I have a rather social weekend lined up. Tonight is our Chinese New Year celebration with Steve’s sister. Tomorrow is the Lyric Opera (Die Zauberflote) with my youngest. So, here’s a quick share…photos I took this morning as I watched my squirrel friend digging around in the fresh powder for the leftover popcorn I put out on his chair.
Sorry for the poor quality…the windows in the living room are pretty dirty!
More anon, good friends…..Happy Chinese New Year!
It’s bitter cold and sunny outside today. A crisp, bright world, intensely interesting. Here are some things that have captured my attention:
frost on my bedroom window
I doctored these shots a bit, which I rarely do. There’s so much to explore in photography, even when you don’t have the latest equipment.
My mother sent me this last night. It evoked those happy tears I told you about.
Steve brought a book to breakfast that my mother and father would love. It’s called The Superior Person’s Book of Words by Peter Bowler and includes such delightful entries as:
“CALEFACIENT — a. A medicinal agent producing a feeling of warmth. ‘Calefacient, anyone?’ you inquire as you pass around the cognac.”
I am creating, with Steve, an Art Trivia Game to be debuted at a dinner party at Steve’s sister’s house celebrating Chinese New Year. I will also be baking almond cookies to bring to the affair. The first effort is challenging me to be humorous and inventive. The second will require that I follow instructions precisely. I’ll let you know if I succeed at either of those. I do know that I’m succeeding in keeping myself entertained!
Be warmed and be well, my friends. It’s a wonderful world we live in!
I love black-capped chickadees. Their distinctive songs are the two-note descending major second and “chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee”. They fly around in happy little groups in the dead of winter, impervious to gloom and cold.
In another corner of my neighborhood, there is a robust icon of Milwaukee: Champion Chicken.
Reflection and interior images
The delivery van
I’m not sure there’s a point to this post. Sometimes I just like to look at the juxtaposition of human stuff and non-human stuff on this planet because it brings up some questions and some emotions. Yeah, we ate their food. It’s very close to Steve’s mom’s house, so she treated us to lunch after we shoveled for her. It was tasty and greasy. I hadn’t had fried chicken in a long time. Steve remembers frequenting this place throughout his childhood. He has an appreciation of American kitsch and collects/recycles/sells it online. Is it history? Is it eyesore? Is it embarrassing?
What do you think?
“Now is the winter of our discontent/ made glorious summer by this sun of York…” – first line of Shakespeare’s play Richard III
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Why is winter associated with Macchiavellian plots? (I have no answer.)
What do you call an icicle with two prongs? A bicicle.
What do you get when you photograph a bicicle from inside a screened window?
Can you tell my mind is unfocused today? Wander with me, if you like…
I’m not the type to rush outdoors and start shoveling in a snowfall. I stay inside until it stops, and then I wait to see how much will melt off the driveway and sidewalks all by itself. Often, someone else has already shoveled by the time I get out. Not very Macchiavellian of me at all.
Squirrel tracks on the garage roof
Stone-faced, pondering, feeling the weight drip slowly down the back of my neck, one cold drop at a time. I’m moody today.
Steve and I have been talking about concepts lately. We humans think conceptually, like it or not. Words, thoughts, concepts and the associations they suggest invariably bring with them emotional reactions and suffering. Trying to leave concepts behind, or to do without them somehow, is what “enlightenment” points to…I think. Maybe it’s not so much trying to eradicate them as it is to acknowledge their fabrication and refrain from investing them with a lot of meaning or credence.
The most troubling concept for me is death or mortality. I have huge emotional associations with that concept that do tend to exert a lot of influence on me. And yes, this causes suffering. I suppose I can say that I come by this honestly, having had both my sister and my husband die at my side during my lifetime. Consequently, I often feel the weight of a burden hanging around my head and shoulders, casting a shadow over my footsteps, causing me to be slow and rather plodding instead of eager and light on my feet. You might call this a certain level of pervasive depression. I find that, as I get older, I am more circumspect, less enthusiastic, and can easily convince myself out of an adventure. I can never dismiss the danger of death with a casual “Oh, that’ll never happen to me!” Instead, I tend to think: Why bother? What’s the point? Why start anything now, with the end so near in sight? That kind of thing.
Let me direct your attention to Exhibit A: Stephen Hawking.
As many of you know, Dr. Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday today. When he was 21, and shortly before his first marriage, he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and told that his life expectancy was about 2-3 years. “Why start anything now?” was a question that occupied his thoughts to some extent as he wrestled with the idea of starting his doctorate. Wikipedia reports that the turning point came with his marriage. “When his wife, Jane, was asked why she decided to marry a man with a three-year life expectancy, she responded, ‘Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather short life expectancy.”‘
We all still have a rather short life expectancy. None of us has a guarantee on the next minute. What do you do with that concept? “Refrain from investing (it) with a lot of meaning or credence.” What do you invest in? Your passion. Your bliss. That’s what Stephen Hawking did. The speech he would have delivered today in person included this admonition: “Remember to look up at the stars, not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”
I took a walk along the Ice Age Trail at dusk. Driving home, I asked Steve to pull over at a cornfield so that I could look up. Here’s what I saw:
And this is just with my own myopic vision through some vari-focal glasses and a point and shoot digital camera. I am curious about my experiences. I am curious about how I think about them. In the end, though, I think I want to concentrate mostly on being aware of being alive.
