Dawson's Photography

Time flies - it's been several days since I last posted. Monday I filled most of the frames I've been collecting, with Dawson's photographs. The goal is to fill our two-story entryway with art, which will mostly be his photos. A king-size antique yo-yo quilt, from Monte's aunt, fills one wall already.

Tuesday evening some of Dawson's classmates from a college Photo Lighting class came for supper - to photograph the food for a class project. We didn't eat until close to eight! but it was fun watching them adjust camera settings, change lenses, set up and move various huge light contraptions and then white boards to bounce the light around. Just a few of the 100's! of pictures they took are on Dawson's photo site.

Dawson's actually been posting pictures for a year now. Sometimes our family happenings get posted there. Like just before the food pictures are several days of Monte and Dawson driving around the NW Colorado corner and over into Utah and Wyoming - as Monte's getting ready to do a field trip for visiting Norwegian geologists.

Wednesday was MOPS. I took a bunch of Dawson's photos to replace photos in frames we already have at church. Our church walls are like art gallery walls, and things are periodically moved around or changed. Dawson has sold some of his framed photos, and has displayed some in an Evergreen Art Center. 

Dawson takes pictures daily and has a good eye - always on the look-out for something to capture.

1sts of Spring Chart

When my kids were young I always put up a Firsts of Spring chart, making a new one every year. It's become so much a part of all of us, that even now, without the chart, someone will tell me "I saw a crocus" or "I saw a bluebird... or robin ..." or "I smelled a stink bug".

I'd mark the chart with the dates - like when we see the Aspens with the catkins that come before the leaves. I always mark my calendar when I see (actually hear!) the first hummingbird. We've already mentioned amongst ourselves that we heard the flickers and their mating calls, which seems to first begin on our metal stove pipe! We saw the first grass snake when Trav's friends were here last weekend.

I tend to mark my calendar too when we see a bear (like my posts last August!) and when the hummingbirds, bluebirds and robins leave in the fall ... when we get the first frost and snow. One year we had the oddest event of a tornado touch down in the garden and totally take away all my floating row covers and some black plastic and some plants! We never did find evidence, even though I looked as we drove places.

It's made us more aware. I used to love the smell of the rain when we lived in the desert - it's very unique. Here in the mountains there's an obvious smell of Spring with the early rains and the sun angle in the sky. We see lots of rainbows, many of them double.

I see these as God Winks. Oh how many winks I bet we miss!

Spring Signs

I saw my first flowers yesterday. It's on-and-off sunny and yet snow sprinkles - it really doesn't know whether to rain or snow. Remember ... I live at 8000 feet! But I took some pictures.

I take pictures every year but I'm going to try and date them and keep a scrapbook this year. I did buy a really fun book from an Amazon seller that's given me ideas for carrying on a scrapbook in a fun way. I do have pages of garden diagrams and notes and dreams from years back all on one clipboard. I change ink color for differing years notes on the same pages. I have notes of what's dead - via underground voles or gophers, elk or dear, or digging dog! - or too, just needing some winter mulching or watering.


With an electric fence, we're excavating more (once it's done snowing and dries out more - it is mostly melted now) and eliminating most of the grass area. We're dreaming of a pond too. We do have an old pond my oldest son made years ago of concrete. We did the sump-pump thing and a series of small ponds cascading into the larger. First off, unless sealed properly, concrete absorbs the water. Secondly, elk like stepping in and messing up things let alone wrecking all the surrounding plantings. And then ... one year, Travis brought home trout he'd caught in a pond down the road. That was nice, until in one night raccoon had eaten them!

This week begins my beginning of starting seeds in my greenhouse. I posted earlier pictures about heat coils and grow lights set up and ready to go. For now I've got a few warm weather herbs I bought there and four flats of stages of wheatgrass - which we've been juicing now. Can't tell you if we feel any miracle change yet! But it's fun.

Redeeming Oppression?

Today is the birth date of Booker T Washington in 1856. Yesterday was remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination 40 years ago.

