June 30 2009 And Did It Very Well

Today marks day 30 of my morning photos. I may have broken the streak of photographing just before bed, but I don't think I broke the habit of posting last-thing.

What did I do this morning? Nothing really, I didn't feel well all day. I did a little bit of nothing here, a little bit of nothing there. My knees hurt, my back hurts, and all because of my hip which hurts chronically. My sleep has been not-so-good and I just took an ibuprofen for my headache. I am going to bed early. Not much else to tell.



Fully automatic.

June 29 2009 Meadow, Grove, and Stream

June 28 2009 What is Seen During a Moment

Every year I expect my daughter (and later I will my son) to host an event that increases in responsibility and difficulty each year, and shows off educational advancement, both in social aspects like speech, presentation, competition, confidence, organization, as well as academic aspects, like rote memorization, facts and figures, language, writing, composition, art, biology, music. Last year many of our friends and family joined us on our back deck for snacks, drinks, sunshine, and a Spider Quiz Show created and hosted by the student. It showcased her public speaking, her reading, her comprehension, and her social graces during the event, and her organizational skills, her question writing, her facts and trivia, and her research leading up to the event. This year, it is a poetry recital and reading. She's memorized six poems by six leading poets, and has been working diligently on invitations. She will also be reading some of her own personal writing. In the interest of not blowing all the surprises for those of you who will be attending, I will let the rest remain until you have been officially invited. I will no doubt photograph the heck out of the event, one of which will undoubtedly reach this blog.

This morning we struggled with various pitfalls of invitation creation. We will continue tomorrow. Who knew there was so much experimentation to be had?



Portrait (different focal points and flash colors) and zoom.

June 27 2009 Beware of All Enterprises

A knit group friend is pregnant with twins and had started a hat, though by following the pattern, it came out the size of the sweater. Being a new knitter, she wasn't sure how to turn it into a sweater, so I have taken on the challenge. I frogged some part of my design with this sweater, well, I can't tell how many times, but it was a lot, and the finishing has taken me much, much longer than I expected.

I didn't even have my glasses on this morning when I got up closer to the afternoon than I expected: I had 15 minutes left until my morning ended. It's okay, I spent that fifteen minutes working on the yoke for the sweater, and frogging it after I decided it was the wrong gauge. Better yet, I didn't count rows when I built the sleeves and after nearly finishing the yoke I finally counted the ribbing and discovered one sleeve was 10 rows too short. Being that it is variegated yarn, I have to be creative, but I am, and I am successful. I dare you to find, when this sweater is finished, which sleeve had been built short. I just dare you.



Auto-Flash=Photo

june 26 2009 'yet untitled'

It's 1:45 am. I am NOT going to try and write now. Complete post in the morning, or afternoon, whenever I get up.

Update: I didn't update this yet.

Update 6/28: Still un-updated.

June 25 2009 Had Taken His Station, or, Tools of Their Tools

My life has been burrowed into one deep labyrinth of a goal. I am here to enable someone else, anyone else. They (the elusive they) say life is a journey with a path and a purpose and that we all fill some role, but mine is to help others reach their goals. I am nothing independent of other people; my path is nothing without someone to walk beside. I find that I am nothing but a sum of my accomplishments, which can only be measured against the success or failure of those I work with. And I am satisfied with this. This is what I do, this is how I work. I derive the most satisfaction knowing that if I don't make it through another day, another night, that I will have made a difference and I have already met my life's goal, and all that's left between now and the end of that day I don't make it through is to keep up my work. I will always be needed, and I will always find that one who needs me. I say my gift is that I can teach anyone how to learn anything. I am not a leader, nor a follower. I am a pathfinder. I know the way.

Teaching fractions and geometry to someone with no positive relationship with mathematics of any sort seemed overwhelming. I chose drafting. It should do nicely. But first, the concept of scale, and using equipment to gather information.



Macro - flash. I was right on my subject, and the camera was on the table. I couldn't get the lens any closer to my focal point. I know, I tried.

