Stacks within Stacks

Photo Sunday's theme is Beach. This shot was taken while backpacking in Washington State last summer. Sea stacks are remnants of harder rock left behind after erosion and wear by the ocean. They make for wonderful photos especially around sunset. Last summer I finally got the family to backpack. My husband has done so in the past but neither of my two sons. We were joined by one of my son's friends and my brother. We all had a good time but only one of my sons got the bug to do it again. Since he just moved to Seattle he will have ample opportunity. I'm jealous. Backpacking from Chicago is not quite so geographically easy. Even though this particular hike was incredibly easy--the only complication was needing to carry all our water the first day--barely 4 miles a day and flat, my 51 year old joints protested mightily. If I ever dream of doing any "serious" hiking, and I do, I will need to get into much better shape. It isn't that I can't "walk the walk"--it is that I need to build up some serious muscle around the major load bearing joints, especially my knees which are feeling their age. Time to get in training.

How I spent my summer vacation

Didn't you just hate those essays? Since I haven't posted since July the topic seemed a place to start anyhow. I got back to sorting through photos from the entire year of 2012. It seems my focus has been elsewhere than on blogging and photography. It is hard to explain. Sometimes these things happen. I wonder if in part I should blame Facebook. It seems as if some of my blogger friends gave up blogging for Facebook and that the blog movement has lost some of its momentum. I feel a sense of loss for that because although FB gives me a place to stay in touch with distant friends and family, blogging is a place where I can express myself anonymously without worrying about what those same people will say or think. I do like FB for the Scrabble though. I claim it will keep my brain young but the recent scientific data shows that exercise is more important than thought for staving off the decays of age. At any rate, I am hereby posting a few shots from my summer vacation which included a brief trip to London and Edinburgh. Hopefully if I keep at it there will be more to follow.

Documentary Photography

I have been making strides in my project for my documentary photography class even though I haven't posted about it to date. I have been documenting a high school biology class at a local school. My inspiration was actually how much my son has been turned on to biology by this particular teacher who seems to love animals and has carried that over into a teaching style that makes learning fun.



The teacher has been most cooperative but I haven't asked if I can use his photo in this blog so I will be sticking to faceless pictures but I will share a few here to see if you feel my enthusiasm as well. Those of you who can't take photos of bugs and snakes will not likely share my enjoyment.



Stay tuned for more in the next few days.

Classy

I started a new photography class. It is only a five week class and already I wish it were longer. The theme is documentary photography which fascinates and terrifies me. I think the fascination is obvious but the fear? We have been assigned to do our own documentary project for over the next five weeks and the instructor prefers (strongly) that it involves people. I wracked my brain for a non-boring project that I thought could fly but have run into my essential shyness. To do this project I have to ask strangers to take their picture and follow them around for a month. Feeling literally shaky I sent an e-mail to the founder of the dance studio my son and I dance with but she hasn't responded. I imagine she is too busy or hasn't seen the note. I need to make some headway on this by Saturday so I now need to come up with an alternative plan. I can't tell you how stressed this is making me feel which is silly and pointless. I know this will be good for me in the long run but I want to hurry back to my pictures of empty buildings, trees and birds.



The pictures I've posted are from our first in-class assignment which was to take a series of pictures in the art center. The specifics were to take 6 pictures, of a wider perspective, a detailed perspective and a person. I even succeeded in getting a person to agree to my photographing him but my near shots came out blurred (I'm still getting used to this 50 mm lens). I do like my one intentionally blurred photo however.

