Tag Archives: photography

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Family

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This photo challenge is one of those too-easy ones.  What photographer doesn’t have a picture of his/her family? So, how do I do it uniquely?  Well, the simple answer is that every family is unique, so any photo of my particular family will be unique.  Having already stretched my little gray cells in composing another post this morning (Model Behavior), I’m going to take a pretty direct route on this one.  “My family” could be my family of origin or the one that I built and raised.  In this case, though, I’m going to show you 3 generations of my family.  Three women, to be more specific.  Three brown-eyed eldest daughters.  Three highly intelligent, brown-eyed eldest daughters.  Three creative, well-educated, highly intelligent, brown-eyed eldest daughters…who can cook and knit and make music and converse about practically anything under the sun.  Their accomplishments and credentials are staggering.  I am in awe of them.  And very proud.   May I present: my sister Sarah, my mother, and my daughter Susan.  Sarah’s got a Master’s degree in Anthropology and Museum studies.  My mother has an undergrad degree in English from Radcliffe (now merged with Harvard) and a Master’s in church music (or nearly…not sure if she completed that).  My daughter has a Master’s degree in Linguistics.  They are voracious readers and always have been.  I listen to threads of shared knowledge dance and weave through their conversations, and I marvel at the connections that bridge the generations.  And I realize that even if they weren’t related by blood, they would be related by the experience and consciousness of their humanity.  And THAT is something that makes us all…..FAMILY.

Family

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Model Behavior

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I don’t have a television, so I don’t see a lot of commercials. Still, I find NBA games on the internet and catch a few ads in the process. There’s one for a fried chicken franchise that particularly bothers me. Here’s the set-up: two teenaged kids have made a rare venture out of their rooms to join their parents for dinner. They are still plugged into their media devices and never speak or make eye contact with the camera or their parents. The African-American family sits in the living room with a bucket of chicken on the coffee table. Mom & Dad tell the camera that the chicken is the occasion for them to have this special “family” experience. Dad jokes that if the batteries run down, they might actually have a conversation.

 Sigh. Is this an accurate snapshot of our current culture? Rewind about 100 years.

 I’m reading a book called Nothing To Do But Stay: My Pioneer Mother by Carrie Young. The author describes her life in North Dakota during the Great Depression. Her mother had acquired land as a homesteader, married and raised 6 kids on the farm. Her sisters struggled to become educated and get jobs as school teachers in local one-room schoolhouses. One particularly brutal winter, their parents found it more sensible to drop off the 18-year-old daughter, the teacher, with the two younger sisters at school and let them stay there during the week instead of transporting them back and forth through the snow drifts by horse-drawn wagon. The week turned into months. Fresh supplies were delivered every week, but these 3 young ladies spent that winter relying on their own resourcefulness for their daily life — with no electricity, simply a coal-burning furnace in the basement and a woodstove with one burner in the classroom. How is that possible? I’m sure that life was one that their parents had modeled for years.

 Compare these two snapshots and imagine the changes that have swept through our country. What has “adult living” become? What do we model for our children these days? What skills are being delegated to machines or service companies or ‘experts’ that used to be more universal and personal? Besides modeling tasking skills, how do we model social and moral skills in this decade?

 When more families were farming, children grew up alongside their parents and were incorporated into communal activities. They helped milk the cows, tend the garden, and make the food and clothing they all needed to live. In the 50s, when more families lived in cities and suburbs, Dad would drive off in the morning and work out of sight of his kids all day while Mom would turn on appliances to do the chores around home. The kids learned consumerism. Then the Moms left the house and went into the workforce leaving the kids in daycare. In 1992, someone came up with “Take Your Daughters To Work Day”. That was expanded to include boys a decade later. What was first perceived as a Feminist issue of role modeling was recognized as a parenting void: children had no clue how adults spent their work days.

 Musing about these changes made me consider what my own children had learned from my husband and me. My daughter made a calligraphy sign when she was in High School: “My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it.” (Clarence B. Kelland) She was 23 when her father died. What we intended to model and what she actually learned are most likely two different things. One thing I do know. She did learn to cook her own chicken.

