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Weekly Photo Challenge: Extra, Extra

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The Weekly Photo Challenge prompt posted today says: “This week, share a photo that has a little something extra: an unexpected visitor, or a tranquil landscape with a splash of color. A lone carrot in a sea of peas. Draw us in with a humorous detail, or find a photo with an added element that makes it an image only you could capture.”

Extra(If you click on the photo, it should open in a larger window for a more panoramic view.)

The significance of this photo has many levels.  Someone just visiting this blog for the first time might see a nice composition of natural scenery and a person enjoying it.  Very pleasant.  Someone who knows this blog a little better might recognize the person as Steve, my partner, who shows up in many of my photos.  Someone who knows my history might recognize the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, opposite my grandmother’s beach cottage where I spent many childhood summers, and understand the sentimental attachment I have to this particular body of water.  Only Steve & I know the thought that prompted him to sit in this place, the person he is memorializing as he pauses on our walk.  The invisible figure in this photo is Steve’s father, Stanley. 

I never met Stanley.  He died one month before I first encountered Steve.  I have been introduced to him many times in concept and story, however.  Stanley was a gentle person, a father who did not assert his authority or enforce many rules.  Steve sometimes describes him as “passive resistant”, but his assessment is one of understanding and acceptance rather than judgment.  Stanley enjoyed going slowly through life, enjoying simple pleasures and quiet places.  He worked many years in the US Postal Service and traveled with his family in his own whimsical way.  Taking a cigarette break was a frequent excuse to absent himself from the social gathering at hand to enjoy a peaceful moment.  When Steve saw this bench along the nature trail at Kohler-Andrae State Park, he said, “This is just the kind of place my father would like.”  He sat down.  I walked down the path to allow him some private time with his dad, and snapped this photo. 

Happy Father’s Day, Stanley.  Thanks for being the person you were and for all you did to make Steve the person he is.  Well done, sir.  

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Room

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Room….and room enough.  How do you make space in your life, for yourself, for your dreams, for another person? 

Scholar & Poet

How do you create warmth and comfort and interest? 

room dining

Is that just about outer atmosphere, or is the inner condition of your soul the place from which an invitation to abide emanates? 

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Isn’t that what “room” is all about?  A place to abide, be it contained or uncontained. 

room tent

And what is abiding?  To me, it’s more than living…it’s living in peace. 

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I want to abide — in my house, in my work, in my life, in the world — in peace. 

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

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Split-Second Story

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StoryThe photo challenge for this week invites us to share a photo that captures an entire story in a single frame.  Here is my interpretation. 

And what is the story?  Is it merely a story of kids going to the zoo?  Does the story that you see here have something to say about animals, including the human animal?  Something about conservation?  Something about family entertainment?  Something about cages and behavior?  Something about connecting to other life forms?  Something about curiosity?  Whose curiosity — the child’s or the lion’s?

I always have mixed feelings, some very strong, that arise when I visit a zoo.  Sadness.  Respect.  Appreciation.  Embarrassment.  Regret.  Awe.  The story is pretty complex, and there are many characters.  When we get caught up in our own narrative and forget that there is more than one, we limit our compassion, our awareness. 

It’s interesting to overhear what mothers and teachers tell their children about the animals behind the glass.  “Oh, look.  There’s the Daddy lion and the Mommy lion and they’re doing _______!”   Are you sure that’s what they are and what they’re doing?  Have you projected your own story onto them?  Do you often do that and teach your children to do that?  What might you learn if you tried to look at their behavior through unbiased eyes? 

You see, this story gets pretty complicated.  It’s worth looking into.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Twist

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“Twist” is filthy with meaning: it’s the unexpected, it’s surprise, it’s even an amazing ice cream choice. What does “twist” mean to you?

Being a bibliophile, I immediately think of a plot twist, the kind that makes you tingle with pleasure in the last chapters of the mystery novel you’re reading.  “Wow!  I never saw THAT coming!”  Such delight.  I did find an appropriately twisty photo that I snapped while hiking around Lapham Peak State Park in early spring.  We were looking for lichen, on a whim, and found ourselves outside the warming house near the skating pond.  I suppose they use that building for winter events, family-oriented programs that might include a craft project or something, because I happened upon this item posing as a lingering patch of snow in the leaf litter….

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A plastic snowflake.  Natural….but not.  It made me laugh.

 

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

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Art

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“Art is the proper task of life.” — Neitzsche.

What is Art?  Who gets to define it?  Who gets to make it?  Do we delegate this activity to those trained and proven in convention or do we allow that any human has the privilege to create, to explore, to juxtapose materials and images and sounds and actions and ‘stuff’ of any description into something unique?  And do we recognize that the miraculous gift of this activity is not merely the product to be admired, but the process that transforms?  Have you been changed by Art, as a creator and as a consumer?  Do you disqualify yourself from the role of artist?  Is it fear that keeps you from it?

I admire people who engage in “the proper task of life”.

Art

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Weekly Photo Challenge: On the Move

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“On the move” in an accelerating society with handy pocket-sized digital cameras may manifest in a blur of city lights and speeding vehicles.  That’s not my style.  I don’t have a smart phone, and my favorite mode of transport is my own two feet.  Slowing to a stop on a trail to snap a photograph of my companions and surroundings is my way of depicting my life, my movement.  “I am the joy in change and movement” is Steve’s self-expression of identity.  I delight in putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward at a pace that allows awareness, self-control and grace.  “Walk with me” is an invitation to a deeper experience of moving with life, apace with the planet.  For a truly masterful illustration of this theme, visit Steve McCurry’s blog titled “One Step at a Time” here.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Spring!

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I brought my camera out today on a trip to Horicon Marsh Wildlife Refuge, but I didn’t take a single picture.  Spring here in Wisconsin meant barely 50 degrees, windy and overcast.  Although the sight and sounds of sandhill cranes and Canada geese and red-winged blackbirds were quite satisfying, I missed the sun and wildflowers that I’ve seen by this time in previous years.  *sigh*  I remembered that 5 years ago on this date, Steve & I were taking a wildflower class through the McHenry County Conservation District.  We learned to identify all kinds of woodland spring flowers like anemones and violets and jack-in-the-pulpit and May apples.  Haven’t seen but one little anemone this year.  Here she is:first wildflower

Brave little Buttercup!  Do tell your friends that it’s almost safe to come out.  I will wait for them.  🙂

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Letters

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Letters and symbols, icons and shorthand. We use them to convey meaning, experience, fact and story to create a reference.  Weave several together, and you have history.  We’ve created these continually throughout time, and have become so prolific at it that most of us have begun to filter out these symbols habitually.  We don’t bother to slow down to read signs.  We delete pop-up messages and junk mail.  We are inundated and overwhelmed with letters all day long and hardly think about them.  What if we focused in on one letter, one symbol, and let it represent an entire text, like the medieval scribes did with illuminated manuscripts?  RThis illuminated letter represents my daughter Rebecca’s first Christmas in 1989.  What kind of a history does this describe?  That there once was a mother who commemorated her child’s first Christmas by making a special ornament.  She decorated a tree with it every year for 20 years.  The child grew up, her father died, and she moved away from home.  The mother stopped celebrating Christmas, but she gave her daughter the special ornament to keep.  Soon the daughter had her own house and her own Christmas tree.  She decorated the tree and invited her mother to come celebrate with her.  Her mother was pleased to see the ornament hanging in just the right place, so she took a picture of it.  The End.