June 24 2009 If The World Knows Them

Forcing myself to write is the only thing these days that gets the writing out of me. This here daily occurrence is the only assemblage of language I produce every day. Some days I despise it, others, I compose all day and savor my moments alone making that composition concrete. Really, really good writing days come rarely, spontaneously, and with no reservations. It's write now, or chug out something later.

A double shot of not-a-good morning. Unmotivated, the bug bites. I announce my intention to sit down and write, which usually accompanies a hug as if I were leaving and a cup of coffee, and the children watching a movie or playing outside. Instead, the pronouncement is followed with a tirade of responsibilities, and the morning leaves angry and incomplete, and unaccomplished. Why? It's the dishes fault. It's always the freaking dishes fault. See? All I did was choose to write instead of put the dishes away, or a slew of other chores. Instead, I didn't do any of the above. Classic.



Yes. I took a picture of my dishwasher. Macro, point-blank, 7x zoom, flash.

June 23 2009 Unmown, Untamed Prairie*

I taught a lesson on something my 12th grade English Teacher called "Ransom Poetry." The assignment: to chop up publications and make a poem on a piece of paper. I worked for hours, with my sister's help, deep into the night hunting down the right words to make the poem flow, to make the phrases connect, to communicate. I returned to class to be met with gaping jaws as mine went on the wall next to creations of fifteen related words, or unrelated words, on a central theme. Mine was a poem. Theirs, barely an effort. Am I an overachiever, or an artist? I did exactly what was asked of me. My piece was, as I later learned, performative in that it was self-referential. It talked about itself. It was about hacking a magazine into pieces and creating something from others' words and phrases.

A late start to the morning but I am ready for study. I prepare a stack of magazines for my babysitter and children for the morning, for "destroying" as my son calls it, and three envelopes with each of their names for their findings. They only got to go through the ones I have already conquered, though. I'm collecting designs, words, and other sundries. Mine are too numerous for a folder; I use a briefcase. The designs are for projects, mostly of the knitting sort. The words are the most important, though, they are for writing with. I haven't been writing much lately, but not for lack of trying. Except, of course, for this.



Stand back+zoom+flash on Auto.

* You will not find this reference. This is a quote from my own piece, discussed above. Maybe one day it will be Googleable. Maybe one day I won't just be a nocturnal overachiever. You could try to name the ad, though, that I hacked it from. Think, 1998.

June 22 2009 Maketh a Glad Father

Up and out and onto the Grand Mesa where...there are thousands of bicyclists coming down the mountain while we are going up and man are there some real idiots out there who don't know how to stay in their lane or share the road or, well, it was kind of scary. Onto the Grand Mesa where we went fishing...well, the children and the fathers went fishing and I minded the pup and read some Lovecraft and some Poets & Writers magazine and got my feet wet and fed or occupied the children when they bored of watching bobbers. We went fishing and the weather was great...the sun was hot and the wind was cool at 9,490 feet and there was still snow on the ground in the tree-covered spots and the lakes and streams were full and flowing and noisy as they burbled downhill upon the rocks.

Our first fishing spot was at the reservoir on the dam, and we eventually moved to the end of the dam where the water overflowed around into a stream, and then we moved to the other side of the res to the stream that flowed into it.



I had plenty of morning to aim my camera every-which-way and shot at every-which-thing and as I was shooting I noticed this setting called Stitch Assist where I can line several photos up in a row where the display gives me the right edge of the photo I just took so my second picture could be lined up (when edited) and it was COOL. So I did it.

June 21 2009 Out All Over

Food on the grill before noon, smoked for hours, consumed in minutes. Families together to appreciate the fathers, and eat. Owl on the fence. Day up to ninety-some-odd degrees. Fresh produce.



Indoor setting+Flash in the opening of the smoker. I wish I could photograph the smell.

June 20 2009 Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose

Being that I've had a long day I will be brief.