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

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Good Gawd, Y’all!

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Another school shooting hit the news yesterday. The impact seems dull. Repetition has begun to numb my response. The predictable media storm continues, but just as raindrops seem less penetrating after your clothes are soaked, I simply can’t absorb this horror. And that is rather shocking.

 I Googled “List of school shootings in the U.S.” The Wikipedia article’s chronology goes by decade, starting with the 1760s. There is one entry there. The next listing is 9 decades later. Two items there. The narration continues to list shootings for every decade. When we get to this millennium, the bullet points are replaced by a chart. From 2000 – 2010, there are 46 different shooting events chronicled. From 2010 – 2014 (n.b. Not even half a decade!) there are 65, including yesterday’s. And I may have lost count of one while scrolling down through the list.

 Obviously, this storm is escalating. This is a flood. Our country is awash in violence being perpetrated against school children. School children! What can that be about? What madness has overtaken our culture that young people at their studies have become targets? I’m pretty sure it’s not so much about the targets as it is about target practice.

 Our culture has target practice deeply embedded in its psyche and readily available in its entertainment, military and politics. Angry? Take aim. Proud? Take aim. Patriotic? Take aim. Need security? Take aim. Impoverished? Needy? Insulted? Invisible? Defiant? Miffed? Whatever the uncomfortable feeling you have, you can get relief by pulling out a weapon and taking aim at some target. Children in school apparently make a pretty easy gallery.

 This approach is like using the same tool for every situation, no matter what it is. Would you use a hammer to wind your watch or play your piano or punch down your bread dough or crochet a sweater? No. And how did you learn to lay your hands on the appropriate tool for each of these situations? Most likely, at a very young age, you watched someone do it. A role model. Perhaps a parent or grandparent. Someone you trusted, who spent time with you, doing everyday kinds of things.

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 Let’s look around. Where are the role models that are pulling out weapons for every crisis? Where are the role models who are negotiating, discussing, creatively engaging, brainstorming and experimenting with different non-violent approaches? Who are the role models who have multiple tools in their belts and use the appropriate ones for the situation? And violence, what is it good for? Is it ever the best tool for the job?

 And, c’mon, let’s be creative. Why does our entertainment have to follow this unimaginative formula of violence? There are a million other options. There are a million other roles to play. Playing something different will make us smarter, wiser, more flexible, more open, more like children. School children….our vanishing resource.

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

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Relationships: Why U R Doin’ It Wrong

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Steve brought me a book we’d sold. “There are a few light pencil marks in the quiz section. Could you please erase them before we ship this out?” I glanced at the cover. Getting To “I Do”: The Secret to Doing Relationships ‘Right’ by Dr. Patricia Allen.

Oh, dear.

I breathe a sympathetic sigh. I grieve for our culture, for social creatures with neuroses fueled by the media, insecurities about whether or not we will be loved, cared for, valued, mated and saved from personal extinction. Our fears are inflamed, and then ‘experts’ step in to tell us the magic or the scientific formula that will save us. Just take a look at the Yahoo! “Dating Tips & Advice” section: How to Stop Falling for Ms./Mr. Maybe, Happiest Couples, Tips to Get the Love You Want Instead of Settling, Traits Unhappy Couples Have in Common, etc. I imagine it’s big media business. How many of these articles simply recycle the ‘statistics’ from identical studies which probably report varying results? We are in a research culture that strives to control and predict, a desperate attempt to apply a balm to those neuroses that we irritate with obsessive attention.

Let’s take a step out of that arena, shall we? Let’s take the relationship out of the Petri dish and place it back into the organic garden. How do you learn about a growing organism? Attention, observation, action and response. Over time, the bloom becomes less a ‘specimen’ than a personality. It is unique. It is dynamic. It is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It IS. And the more honest you are in your interactions with it, the more you trust it…to be itself.

And where do we find guidance in this garden of real relationships? In stories. There are billions and billions of relationship stories out there. Some are fact, some are fiction. Many of the fictions center around the magical or formulaic as well, but the ones that really inspire are the ones that are singular and sincere. They give us the hope that our own inimitable story may be just as satisfying.

