late summer 2019, heat and all

post #437
        Lots of words last week. Today mostly some photos from this past week. I'm slow to get back into my photo groove. And it has been really hot outside. But there is no question that I love looking closely, noticing things, being hopeful, thankful, and amazed. 
       Yet, even so, or maybe because, please bear with me, it also makes me uneasy.  This week I want to believe there is a way to stop the Amazon Forest from burning up. Why, again, hasn't it been obvious what our responsibilities are to the next generation? 

butterfly visitor, to the past-its-prime joe-pye.

          Now that my big field is getting mowed twice a year, with a tractor, there are so many more flowers for the bees and bugs. A lot of living goes on in there between the mowings.  Each year it gets more beautiful, to me.

on the road again

post #423
       Greetings from .... well, feel free to figure it out by looking carefully into the distance in the first photo for a famous landmark that exists nowhere else. I am riding in a bus from the airport.

         Roads and more roads are taking me to places I don't usually go. My good friend, Liz, knows where to walk on roads that go to the nearby Pacific Ocean.  (Ha, another clue!)

See, I really do have my friend with me, and here she is up close and personal with the cliffs at this beach.

        Everywhere we walk  -- beach or neighborhood  --  are flowers and blooming plants of all sorts along the way:

Roads even take us to the big city, so we could visit their well known museum of modern art.

Guess what -- photographers absolutely love to end up at a large exhibit of a "kindred spirit" photographer! Five rooms are filled with the work by Louis Stettner, whom I didn't know a thing about before this trip.

     Back out on the street, I see a familiar sign -- used in George Ella Lyon's autobiography for children because she remembers staying here as a child and loving the sound of the words Hotel Pickwick.

        Well, I hope the Golden Gate Bridge could be seen in the middle of the first picture, and, along with a couple of other clues, it's by now clear I am visiting in San Francisco. I haven't been here in a long time.

        I hope everyone has roads to explore at times in their lives. 

a week of non-photos

post #387

Today I’ve decided to share how the non-photo life can be experienced by photographers who always see stuff but can’t always immediately make art. For you, my readers, it may simply feel like a litany of photos I didn’t take. But for me, the week has been unusual.  The incentive for all this was to take part in a road trip my sister, Cathy, had planned, starting her trip in New York, driving to North Carolina with a friend and then coming to Kentucky to see me before heading to Missouri and Lincoln, Nebraska and then back home via Indiana and Buffalo. Lots of miles!!

My part started when Cathy and her friend, Judy, who was doing the first part with her, came here from Tennessee after being in North Carolina.

Once Cathy and Judy finally arrived on Monday -- escorted by a neighbor in a pickup truck, leading them from the local store because Cathy had lost her phone that morning and didn’t know where I now live or even what my phone number was but she remembered the store and my name.... Cathy and I had to go into Morehead right away to the Verizon store to replace her phone. They did retrieve her phone numbers, and she kept the same number. Sorry, but I think it’s amazing. And time consuming. Meanwhile Judy cooked up our supper. Bravo, Judy! None of this, needless to say, was of direct relevance to the art part of my life….

Tuesday there were the usual demands of the day, including my finishing reviewing an article, for its English fluency, about Vitamin D that a German friend sent me out of the blue. Cathy spent time setting up her phone, and Judy met a friend at Morehead’s renowned Folk Art Center (which may be closing because of the pinching of funds for public universities. Thanks for nothing, politicians.) Late afternoon we three went over to where I used to live and we ate supper on the porch with R, J and T.  Luckily, this happened after the shower of rain that ended in time for a quick walk to the first waterfall before dinner, but with no time, however, to do the noticing a good photo usually requires, especially when there is a threat of rain. I still haven’t heard how many photographers ruined their cameras during this year’s very wet Kentucky Derby!

Later, at home, there definitely was no time to make a photo record of all that I left undone before going to bed that night, even though I well knew we were leaving early in the morning! Ha!

Early Wednesday is when I left the battery for my point and shoot on a table at home…I guess it was on the way to being recharged but never made it to the plug. It really needed that recharging. I had finally decided not to take my big camera with me because of the heat this time of the year in a closed up car. My photography friend John F. would be rolling his eyes at me, but this time it really wasn’t worth the risk since we would be living out of the car for several days, a car without a trunk.

The morning was spent taking both their car and mine as far as Lexington, where we left mine at the Lexington airport. Then the three of us and our bags squeezed into the little car for the hour and a half ride to Louisville, which included a deluge that required us to pull off on to the shoulder and wait it out. I couldn’t even change positions in the back seat well enough to take an iPhone photo of the storm. 

We left Judy and her baggage at the Louisville airport so she could fly home. A changing of the guard. Cathy and I spent the next four hours driving halfway to Springfield, Missouri. The road was lovely and country and no big trucks. No time to stop either, however. Miles and miles on Route 60 west, and more miles, through the southwest part of Kentucky that I rarely see, yet there wasn’t time or reason for photography. We stayed in a motel en route, and the next night we were to stay all night with our cousin, Doug, his wife, Lois, and her mother, Priscilla. We got lost (near Paducah)! We got found! We got lost (in Springfield)! Finally Doug had to talk us along the final part of our route to their home. An urban sister and a rural sister hit small city challenges! No street signs! No unusual landmarks! Once we arrived, we started right away catching up on multiple family stories since we are a spread out kind of family. What a treat.