It was a car day. Not just any car day, but a beautiful car day. My Mercedes-Benz and I cruised across town, where I saw the subject of this photo and four other amazing vehicles, one I wanted now and even made my mouth water (but it might have been the candy-apple red paint job that did that trick). I then passed the city park and in three signs it said "Car" "Show" "Today" so I had to gawk, of course. We then took our van out with our guests--the military-converted 4x4, custom-lifted, full-sized van-- to the desert to go off-roading. *squeak of joy*. The trip to the desert and back was also rewarded with glimpses of 1930s hot rods with engines exposed, 1960s muscle cars with racing stripes, 1940s panel trucks with glossy coats, 1950s rides with fins. We even had to loop around a block to see a Mercedes-Benz just a body-style older than my own, the big-brother version, complete with fins. *squeal of delight* I had to have that one now too. Oh, and the seven hot Harley Davidson's parked in front of the pub were nothing to miss mentioning, either. Oh, it was indeed a beautiful car day.



Of course you can't see the darned 80s Datsun Z because the woman with big, black hair and huge dark sunglasses stepped on the accelerator after the light SO fast...I have got to remember to take my camera with me; cell phones are so SLOW. I wasn't about to increase the gap between me and the speed limit to keep up with her. So it was this car but in that baby blue...

June 19 2009 A New Planet Swims Into His Ken

There were adventures today. My children played with the baby, and we took them out on the orchards. They played together at the Meadery while we adults tasted honey-wine and they spun the rollers on the peach packing line at the peach orchard. They looked out for each other, entertained each other, played with each other. For dinner two more children joined the fray and it was remarkably peaceful, though full of activity.

Give everyone a new experience, especially if they're children. Things to fill, bang, strum, press, read, breathe, see, feel, taste. Places to run, fall, sit, walk, ride. People to see, watch, and hear. My daughter loved being a big girl, helping the baby see things in new ways and lifting her to carry her out of danger, or off the dirt to be brushed off. It wasn't a cranky head-strong pre-schooler or toddler, or peer. It was a baby who needed lead, guided, shown. Oh, yeah, and the baby learned things too.



Kids and Pets - Flash. Definitely a candid shot, and I got off three before anyone noticed.

June 18 2009 Angels Unawares

The cleaning I indulged in for the Mardi Gras celebration some five months ago had become unapparent since. Yesterday afternoon I get a call from my husband that he had heard from his friend that friend and family were coming to my house to visit, today. I had just taken all my usual source of quick-clean-up and set it out with the recycle, so I had to do without cardboard boxes. A day later and I succeeded in making my house one-year-old proof. And made both guest beds available. And teach. And not lose my mind. Honestly, I need motivation to keep the place tidy more often. (Do you hear that? You should visit. It keeps my house picked up.)

As for the photo, this is the husband's bowling shoe. The deal with it is that there is only one, or that it only shows one of the pair at a time. We finally hung it on the hat rack so that if we see another we know this one is neatly tamed. We have a shoe on our hat rack. Yeeaaah.



I do not know why I took this picture when I did. Something suggested I should. Auto+Flash-Zoom. I was right on the thing and didn't bother to adjust the flash or compose.

June 17 2009 A Very Small Number Play a Great Part

It does not matter if the book has pictures or words or neither, if it has a cover it must be opened. Have you ever stopped to think why this is true, especially of children? We are curious creatures and knowing that between the leaves there are surprises and that each bound creation has something different, and that each page of a single bound creation has a relationship to the others in that same book, these bits of knowledge drive us to expose the secrets of a book. When was the last time you held a book you did not open? My daughter cannot clean her room if there are words in it, even a scrap of newspaper with words incoherent is worthy of decoding, and she must decode it. My son knows there are words and understands that the order of speech and the order of written words and letters is essential to valid communication: no one knows what his name is unless he spells it. (No one knows what I have named him unless I spell it. It's not unique to his pronunciation, but to the rarity of his name.) He is also a punster. He loves when I read aloud so he can make jokes, or when the author and illustrator have made jokes using language. My children love words.

