Enough of winter diversions! It's time for the promise of redbuds!

     I am so glad to be making a new post. I love working with my photos, and I love sharing them with those of you who keep returning.  I hope everyone is warm and dry, but I know that this year that's asking a lot.  There seem to be relentless climate challenges these days.  In what ways can we help each other through this!?!

    I have quite a few redbud photos because it is a favorite time of year for me.  And that time is almost here.  So, in case I get distracted by this year's spring, I want to share a few of my photos early -- all made very near where I live in northeastern Kentucky.

 NOTE: for some unknown reason I wrote the above weeks ago but then I couldn't get the photo part to work.  So I have been waiting and checking on it regularly.  Then tonight, again for some unknown reason, it seems to be working!!  I am keeping this post short, even so, in case the magic disappears.  And now some redbud photos:
 

 

These flowers -- which are also branches -- are always eye catching.

I always look for this "patch" of redbuds along this nearby dirt road

a photo from several years ago

This tree was once a little transplant next to the steps down to our house. It has survived ice storms, children climbing on it, super winds, and such.  So far.  

 

 

 

 

 

I love this photo, made near Winchester.  The sky and the light made me happy for the tree's abundance.

Of course the dogwoods like to follow the redbuds.  This past weekend, with a friend, we drove  all the way south to Harlan County, Kentucky, to the Pine Mountain Settlement School for a gathering there.  The dogwoods puncuated the woods as we drove through, mountains on either side of the road. The redbuds were mostly finished blooming.  The trees along the way were a wonder of greens, hillside after hillside. Our timing and the weather were a blessing. It was so beautiful to have the chance to drive on narrow roads through this spring display.

Please be happy for me and the chance I have had to share one more post.  I hope to this means I will be able to do a next one soon.  After 10+ years of this, I care about being able to share my thoughts, concerns, and particularly my photos.  Surely I will be able to be back soon.  Ann

    

 

 

 

All on an October day

         Yesterday was filled up!  I went to Lexington to take part in the nationwide rally for women's reproductive rights.  (I also went grocery shopping at the Good Foods Coop where George Ella Lyon and I met up to go to the rally together downtown.)  On the way home I drove along our ridge in great evening light so I had to risk my life a bit to take a few photos --  I can't help myself.  When I arrived at the house, I could see that Preston Netherly had been by that day to do the October mowing of my field. I was barely in time to see it with the hint of lovely mist.

 

This is my favorite photo from the rally -- I didn't take all that many.

mother and daughter

BACK ON THE RIDGE, NEAR HOME, though not in chronological order:

PLUS:

brand new neighbors!

For now, the mowing happens twice a year. 

Once again, I hope every one who can be is now vaccinated, for the sake of each other.  

At the same time, thanks for sharing an unusual day with me. I appreciated the energy I received at the rally!  I also am grateful for the beauty around me where I live.

More in two weeks!  Ann

Slight delay, but here's some words and photos, two weeks and a day since the last time...

    I have been out and about -- Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.   I've seen beautiful flowers, and some hillsides covered with kudsu:

      There were mountains to cross, fabulous back roads, people to answer my questions along the way, an outdoors memorial gathering to celebrate a life well lived and loved, in addition to visits with good friends -- in SW Virginia and SE Kentucky, where I am this day. I continue on to Lexington tomorrow and home I HOPE tomorrow night.  This trip required wearing many masks, and giving reduced hugs, if any, and using safe protocols all along.  Still it reaffirmed that conversations are even more valued than ever, and I sure hope no more unnecessary deaths happen when those who can get a vaccine don't bother to do it.  PLEASE DO IT.

    One special geography event happened while driving through Tennesee -- I crossed over the French Broad [River] six times! I wasn't able to take photos, except when I discovered a no longer used "Boat ramp".

    

I will finish this later tonight - I am about to go for a ride on a KAWASAKI MULE through damp and beautiful Kentucky trails through the forest where I am on this wet weather day.    Be safe everyone. 

the morning room in the Inn where several of us stayed in North Carolina -- warmed coffee cups!

WHAT I AM SEEING WHILE WORKING ON THIS POST.... "Don't even think of using this chair! "

Some same 'ol stuff and a first time something

 post #519

                Busy day. I heard that Joe Biden sprained his ankle today while playing with his dog.  I'm so sorry it happened. Who has time for that?  ( oh well, maybe Trump does since he hasn't been not doing much that's presidential lately. His service to this country continues to be peculiar. His legions of Republican enablers are also tragically hard to figure out .)                  note added on Monday: it seems Biden has hurt his foot in the very same way I did a year and a half ago!

            I didn't get out for a walk, BUT I did do something new -- painted the front of the front door!  It's the FIRST door I have ever painted. The door is no longer dirty white! It's blue!   I took a photo of this little miracle, and put the geraniums onto the photo since it may be their LAST night. I've had them for two years and there's not a good place for them in the house.  I've wanted to paint that door for at least five years.

           We are expecting 12 or so hours of rain before the next night when it will turn to snow.  In Kentucky, we usually get snow later. Hmmm, I don't know yet if from home learners get to have Zoom snow days!? 