We have been experiencing some very unusual weather for January here in Wisconsin. We have no snow, and it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, we often get what I call a “January thaw”, but this year, it’s been all thaw and no freeze. I worry about the polar bears further north trying to adjust to these conditions. And while I’m sure that climate changes are part of the natural process, I can’t imagine that 7 billion people aren’t having an impact on this.
I did another training day at the Nature Center. We were learning about winter tracking. Well, there isn’t any snow to see tracks in. But there’s mud and other evidence that critters are alive and well, even in winter. I like the fact that Wehr Nature Preserve is a “passive recreation” area. That means that we don’t allow jogging, biking, skiing, snowmobiling, or pets on the trails. There are plenty of other places for that. Believe it or not, though, my most exciting animal encounter yesterday happened at dusk at a city park, right near a noisy train track and a major through road. In the stream by the sidewalk, this muskrat was heading toward his home with a bit of a root in his mouth.
I snapped this picture as he headed under the footbridge where I was standing. On the other side, he swam about 8 more feet away and then disappeared under the water with a flip of his tail. The underwater entrance to his burrow must have been nearby. I was so excited to see him with his vertical tail rudder, just skimming happily through the stream!
And then, the sky….I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
On a night like last night, I could well imagine setting off on a camel to follow yonder light just because its luminescence compelled me. It invites me to slow down and enter a silent world, removed, far off. The traditions of the ancient festivals of Twelfth Night and Epiphany support an opportunity to view the world differently, upside down, where God comes in and shakes up our status quo, socially, politically, theologically. Things are not as we suppose they are. They are always changing, always new and more mysterious than we can fathom. Time stands open for us to feel a great discovery. “Aha! There! I see it!” The great challenge is then never to put that experience into a box, or build a booth around it, a tabernacle or edifice. Be stupefied and humbled forever. And keep your eyes open for the next epiphany.
I enjoy feeling like a little kid. Doing my training at the Nature Center affords me to opportunity to look wide-eyed and ask questions, blurt out associations that spring to mind, and sometimes just be the smart alec in the front row. I find myself pointing at things for the rest of the day, going “Oh! Look at that!” The world is amazing. So, I’m just going to post some photos today as my way of poking you in the shoulder and saying, “Lookee, lookee!”
Guess what we learned about at the Nature Center? Winter camouflage. The short-tailed weasel becomes the ermine in winter. He gets to change his name as well as his coat.
They're smaller than I thought, about 6 inches without the tail.
From my bedroom window, I can watch the sun set at about 5pm each evening. Last night, we got some intense colors. I wish I had a better camera. I’d set up a tripod…maybe on the porch roof, looking west, and do a long exposure.
I found this poor Canada goose just off the sidewalk of a church. I wonder if he fell from the sky or tried to land on the parking lot. There’s no open water anywhere in the vicinity.
We ask our 3 year old class what the colors of winter are. I always think of blue: sky blue, ice blue, pale blue.
And in the “they just don’t make ’em like they used to” category…
I’m going to go take my inner 4-year old outside again. The sun is still shining, and we have very little snow. Carpe Diem!
With apologies to Dr. Seuss for stealing most of his title, I am reminded of taking my kids for a tour of my neighborhood on Christmas afternoon. I love just walking outside with a camera, or even without, and simply noticing all the absurdity of life. There’s some weird stuff out there! The most bizarre neighborhood sighting appeared the week before Christmas. I was walking to the market to buy groceries, when around the corner and very fast, a white car approached with something pinkish sticking up out of its roof. I thought maybe it was some helium balloons. It got closer and slowed down, and I realized that it was a large, inflated, vinyl doll with enormous balloon boobs rising from the sun roof of the compact car. I was too mesmerized by the plastic flesh to look at the driver’s face, but he was slowing down right near me. I wondered if this was a threat. Suddenly, I heard a man’s voice growl “AAAaaarrrrrrgh!” and the car pulled into the driveway that I was just crossing. I walked on, blinking, and supposed that he was voicing some kind of frustration at having been delayed entry onto his property. Of course, my thoughts then went spinning into all kinds of fiction scenarios that would create a plausible story to go along with the encounter. An embarrassing office gag gift? A desperately horny bachelor? Who knows. I shake my head and smile.
Then there’s the lady with the fur coat and the Cocker Spaniel. She saw me & Steve and my four guests approaching and once more issued her warning, “He’ll jump on you!!” We waved. We’d been warned before. Up the street from her is a pair of garden lions sizing up their concrete casing.
Does this make me look fat?
Further south, I found this friendly front door.
"No Soliciting"
And close to the park, this possum in the road.
Not just playing
Down by the railroad tracks, we found a pile of rusty spikes. Steve pocketed one as a souvenir for our “museum”.
Like looking for a needle...
He was going to pick up another souvenir, but he found it hard to lift.
Another neighbor had this parking meter in his driveway. Do you suppose there’s any money in it?
Usually the ducks on the pond swim away when I approach. This time, they made straight for us. I think they were hoping we’d brought bread crumbs. I felt bad that we’d eaten two ducks the night before and didn’t offer anything to the survivors.
So, while I’m hiking around trying to burn off my holiday calories, I look around for visual treats. Eye candy is non-fattening.
scillagrace 