Tag Archives: postaday

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Eerie

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The most eerie place in town is the abandoned poor farm, insane asylum, and tuberculosis sanitorium on the Milwaukee County Grounds.  Even more eerie, this place is now in development and the largest chunk of green space we had is now becoming a Technology and Innovation Center (read: big, modern buildings and roads).  My blog post and photos of this place can be found HERE.  Sample photos:

011007

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Horizon

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Wisconsin horizon

Wisconsin horizon

Ever since I was a young girl, I have been enamored of “rolling hills” and farmland.  My third grade class studied farm machinery and went out to the plains of Illinois to see a farm.  It was nice, but when I caught a glimpse of Kentucky and Iowa on a family trip that summer, I raved about the “rolling hills”.   Now I am living up in Wisconsin, where ice age glaciers left deposits across most of the state in landforms known as moraines, kames, drumlins, and eskers.  I am in heaven when I venture west from the city of Milwaukee and wind my way around farms nestled between these ancient hills.   I am planning to aim toward this horizon more intentionally in the future.  Steve & I are hoping to move next year to a more rural village and live a simpler, slower life.  May we all reach our desired horizons before the darkness comes!

P.S. to enjoy this horizon in a wider view, just click on the picture!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You

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I have always identified with autumn colors.  My eyes are brown and green, flecked with gold.  My hair is a sort of light brown with golden strands that catch the sunlight.  I was a true blonde until my late teens when I began to shun the California sun for indoor time with my studies.  My sister nicknamed me “Golden Girl”.  I have never colored my hair and have only one gray one (which I pluck when it gets more than an inch long!).  I love to stroll the green spaces where I live, and I get a little uneasy in a plane when all I see below are dusty expanses.  Green is my go-to color.  My mother never liked green and made pronouncements about why it was “bad” for a kitchen, for clothing, for just about everything except plants.  I grew up revering my parents’ opinions, and learning to develop my own style is something I’ve come into rather late, I think.  Sorry, Mom.  I WILL wear green and decorate my indoor space with it liberally!  This picture reflects a wonderful tapestry of fall colors, with a blue sky for background and a towering church which seems like it is being overtaken by vegetation.  This is also me: my monumental Christianity is slowly being eclipsed and colored by a more prominent display of natural life.  This is the hue of me:

Holy Hill

Holy Hill

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Infinite

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Happy Columbus Day!  As it’s a federal holiday, United States Postal Service workers got a day off, so Steve & I went on a 7-mile hike on the Ice Age Trail around Holy Hill.  The air was crisp and sunny; the leaves were resplendent, and I couldn’t have been happier to be outside with my favorite trail partner.  We’ve missed this in our recent life and are making plans to change our lifestyle so that slow walks in nature are given priority again.  We talked about the process of awareness and making decisions.  We can do better.  This is an infinite process, but it’s not about the results; it’s about the journey.  The climb.  The progressiveness.  “Pointing the canoe” and paddling toward your values – like integrity.  I am dedicated to giving it my best shot.  And here’s my favorite of the day – very fitting for the theme, I think:

infinite

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus

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Focus.  Concentrate.  What is important?  Who decides?  And what about the other stuff?  Again, photography acts as a metaphor for life.  How do you get the experience of your own powers of creation?  Make decisions, make art, and you know that you are making a universe.  Then, unmake it, and you’ll know what you can control and change.

Is the glass half empty?  Half full?  Is the glass solid or as liquid as its contents but moving at a different speed?  Am I half done with my life or beginning a new day?  Are the things that exist only in my memory real or not?  If they exist in my memory, have I lost them? 

I had a birthday on Wednesday, and a good cry on Thursday.  The quiet, summer afternoon transported me to another time and place.  My husband was alive, snoring in the Lazy Boy in my living room.  I had a living room – a full house with 4 bedrooms.  My oldest daughter was in her room, reading children’s books.  My son was in the yard playing with a next door neighbor.  My two youngest daughters were entwined on a bed, thumbs in their mouths, damp curls encircling their sleepy heads.  It seemed so palpable…and so untouchable.  Never again; though, yes, it was.  Once.  LOSS loomed in my brain.  A word I envisioned; I’d conjured it like the scene of that composite day.  When I focused on it, I was awash in gut pain.  It was powerful.  Over moments, the focus softened.  Its power faded.  It became a muted background of warmth, of subtle longing, a wistful smile.  There are other things in my life.  Some embryonic, some ripening.  That previous life is like the green light of a summer day.  It is there, all around.  It is not in focus, though.  It is enough.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: One Shot, Two Ways

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This photo challenge is actually quite a useful meditation on perspective.  I had thought about my options in taking up this challenge, ranging from skipping it altogether because it’s not an obligation, to spreading it out over a whole week to give me time to find something I love dearly enough to photograph it on purpose.  I had thought about visiting the place where Steve & I had our first date, Glacial Park, while on my way to visit my kids back in Illinois.  That is a place dear to my heart, and closer to being worthy of Jeff Sinon’s incredible nature photos of New Hampshire (I’m a big fan and follower.  Do check him out!).  But it would mean not posting until at least a few days from now.  I browsed around the Internet for a while and lit upon a few threads that interested me.  What is it that catches my attention?  Perspective.  I read a bit about Marfan syndrome.  Ever meditate on how perspective changes quality of life and the level of fear you feel about something potentially life-threatening?  I read about an American couple jailed in Qatar under suspicion of murdering their adopted daughter.  The perspective on adoption is quite different in Muslim countries.  How you think and feel about something is altered dramatically based on where you stand.  I began to take that idea closer to home.

My partner, Steve, owns and operates an online book business.  I might consider Scholar & Poet Books to be the “other woman” in our relationship.  I don’t feel about her the same way that Steve does.  To him, she represents his autonomy; she is a huge financial asset, and endlessly fascinating.  To me, she is a dominating presence that crowds me out of closet space and Steve’s attention.  She is also somewhat boring to me, as she doesn’t touch or speak.  But I would like to make friends with her.  I would like a different perspective on her.  So I chose her for my subject. 

I don’t know if you feel you only get one shot at life, one shot at any given problem.  I do know that there are always at least two ways to take it on.  Perspective.  You can get a different one by moving just a little.  It’s well within your range of powers. 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow

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Interesting theme….had to think a bit on this one, but I’ve decided to post a shot that I took during the introductory photo class that I got with the purchase of my camera last September.  Literally the first digital pictures I ever took, foreshadowing many years of happy clicking and editing, right?!  It suits, I think. 

foreshadow

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Masterpiece

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Creating a masterpiece…out of your life.  Making decisions, making meaning, making changes, making love, making sense, making it count, making the most of it.  I dedicate this post to my daughter, Susan, who made a big addition to her masterpiece on Sunday.  Congratulations!  I’m proud of you, dear!

masterpiece

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh

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I so wish I had a photo of someone doing something cheeky, but as I’ve admitted before, I tend to have still life and landscape photos and not much photojournalism-type shots with people in action.  “Fresh! *slap*” is the first thing that came to my mind.  The second is my daughter’s quizzical expression, “What fresh hell is this?” (Which my mother reminds me is Dorothy Parker’s line; Susan lifted it from The Portable Curmudgeon.) Again, a dramatic scene to be pictured.  Ah, well.  Perhaps more boring, but nonetheless colorful, is this collection of purchases from a fall Farmer’s Market.  Enjoy! 

Fresh