        Yes, time for some photos:

The door color isn't really how it looks, but, hey, seeing is believing....that something happened!

a closer view of the two year geraniums -- thanks thanks thanks

     Another project made great headway today.  My friend Carolyn in town made a random comment a couple of months ago about needing another project while spending so much time at home. I replied in a joking manner that I had a task I would love to have her do, if she really wanted it. She said it sounded great, and today she reached the almost done stage -- working an hour or so most days she has typed out the 93 page journal from the notebook Frank and I kept every day -- while we traveled from California, going west, because our first stop was to visit his brother, who was in the Peace Corps in Western Samoa in the Pacific.  We were there for Christmas. We went on to Fiji, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, and all the way around back to the USA. Six months. This was in 1970-71, when there were cheap airplane tickets available as long as we continued more or less in the same direction. We went where we knew someone or where someone back home knew someone. We each carried a back pack, stayed in youth hostels or cheap hotels when not in someone's home, and we kept track of every thing we spent -- averaging ten dollars a day.  To pull that off actually takes a lot of work, but that trip was the privilege of a lifetime.

        Carolyn also loves traveling and has done quite a bit of it after growing up on a farm in Kansas.  I think she has enjoyed our adventures, and I can't thank her enough. She and I are going to figure out a sheltered way soon to go over the pages and decipher words or even clarify here and there. I never expected anyone to be able help me with this, and I knew I'd never manage to do it. I wanted to be able to share the adventure without having it be hard to read.

        Here's a photo of the modest looking notebook (our constant companion.) I've not been to Africa or South America; a thin line around a globe shows how much we haven't seen, but it was a precious adventure all the same. I'd always wanted to know what was on the other side of the world.

 

Frank did much of the detail recording, and I could add, or visa versa.

    

         

             

     

            Then there's these two photos of T., posing as a hairbroom in the first one, and showing her hair from the back in the second.  I have a better photo of her sitting down, but it's a vertical shot, and I STILL have not figured out how to make the transfer of a vertical to the current posts with the newly revised secret rules.  The sun was making her hair sparkle, but I couldn't get that to show either.  But we had fun trying -- though I was constrained to my chair in the corner....The attempt to convince me I'm elderly -- and therefore virus vulnerable -- continues. 

             I hope everyone is safe, healthy, and ready for what the next two months will bring us. I wish the wall that Trump is determined to complete was instead a structure that was being taken down, as a symbol of how much more important it is instead to break through our current partisan divide. It's going to take a long time to come to our national senses.  I'm sad that we couldn't make the trip now that we made 50 years ago, plus the world has real problems to solve, like the air, the water, and the access to food for all.  We don't need to spend time on egotistic walls and unrelenting tantrums.  We need to return, at the least, to being able to hug each other.  I'm grateful for friends, family and others who are keeping their eyes and hearts focused on a future filled with healing for each of us.  Ann

What I thought would be a simple post.....not

post #435
        This blog is also about photography, and yet I realized I had never shown some of the work I have done.  I decided today to share several photos on covers of books, and some author photos. These never pay the bills, but they're very satisfying.  And a good source of stories. And fun. But they may need some explaining.

       This is the first book George Ella Lyon and I did; its part of a series of autobiographies of authors of children's books.  I took some of the inside photos. However, I didn't know her in her younger days, so I used her photos to make a collage cover.  She grew up in Harlan, Kentucky, and I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, but we both had the same FIVE YEAR DIARIES!!  The one in the cover photo is actually mine, since she burned hers up while in junior high. This is the first time I have told this truth in public.

       

This second book we did uses only my photos, but I didn't decide which exact photos would be used or what the design for the cover would be. That was done by DK Ink, in New York.  Again, each photo has a story. Someday this year I hope to put the photos that are inside the book on this blog. They were slides, and so far I have not digitized all of them.

      I also have taken photos of George Ella which can then turn out to be useful as part of her publicity.  Sometimes they end up on posters, or fliers, or in a magazine.  We find that they work best if it happens to be a good day, with lucky circumstances -- like the ambient light. This image showed up recently on line  for Geroge Ella even though it was made years ago.  I still love the smile she has in this photo.

Wendell Berry is so much fun and such good company. He is known for not using computers, but it's a good thing I already had this image on my laptop -- because it was January when he needed to suggest another photo to his editor for this cover, soon to be printed.  I heard "Do you have anything?" and I could say "yes!" Again and always, a story.

This is actually the first cover photo I did with him; it was for a reprint of this early poetry book of his.  I thought these hay rows looked like lines from a poem!  (His publisher is Counterpoint Press, now in San Francisco.)

Somewhere I have the original photo, in color, but it's quicker today to use the photo from the jacket. I wanted to include this photo of my sister here because she was very strict. She knew exactly what she wanted. I couldn't make a single suggestion.  At least she claims to like the photo. (The title of her book is Flying Close to the Sun.)

Appalachian Heritage has a long and "storied" tradition in Kentucky. It features all kinds of writing and some kinds of art, like photography. This issue has my photos, and George Brosi was the editor at that time. I'm including below a photo of the back of the magazine -- it's not so usual to have a photo on any back, so I thought I'd indulge myself tonight.