Books are environmentally friendly: they are useful in any environment. I wanted the children to experience a social reading environment. The library has served well in the past, but they needed a change. We went to the bookstore where they had reading and a craft, and milk and cookies. The milk and cookie cost a dollar, but it was worth it to them, and I loved watching them surrounded by equally enthralled children.



Shot on Auto-Flash+Zoom while my son allowed me to walked away. He is in a clingy stage, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get far enough away for the photo.

June 16 2009 A Ribbon at a Time

My first conscious breath this morning came with a knowledge that I was not going to make it back to sleep. Instead of asking the darkness of my room for another chance I went ahead and accepted the challenge, moving about the room quietly and starting in on Tuesday's chores. I bucketed and carried the recycling to the curb, and then I broke down the cardboard boxes I had accumulated and stacked them with the glass and paper. I watered the lawn and dug out the railroad ties implanted between the gravel I want to remove and the grass I'm trying to keep alive. Then I went in for breakfast.

Ironically, the house was sold to us with a lawn that needed a hose and sprinkler to water, and me being a stickler for where my water lands, I spent an entire season buying different sprinklers so that it didn't water my sidewalk. Hence also the trenches, though, as I dug them I uncovered a sprinkler system. In the basement there is a Rain Bird box, and a second box. In the side yard there is a backflow device. Pinned to the wall next to the water heater is a map of where the sprinkler system was run. What do you know,mine is not only a mobster house but has a lawn care system in place as well. I love good mysteries. One day we will discover whether this system is intact, as it is 15 years since its installation. In the mean time, I sit on my porch and watch over my soaker hose as it encircles each quadrant one at a time.



I took three photos of this scene and liked the water curtain. The others looked like I was trying to document the fruits of my labor for some legal purpose: very cold and dry. Auto + 24x (max) zoom.

June 15 2009 The Triumph of Principles

It has not been an easy day. I do not want to write. I do not want to spend my time here right now. I awoke in the darkness in a sweat with a belly full of undigested food. I discovered an open door at the back of the house and in my feverish delirium I searched for the raccoons I was sure I heard moping about in the bedrooms. Having cured myself of said ailments, I awoke again in the morning malnourished and weak. I trickled the cure for this ailment into my system slowly, and forwent my martial study. I rested and got better. I pulled my son's room out of its child-created jungle and put it back together in the best pieces I could. Their bedtime has interrupted my progress. The remaining bits of energy I have today I need to use during sleep to pick up the rest of my immunities and healing.

There is no irritation like illness to swamp the mind with things that have yet to be done. The rain today was as weak as I was, not only did it barely speckle my patch-of-dirt that refuses to be my garden this year and taunts me, it did not thwart a trip to the metal scrap yard in search of materials for the artist, and as a field trip for the children and myself. The idea of pulling something out of nothing, fruit from my garden and art or utility from these discarded heaps of rusted steel, and me and my healing, this idea recurs today like bad imagery from an amateur novel. Emerge! it ridicules. The best power of emergence comes from within, and does not gape like white teeth starting with the title.



I did not know what I would end up writing about today, so I took my camera out and shot various pictures of the late end of my morning and reviewed them in the context of my day. I chose this photo of that teasing patch of dirt and the walkway I uncovered months ago in no little feat. Auto+zoom.

June 14 2009 To Respect Its Flag

Today marked the 132nd Flag Day. *insert cheers from the crowd* Upon this day in 1877 our most recognized national symbol was endowed with its own celebration. Break out the flag and practice your flag folding. Make sure the kids know the real words to the Pledge of Allegiance, so that it is not "under God invisible" or other misunderstanding of the poetic inversions. Make sure you know the real words. Sing the National Anthem and omit the "Play Ball" and cheering at the end, and remember who Francis Scott Key was, and refresh your memory of the War of 1812. Learn how to fold an 8 1/2" by 10" sheet of paper so that with one cut you have a perfect five-point star, courtesy of Betsy Ross. Pick your favorite American Flag in history, and talk with someone about why it is so.

