Day 31

Day 31: one month down. What have I learned?
1. take a couple shots rapidly when doing people.
2. the big camera is too heavy to take pictures while you are driving.
3. No matter what you think, the light has to be in front for a portrait to work.
4. Birds are hard to catch.
5. The moon, no matter how bright, is hard to shoot.




What have I learned about poetry this month?
1. you have to write in order to create one.
2. that I miss writing if I do too little of it.
3. That I can say more complicated things in writing than I can with a camera, thus far.

As for Edges,
1. They are really important in photography and writing.
2. That it hurts when you bang your head on one.


I have spent the month in a small town, USA, one which I have lived in since 1978. But I have seen it with completely new eyes this month. I am amazed at how well I know the corners of this town all of a sudden. Yes, documenting 365 Days is rewarding.

Day 30

Today was a big learning day. I've been trying to shoot the moon for 3 nights. I have been reading about exposure and I have been asking questions of my fellow Shutter Sisters, and I think, just maybe, I did ok tonight. I took a lot. I took them over the cove, in the middle of a Turners neighborhood, in front of the Wagon Wheel and in my front yard. YUP, I think I'm getting this, exposure, holding and apperture stuff....... COOL!





Day started off hard, think I have a sinus infection, but it amounted to all the daily edges.
But community is community, and whether you help someone put eye drops in, or catch up with fellow frontliners, or laugh at yourself, it anchors you. It is a plus.








Oh, and it is still really cold out there, why was this Robin here? Why did he fly North this early and subject himself to this weather?









But the most important thing continues to be friendship. Tonight I went to dinner with two women friends who encouraged me to stop and take pictures of the moon in crazy places. I did. I learned alot with the support of Edite and Christian. YAYAYAY!!

Day 29: Fourth Friday

In celebration of Brigit and poetry.

The Pine and The Girl

Your tall straight standing trunk
and long thin piney branches are
weighted down by cones 8 inches long.
Who heightened the swing
It must have been Patrick
Come back to make the seat high enough
For your new long legs.

It is too easy for you to fly
Into the needles in front
Too high for either of us to touch
But when you swing
Forward your legs stretching out front
You slash through those needles
Like the soaring hawk
or the jays scooting in and out.

You are a bird upon
a cherry seat
Your swing
Made higher
Each year you grow.

You are a bird
Your talons hanging
Straight down
Ready to embrace
Your prey.

You are the swing
Too high to be removed
A long arc that
Sails across the lawn

You are the swing
You are the bird
You are the pine;
food for several inhabitants
creatures below.
Strong and eternal



I have learned to love my Fridays. Today I left early to do a circle of 63 miles of farmland and rivers, which Greenfield is surrounded by. I saw cows and horses, no large birds, but plenty of ice floats. It was bright and beautiful and freakin' cold.




This process continues to change how I am looking at the world. I still am documenting those I love and getting the dog looking at the kid with those big eyes, but I'm also seeing small little things and shadows that I never took in before. I'm also truly learning about the camera. I'm trying to think about a show and how to put one together. It is the same mystery to me that putting poems in a manuscript. Should one have a theme in a show?



Franklin County is beautiful, even when the temperature is not much over 0. I'm a lucky girl.



And at the end of the day, I have my giggling girls, all of those wonderful nieces, and the two goddaughters who keep me alive. (By the way, there are a few nephews who are pretty amusing, too.) Yup I'm lucky and I am grateful for my Fridays off giving me the space and time to create.

Day 28

>
self-portrait by Emma


Sparrows At The Market

Green Eyes

Milky green glaze on a
French antique water pitcher.
Not bright but wise, older,
worn for their age.
The color has depth,
pale depth, like an inlet
where lily pads have
covered the water’s surface,
where cattails grow
comfortably and ducks hide
on the shore to care for their young.


There is a place
between Race Point and the lighthouse
where such a green exists.
It’s where we saw a blue heron
and an egret feeding together.
We drove by them 4
times just to spy as
those two majestic birds
stood on their long
lanky legs
just at the grass’s edge,
in the marsh, the green marsh.

In those young eyes
in their shade of green.
There is knowledge and
compassion beyond your years
They watch or stare into
blankness trying to take in
all that they saw today.
Let them close. Sleep, may
your dreams be as gentle as
that green.