Mail Geek

I feel like such a geek and one problem with being a geek as a kid is that your never get over the trauma of being thought a geek. Wow, did you know you could use the word geek three times in one run on sentence? I have been a letter writer since I was a kid. My grandmother, my favorite person in the whole wide world after my kids, saved my letters because she thought one day I'd be famous and they might be published. What a nice thought. I sure miss her. She used to have my first letter ever, in those giant letters you learned in kindergarten, taped to her closet mirror.
I wrote most regularly to my grandparents in California (at the time I lived in Seattle) and an assortment of letters and cards to other people.
While I lived in Paris in my senior year in college I sent a number of air letters (what ever happened to them?) to friends and family, especially my grandmother who had terminal breast cancer. I couldn't afford many phone calls home and those involved dropping all my loose change into a pay phone until my call ran out and was abruptly terminated. How much life has changed with cell phones, e-mail and Skype. Although I adored being in Paris it was lonely at times and I lived for letters from the States.
I stopped writing, and thereby lost a few friends including the couple of friends I made in France, as graduate/medical school began and I got bogged down in work and later family. Now I have regrets, but what can you do?
I am happy to find like-minded, extremely cool people (unlike me) who are trying to keep the postal service alive and keep the hand written letters moving. Postcrossing, sendsomething.net and some letter-friendly bloggers net some letters and postcards from home and abroad. It sure beats bills and junk mail. It also gives me an excuse to buy odd postcards and the latest US postage stamps.
As to the images I've posted here, they are my thanks to thesnailmailer who enjoys seeing her letters posted and who sent me the above envelope and card which truly deserve being shared. I have to confess, I've never tried Jello-shots--geek that I a--but one good envelope deserves another. Speaking of alcohol, have you ever heard of bubble gum flavored vodka? Now that is really gross. Have a lovely weekend and write lots of letters.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Or, you're never to old to do something new.
Today I changed some light bulbs. I know it doesn't sound like anything to brag about but these were on my car. Sad to say, I've been driving around for months with only one working headlamp on my car. This has annoyed my spouse to no end but not enough for him to get the bulb changed. Last night I was set to win the procrastinator of the year award when the second bulb gave up the ghost. Today being Sunday, of course no one was going to be able to service the car so I took the reins and Googled how to change a car light bulb. Next a search for an open auto supply store with the bulbs in stock and off I went hoping I wouldn't mistakenly buy the wrong product. Then for some time under the hood doing little praying that I wouldn't break something in my car. There were a few missteps--a dropped bulb, fingerprints on said bulb necessitating solvent to clean off the grease (as per instructions), some scrapes and grease on my hands--but things seemed to finally go through for the first bulb. But then the light still didn't work. Assuming I'd misconnected something, I looked more closely at the second light and changed that carefully. Still nothing. Finally, I figured out my mistake--I'd changed the high beams which were working, not the low beams. Feeling very glad no one was watching, I got back to work and replaced the other two light bulbs! Now my car has 4 working lights and I am, despite glitches, very proud of myself. And my family and I can drive to tonight's Super Bowl party safely.
In honor of "in the picture"--this month's theme "write on!" I commemorated the moment on my somewhat battered and greasy hands.

A Piece of Me

Urban Muser has a lovely photography blog and is running a year long self-portrait project. I'm not all that keen on self portraits as I don't like to see myself, ever, in front of the camera, but what can be better self-therapy for camera shyness than posting pictures of myself. Muser started easy anyway with a request for a piece of oneself. This little piece of my came through playing with a mirror and my arm reflected. I kind of like the effect.



Here is another piece of me. The wedding ring was my grandmother's, now mine, and the mirror was my mother-in-law's. It has a warm feeling although the two never met and both are now gone.

The Sketchbook Project

Sketchbook cover

Last summer a touring exhibit came through my local art center. It was called the Sketchbook Project and was a collection of sketchbooks from artists from all over the country (and some international folks too, if I remember correctly). The little books could be checked out and viewed and I just loved looking at and handling them.



I decided with heavy trepidation to try one myself for 2012. The trepidation results from my awareness that I am not talented in the drawing/sketching department and don't want to parade myself as being on a par with the talented folks who will be submitting theirs. On the other hand, there were many styles of sketchbooks and why not? Don't I need to lighten up and live a little? At 50 do I still care if my peers think I'm a dork and a geek? (Answer is, often, yes). So in the light of getting over myself I am submitting my little sketchbook this week (the deadline is the 31st). It will be out there for others to mock, ignore or enjoy as they will.



The theme of my book is Travel with Me. There was a choice and I chose to take my little book along with me to France this summer. As you can see from the pages I'm posting, mine is a cross between journal and scrap book with a few awkward sketches thrown in. I rebound the book and added additional sheets of paper, some from recycled paper items and a few from purchased sheets. At this point, I need to say, "It is what it is" and release it. I'm in the process of putting on the finishing touches and will likely post more scans in the next few days.

Pre-performing

Tonight is dress rehearsal and there are performances Friday, Saturday and Sunday of my local Nutcracker show with me making a cameo as a, gasp, adult in the party scene. More importantly my younger son plays the eponymous Nutcracker. Kudos to him--it is a lot of hard work, especially as finals have started this week and he has a head cold.
I enjoy my minute or two in the limelight, something that comes as an absolute surprise to me. I was the kid who detested the school play but now I've discovered that although I'm a little nervous right before curtain time, I've finally learned not to care so much about how I seem to the audience. One good thing that came with age, I guess.
The picture is of me in my dress. I had to take it home to hem the skirt so I was able to pose in front of the bathroom mirror. For tonight's dress rehearsal I'll look much the same except I'll be wearing makeup (tons) and will remember hopefully to take my watch off! Getting my hair to cooperate into a bun shape is a bit of a challenge! It always has a tendency to escape from all attempts at control. I plan to spray (Aqua Gel believe it or not!), gel, tie, twist and hair net into submission. Kind of like wrestling with a python.
Wish me luck.

