Category: photography

Hello in there: A rambling discourse

Sometimes I feel like a baby spider floating through the air on my gossamer web-string, wondering when this little journey will end, where it will deposit me, and in general, what does the near future hold. I’m in one of those in-between times right now. I would like to tie this up neatly by saying, “Well! I’m approaching my 70th birthday this weekend, and that explains it! Ipso facto, easy-peasy, make no buts about it.” It’s not so. I’ve never lost the summer vacation feeling we all used to get at the end of May as we eagerly anticipated the end of another school year and the beginning of a responsibility-less (or less responsibility) summer. I had barely joined the workforce at the beginning of 1978 then I returned to college in September 1981. From then until 1992 I taught in public schools–summers off! After taking a year off, working the summer of 1993 started my final move, this time to a permanent career in pharmaceutical manufacturing. But…my antsy ways caused me to move cross-country in May 1997, and we moved to a new house in May of 1998, and we moved to New York in May 2001. In May 2003 my job situation changed markedly and by August I started looking for something new. Cutting to the chase: I started many of my dozen or so consultant contracts in May, plus or minus a month. Then there’s our society’s natural predilection to mark the end of May as summer, and the end of our church choir season, and the beginning of really warm weather, and the fact I’ve always loved warm weather, and…and….and…it all seems tied up with my birthday in the beginning of June.

Turtle cannibalism

My wife and I came across an odd sight this morning. The photo below, though taken in poor lighting and into murky water, shows a snapping turtle feeding on something.

Snapping turtle eating….a turtle? Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.

I’m pretty sure that’s a snapping turtle. I estimated the shell at around 15 inches lengthwise, maybe 18. Snappers average 10-18 inches, so that’s the right ballpark. It took awhile to make out what was going on until I realized it was feeding, and the object of its meal-affection appeared to be an upside down turtle of pretty good size itself. They are omnivores and eat carrion.

Other sights during our walk around Lake Lynn:

One of two geese of this species we see frequently. This one stands one-legged up the slope from the lake near an apartment in the many buildings which ring the lake. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.
The Lake Lynn southern parking lot has a small butterfly/pollinator bed including these Bachelor Buttons. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.
In the butterfly/pollinator garden Black-eyed Susans predominate. Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. June 2024.

Coming home we remarked that our own surprising volunteer Black-eyed Susan plants were starting to look pretty good:

Or maybe this isn’t a Black-eyed Susan…or the others aren’t? June 2024.

Our hydrangea plant continues to weird us out by changing color just a bit every year, getting more and more pink:

Pretty sure I shared one like this last year. The blue stamen/pistils are really something. June 2024.

And this year the main hydrangea bush’s outlier, a new plant coming up beside it and presumably from the same root system, shows a new color scheme altogether, seeming to lean in to the color scheme of its parent:

New hydrangea. June 2024.

What I’m brooding on…

These lyrics by John Prine in “Hello In There” haunted me in the 1970s and do so more the older I get. “Happy” Monday to you all.

"Hello In There"

We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it's been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don't know what for,
Don't matter anymore.

You know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder every day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there. Hello."

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeat itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen.
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if he asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? 
Nothing much to do."

You know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder every day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there. Hello."

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there. Hello."

I had to buy it

My 2.25-pound purchase. May 2024.

I shop produce first, even when the store doesn’t shunt me there with its layout. Friday, barely into the nearest Whole Foods, I spotted this heirloom tomato, all 2.25 pounds of it. I wandered the store getting things for the list, but couldn’t shake the idea of thing. I texted my wife and a couple friends about it, and they said, “buy it!” For scale, I can just comfortably get one hand around each half; it takes two hands to hold it. It looks like conjoined twins–I guess it’s offensive now to use the older, more common name. A bit hard–we’ll give it a few days to ripen up and then what? My wife’s vote is for stuffing it. I was thinking a stupendous, feeds-a-family-of-four Caprese salad.

Frivolous Friday

The piece I wrote last night isn’t quite ready, my tasks outpaced my time available, and I really want something to be posted. Ergo….

THOSE WHO DAWDLE MUST STAND ON CURB

I guess the two on the curb are crossing guards. May 2024, Raleigh, NC.

One of the best blues-rock live albums of my lifetime: “LIVE” FULL HOUSE by J. Geils Band, released 1972. “Whammer Jammer, lemme hear ya, Dickey!” and Mister Magic Dick on the lickin’ stick takes off with some serious Southside harmonica work. (YouTube also has a 1979 video of the band performing this onstage–worth it for Magic Dick’s bush of hair alone.)

Ideas I will never write (feel free to steal):

  • I was only hunting moonbeams/But my eyes got in the way
  • The scariest monsters don’t lurk under your bed. The scariest ones climb into bed with you and pretend to love you.
  • “He’ll worry all about the bugs on the windshield but not about the car coming at him in his own lane.” Not sure where that is from. Was it me?
  • Many people will travel the world on a regular basis but will be unfamiliar with the land and culture within a 300-mile radius of where they live.
The oak-leaf hydrangea has recovered from the complete devastation of the squirrels two years ago. Though only one stalk remains, it has leaves on it as big as a small dinner plate, and this lone but lovely bloom cluster. May 2024.

the peony’s promise

Pink peony. May 2024.

Symbolically, this peony represents why I haven’t been posting. It’s two days ago, I’ve got about 30-45 extra minutes in the late afternoon, and I think, “Hey, I better get that peony tied up before it blooms, and for sure before those hard rains hit that are forecast for tonight.” My two peonies will fall right to the ground as soon as they bloom fully. The rain didn’t materialize, but this photo, taken yesterday, shows many blooms are on their way and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow “for sure” and…you get the idea. The idea that I could instead get something posted never entered my mind.