Today was all about snow squalls. They came in and out.





All poems and photos by Lindy unless otherwise noted.

Day 27: Play

OK, I've had several friends say this is fun and one friend tell me blogs are self involved dribble. I want a vote. I hope it's not just self involved. I hope some of it speaks to others. I also wish people would respond.

Today I came home from work and played with my girls.




I love laughing with these two. They are so funny. Sunday we'll see a movie. They also both love giraffes, me elephants.

Day 26

I'd like to choose 10 photos that I'd blow up to 12x14, but the problem is one knows that there will always be another one right after that will be better, so it's hard to make choices. In someways I believe the photos with the edges are the ones to choose, well you could argue they all have edges, so the question is can I be more precise about what it is in a photo that makes it good for me.

I think there are 2 kinds of photos and poems that speak to me. One is a narrative photo, a photo that tells a story far greater than it's parts. The other is one of presentation, one that presents a singular item clearly and beautifully or poignantly.

This morning I took a picture of a single piece of ice forming on black top; white and grey facets on black bumpy background. It works as the later.



I also took a photo on Main St at 4 with sun glowing buildings and church steeples sparkling in the back and traffic backed up in the foreground. This may be an example of the former. It tells a story of a middle class town, a working class town. Traffic at 4, American Flags and church steeple on Main St., USA.

I love my long narrative poems that describe the harsh realities mixed with the glories of my life. But I am confident of those singular descriptions. I am confident in the simplicity. It gets rockier for me when I attempt complex comparisons. But I'll continue to try to write and photograph those long narrative stories.



My forsythia bush is so fascinating at the moment. In the fall, Geoff and i cut it back and cleared it of its invasive vines. So now it is bare and you can see how the thick sections have grown in braids along each other, twisting, they make up such beautiful curves, lovely beiges and greys twisted. On Sunday I was really looking at it and it reminded me of the nude woman wooden sculpture in my garage which Patrick did when he was a student at the Students' Art League in NYC, so I went and opened my garage door and photographed her back in the corner near piles of junk. I put a picture of her and a picture of forsythia wood together on my photo stream to illustrate the connection on the question, does the wood speak to the sculptor and help to determine the eventuality of the sculpture? Can a photographer show that after the fact from 2 random items? Or is it too complicated, too abstract?

Day 25

The weather was awful today, so I did not take the big camera out into the rain. It was gross. 2 hour ice delay and then terrible rain and wind. So I had the little camera at work and much much too much work.



Loads and loads of students. Loads and loads of database. Rain and database.... not a good mixture..... and to make it kind of happy, children of students hangin' in the office drawing, playing, entertaining me, giving me an excuse to shut the database down.

Home, where my front yard is now an ice rink.


Geoff came home.
Emma came here and then the drive to her house in the fog and visiting on a foggy rainy night when all I want is sleep, so tonight. No real blog, just sleep.

Day 24

Oh, Sunday.... a day of rest... a day of kindness, a day of peace. It's been that. My niece, Sarah, and great-niece, Hannah came to visit me today and I took them out for Chinese (3rd time this week). We had fun. It's so nice to like family. We get along. We also care about a lot of the same things. Today I passed along a family heirloom to Sarah. It was a ring designed by my great-grandfather for my great-grandmother (whom I'm supposed to be just like). She passed it on to my grandmother, who passed it to my mother, who passed it to me. I love it, but I will never be able to wear it again, my knuckles have gotten too large. It fits her perfectly. It looks gorgeous on her hand, and it keeps the story going, the thread connected. I love that.....



We then took a drive together, Hannah rocked out to her ipod, Sarah and I looked for cool pictures. It was fun to have someone else drive while I shot, and have two pairs of eyes. I didn't get that many shots. It was so grey, but we had a good time.

Then I went and dried my clothes.

I've been trying to do some other things with shooting lately. I took pictures of the dirty laundry on the floor of the kitchen, the wet laundry in the basket and the piles of folded laundry at the end. Interesting? I don't think it worked. I also took pictures of forsythia all tangled together and a wooden sculpture of a woman that Patrick made. That's a little bit better. Maybe I'll post that. I've been trying to shoot the same thing at different times of day, like the swing or the mailboxes. Some of it works, but it's not quite there yet. I want to do the preschedule "today it is" weather calendar. Maybe I'll post a clear weather picture everyday. I want to see continuation. That's what its about. It just all keeps going, it all keeps winding in on itself. It is lovely.