It's not fireworks or barbecues, and it's not a day off school and work. Flag day gets easily overlooked and therefore you can find flags in the rain, tattered flags flying, flags on diapers. People don't know what the symbol is for anymore. We recognize it every day of our lives, criticize people who don't cover their hearts or remove their hats during a recitation of our pledge. Have we forgotten that our country is the union of fifty sovereign states built up on the original union of thirteen sovereign states? Have we forgotten what the red, the white, the blue represent as colors of patriotism? or Do we blindly follow what we have always blindly followed? Where are the citizens of our democracy, and where is the line that can be crossed, and what does it take to take that line back?



Keeping the artists from shadowing the shot was the only hitch in the photography session for the day. You can tell by the toes. Auto - flash.

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June 13 2009 With a Trace of a Grin

Today I did none of the things I predicted yesterday I would. Instead I tackled the pile of teaching and school stuff and clothes-to-grow-into in my daughter's room and managed to get all the boxes emptied. I almost went back to organize everything but didn't want to be reclusive. Instead my husband and I decided to work together on this big kitchen project that is supposed to save our sanity: we switched the snacks, spices, and drink mixes and tea and stuff from the pantry to the island and the liquors from the island to the pantry. We cleaned everything as the dust here in the desert manages to become uber-sticky when it lands on things in kitchen areas (I've seen other people's kitchens. I know it's not just me). Now the liquors will stay clean, and I wonder if the children will start helping themselves more to the snacks and stuff, and depending, it might be okay. In either case, the change should really make a difference.

I have a philosophy of living quarters, which, when I talk about it, I state that I do not try to change our habits to my organization, but instead, my organization to my habits. It takes time and tolerance, and sometimes things don't work and sometimes they do. The recycling is no longer an argument. The dishes-cleaning is less frequently an argument. The entertainment media (cds, dvds, tapes, albums, vhs) are no longer an untameable mess. Pots and pans, tupperwares and lids, beer and soda and juice, the overstock from Sam's Club, none of these things are the frustrations they used to be. There is still a lot of progress to be made, but in my opinion, I have the rest of my life to get comfortable. I moved into this house with more stuff than would fit into it, and only time and habit will teach me how to arrange it and what stuff I don't need anymore.



This pile caught my eye this morning as it represents one month's worth of work. A transient thing, as it will be broken down and recycled this week, the photograph represents a moment in time more than anything else. Auto+zoom.

June 12 2009 Word at Random Spoken

After days of hard work I have flushed my mind of thought with about four hours of an interesting puzzle-like game on the xbox. The time just vanished. Now I'm thinking about a cup of coffee in the morning and a sit on my front porch with more of that Lovecraft stuff, and humming the Shostakovitch piece we marched in high school (probably because I'm in the middle of a short novel called something like A Day in the Life of Ivansomething-or-other name in a language that reminds me of Russian music.) I spent all my paycheck on a double-family trip to the movies, so I can't buy the veggies this weekend I want to plant, but I might be able to pull off a file thing to help with the cleanup of all that teaching stuff in the other room. Maybe I'll make some fruit drinks for tomorrow afternoon, with frozen grapefruit and limeade. I really don't feel like thinking about today or yesterday or organizing my thoughts at all. I'm quite pleased with my current state of mind.

I worked early this morning, after a half-hour drive to Palisade. I took the highway, which I've never done on my own before (reminder to all this is only part-way through year 2 of me having a license.) The Mercury drives at highway speeds better than the Mercedes, but there's no comparison of the handling. The Mercedes part was picked up this morning so I get it back sometime next week. Teaching went well, but I botched up the invoice. It was early when I wrote it. I was not awake. My younger student and I had fun; I love it when she's in a good mood. Her learning curve is way steeper than when school was in. I prepped for her all morning. The disorganization of my thought is seeping through in my writing, so I'll leave my assessment of the morning there.



