Tag Archives: postaday

Weekly Photo Challenge: Symbols of My Father

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Reposting from July 10, 2015; my dad died 10 years ago on March 19:

Today is my father’s birthday.  He’s been dead for 5 years, but his influence on my life has been incredibly profound.  I look through my photos and recognize him in symbolic images that point to something he represented in my life.  Representation is a well-developed part of human culture.  We use it in language, art, religion, philosophy, identity and so many other ways.  The real challenge we ‘civilized’ folk have is to strip away representations and come face-to-face with actual entities.  My father was highly educated and an educator himself.  His facility with symbol was quite advanced: he was a mathematician and a writer and combined those skills in his career as a Technical Writer.  I am grateful for the symbols I still see that remind me of his life, his personality, his love. 

My photos are valuable symbols to me.  Especially when I can’t access the actual things they represent.  GWHII RIP 2I miss you, Dad.  Rest in peace.

Symbol

Weekly Photo Challenge: Seasons of Love

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Click the link to listen to the song as you read: 525,600 minutes  – how do you measure a season of life?

Whether I measure my life in love,

in sunsets,

Wyalusing State Park

in Truth and the tears I cried, 

photo credit: Josh

photo credit: Josh

or in rain, snow, sun and the way that he died…

photo credit: Susan

…every season has been rich, beautiful and full of Life.  So grateful for the way that is!

Seasons

Weekly Photo Challenge: Life and Art Are One

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Life imitates Art; Art imitates Life.  What’s the difference?  Maybe Life and Art are one and the same or so intermingled that it’s impossible to separate them…like mayonnaise: egg, oil and vinegar bound together in one, smooth shmear. 

Here are two pictures I took on the same day in New Mexico:

Statues in the city; real people in the wilderness.  The fact that I put those photos side by side might say something about life…or art.  They’re blended, see? 

How about this one?

artsy still lifeIt’s a photograph of flowers on my dining room table.  A still life.  Is it still life?  Those peonies were alive, right there in front of me.  I took a picture, which I think looks a bit like a painting.  That’s Art, but it looks a lot like Life.  Our brains tend to blur symbol and substance. Try talking philosophy for a while: the words we use for concepts often supplant the concepts themselves. For example, the sign shows the words The Grand Canyon. Is the Grand Canyon the sign or the landscape behind it? 

I love Art and Life; I love their blurred edges; I love their intermingled perspective. How fortunate to be able to play with both!

(photo credit: Josh)

Life Imitates Art

Weekly Photo Challenge: Time is Change

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There’s no such thing as Time.  It’s not a thing; it is a concept.  It tries to explain why we see change, which is a thing. 

This looks different!  time tree

This difference is a change. Why did it change? Because the tree fell.  When did it fall?  Ah, now we need a concept for that moment and for the changes since that moment.

Leave a messageThis looks different.  This is a change.  Is it about the time?  47 years doesn’t mean much.  The changes mean a lot.  There was a man, a husband, a father, a singer.  Now, there is no man, no husband, no father, no song. 

What about this change?

time OWWIt might look like a change from what you’re used to, but some people see this every day.  No change; no time.

In order to feel a sense of time at all, we need to be able to imagine what something was like before and how it’s changed.

scale 2And then we try to measure the rate of change.  How long did it take for this to become something different?

time caveWe humans get to think about change and time because we have such big, big brains. Other species don’t. That gives us a huge amount of responsibility.  We should be taking that seriously, noticing changes and imagining what the future might be like. 

victory 2In time, we’ll see what changes.  And we’ll know how we’ve participated in that change as well. 

Time

Weekly Photo Challenge: Optimism is a Choice!

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Good things are on the horizon.  There’s a pink dawn behind the frost on my second story window.

optimistic

I feel hopeful that the new day will be fair.

victory 2

I believe we can always try to do better, that we don’t arrive, we practice.

With hard work and perseverance, we CAN clean up a mess and get things in better order.  (I’ve lived here with Steve for 5 years; for the first time, we have all our clothes stored out of sight.)

closet

I believe that ‘obstacles’ and ‘obligations’ are simply the wrong terms for ‘opportunities’.  (My daughter quit her job and went back to college this week!)

optimistic 2

I am an optimist, an idealist, and proud of it!  The glass is waiting; FILL IT UP!

glass

Optimistic

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Alphabet

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A is for Art, B is for Bernie, C is for “Comming Soon”…. and I didn’t follow this prompt to the letter in constructing my gallery. However, it raises some interesting questions, such as:

How many letters are in the Post Office in Embarrass, Wisconsin? 

What does “Recombobulation” mean, anyway?

What do you make of the printed word?

And finally, what will be written on your grave marker?

 

Alphabet

Weekly Photo Challenge: Weight and Gravity

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Things that are not weighty can be significant nevertheless.  What is greater than a seed on the wind for the future of a plant?

weightless 2

What is more important than light that lifts the soul in the dark of winter?

weightless 5

And something as weightless as a feather is essential for a bird to soar.

weightless 4

We are wise to take the ethereal seriously: the death of the canary in the mine, the evaporation of a pond, the butterfly that will not migrate. They tell us vital things.

Vivid

At the same time, we must examine the gravity we feel about death.  Is it really such an enormous thing? It is altogether common and expected.

weight

And even mountains move – eventually.

Battleship Rock NM

The cosmos is forever dancing with the forces of gravity.  The stars are light on their feet; they twirl and twinkle, smiling their whole lives long.  We are made of star stuff.  Let’s lighten up!  After all, what could be more meaningful?

Photo credit: Carol Toepke

Remember this post when you feel like you’re doing too much heavy lifting. 041

Weight(less)

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Circle of Life

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I see life in the miracle of the spherical –arboretum in winter

  of the cycle, the whole, balanced circumference – eye 1

of endings that beget beginnings, the disappearance that creates an opening that begs a new adventure –

natural bridges state park

of gestating generations.

may apple

Life encircles all around.  Literally.

appleMay this year bring you the peace and joy of Life – wherever you may see yourself in the circle.  And thank you for including me in the embrace of your life by your visit!

Circle

Weekly Photo Challenge: Gathering My Group Shots

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I do notice some predominant elements at gatherings with my nearest and dearest: big smiles, big hugs, goofiness and a glass of something.  Looking forward to having more of these…in this year and in the next.

Gathering

Weekly Photo Challenge: Oops! Fun Fails

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Walking along the Ice Age Trail in June can take you along the tops of glacial formations like kames and eskers and drumlins.  It can also take you through kettles and boggy meadows.  Wisconsin in June is often wet.  We are blessed with abundant fresh water in the Great Lakes region. It’s a glorious thing to watch the greening of the landscape each year because of all that water. Things certainly bust out all over here. The tendency to misjudge the depth of water on the path is probably a pretty common “oops” for many hikers. But what a delight to pull off your soggy boots and socks and run barefoot in the new grass!

oops
Oops!