grateful for how art makes a transition feel more real

post #307
        My reality this month is that I am moving out of a house where I have lived for 42 years.  My daughter and her family will be taking over the place, so I am not having to leave it entirely! I am moving to my Gallery, nearby. But I do have to downsize, always good but also always tricky.
       Since this task does include some life review, in addition to my journal I am trying to make time to take some photos as I tackle various tasks. Though I don't have time to do my best work, I thought I would just share some of what I am seeing while I make this effort.
 

This is where I am sitting while putting this blog post together.  The next photo shows what this corner will look like once my daughter and her family make this place their home the end of the month. The couch is theirs; it moved here in July. They have been busy exploring the USA before taking up new jobs and such. I do get to have their dog during their trip (photo to come.)

chuckle! chuckle!

Here's another chuckle! This New Yorker cartoon has always been a favorite of mine.

 

upstairs window, looking south

same room, looking west through the black walnut tree -- this week

current display on the bulletin board halfway down the stairs

view looking southeast from my desk, through a window downstairs

looking east from the desk

a favorite view out the north door, of our hay field (which long ago was a tobacco field)

things found while sorting drawers and boxes.... from kindergarten (E)

      I am having all together too much fun doing this post, when I might be better served doing some actual moving preparation, so I am going to stop here for today.  I will try to wait until next Sunday to add some more. I sure hope I will also be able to report progress.
      

BIrds who have visited me, part 4: single moments

post #280
       I am finishing this bird series with a collection of photos I have managed to make on the run, with no one bird or birds staying around very long.  All are from within the house, and most probably through a window. The light would have had to be right to make that work, however. Most of these photos I have posted before in the five years of this blog....
       Please remember: birds don't usually wait around for me to get my camera and certainly not for me to take off a screen and open the window! The one exception might be the mourning doves, which I see from the window in the bedroom upstairs. They actually enjoy  a quiet moment with their kin or is it their mate! (It's hard for me to tell which is male and which is female.)

blending in with the black walnut bark (I think this is a young sapsucker, but I am not sure. Will anyone take me on?)

a parading gathering of turkeys -- called a gang -- three weeks ago

back again two days later, foraging

mourning doves

a red-bellied woodpecker, sunflower seed in beak

several bluebirds in the same bush with berries

female cardinal

male cardinal, the Kentucky state bird

the walnut tree still again, with the bird feeder near by

two fledglings busy trying to be first for the food their dad must surely be bringing them 

        I have a two photos I can't locate at the moment that I want to include here; I plan to post them as soon as I find them. I am so honored to have the company of these birds.

tobacco as art, part 1

post #52

Welcome to the coming of fall -- which means our black walnuts have begun to fall onto the deck!  There is random clunking heard day or night; all will have fallen by the first frost.

        Fall, however, is just one of many seasons for TOBACCO, the crop I have photographed over the years because it is so much of this place and so interesting. I am lucky to be allergic to smoke, so I have never smoked. In fact, I disparage smoking.  But for many years we had a tobacco base.  That means we were allotted and allowed to grow so many pounds of tobacco per year.  We didn't grow it ourselves -- we leased it to our neighbor --and we never earned very much, but for a long time having a base that was used yearly made a farm such as ours more valuable if we ever wanted to sell.  Turns out we've stayed here so long that by now the way tobacco is grown, if at all, has completely changed.  

planting tobacco plants that have been grown in a covered bed (the seeds are minuscule.)  Notice a plant being  placed into a kind of chute while the tractor moves slowly down each row.  Several parts of the process are going on at one time.  In earlier times, they were all done by hand!

    Changing economic times, however, are another story, for some other time.  For now, I mostly want to share some of the many photos of tobacco that I have taken over the years, in different fields, with different neighbors, and during different seasons.  Today images are mostly from the months of May, June and early July.

first plowing, in 1997, ammonium nitrate on the field, rare view of 
how things were done "in the olden days"

 

way back in the woods, an unexpected field of early tobacco

Two years ago I was invited to take photos of this team of mules since it would be their last time doing this annual job.  The spring had been so wet that the tobacco was farther along than usual for this first plowing.  The mules are 21 years old.

side view

back view

"teen-aged"  tobacco plants

reality moment in the tobacco field --  what it is all about...

        Speaking of reality, a mention here of the national upheaval this weekend while the world observes the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I am clearly sorry for so much loss of lives.  I am also sorry for the way this tragedy seems to make it even harder for too many people to think with nuance.  Instead there is a rush to an either/or, good/bad, right/wrong way of thinking.  That's when sound bites have way more power than they deserve, as we give up our right to figure things out for ourselves.  Democracy's challenge and strength is to be inclusive, which requires we use our brains and facts to be informed and therefore to keep it strong.   

       

     Next week I will share some more tobacco photos --for now, two more, taken last week, with my new little waterproof camera which I am trying to learn to use correctly.  The first shows a field (and a bit of a barn) waiting for the rain to stop before getting cut, and the other a recently cut field with some of the cut tobacco visible hanging in the barn.  
     Tobacco is still happening here, but each year there is less and less grown.

Elliott County

Morgan County (still learning about my new camera settings...)  Here the plants have been cut, and stacked in the barn.  The section of the side of the barn is open, as well as the barn doors, to give more air for the drying of the plants.  Too much rain can produce mold on the plants.  Tobacco requires day by day tending.

     I feel this is a good example of holding two truths at once....I hate smoking and all that it does to people I love, but it has provided an on-going honest and honored living to many families I know.  For small farmers, it requires hard work every month of the year.    However, I can't resist a final clarification: I took many of these photos BECAUSE they show something unusual or interesting or disappearing, but NOT because I believe in the big profits corporations have been making off of the addictions caused by the cigarettes they produce.  Stay well everyone, and thanks again for reading to the end!