UN

I can't believe I've been so UN--my last post was over a month (two?) ago. I've been uninspired, unavailable, uninteresting, unpleasant, unhappy, uninvolved, uninvested, uncool, unintelligent, etc. It is a bit of my annual fall laissez-faire, added to a bit of worry and woe and a bit of everyday ordinary laziness.
So what have I been up to during the past months' brain fog? Playing too many games of on-line Scrabble, reading books, making meals, watching TV, helping my son with Geometry (talk about ancient history for me), a bit of travel to San Francisco for a meeting and starting rehearsals for my annual Nutcracker show. Oh, I almost forgot, I work too. Unfortunately my creative brain took a leave of absence, hence too few photos and no blogging. I hope this will change soon enough. Perhaps this is the day. After my headache goes away.
TTFN.

Without Reservations

Siena, Italy

I just finished reading Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach. It is the story of a nearly year long "sabbatical" she took from her career as a journalist to live and travel in Europe and try to find herself along the way. I saw a lot of myself in the book as I read about her. She was 50 something at the time, her kids had left home and she was coming to terms with being in the latter half of her life.
This has been on my mind a lot of late too. Many existential questions of where do I go from here? On the one hand I think I love my work--note that even there I am losing my certainty. On the other hand part of me wants to "run away from home" and find a new life.
The back to school season leaves me thinking about transitions and empty nests--my oldest has moved into his own apartment near campus and my youngest started high school. In four years it will just be me and my husband, cats, turtle and fish rattling around in a too big house. Even before Alice suggested the idea by her own life choices, I had been thinking about what the next steps will be.
There are all these lists nowadays--50/100/1000 things to see/do/read before you die. I don't need a book to come up with my own list. It is there in my mind, more so when I get itchy feet and need to do something new or challenging.


Paris, France

Ms. Steinbach spends her year of wandering in France, Britain and Italy. She writes concisely as in a series of essays about her experiences of each place she stops, as well as her experience of herself in those places. Not everyone can do what she did--it requires a financial freedom and a freedom from pressing responsibilities that not everyone has. It also requires a degree of courage and spirit of adventure to make the leap.
I'm not likely to make any great leaps until my son graduates high school and heads off to college but I'm dreaming now. I hope I make the right choices for me when the time comes.
But back to the book. I very much enjoyed it. It is a relatively light read--easily accomplished in a couple of days but journeying with the author was a pleasure. It also may inspire me to pick up the works of some of her favorite authors: E.B. White, Freya Stark and Janet Flanner.
What's on your life list?

Outgoing

So, what am I up to? Working, reading, taking photos, dancing, and too much time on the internet. I liked the look of my outgoing mail today so I scanned it for you. Two of the letters are to my son who is away at a camp on wheels--today I think he is in Idaho. The letters will find him in Jasper! What a great place that is. One of the most beautiful parks in the world in my book.
More news to follow.

It's My Birthday and I'll Cry if I Want to.

I'm taking the day off work to play in town in honor of my hemi-centennial. Can't decide quite how old I feel. Depends on the moment. The book is more vintage than I am though.

Here is a quote from Chicago Confidential, by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, c. 1950:
"The actual circumscribed Loop was once hailed as the diadem in Chicago's golden crown. But it became the stone in her gallbladder."

I think I'll go check out the stone and see how bad it really is in 2011. Cheers.

5 years, 1132 Posts

Niagara Falls, 1964

I guess I've been keeping busy. Today was the 5th anniversary of this blog. 1100 plus posts isn't too shabby even if I post less frequently than in the past.
Today I spent several hours scanning old family photos. These are of my in-laws' family so there are no personal memories attached. I don't have my old family photos in my keeping since both my parents are alive but I have become the archivist for my husband's family. I see it also as keeping my sons' legacy for them. Truthfully, I'm the only one in the family with the will to do it anyhow.


(unknown location and person somewhere in Australia)

The unspoken rule is that I rigorously maintain the privacy of that side of the family but I though it would be cool to share a couple of vintage travel shots. These are from Australia and Niagara Falls. The man looking down the edge of the waterfall is an unknown acquaintance. I've posted on Flickr to see if I can find out what fall this is. 2010 safety rules doubtless would not permit one to stand on the edge of this fall and look over. How life changes!


American War Memorial, Canberra, Australia
Memorial is inscribed with the following words:
In grateful remembrance of the vital help given by the United States of America during the war in the Pacific 1941-1945.
Unveiled by
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
February 16, 1954

Muted

It sounds like a bad joke along the lines of: "What do you call a shrink who loses her voice? Unemployed." Ha, ha, ha. Yes, I have lost my voice. I hope to find it again someday so unemployment seems unlikely but it feels strange to be unable to talk. Is there some sort of theme here? Not long ago I largely banned myself from the internet due to an arm problem. Now I can't talk. Typing, talking...hmmm. What next?
Actually, my arm is improving although I'm still taking it easy with the computer time. No Mortal Kombat for a few more weeks. Kidding. Otherwise I have this stupid cold--cough, sore throat, the works, and silly me, I chose to keep working through it. I just hate calling in sick. Not that I have anything against vacation days but sick days are hard when you are a doctor. They're so...unplanned. Well, the best laid plans of a control freak are not proof against a virus. I worked through it Wednesday and stumbled home with my throat on fire and my voice gone. So I called in on Thursday. No choice, really. I spent the day in front of the TV which thanks to TiVo and Netflix is more interesting than it might otherwise have been but succeeded in making me desperate to be functional again.
Happy Friday.