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I have relationship stories of my own, and they are very important to me. I have a yearning to share them, with my children and with anyone else who may be listening. Why? Because I hope that my practice of observing and appreciating the slow unfolding of a delicate bloom will spark the same in someone else, that our posture in relationships will become less that of a victim on the couch, more that of a poet in the garden.

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

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Window

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Windows of opportunity.  Every moment hosts an opportunity, even moments of disappointment, tragedy, and loss.  In each moment, we have an opportunity to choose, to act, to be, to embody…whatever we value.  What do you shine from your windows?

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A Cup of Kindness

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New Year's 2013Today is my mother’s birthday.  She is 79.  She is one of the most positive, enthusiastic, intelligent, and wise women I have ever known.  She continues to inspire me.  A week ago, she moved from her home of 36 years into an apartment at The Meadows, the assisted living facility where my sister and I worked as college students and where my father died in 2010.  She is having an absolute ball collecting stories from the residents, entertaining dinner companions, playing the piano in the chapel and lobby, and making connections within her collage of life.  She says that her Bucket List has been reduced to a Shot Glass List, and she’s grateful and content with all that she has enjoyed.  She told me that she doesn’t ‘make’ New Year’s Resolutions, she allows them to ‘surface’.  She shared that the phrase that is surfacing for her this year is “Live peace; take joy”.  That conversation made me think of what is surfacing for me.  What is surfacing is Shame.  And I’m resolved to do something about it.

I have been thinking about shame for some time.  Listening to Brene Brown’s TED talks on vulnerability and shame has brought about some introspective reflection on my history and patterns.  I was raised by a very authoritarian father, a devout and dogmatic Christian.  He was an intellectual, and my mother very candidly told me last night that although he could understand rationally that our behaviors and social constructs must evolve and change and that they weren’t based in any ultimate reality, he didn’t know how to navigate the emotions involved, and so he would fearfully nail those down into a ‘safe’ corner to protect himself.   What he then communicated to me, his daughter, was that we are all fallen creatures, sinners whose nature it is to be not good enough, and that we couldn’t be trusted, so to be saved, we must follow a carefully prescribed path and check ourselves frequently for deviation.   Our wills are suspect; God’s will is perfect.  My deepest desire was to please my father and to be loved by him, so I became a very compliant child.  And I bought the idea that whatever I wanted was probably not good, or good enough, and that I would fail to be good most of the time.  My best hope was to be obedient, and so I did that to the best of my ability.  I became accomplished in being obedient.  As I grew up and my father became less central in my daily life, I transferred that obedience to God, the Church, my husband.  Finally, after my husband died, I think I took that authority and transferred it to myself, but I ended up carrying out the same message.  Now, I tell MYSELF that I am not good, or good enough, and am likely to fail to be good most of the time.  In other words, I have taken over my dad’s role in shaming myself.

Needless to say, this is not freeing me to take risks, be vulnerable, be creative, be self-determinant or self-reliant.  Instead, it is keeping me in ‘customer service’ when Steve is itching to make me a full partner in a home business (or series of them) so that we can be self-employed and embody the values and lifestyle that WE find important.  How do I make the changes necessary to gain this freedom?  First, I have to stop telling myself that I can’t.  Or shouldn’t.   I have to stop shaming myself.  I have to become aware of the times when I do it, and I have to let go of them.  Like the bubbles surfacing in my champagne.  POP!  “So, here comes that shaming bubble.  I don’t have to analyze it, give it power, or trace it back to someone to blame.  I will just notice it, watch it pop and let it be gone.”  That’s my resolution for this coming year.  Take a cup of kindness, and stop shaming yourself, Priscilla!  Then move on.

I am also posting my blog summary for 2013 today.  I want to give big cyber hugs to my Bestest Blogger Buddies – Helen, Stuart, Jamie, Naomi and Elena.  Thank you for supporting this vulnerable venture and helping me trust myself to create something.  (Something ‘worthy’?  Something ‘good enough’?  STOP.  You don’t need to judge it.  Create something.  And just leave it at that.)