I remember an assignment that Tony Barrand gave us in Perception and the Arts (1975). It was the first time I had to do a learning journal. I loved it, I had to write down everything I perceived as interesting during the day. I remember one posting was a description of a 2 year old's hands in mine. Mine were large, at that time they weren't that fat, but they have always been large, and Robban's little hand was going to be precise some day. Anyway, I kind of think this blog is a little like that learning journal, and I would like to show more hands. My Mother's are almost transluscent, Emma's are long and strong, Geoffrey's have been used a lot, and Hannah's seem to be the favorite toy of a kitten. All hands, a tool in the life of edges.

Day 23

Went back and forth to Mom's today with Diane. I'm exhausted!!! I don't know what to say today about edges or documenting one's life. I do know that as we were heading back the sunset was a golden orangey red and as we went around a bend on 91 and headed into Hartford those copper and glass buildings glowed. That was a shot I missed today. Another shot I missed was looking out onto the sound the water was a perfect blue and the wharf poles sticking up out of the shore had had fresh white paint put on their tops, 5 in a row.




As for edges, mine are rounded today. I feel humble, I am filled with emotion and not a whole lot of ways of expressing them. I am tired. I have a terrible tooth ache. Thus, I will not try, I will not try to write tonight. I will just say that I am grateful for the love in my life.

Day 22

Happy Birthday Diane!

It's been a slow day. I've not felt well. I have a bad tooth and I think I'm being affected by it.... poisons and all. So I didn't take my usual Friday drive and shoot. I came home and napped instead. That's ok. I don't have to be brilliant every day, right?

We did go to China Gourmet for Diane's b'day. China Gourmet is a great place for us to go because it is like home for me and Emma. We're there a lot and the staff treats her as though she is very special, actually I think they know she is really special, she is. So's her Mom. It was a nice evening...





The other women in these photos are, Shoshawna, close family friend of Emma's family and Angie who is a manager at China Gourmet.

The only slight reflective, peaceful thing I did today was go over to Beacon Field and watch an old golden retriever walk across the park.


I do love my Fridays!

Day 21

This picture is this morning when I stepped out to get some real air during a 5 hour meeting. It is of Thomas, Luke and Thomas's working dog, whose name is escaping me at the moment. They had just given a workshop at a local elementary school. I caught them before they took off in the car.

A work week is over. That went really fast, because it was only three days this week.
Would you rather eat Thai, Chinese or Korean?
Education is most successful when it combines community and individual attention. Learning environments are most effective when they are interactive.



I Believe In Color
Lindy

I believe in red
the changing forever-ness
of red. A pure rich red:
cotton tee shirt red,
berries on the bushes in the
dead of New England winters,
cherries in June next to a
slab of ripe brie.
Magenta, a little redder than wine,
blood as it begins to dry,
the curtains I always wanted,
floor length heavy velvet.
Orange red on the skins
of a tangelo; blood oranges
in a light blue porcelain bowl on
a small table near stark white walls.
Dusty rose of an old flannel duvet,
the height of fashion in 1980.
I believe in red.

I believe in blue.
The ocean, a million different
shades in a day, dependent
on wind,
on clouds,
the sun’s angle,
how tired my eyes are.
The blue of a winter sky
the blue of a clear summer’s night.
Midnight blue,
dark, dark,
dark, not quite black.
Stars poking holes into it.
The blues of the Aegean;
all that clean white alongside
blue with no other color
added. No leanings
towards green or gray.
I believe in red, blue.


I believe in yellow.
The most marvelous of all yellows;
the sun high in the sky in July.
Washed out, but so bright.
Hot.
The yellows in late August.
The full heads on flowers.
Yellow ends the summer,
begins the fall.
Yellow has a hard time
staying pure, not letting
blue or red seep
dribble into it.
The yellow of lemon or a Baltimore oriole
Yellow of a Ford Pinto
that down shifts when
you turn on the air conditioner
I believe in red, blue and yellow..


These photos are all store windows on Main St., Brattleboro, Vt. I shot them in the dark because the color was so impressive, uplifting on a January winter's night.