Weekly Photo Challenge: Anticipation

December 16, 2016 by scillagrace

One of my favorite Advent anthems I used to sing with our church choir was titled “Anticipation”. It was a jewel of tight 20th Century harmony supporting a beautiful poem whose author I cannot find. It goes something like this:

The sky is black
The dawn is but a promise
and here I wait
impatient for the light.
My dearest friend is coming back
Tomorrow.
Anticipation fills the endless night
and soon the sky will fill with golden sunlight.
The day will break with joy beyond compare,
and I will fly…I will fly…
to meet him in the air.

I haven’t got the music or the lyrics to cite the source, but it haunts me in these long nights of darkness waiting for my dearest friend, The Sun, who warms me and enlightens my soul. Soon we will celebrate the Solstice, the return of the Sun, and days will lengthen steadily. That is a hope and a joy to anticipate!

Weekly Photo Challenge: New Horizons

December 9, 2016 by scillagrace

A New Day dawning…

…in a new place. Since the first of November, I’ve been living on land owned by the Conservation Foundation where I work. However, at the end of the month, my boss tendered his resignation. What direction will the Foundation take going forward? I’m not quite sure. As the only employee there now, I have a lot of work to do. It will be an uphill slog along an obscured path, maybe more like this photo: So, “we’re not out of the woods yet”, but frankly, the woods is where I want to be. That is where new life is pushing up from under the decay. And that’s pretty exciting! So, my resolution: keep practicing conservation of resources and doing no harm, no matter what others around you may be practicing. Live with integrity and love with generosity.

Happy Horizons to all!

Weekly Photo Challenge: RELAX

December 2, 2016 by scillagrace

I can’t help being reminded of a T-shirt my late husband wore. It was commissioned by his barbershop quartet; they wore them together on a barbershop weekend retreat for practicing, hanging around the lake house, and just “chilling” (in Palm Springs). The shirt simply said: RELAX. A lot of the people near and dear to me have been experiencing heightened anxiety – myself included.

November has been a difficult month. To cap it all off, my boss resigned on the last day. My boss and I are the ONLY employees of the Conservation Foundation where I work. And I just moved onto conservation land at the beginning of the month. I have a lot of questions about my local future to add to the bigger questions I have about a global and universal future.

sigh So…what do I do to relax? I go outside. I walk. I watch the trees, the sky, the animals, the sun doing what they do without anxiety, on a larger scale, and with the simple grace of the present moment. It never ceases to be helpful to my mood. So, pull up a bench…and relax with me.

Look closely at the beauty all around, and wonder in silence.

Now, don’t you feel more relaxed? I do.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Tiny

November 11, 2016 by scillagrace

Having recently discovered my camera’s close-up setting, I am having a great time photographing tiny details.

I still find that my camera doesn’t quite depict the way that I see the world — the awareness of the juxtaposition of what’s outside the frame with what’s inside, for example.

And the colors and scope of a sunset and simultaneous moonrise.

Where is the camera that can take in all that my eyes and brain and heart envelope? Non-existent. And that’s good because I’d hate to think humanity could be replaced by technology.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Chaos

November 4, 2016 by scillagrace

Sometimes I think WordPress has a surveillance camera on my life! How else would they know that my world is entirely chaos at the moment while I, in my natural state, am an extremely organized person? It so happens that I’ve just moved home and home business 35 miles away into a new rental. A normal move is somewhat chaotic. Add to that the fact that our home business is an online used book (and music and whatnot) store called Scholar and Poet Books. (Find us on Facebook or Ebay!) In our inventory and in our rental home, we have AT LEAST 25,000 books. Being quite the ambitious, self-sufficient types, we thought we could move those ourselves over a two-month period. We’re also over 50, both of us. And most of those books were in the attic, 3 flights of stairs up from the curb. Long story short, we had to hire professionals to help us pack up and move the last 285 boxes of books, each weighing roughly 50 lbs. Now all of that is in our new home, and we’re unpacking and organizing. Another yuuuuge task. sigh But our new place is gorgeous, a ranch-style house with only one flight of stairs (down to the basement), on land owned by the Conservation Foundation for which I work. I am not complaining! I’m just sharing what a bit of chaos is like — interesting, challenging, exhausting, stimulating. Here’s a gallery of our old place:

Scholar and Poet II

scholar & poet

Weekly Photo Challenge: Shine!