And here’s a sample of what I’ve created on this blog this year.  If you’re new and see something you like, please browse around!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Joy

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“Joy to the world!  All the boys and girls!  Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea!  Joy to you and me!”

I had to wait until after my holiday celebration with my kids to post this contribution.  I knew that there would be plenty of joy to photograph when we got together.  My kids have great, big, laughing faces, exuberance, enthusiasm, and loads of energy…and they always have.  But now that they’re in their 20s, they also have the ability to focus on a serious philosophical conversation and communicate deeply personal insights…for a while, anyway.  The spontaneous laughter, the spontaneous song with harmony, the spontaneous dance around the room – these are part of every Galasso get-together.  Costumes and hats frequently make an appearance as well.  It is really a privilege to be related to these young people because we all genuinely like each other.  We are good, kind, positive, broad-minded folk, to be honest, and I am grateful for all the circumstances that helped that to happen. 

And food!  I have to mention food.  It is such a joy to gather to prepare and eat from the marvelous bounty that sustains and delights.  Wine (in a long-stemmed sippy cup, no less!  Sometimes preschool isn’t so remote, even after you’ve grown up), cheese (truffle gouda & goat cheese, espresso hard cheese), roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and pickled watermelon rind, potato salad with fresh tarragon, broccoli & kale salad with bacon vinaigrette, Mediterranean spaghetti squash with feta and olives, mince pie, and Fireball whiskey bread pudding.  Next morning: creme brulee French toast.  So much tasty!  Very goodness!  Wow!

I wish you all joy and peace in the coming year, and an increasing ability to take joy in every moment of being alive.  Celebration is an attitude that can be part of every single day, no matter what.  I like to remember that.

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Christmas Day 2013

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Thank you, blog followers, for counting the days with me and considering the many gifts that we receive in life. 

May we be filled with gratitude;

may our gratitude transform our spirits;

may all beings be happy. 

From icy Milwaukee, I wish you peace!

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And to close, I simply must share my favorite Flash Mob scene of all time, from the 1970 movie musical “Scrooge”.  I cry happy tears every time I see it and find myself dancing and singing along.  Please click on this link and Enjoy!  I was 8 years old when my father took me to see it in a theater.  When we emerged, a beautiful light snow was falling on the Chicago streets.  Years later, my youngest daughter was cast in a production of this delightful (and musically superb!) show, and Jim and I helped prepare the chorus in rehearsal.  I also got to conduct the band from the orchestra pit for every show, and it was one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve had.  Imagine me waving my arms enthusiastically, caught up in the joy of “Thank You Very Much”.  Thank you all for supporting my blogging efforts over the years.  Your company is a great privilege!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Community

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Community – is that a portmanteau of ‘common’ and ‘unity’?  What is the unifying thing that all life has in common?  Is it the everything particle?  Is it a Divine Source? Would you just call it Life?  Our community home is a beautiful, spinning sphere wrapped in a blanket of atmosphere.  Sounds cozy!  We dance atop this sphere with all kinds of creatures.  A community dance, an every day Festival, a holiday (holy day)…on ice!  Here’s where my stream of consciousness lands:

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Whether you’ve got skis or boots or hoofs or paws or fins or feathers or roots, we are gliding together on a slippery path.  Let’s hold each other up and work together in common unity!

 

 

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Advent Day #10 – Hearing

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And what’s behind door #10 on the Advent calendar? 

Do You Hear What I Hear?

“A song, a song, high above the trees with a voice as big as the sea, with a voice as big as the sea.”

As a little girl in chorus, I loved that Christmas piece.  There was something majestic and homey about the conversation passing from the night wind to the mighty king.  I liked the imagery of the sky and the little lamb and the star with a tail as big as a kite.  I sang it with all the passion I could muster at the age of 9.

Today’s gift on the parade of days in December is hearing.  Sound.  What are your favorite sound memories?  What’s the first thing you enjoy hearing in the morning?  How do sounds change your mood?

