they’d eaten branches and bark.

This is how we draw the kids' attention to a find

Whose little hands have been here?

And then, the sunshine creates lines and angles everywhere.

And the water that isn’t frozen ripples and sparkles, creating more textures of light and shadow.

I’m liking the black and white idea today.  Steve & I are planning to see “The Artist” this afternoon, a new silent film in black & white.  Sometimes, the world seems just too much to comprehend, so we break it down into stylized bits and patterns so that we can wrap our feeble brains around some part of it.   What would it be like to walk around open to everything at once, without compartmentalizing or simplifying?  Would we explode?

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Winter Photos

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So, here’s a pictorial view of my week.

I made almond cookies for Chinese New Year.  Extremely tasty with Amaretto and orange slices.

Honorable Almond Cookie

I supervised a bunch of 4 year-olds (68 of them, actually!) as they played in the Wehr Nature Center’s play space with spray bottles of diluted liquid watercolors.

Like a giant sno cone

I watched the sun setting in the west from my second story bedroom window.

"World turning on the burning sun...." (James Taylor)

And I felt the frost fly up on feathered wings into the morning light…and into my bones.

This morning, I took a group of Kindergarteners out on a nature hike.  One little boy walked beside me, counting excitedly.  “I found a hundred things!” he shouted.  Oh, there so many more than that, I thought.

—Say it, no ideas but in things—
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident—
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—
secret—into the body of the light!

-William Carlos Williams (from “Paterson – Book One”)
Things…winter things…frosty filigreed, foggy white, cold-packed and angular,  distant and spare.

Ideas…winter ideas…hard and dense, insular, desperate, furtive.

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Winter Warmth

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A group of 68 pre-schoolers visited the Wehr Nature Center today.  I volunteered to supervise their play time outside.  Six groups rotated through my station, staying 15 minutes.  I spent an hour and a half standing in the snow, watching them spray diluted liquid watercolors onto that white, frozen canvas.  It ended up looking like a flavored snow cone playground.  I didn’t think to get a picture of it at the end, though, because all that was on my mind was getting feeling back into my toes.  Brrr….

The sky is gray, the bare branches are gray, the ground is gray, my gray matter is gray.   Suddenly, a flash of red whips over the roof and settles at the bird feeder.  A cardinal!  Oh, happy wings of fire!

We were hiking the Ice Age Trail, through a dark pine forest by the Oconomowoc River.  Through the trees, I saw a red barn with it’s face shining in the late afternoon sun.  It burned like a beckoning hearth.

I’m wearing a red sweatshirt, half wishing it would burst into flames and warm me up.  What I really wish….is that I had a fireplace.  I love building fires.  I love the smell of a fire.  I love watching the flames in their colorful dance.  I love the warmth.  When I was a child, I would pester my father to start a fire in the fireplace.  It made an otherwise ordinary evening feel like a holiday.

Alas, I have no fireplace, so I am going to attempt a simulation.  Mesquite incense sticks, flannel pajama pants, and several layers of blankets.  Maybe I’ll warm up enough to fall asleep for a little while.  For all you warm-blooded, hibernating, furry creatures out there, stay snug.  It ain’t over yet.

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Happy Chinese New Year, Happy Magic Flute, Happy Ethiopian restaurant

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I just got back from my visit to Chicago to see my youngest child, take her to the Lyric Opera, eat dinner and sleep over.  Had a grand time, and stashed my camera in my purse so that I could share the event on this post.  So, here are the characters:

Scillagrace, actually wearing make-up and a new scarf from the Fair Trade store

 

...and Mema, who is always too fabulous for words

 

And here is the Lyric Opera House in Chicago….

Grand staircase with gold banisters and red carpet

Iconic fire-proof curtain screen

Theatrical gold chandeliers

Patrons people-watching over the balcony

The matinee performance of Die Zauberflote (imagine 2 dots over that ‘o’) attracts a younger audience and satisfies the anticipation of spectacle by including plenty of flashy pyro effects, disappearances through the trap door, animal costumes, flying and gliding set pieces with people on them, and all that good fun.  The hyper-vengeful Queen of the Night was a tad disappointing.  Her famous raging aria was not always on pitch (actually sharp on a high D!) or facile in the fast passages.  She’s a younger singer, not as seasoned.  Pamina was exquisite, however, showing superb control in her dolce pianissimo.  Mema felt the chills!  And Papageno was an expert clown as well as a spot-on baritone who had the audience eating out of his hand.  Bravi tutti!  On to dinner…

A little Ethiopian restaurant with only 8 people in it besides us.  I’ve never eaten authentic Ethiopian food before.  It is served without utensils.  You break off pieces of the spongy, sour flat bread (injera) and grab the spiced food with that.  I ordered a lamb stew; Mema had a vegetarian platter which took up half the table!  Five different spiced vegetable dishes on one huge round of injera: squash, green beans, mushrooms, chick peas, and salad.

The injera is sort of like a damp rag...but tastier

Delicious, and new!  Toddled off to Mema’s apartment to get into comfy clothes, cuddle the cat, watch a video of my late husband (her dad) singing a recital, have a few drinks and a good, cathartic cry before going to bed in the king-sized cushy bed that used to be mine….

I love my daughter, as a person as well as a family member.  I love that we can talk honestly about everything, share on the deepest level, feel genuine affection for each other, and play together!

One thing I noted, however; nighttime in the city is noisy!   The elevated train rumbles by, rattling the brick building; the floors sag and creak when anyone walks through the apartment; the cat purrs loudly next to my ear.   So, now that I am back home, I’m going to take a nap!  Toodles….