Tag Archives: photography

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate

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The first thought I had about this Weekly Photo Challenge word was of Simon Schama in “The Power of Art” DVD describing Bernini’s sculpture “Ecstasy of St. Teresa”.  The delicate touch of an angel, the intense and spellbound concentration of presence, distills the vulnerability of human existence.  It is a very spiritual moment of intimacy in which the soul is liberated and comes to the surface.   Bernini illustrates it masterfully in his sculpture.  I have not photographed the sculpture, nor have I seen it, even though I have been to Rome.  The best I have to offer is this shot, taken one luxurious morning at a historic hotel in West Virginia.  Yes, those are my legs. 

delicate

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons

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Changing Seasons is this week’s theme, but  Nature is always changing, and the parameters we use to describe a “season” are artificial.  I would imagine that any nature photo would depict change in some way, so I am anticipating a lot of cool nature shots will be hitting the blogs this week.  Yippee!  I do have one to share, taken last February as ice was melting at Wehr Nature Center.  Spring arrived very early in 2012.  Climate change is noticeable here in Wisconsin, as it is in many parts of the globe.  How do you live with change?  Happily accepting and learning from it?  Resisting and avoiding it?  Oscillating on that spectrum somewhere?  It’s always interesting to observe myself when change manifests.  The challenge for me is to be gentle and not judgmental in that observation. 

I have another picture to share, but I can’t post it except in words.  Late last night, I heard the call of a Great Horned Owl outside.  It was the second time in a week that I’d heard it.  Steve had heard it a few days ago and called me in to his office to listen.  I thought at first it was the hoot of my own breathing in my head as I grew quiet to listen.   Then, unmistakably, a pattern emerged.  I looked up the audio track on the internet to identify what kind of an owl it was.  We went outside to look.  It was coming from west of our house, but a street lamp shone in the mid distance making it impossible to see anything in the trees in that direction.  Last night, I heard the sound again from the bedroom.  I looked out the east window at the top of the stairs and saw a silhouette in the tallest bare tree in the neighborhood.  It looked like a huge cat with pointed ears, bunching and stretching way up in the tree.  The cloudy night sky reflected the city lights just enough to show an outline.  The wavy old glass, dirty and screen-covered, made it even more difficult to make out, even with binoculars.   But there he was, large and spirit-like, hooting in the night air.   I knew this mystery could not be captured on film, so I resolved to keep it in my head and share it in story. 

changing seasons

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Wehr Have You Been?

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Yesterday, I returned to the Wehr Nature Center where I had volunteered as a trail guide for their school programs before I got a job as a historic interpreter.  It was good to see the place again, the furry and scaly and feathered and leafy friends as well as the humans.  I was helping sell snacks for their Homemade Holiday event.  Families bustled about creating holiday decorations and cookies throughout the building, while a moist, gray blanket of fog settled warmly outside.  When the activities were over, I grabbed my camera and headed out for a walk around the lake.  Dusk crept up, and Canada geese honked loudly from surface to sky, jockeying for shelter for the night.  It was as if I was looking at an old friend wearing an expression I’d not seen before.  Some things had changed: new fences were in place.  The duck blind at the edge of the lake had been repaired.  I felt like we’d both been out of touch for a while.  I sat down on a bench to renew our acquaintance. 

December silhouette

December silhouette

Old and new

Old and new

Wehr

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

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I do a lot of reflecting in my mind.  Every so often, I also do it with my camera.  This week’s photo challenge prompts me to share a few shots.  It’s not coincidental, probably, that my reflections show the natural world off some man-made surface.  A window.  A puddle in the pavement.  How often do you feel that you’re looking at real life through the rear-view mirror?  What is it that keeps you from turning fully around and facing it head on? 

reflections

reflections 2

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Cyber Monday

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Scholar & Poet Books is the online book business that Steve & I run from our home.  We shelter books that we have rescued from Good Will, library sales, church sales and rummage sales.  We clean them up and put them up for adoption on Amazon, Alibris, ABE Books and eBay.  We find new homes for old standards, eclectic oddities, and arcane tutorials.  Pulp fiction with vintage cover art, lots of spiritual topics, Christmas and cookbooks and CDs and children’s books…you name it, we probably have it or something related to it.  So, if you’re in the mood for some cyber shopping today that supports the U.S. Post Office, a small business, and the non-electronic world of all natural BOOKS, you can browse our collection through this link.  We have a 5-star rating, but neither of us has a Facebook account.  If you like what you see and want to share the link with your friends, though, we would be very pleased!  Happy hunting, bookworms!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful

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Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!  It’s Steve’s favorite holiday, and we’ve eaten turkey for the last 3 dinners.  First, it was the 20-pounder I cooked for us and his mom, aunt, sister and brother-in-law.  That occasion included a lot of cleaning up and rearranging books so that the book business didn’t take over the dining & living room.  The result of that work is being able to provide a comfortable place for people to gather, relax, feast, listen to music, and converse.  Holding a safe space open for life to unfold is a responsibility that I willingly accept, and I am thankful that I have figured out how to do that with the resources available to me.  I am very thankful for my partner and for the home that we have made together.  The day after Thanksgiving, we went down to visit my children in Illinois.  With all 4 of them, plus my daughter’s boyfriend and her godfather, we made 8.  She cooked another turkey and we brought our leftovers to share for this second feast.  I am thankful for my children, for the unique and wonderful people they are and for the fact that I have a healthy, happy relationship with each of them.  Yesterday, we drove home, past Glacial Park where we had our first date, back to our clean and tidy little duplex apartment.  Steve went back to work, I took a nap, and later fixed some more leftover turkey for supper.  Oh, but just before that, something else happened.  I had a good cry.  You see, my oldest daughter went shopping on Black Friday and bought…a wedding dress.  All by myself, back at home, I put on a Louis Armstrong CD, “What A Wonderful World”.  I felt happy and lonely, missing her father who died in 2008.  I wrote a sentimental bit of poetry, drank some vodka & cranberry juice, and let it flow.  Life moves and changes and goes on.  We are the bearers of our own memories, the crucible of our own journeys, and no one else shares that responsibility with us.  That can feel very lonely sometimes, but it also feels satisfying.  I am filled with the weight of my life and still have room for more.  For that, I am especially thankful.

Conversation

 

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Special Photo Challenge: Inspiration

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The WordPress Daily Post sent me an interesting challenge: “For this special mid-week photo challenge, we want to see portraits of you doing something that inspires you to blog.”  The challenge for me is that I am rarely in a photo, as I’m usually the one behind the camera!  However, I found a selection of 5 photos that may serve this purpose. 

The theme of my blog is “Striving to live gracefully in my 50th year.”  I began it on my 49th birthday, and its purpose was to give me a vehicle for sharing my journey toward maturity in writing and pictures.  I find inspiration for growth all around me.  These pictures illustrate just a few examples.  Here is a self-portrait of me wearing the corset that was part of my costume as a historic interpreter.  That job inspired many posts about history, lifestyle, and preservation.  Here is a picture of me with my father before he died of Alzheimer’s disease.  I have met others who are caring for a parent with dementia through this blog, and questions of facing mortality, change, loss and frustration with grace have inspired many posts and comments.  Here is a picture of me hiking in Zion National Park.  Nature inspires me and demands my maturity every day.  How are we to live in harmony on this planet with all other living and non-living things?  Here is a picture of me with my children and my partner and other members of Team Galasso setting out on a walk to raise funds for the American Diabetes Association.  My husband died almost 5 years ago from complications of diabetes, namely heart disease.  The process of grieving his death and parenting our children drives much of the writing which finds its way into my blog.   And finally, here is a picture of me beside a campfire with an abandoned lamb who is dying of starvation without its mother.  It illustrates the compassion that inspires me to blog, to connect with humanity through words and photos, to face the reality of our common suffering without looking away, simply to be present in the world, aware, and alive.

Me and Dad, in the final stages of Alzheimer’s
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Hiking in Hunting Season

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It was a quiet Sunday along the Ice Age Trail…until the Packer’s football game ended.  “Blaze orange” jackets and shotgun blasts began to add noise mid-afternoon.  Steve and I are both creeped out by the gun culture.  Not that we don’t acknowledge the usefulness of procuring food and enjoying exercise.  The violence that these weapons invite seems to us completely unnecessary.   Is that an integral part of “hunting”?  Why is hunting a social norm in the Midwest?  I don’t remember fall being a time when people went hunting when I lived in California…they were mostly anticipating ski season.  Anyway, here’s what I shot on my excursion:

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Green

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Like Kermit says, it’s not easy being green.  It’s not easy building green, either.  My son has a degree in Construction Management and is interested in green design.  He’s having a hard time finding an entry-level job in this field, but it seems like a very useful career in the long run.  7 billion human beings generate a lot of construction; we need to be wiser about how and what and where and when we build because it makes a huge impact on our environment.  That’s common sense.  What does it look like when that is taken into consideration?  It takes time.  It takes money.  It takes intelligence and skill.  So, “forget it” is the conclusion many construction companies take.  Fast, cheap and easy…up goes another WalMart with a parking lot the size of an inland lake. 

I’ve visited two LEED certified buildings here in Wisconsin.  (click on the links to read about their energy-saving and environmentally responsible features) The Schlitz Audubon Nature Center was certified on the Gold level.  It houses a pre-school, among other facilities.  The Aldo Leopold Legacy Center was certified on the Platinum level.  Built where Leopold died while fighting a brush fire, it houses office and meeting spaces, an interpretive hall, an archive, and a workshop organized around a central courtyard.  I took some pictures for my son at the Aldo Leopold Center, and this prompt is the perfect opportunity to post them and share!

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You Know It’s November When…

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The temperature drops 30 degrees overnight.  Oh, but we were warned, so we went out to embrace the front, the wind howling from the south, still warm.  The clouds gathered in the valley, the sky darkened, the weeds shuddered…very gradually, drops began to fall.  It rained all night.  This morning, I went through the house pulling the glass panes down over the screens in all the windows.  The furnace rumbled to life every few minutes.  The trees are mostly bare.  It is late fall at last and winter is just around the corner.  I dearly wish I had a fireplace or woodstove…