I went outside and took a few pictures of some random things. I looked at the photos after I had done the above writing, so I chose this picture of the Mercury-Mercedes face-off.

June 11 2009 Whatever a Body is Obliged to Do

Sometimes there will be days like this. I spoke with two of my best friends last night instead of working, which kept me up until about two, which left me with a bit remaining to do, which caused me to sleep in until about ten, which left me with about an hour to finish the work, which pushed the prep for my students over lunch time, which kept me from eating until after the students left sometime this afternoon, which leads eventually to me in front of this computer yet again today to write to you about nothing of interest I managed to do with my morning, and furthermore no picture of mine of that morning. I'm certain you know what a times table looks like, so you may imagine that and some drugs' prescribing information, and a bit of multi-weight lined graph paper. That is what I looked at all morning.

Yet it was not a photograph-less day, for while I worked my husband and son and niece and nephew took their first fishing expedition of the summer. Fish were caught, bugs bit, no one fell in the river and there were only three pokes of a finger with a fish hook. The day was cool, the sky was bright and the lakes were stocked, though only tiny ones bit this late in the morning. Fishing has never been my thing, for if I'm going to sit somewhere and do nothing, I'm really going to do nothing, not pretend to do something. Yet fishing with kids, never can that be likened to doing nothing. Fishing is one thing, and expedition with the children, something completely different.



The little, dinky, decrepit backup camera was used instead of hauling the photography equipment where children, sharp objects, and water were in play. The info for this photo say it was taken on portrait.

June 10 2009 Strangeness and Self-Particularity

Today being midweek in the city, there is ample evidence that this is not a city. This is an overgrown town. On a Wednesday, at four in the afternoon, there is no traffic. On a Wednesday, there are parking spaces available right next to the front door. There's no one in the stores, no lines, no waiting. My little city isn't. But that's not the least of it. This town is odd. The tallest building for years was a bank, until it was usurped by the mammoth hospital wing going up. It's awkward and out of place, but very city-esque in appearance and size. To fly here you must take a propeller plane. You can leave your car doors unlocked. Well, I suppose you can leave them unlocked anywhere but traditionally it's a greater risk than it is here. This is definitely a town.

This morning I took my daughter to her first region-wide Girl Scout event, at a place across from the mall, where she played and worked at a fenced-in back-yard of the Service Center building, a yard surrounded by industrial and commercial lots. And she was perfectly safe. Then we tackled some back roads to the outdoor sports store, which is only accessible through these back roads. Then getting back onto the main drag, there, at the perpetual Fireworks store and across from the Sheriff's department and Courthouse, is our torpedo. Yes. Our city has its own torpedo. It's something we all know about, like the odd man who feeds the birds in a walking route around the city. I have no idea its origins or its purpose, or who painted it and mounted it, or who it belongs to. But there it is. Another oddity of our city.





Auto photo on a day finally sunny enough not to require a flash.

June 09 2009 Confine for the Sea's Worth

Morning comes at the end of the school year. Bound printed matter becomes no matter, for that which our taxes have paid has arrived in a sad state of perceived obsolescence. The school district must buy new books, the children must always have new books. Though, there is nothing really wrong with the old books that a bit of duct tape can't fix. Algebra One does not become different in the five years since the texts were purchased. History does not change, only the perception of it, which cannot be influenced by a new text but instead by the teacher. Geography, yes. Change geography books: the politics and social constructs that make geography the interesting bit it is--this changes. But the books you buy today will be obsolete next fall anyway.

I woke and went empty-handed, with only a cup of coffee to babysit my growing pile of boxes of books from the school district's annual give-away. Textbooks, teaching resources, and discards from the libraries from around the valley sit musty in boxes rejected from their post on classroom shelves. In the library book section, I come across this book (I am looking mostly for workbooks and teaching tools today) and I must share my smart-ass remark. I look left, right, no one is around to hear me. So I send a photo via text-message with my quip: We should send this to Washington.