Oh yes, at one exit in Kentucky we had tried to find some special bourbon to fill a request from a close friend of my sister’s, but we hadn’t done our research ahead of time; what we found was essentially a factory. Not very picturesque from the outside. Sadly I missed the whole Bourbon Trail.

This might be too long a piece for my blog, so I will leave the last two days for next time. There are some unexpected adventures still to share – in words that imply a reliance on the images we each form in our own heads.

However, I just have to include a single photo by my friend in Germany – obviously not one I made! I thought it a beautiful moment looking out into their back yard. Thanks, Juergen, for sharing this, and for all I learned about Vitamin D.  Really.

May moments caught on my iPhone

post #386
       Two weeks in May, when we finally had spring and quickly moved on to summer!

The dogwoods finally bloomed, in the woods edges nearby.

many bluets this year -- sometimes known as Quaker Ladies

          I needed to pick up some framed photos, in Paris (Kentucky) at Frames on Main, and on the way home, on Route 460, I discovered the Montgomery Green House -- with a single sign and a dirt road to the top of the hill.  LOVED IT and the sound of cows in the barns. While checking out, I was surprised to be recognized -- by some retired teachers who had been checking me out... It turns out they had heard me years ago do a presentation about Counting on the Woods. Who knew.

        The first week of May is big on birthdays around here. My granddaughter and a friend decided to share a birthday, with each one, however, decorating her own cake.  Luckily all the families were able to switch days at the last minute, from Saturday to Sunday, because of all the rain on Saturday. This made the requisite walk in the creek even more fun....

beach theme!

         I recently had my first appointment at the brand new St. Claire Medical Clinic. It is full of windows and space with lots of seating -- and since I was there mid afternoon on Friday, I kind of had the place to myself at one point.  All in all, a VERY IMPRESSIVE change, and, I hear, much appreciated by those who work there.

        Later that same afternoon I took a friend for a drive, and we cruised the Fish Hatchery out near Cave Run Lake.  Something has happened to all the Canada Geese who used to live there, eating the fish that were "maturing" in multiple rectangular ponds, but today we saw only three "families". Each had several fledglings. Because my car doesn't have a trunk to protect my camera from the heat I had not brought my good camera.  So this is what I would call "an evidence" picture. We were there:

A recent evening walk along my road.... lots of pollen this year:

pipeline views....

         Well, truth to tell, I also had a birthday during this time, and after an unknown-to-me orchestrated effort by friends and family, I received as much personal mail in my mailbox over ten days as I have received in the previous 5 years of my existence!  Thank you all!!  I have two things to show here -- first a collage of many of the different stamps that arrived!!  Real stamps!! Forevers and forevers!

          The other came from my friend and neighbor, Jean, who delivered this card to my mailbox one evening.  I could NOT figure out what was inside the envelope. What a lack of imagination I sometimes have.  It is hard to describe this work of art, so here is a photo, again with my iPhone.  Wonderful, wonderful, and hilarious. In fact, I think the photo might have been sharper were I not laughing even when I made the photo.

   I do enjoy the ease of my iPhone, and so here, to express my thanks to it, is one last photo, made while my overworked sometime companion was getting a charge. Thank you 6s, and I hope you are having some fun along the way, when you aren't either lost or forgotten.

This is what my iPhone sees while charging in the kitchen.....

my recent photo project -- ROUTE 32, before its impending demise!

post # 187
       A road is just a road.  However, in a rural area, often the road is what links a community, even though it is stretched out along many miles.  
      Near where I live there is a road that the powers that be are eager to "improve."  This means that plans are already made which will totally change the configuration of twelve miles or so of the Route 32 community in my county and the neighboring county.  
      I am not at all convinced this project is a good idea, so I decided to ride the road during  this early spring -- before the leaves are out and hiding the lay of the land -- to see what I could see.  I've enjoyed taking photos both along the road and on the smaller side roads that connect to it.  It is beautiful where I live, and, as usual, with my camera I take time to notice a lot more aspects of a place.  (Partly that's because I am not driving and photographing at the same time!)  Note: it does require some ingenuity to find places to park my car -- thank goodness for all the family cemeteries.  
      So far I have managed to get over there 4 times.
      I have shared these photos with Darlene who knows who lives where now, as well as who used to live where.  She is amazing!  She can even point out some of the places where the road is expected to go. I sure appreciate her help and her good humor.  
       This first photo shows a home (on the right of the photo) which will be taken out and replaced by an impersonal wider road.  Route 32 is on the left in this photo.

      The next three photos show images as I moved the camera to the left :

       Next is another photo of the same house-which-would-be-gone.  I am standing a bit farther off route 32.

        The following three photos continue to the right from the house.  The road would run across them all and take out the barn as well.  (Logging is in progress by the current land owner.)

 

         I drove on a dirt road toward the barn for the above photo, and this cemetery was behind me when I tried turning the car around.  I just liked the look of it all.  Road design plans usually try to avoid these small family cemeteries, which are very common in the rural south.

    

        Another perspective on the trees and the cemetery:

leaving the barn/cemetery road, back to Route 32, about to continue on to the left :

      a closer view of the house and barn across the way, visible through the leafless trees:

      I am repeating this photo from earlier, as I get ready to continue left.  The road to the barn and the fence in the two photos above are to the left of this photo below:

      I will continue my views along Route 32 next Sunday on this blog. Questions are welcome in the comment section. Just sign in as "anonymous" if you don't have another sign-in choice that works for you.  Thanks so much!