Today I woke up to the sound of chickadees outside my window.  The sun was shining through the frost making rainbow diamonds of pink and green.  I tried to take a picture of it, but the colors didn’t come out.  I realized that even when I put my glasses on, the prism effect disappeared.  I Googled “frost” images, and none of them have the colors that I can see with my naked eye.  I wonder if the lens thing destroys the refraction?  Okay, that’s a sight digression.  Sight was yesterday.  Today, I want to concentrate on sound.

It’s funny how you can be totally familiar with a sound and not even know that it’s in your repertoire.  For instance, I can sit upstairs in bed while Steve goes down to the kitchen to make a snack, and I can figure out exactly what he’s fixing, just by listening.  My kids used to hate this skill.  “How did you know that I was doing that?”  Sneaking snacks, tiptoeing out the front door, playing music on your headphones when you should be sleeping, they all have a particular set of sounds.  Even silence.  Silence to a mother with toddlers communicates alarm louder than a French siren.

Favorite sounds from childhood: the ice cream truck (why do they always play The Entertainer by Scott Joplin?) is a cliche.  I’ve got one: the sound of my mother calling us in for dinner with an alto yodel at a major third interval.  I was the most embarrassed kid on the block.  Couldn’t we have had a bell or a triangle or something that wasn’t her voice?  Okay, in all fairness, the sound of her singing Brahms lullaby to me at night made up for that.  “Lullaby and goodnight, with roses bedight (archaic form of ‘bedecked’, I suppose), with lilies o’er spread is baby’s wee bed.  Lay thee down now and sleep, may thy slumber be deep; lay thee down now and rest, may thy slumber be blessed.”  Or her other standard: “Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, shadows of the evening steal across the sky.  Jesus gives the weary calm and sweet repose, with his tend’rest blessings may thine eyelids close.”  “Night-night, d’good girl”, she would always say, kiss me on the forehead and tuck me in before tiptoeing out of the room.

Music; have I had music in my life!  I am a walking encyclopedia of silly camp songs that crop up at the most mundane cue.  I am still learning to be as familiar with “serious music”.  Even after attaining a BA in music, I have to say that I feel I know very little about classical instrumental music.  This is where Steve is educating me.  He began collecting albums as a teenager and can cite off the top of his head how many symphonies, concertos, operas and other works were composed by a plethora of artists.  As a voice performance major, I know more about songs.  I even make orchestral works into songs, mnemonic devises to help me remember the composer.  “Sergei Prokofiev could barely read the treble clef until he was past 47″ sung to Peter’s theme from Peter & the Wolf, for instance.   (I got that from a book, actually.  I didn’t make it up.  But you get the idea.)

White noise.  There’s a scene in Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris” where they tape strips of paper over the air vents of their space station to simulate the sound of rustling leaves.  Noise that makes you feel at home.  The elevated train down the block.  Sirens.  Owls.  Coyotes.  The dishwasher.  I have my own white noise going constantly in my head.  I’ve had it since 2005.  It’s called an arachnoid cyst.  So I am a bit hard of hearing, but not so’s you’d notice, really.  Except when Steve mumbles something in his low register.  “Did I fake a rainbow trout? No?  Oh, ‘did I take the garbage out’!”  I can live with it.

My favorite sounds, off the top of my head:  Susan’s voice saying, “Hiiii, Maamaa!” on the other end of the phone.  The whistle of a cardinal.  A barbershop quartet.  “Unforgettable” crooned by Emily.  Josh and Becca laughing.  The pop of a cork from a bottle.  Coyotes and hoot owls and wind.  Red-winged blackbirds.  The loon at Woodbury Lake.  My mother’s voice.  Church bells.  The bell of mindfulness.  Frogs: spring peepers to be exact.  I hear them every year.  They’re deafening, practically, but I can never SEE one!  It’s a taunt.  One day, I’ll get lucky.

What is music to your ears?  Tomorrow, we’re off to the Lyric again for Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos”.  That’ll be some music.  Then we’re having dinner with Emily at an Algerian crepe restaurant.  Can you guess what the gift will be for that day?