October 21, 2016 by scillagrace

My daughters sparkle and shine far more brightly than their surroundings…but maybe that’s only from my perspective. Here are some shiny photos of them. I can’t decide which I like better: the color or the monochrome. What do you think?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Local

October 14, 2016 by scillagrace

What a coincidence! Here I am packing up my home and home business and getting ready to move to the place where I have a part-time job with a Conservation Foundation. Why? So that I can live locally with the land that I’m working to conserve. And this week’s word is LOCAL.

Living where you work, working where you live, eating what grows on the land where you live, using your energy to shape your life — not extravagantly, not wastefully, but sustainably — is important to me. I think it makes good, common sense. So, here’s a gallery of my office, my new home, and the surrounding area that’s in the land trust.

The Office

The Office

Office Parking lot

Office Parking lot

Prairie and kame

Prairie and kame

Ski Fox Hill Kame

Ski Fox Hill Kame

milkweed

clcf-sign

My driveway

My driveway

gazebo

My new garage

My new garage

Weekly Photo Challenge: Water, Water, Everywhere

October 7, 2016 by scillagrace

“Death Valley is all about water.” So we were told by Jay Snow, the National Park Service ranger, an Okie character with an over-the-top presentation. It’s the lowest point in the country, parts of it falling below sea-level. It would make sense that gravity would bring a lot of water to that place. And it does. It’s just below the surface of the salt flat. Fascinating! Water does not behave in ways we often assume it will. It remains mysterious, a shape-shifter. It goes from warm color droplets…

…to sharp-angled crystals…

…it will eventually dissolve and transform even rock, paper, or scissors.

Water is life, practically the very definition of it. What would we “dew” without it?

It may threaten to destroy us; at the same time, we can’t live without it.

For all of these reasons, H2O commands awe, wonder, reverence. We ought to treat it with a great deal of respect and not tamper with it in its natural state unadvisedly or lightly.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgia

September 30, 2016 by scillagrace

Back in 1997, I self-published a book of poetry called The King’s Gift: Poems and Parables. It contained this one that I titled “Change”:

In autumn, the trees start to sing once again
of the bittersweet mystery of change.
Is it beauty or pain
now attached to my soul?
Is it grief…
…or relief…
…or nostalgia?
In the scarlet and gold,
the blood-red of life’s hold on my heart
and the warmth of its love
mingles memories and years
into afternoon tears
falling softly
…as leaves…
…to the ground.

I feel this way every fall. The change in light makes everything seem altered and thrown back into the past — until my eyes adjust and my brain catches up. Then the brilliance of the season kicks in. I really love Fall for its ability to draw out a range of emotion and hold it, fully aware and unashamed, in its transient environment.

dreamy september

contemplating colors

mono green

off season 2

leaves

Holy Hill

Text and photographs © 2016, Priscilla Galasso. Poetry © 1997, Priscilla Galasso. All rights reserved.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Quest

September 23, 2016 by scillagrace

At this point in my life, I am Over the Hill for sure. The sun is setting – how rapidly is anyone’s guess. Anticipating the unknown sounds like an exercise in futility. Any build-up is likely to increase anxiety. I think what is more important is simply practicing being the character I want to be. I am not on a quest to challenge my mortality, but to be at peace. I am looking forward to moving to a more rural part of the state in a month, on 56 acres of restored prairie that’s owned by the Conservation Foundation where I work. My quest will allow me to spend more time in Nature and more quiet time writing. We’ll see how rapidly that sunset arrives. I’m not looking to jump on any fast trains to get there.