I've read Booker's autobiography Up From Slavery. It was a good read. He was so much a part of reconstruction of the rubble of the South and the repercussion of slavery. His legacy is not just what he accomplished himself, but what he helped thousands of others accomplish--both black and white.

I'm old enough to have vivid memories of the day John F Kennedy was assassinated. School was a very quiet place other than all the teachers crying. And I remember all Saturday morning cartoons and regular programming on the few networks were dominated by his funeral and the constant replay of the open convertible car scene.

Kennedy and King were both at the beginnings of every home having a TV. Though slavery was abolished in the 1860s, blacks were not free. We saw that on TV. Though Martin Luther King Jr learned from Gandhi, OT Daniel and his three friends, and early Christians, that nonviolent resistance is the way to bring change, we did see violence. I hold these images still in my memory too. 

King clung to nonviolence because he profoundly believed that only a movement based on love could keep the oppressed from becoming a mirror image of their oppressors ... Nonviolence, he believed, "will save the Negro from seeking to substitute one tyranny for another." 

King accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Philip Yancey in his Soul Survivor has a chapter on Martin Luther King Jr and says, "Because he stayed faithful, in the short view by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, and in the long view by holding before us his dream of a new kingdom of peace and justice and love, he became a prophet for me, the unlikeliest of followers."

Above Picture by Jacob Lawrence

Color?

I saw this picture in the news about Toyota - these are new recruits. Did they give them a dress code prior to the meeting? What if someone wore color, like red? Boy wouldn't they stand out!!

Criticism

Should I say anything or let the pictures speak for themselves. If you think of them in relation to me or Monte ... Or think of what goes on in churches and culture and history ...

My Worth Quote

My worth to God in public 

is what I am in private.

- Oswald Chambers

Story Quote

My friend Ellen had this quote on the bottom of one of her emails. Maybe she did it just for me? She knows me!

"There's an old Jewish saying, 

'What's truer than truth? 

The Story!'"

And I do love it's message!

More Egg Pictures

I got Dawson's pictures from last weekend and thought I'd post some more of the Ukrainian eggs.








And here's my daughter-in-love Sarah with their little dog Bea.

April's Fool?

No real facts on this day's history exist. Even Snopes.com mentions it (more than mentions it, it's rather long). I actually just wanted to post this picture I found.

There is a story of a day when a king would change places with a fool for the day. And I like this so-often-true thought:

"Fools were really wise men.
It was the role of Jesters
to put things in perspective
with humor."

The changing to the Gregorian calendar in the late 1500s is what you find the most out there in legend-land - which changed New Year, end of March, to January 1. But it doesn't really work as an explanation since the UK celebrated April Fools long before they adopted the Gregorian calendar in the 1700s.

I'll share a story from one of my British children's calendar book called All Year Round. It's of a baby Olaf sleeping in a cradle slung from the branch of a tree, while his mother mended fishing nets nearby. A large wave came upon the beach and took the baby leaving a fish in the cradle. She shrieked to her husband that the baby was gone. While her back was turned, a second wave miraculously returned her baby to the cradle and retrieved the fish. The husband came, looked, saw the baby, and berated his wife as a fool.

There has to be some fish connection, because in many countries they make fish shaped confections for this day and people slyly tape paper fish on people's backs. Maybe it has something to do with the zodiac sign of the fish around this time of year.

Some people hang a little cradle carrying a fish (like a half walnut shell with a cracker or carboard fish glued inside) around their neck or at their front door, as protection. Most practical jokers respect this code. But I don't think any of this exists in the USA.

Another thing I've read is that April's weather can be so fickle that it'll fool you into planting too early!

Fool phrases -
April Fool; Fool's Cap; Act the Fool; Fool's Errand; Fool's Gold; Fool's Paradise; Fool's Parsley; Playing the Fool; Tomfoolery; Trompe-l'oeil (A still-life painting, designed to give an illusion of reality. Literally 'deceives the eye'); Foolery; Foolhardy.