Sometime this afternoon I nearly panicked in my failure to have taken a morning photo. Then I remembered my smart-assery via cell-photo. It will do. Yes. It will do.

June 08 2009 The Cold Grey Dawn

There is something odd about waking up in the morning, the morning after you've had people over for dinner and the rooms and halls and kitchen and back porch had been crowded with various discussions and creative processes. Around the house there are little reminders, the aluminum to be crushed, the vinyl to be re-sleeved, someone's odd sock in the hallway. There are some things so inexplicable, though, as to be nothing more than something to marvel at. Some things are not to be cleaned up or tidied. Some things are not to be corrected or returned. Some things, in the fog of waking up in the morning, reduce one to such perplexed laughter and mirth so as to become the hair of the dog, the same that kept one up late revisiting in the morning. These things are not so predictable.

The story goes from baby shower and dolls necessary for the game and having to mend the arm of one removed in the process of destroying the net that holds the stuffed creatures off the floor, and the other doll whose mending is not quite so simple a cure as a bit of thread or a safety pin and suddenly the head of said second doll is being passed around the room likened to the creature from Toy Story and other toy disasters. I wake up to find this. Is it irony that the sculpture is missing its leg?



Auto no flash. The light was too nice today, and the flash made it look creepier, if you can believe that.

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June 07 2009 Their Most Serious Actions

Mornings with happy giggles and snuggles in my bed before we all finally get up. Tickles and hollers and wrestles and finally pillow fights. Hiding under blankets and creeping forward like a monster and simple ways to out-smart a four-year-old. Anytime leaving the bedroom is too soon.



Photo taken on Kids and Pets (better action, shorter shutter), no flash, when I could.

June 06 2009 Sheep's Guts and Men's Bodies

Human nature is to attempt to capture things that are transient: portraits, photography, journals, scrapbooks, recordings. Something so immersive--so immediate-- as sound is less dependable than sunlight in its continued existence. My home is built on acoustical marvels: instruments and their players, written music, engineers and their experiments, speakers, recorded music, players. A small diamond reads vibrations fossilized in petroleum and someone figured out how to translate that into electricity, so that magnetic induction can compress the air and fill my environment with sound.

My morning, quiet because the community radio station's vinyl sale lured my husband into its musky atmosphere, was not so quiet as I constructed a digital playlist, first on my xbox and then on the artist-rich MySpace. I waited to take my morning photo until he returned, three hours after the sale started, with six dozen new black round things in paper sleeves. The afternoon playlist was comprised of original sound-recording technology.




I disassembled the box the albums were in for good lens positioning for the angle, I used the color accent feature--of which I am still ignorant of the color choosing--and the macro setting with no flash. I took a handful of photos, all different, and cropped this one for maximum aesthetic quality.

June 05 2009 Through The Palpable Obscure

There are few occasions in my married, mothering life where I get to experience a morning to myself. I had a handful when I went to Michigan, and they were awkward and absurd. Since I was a child I was a morning person, thrilled at the sun's dusky rays across the cloudy sky, creeping towards the ground after first traveling into an unknown indefinite distance; whispers from the tops of trees to the bottoms and then to my feet. Nothing is silent in the morning, but it is quieter than dusk.

My Fridays have become worthy of the Happy greeting I once attached to the day's name. I have a morning student across the valley and the travel is peaceful and the work is good. There is something about roses where there are a lot of them this time of year, more than I've noticed in years previous. The road ahead bends across as an overpass and throws me headlong into a view of the cascade on the side of the Grand Mesa. In a moment, it is gone and I am buried in the trees of the valley. Unlike the world where I grew up, the sunlight has a definite distance point before catching the tops of the trees and reaching the earth to warm it: it is a valley.



I took an unknown number of pictures saving only a few on the cell phone. I did manage to buy batteries today so I will be back to a more photogenic photo. This machine did not do this view justice.