I wrote a very lengthy essay last weekend the first of a series to explain from various points of view explaining what I think is more important than writing. Though sober (a good way to write!), I left it overnight to review in the morning, and decided at that point it just was too personal. My desire to be a writer and accept that a writer needs to write where the words will take him conflicts with my desire to be liked by at least a few people and with my desire to not expose every piece of my soul and psyche.

There won’t be many posts in the near future either, but I keep saying I’m ‘going to do better’ and maybe this time I mean it. Hey, I finally started going back to the gym after a six-month hiatus, didn’t I? And that’s for something I don’t really want to do!

Sawmill gravy

Buttermilk Kitchen’s Sawmill Gravy on O.G. Biscuits. March 2024.

At the risk of offending multiple food groups (in the sense of those of us who eat food), let me offer up one of the more satisfying meals I’ve made in the past year. About six weeks ago I purchased Welcome To The Buttermilk Kitchen a cookbook by Suzanne Vizethann who operates a restaurant in the Atlanta area called Buttermilk Kitchen. The above photo is of a Southern staple: sawmill gravy over biscuits, i.e., “biscuits and gravy.” The gravy can be of several varieties, but the most common is a béchamel-type base with sausage in it.

It works like this: take five frozen sticks of European butter (the kind with a higher fat content than American butter); grate it coarsely. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and then fold in the grated butter “until mixture resembles sand.” My patience level has never achieved this standard. Add 2.75 cups (1.33 pints) of “high quality, full-fat” buttermilk. Drop them on baking sheet with a 4-inch ice cream scoop and bake.

I use Michael Ruhlman’ From Scratch to make my own breakfast sausage. (If you’re into cooking, I heartily recommend this book. It takes 10 basic meals and riffs off of them with dozens of recipes for each one. For example, the sausage recipe–ridiculously simple–is in Chapter 2 which is “The Omelet”.) The Sawmill Gravy recipe starts off like a basic béchamel, veers this way: 5 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of heavy cream. The “4 dashes of Tabasco” is perhaps not in your béchamel either. The rest is obvious. Split a biscuit. Ladle gravy over it. Sprinkle with parsley if you’ve got it. Eat. Retire to porch/living room/deck. Loosen pants. Snooze.

Repeat as necessary.

Plugged

There’s a logjam of words at the mouth of my brain. Nothing’s getting out. This photo will have to suffice.

Brown hole. Similar to black hole, these suck one into the depths, spit one out later. April 2024.

…the rest of your life…

A door by any other name. Stained glass lighting of the ordinary. March 2024.

Among the plethora of button-pushing statements to set me off is, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” No. Shit. The sentiment behind it? Okay, sure, don’t drag yesterday’s baggage into today. Yet who among us feels wise enough to know every single one of the elements from the past which represent baggage (versus valuable life-informing lessons)? I’m a Jacob Marley sort. I drag a long, long chain of emotional bondage behind me, all the little boxes filled with guilt, remorse, sorrow, and pain. I’ve been blessed/cursed with an excellent memory so all of that stuff remains instantly retrievable. (My family: “How do you remember all of that?”) I’ve been blessed/cursed with an exactitude which drives me to excel and drives me to repel. And I’ve been taught by my father to dwell on failure, hold it close, never let go, and fixate on the darkness behind instead of the light ahead. This works especially well if one can punish oneself for some splitting-hair issue which no one else can perceive.

With that in mind, it’s perplexing how much of an optimist I am, and to that end, over the past week or so I’ve felt yet another “new” beginning in my life. Maybe it’s caused by looking ahead 70 days to the eve of my 70th birthday. (Huh. That’s numerical coolness right there!) More likely it’s just the relief of warmer temperatures coming to join the much longer, much brighter days. Whatever. I feel the same soul-searching and goal-setting vibes as I do at the beginning of Advent or the New Year. I’m getting in shape! I’m rededicating myself to my scriptural studies! I’m planning a cool getaway that’s been on the books for over a year! I’m getting back to writing more, photographing more, and posting it all here! Yes! Yes! It could happen!!

Perspective says, “No, you know it won’t happen that way. You’re going to light a birthday-cake’s worth of hope-candles which will be snuffed out quickly in the winds of your ever-changing mind and the vagaries of life. You’ll move on. You’ll declare a New Normal. You’ll dive, you’ll soar. It will be Life As Usual.”

Okay then. I’m leaning into life as usual, but I’m redefining usual! So there, Perspective!

And speaking of perspective, this last thought: I recently told a friend in his mid-80s that I had been dwelling on “how much time do I have left” and it saddened me that I had so little time remaining to study the underlying scholarship to the Bible. His immediate reaction: “Why would you do that!” He noted I likely wasn’t ready to pursue the studies until I did. Generalizing from there: one does what one does when one does it. Would I have had a different life if I had listened to my inner voice of reason in 1992 and said, “no, I’m not moving to Philadelphia just to pursue a fling with a young woman?” Sure. Your life flows through the geology of existence, creating a channel called My Life. I’ve tried to choose the most natural, easiest path on the theory it represents what’s best for me at that time. It led to many wonderful things, but I can’t say any one decision made differently wouldn’t have led to many other wonderful things.

Perspective–it’s a bitch. That’s why old folks are so bitchy–we have more perspective.