George Ella emailed me that if I'm going to show two photos of her that I should at least put in one photo of me at work -- made by her.  So here it is! Thanks, George Ella, and don't you think it's a lovely miracle that we have had so much photo fun over the years?

    This last photo on today's post was made outside the lodge at Kentucky's Natural Bridge State Park, where George Ella had just given a workshop.  Again, for me, it's her smile during this unexpected and unplanned moment that makes it all work. Maybe her love for singing and her guitar helped as well. Who ever knows. She had needed a PR photo around then, so it worked out well.  She has been asking about our doing an updated new one, if we can ever be in the same place at the same time. That helps too! Stay tuned.

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.

Immigration in Kentucky -- a response -- plus a birthday

post #321
To all my readers outside of the USA -- while I work on the putting the rest of my post together today, I am sharing the words I read yesterday about the current chaos in the USA.       
       First, I am so sorry this immigration crisis has occurred. This is not what most Americans believe could happen and not what we want to happen. Secondly, one of the two senators from my state of Kentucky occupies the most powerful position in the United States Senate. He is a Republican, and therefore in the same party as our new president whose alarming behavior has caused this senseless situation.
        The essay I share today was in the Louisville newspaper, The Courier-Journal. It is in the form of a letter addressed to this senator, Sen. Mitch McConnell. I think the letter is so well written and so on target. Thank you, Fedja Buric. (I had to "cut and paste" the article in order to be able share it here.)
         The rest of my post today now appears later in this post. I promised some photos.


Dear Sen. McConnell -- In 1992, when I was 13 years old, democratically elected nationalist leaders blew up my life.  The country I had known, Yugoslavia, was torn to shreds in a brutal ethnic conflict none of us had either expected or wanted.
          In less than two years, these leaders would proceed to murder over 100,000 people and displace over 2 million more.
         With two suitcases in hand, my parents, my brother and I left behind the life we had known for something that no longer even resembled a life.
         We roamed the Balkans searching for a haven. We slept in an out-of-service train car. The train car was near a major battlefield so the UNHCR relocated us to Turkey. In Turkey, we lived in a refugee camp. We shared a couple of bathrooms with over three thousand other unfortunate Bosnians.
We wrote over thirty letters, begging for asylum: New Zealand, Australia, France, Switzerland, UNHCR, among others. They all said no. Only one country said yes — the United States of America.
         In June 1995, we came to Kentucky. We came bewildered by what had happened to us.  But, a few weeks after our arrival, our depression began to lift.  It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening to us—we were being shaken out of our stupor by the decency, generosity, and hospitality of the people of the Commonwealth.
        From a parent of a high school friend who offered to co-sign our first car loan, to my ESL teacher who listened to my sappy war stories and encouraged me to write about them, to your own office in Louisville, where your aides expedited my father’s travel papers so he could visit his ailing mother in France, the people of the Commonwealth moved us to tears with their generosity.
        Not once, did my foreign heritage, or my refugee status, hinder me in Kentucky.  On the contrary, Kentuckians from all walks of life, and of all generations, urged me to keep telling my story.  I did.  And as a result, I became a historian.  And a proud American.
        I am writing this open letter to you because I am dismayed, angry, and despairing over the direction our country is taking under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
        But even more so, I have been utterly demoralized by your silence in the face of the ugliness coming from the White House.
       When candidate Trump berated Muslims, you remained silent.
       When he promised to ban them from entering our country, you remained silent.
       When President Trump is putting these words of hate into executive action, you remain silent.      Yet again.
       Dear Senator, as a leader of one of our most cherished institutions, the Senate, you have a constitutional, but more importantly, a moral, obligation to speak up.
        It is up to you to stand up to President Trump’s bigotry and xenophobia and block the parts of his agenda that reflect the ugly echoes of the past.
        Senator McConnell, you are well aware that this not a partisan issue.  This is about our democratic institutions, common human decency, and the respect that the United States of America has earned around the world by embracing those unfortunate, desperate, hungry, and poor.
        I plead with you, sir, to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln and reach out for those better angels of your nature.

Fedja Buric is an assistant professor of history at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.

       Now for some photos!
       I was in Colorado last weekend with my son's family, to help out. I didn't have my good camera with me so I used my iPhone 6s. I also didn't have time to get out in the wilderness there, but I did capture some snow near Denver in the mountains where we were on Saturday. Then there are some birthday photos -- thanks to my now 6 year old grandson.

good early morning!!

driving over the pass on the way back to Denver

looking out the side window of the car

note: I wasn't the one driving.....

 

 

back home, ice cream cake, per Will's request, and more grandparents

The Kentucky Wildcats shirt was a birthday present I was lucky to find and bring with me....

And of course there was a birthday event at school as well:

Will with one of his teachers and his sister, Audrey

Audrey built this in school, and I was fascinated by its possibilities. First I made this photo by putting it on my lap, and I was wearing a black coat.... Then I wondered if it was a model for a flow chart for use in the current Oval Office. Surely there is some other explanation for what's coming out of there besides meanness and short-sightedness.