June 04 2009 The Weakness and Wickedness of Luxury

There are few things higher on the list of things I would not like to wake up to in the morning than having to look for something. Unfortunately my house is not conducive to a peaceful mind, and compounded with something misplaced, it has the ability to rip my mind to shreds. We tend to lose things even on nice, organized days, things like sunglasses, keys, hair clips, wallets, phones, even the glasses we need for functioning. Clutter just makes the search a mood killer.

I chose to sleep in, something I don't get to do often but that my lifestyle affords in the middle of a week. The clock for my morning photo was ticking. I have no batteries in my disabled camera, have been returned my working camera, and cannot locate a charger, and have run through all the weaker batteries in the house. Two perfectly useful cameras, two sets of perfectly not-useful batteries. To top it off, after I gave up, the batteries in my trackball finally gave up the ghost, and I didn't go buy more batteries so I'll be facing the same story tomorrow.



With a cell phone I can always just snap a gritty photo and mail it to this post. Interestingly, it's as good as the older camera as far as quality goes.

June 03 2009 How Way Leads On To Way

When we travel we prefer road trips. When we look at the map we see endless routes. We find roads with numbers we have never heard of, like 36 or 191 or MM, or towns of interest like Hannibal or West Lafayette. We ask Google or Garmin, not TomTom, whether there are brew pubs in the vicinity of our routes, and we never eat at chain restaurants.

This is a part of our collection of growlers, refillable half-gallon vessels of in-house brewed beer or soda. The silkscreens tell of places we've been and adventures we've had. We read through it this morning, reminiscing on the food and beer and corresponding city, as we contemplated our summer travels. If we make it back to such-and-such brewery we can bring the one with "such-and-such" printed on it with us and have it refilled for cheaper than a six pack. But we'd rather highlight different roads every time we take off for three weeks, so we hope it is a rare occasion paths cross with a familiar pub.



I did a lot of environmental manipulation to get this photo. My clutter and my camera's decrepit shutter were determined I did not get everything in the photo as I wanted, but I did the best I could.

June 02 2009 Everything That Isn't Me

Mornings every-other-Tuesday mean rolling out of bed and rounding up all the recycle from around the house, and frequently Monday nights included entertainment that left beer bottles scattered from the back yard to the front porch, so the round-up can take anywhere up to a half-an-hour. There always seems to be a sense of relief, though, when I come home to find the bins stacked nicely by my front steps after the recycling crew came by to pick everything up.

One of my handles is "imarecycleitall" and it's not for no reason. I don't recycle because it will make the world go round, but because I like the idea that things can be made from other things. Once upon a time there was no landfill infrastructure, everything was used, re-used, repaired, re-purposed, until it decayed. Even bottles could be returned.* I just finished a glass of juice from a bottle with a return deposit from a local winery. I like the inventiveness of reuse.



Older camera with lens adjustment problems cannot focus on its own, so I used portrait setting and adjusted my distance for focus. Kind of an interesting experience.


* Colorado doesn't have deposits on bottles like Michigan, though I can't say I miss hauling my smelly, sticky bottles and cans to the grocery store before buying food. Just so...unappetizing.

June 01 2009 Things Fall Apart

I found peace in my morning, cheerfulness even, even as its threads began to unravel, from my lateness to having to take the children with me to my instructor's lateness to a closed bakery to my friend's day off. Each thread, however, connected and supported others and managed not to be lost, and as I sip my coffee this afternoon and listen to the same playlist I constructed this morning, I consider these connections.

I have arranged to help maintain my instructor's house in town (vs. the famed one in the desert) and included is care of his roses. This rose and two others I clipped carried around with me on my errands this morning, and placed in a vase on my front porch with others I clipped from my neighbor's rose jungle.



My camera still being at my friend's house I found the one it had replaced and was patient as it struggled to open the shutter and expand the lens, and put it on macro and got up close and personal.