A Day at the Aquarium

The last day of my so-called "staycation," I convinced the kid we should go to the aquarium. I was amazed at how much admission was! Now we're members so here's hoping we'll go back this year. The fish were great and the kid had more stamina than on our last visit so we actually got to see quite a bit. The jelly fish exhibit was amazing. I sure wish my pictures were better, though.

Crafts and Arts

I've been playing with making my own little hand bound books. Nothing fancy or professional--I don't have the time, materials or skills--just little hand bound notebooks or journals, made largely out of recycled materials.
Here are a few:



These two are made from a recycled, felted sweater with liners of old sheets I salvaged from the cleaning rags. I added vintage buttons, crochet and other bits and pieces I found around the house as details.






These two are made from old coffee bags. The handles are from Starbucks brown paper bags and the clasps are buttons on one side and shell on the other. The interior paper is recycled from old calendars, graph paper, my kid's homework, paper bags and other bits and pieces from around the house.



Now all I need to figure out is what I want to do with them.

Because It's There

I joined a couple of book memes last month. I had done a few when this blog was younger and am trying to wake up both myself and this blog so went back to them. They are both TBR memes. TBR means to be read and they have to lofty goal of getting rid of books from old piles or shelves of unread material. In my case, there is no shortage of TBR books.
I am now proud to report that I have read 4 of 12 books on my list with an additional one almost finished. These were books I have been procrastinating on reading, some for years. So I'm half embarrassed at how easy they were to pick up and read with the right motivation. Now I'm procrastinating on reviewing the books but here's the first.
Eiger Dreams: Ventures among Men and Mountains, by Jon Krakauer.
I very much enjoy Krakauer's writing and am an armchair mountain climber. Except for my dream to someday climb Mount Rainier (a non-technical climb that can be achieved by wimps like me), I have no ambition to confront my fear of heights and dying in a more direct fashion. Even so, I love to read of other people's courage, drive and stupidity.
Eiger Dreams turned out to be great fun. There is some stirring prose and plenty of humor. Here is a bit of the former: "By and by, your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trance-like state settles over your efforts, the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. . . . At such moments, something like happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing, the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive." By G-d, I almost get it.



There is a piece on canyoneering that had me itching to grab my hiking boots and head to Utah, and stories on the dangers and physical trials of climbing that had me vowing never to climb anything taller than the flight of stairs to my office.
Here is Krakauer describing inside terminology for falling off a cliff:
"'Peel,' 'catch some air,' 'take a screamer,'log some flight time';such are the quaint turns of phrase climbers use to denote the act of falling."
Actually hitting the ground in a fall (as opposed to being rescued by one's ropes), is referred as "cratering." Cool.
I have made a commitment to myself to take my family backpacking next summer. That will probably be adventure enough for me. As to this small collection of essays, they are not of the caliber of some of Krakauer's longer books, such as Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, but it is well worth a few hours of reading.

P.S. The photos, as always, are my own--Half Dome in Yosemite and a slot canyon in Zion National Park.

Me, Myself and I

So I was at a conference in Atlanta this past weekend. The area I was in seemed to be a land of glass reflective surfaces, as was my hotel. So here's a little narcissism.

Nutcracker Redux

This is my fourth year performing in a local Nutcracker ballet. For those who haven't heard the story, I am most adamantly not a dancer. I regard my part in the show as more of an extra but it is a lot of fun. I never took a single dance class as a kid. Although I can hold my own in many sports, if not compete, I totally have two left feet. Plus I was not a girly girl and preferred climbing trees and catching frogs to wearing a tutu. I'd say I never wanted to dance as a child but I remember listening to the Nutcracker and Swan Lake on my little record player (I think one of the records was actually pink!) and dancing around my bedroom. So maybe it was fated that one day I'd get a chance to dance it.
Of course, given that I'm on stage you don't get to see a whole lot of pictures of me dancing. One small drawback to being the photographer in the family. We get a video every year but I haven't figured out how to (illegally) upload it onto the net so there you have it.



My younger son performs in the show every year which is how I got into it but I have reservations about posting his life story publicly since, after all, it is his life and not mine. But I thought I'd share one or two pictures of how the show looks.
In my humble opinion, yours truly was merely above average but the show was amazing!