It had been months since we last knowingly heard from Bruce, an obviously troubled man who had been desperately reaching out for his old friend. I say “knowingly” because we no longer have caller ID, so Bruce may be also responsible for some recent hang-up calls. We know he called today because he left a protracted message on our machine. This scenario reminds me of a quote from the immortal Einstein—
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
On my third day of vacation, we went to the Corning Museum of Glass. My grandfather used to work for Corning, which may be the reason why my parents took me and my brother there so many times when we were kids. It seemed only fitting that my brother’s kids should go, too.
Kids are always accused of having short attention spans, but it’s really the adults who lack focus. One of my nephews took 211 pictures in the museum and he would have taken more, he avowed later, had we not rushed him. While I’ve always been fascinated by both glass and archaeology, I started yawning almost immediately. The museum’s collection was too comprehensive for a one-day visit.
Some of the newer pieces were quite pretty. I love this glass tire, for example. I didn’t take note of the artist’s name at the time, but I believe it to be Robert Rauschenberg. The dark blob over the top of the tire is the reflection of my father bending over to look at it more closely.
Another highlight for me was the glass harmonica. My hero, Ben Franklin, devoted some of his genius to redesigning the glass harmonica in the 1760s. The museum’s display included earphones through which to listen to a recording of one. It had a beautifully haunting sound.
We had been making such slow progress through the exhibits, we finally had to start shooing the kids along. We made it through just in time for the next glassblowing show. The glassworkers made a beautiful pitcher and then, to the dismay of the entire crowd, trashed it by throwing it into a bucket of water. Glass has to be annealed (cooled slowly) and they didn’t have any room left in the kiln. What a shame!
The gift shop was a letdown. They had some wonderful, exorbitantly priced items, and they had plenty of cheap stuff made in China, but not very much in-between. I bought a couple of small gifts, then got bored and went to the cafe, where I waited for everyone else to finish their shopping.
Faithful Reader and I took my nephews in our car for the ride back to the lake. Their musical tastes are limited mostly to classic rock, thanks to their father. I love classic rock, too, but I haven’t yet transferred that part of my music collection to my iPod. Since they complained, I amused myself by torturing them with other kinds of music—a little scat, some opera, and one John Mayer tune (listening to them sing along mockingly to “Waiting on the World to Change” is something that I’ll never quite forget).
Our children will be different. 😉
That was day three of my vacation. As soon as I can remember what we did on day four, I’ll tell you all about it.
My pictures of Niagara Falls made me start thinking about photography as an art. They’re fine pictures, but they’re “stock.” You can go online and find the same pictures on other websites, not because the contributors all stole from each other, but simply because Niagara Falls looks much the same from day to day and millions of tourists take pictures of it every year.
If you just want a record of what you see, then everyday tourist shots will do. If you want something more from your pictures, then you need to give them “soul”—that ineffable quality that makes a thing alive and unique. So how does one add soul to a picture? I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that part of it has to do with using interesting angles and with capturing elements that are different from day to day (or even minute to minute).
I don’t know how far I’ll go with my photographic efforts. Mostly I use photography to keep my brain busy while my body exercises, but some of the resulting pictures give me artistic satisfaction. I’m going to have to think more about how I can make my photographs special.
In the meantime, I offer you a few more pictures from recent walks.
Land snails are small and hard to see, but once I learned to spot them, I found them all over the place.
I think weeds can be beautiful. I would have retaken this picture to sharpen the focus, but a certain someone (who shall remain nameless) chopped the plant down the very next day. Zai jian, pretty weed!
The official name of this plant is Indian Pipe, but I call it Ghost Flower. Like a ghost, it’s white and creepy-looking, not to mention hard to capture on film.
As soon as I read about chicory being added to New Orleanian coffee, I had to try it. I even bought some, but then I let it sit and sit in the cupboard. A few days ago I awoke with the brilliant idea of finally making the chicory coffee. We brewed it. We drank it. It was strange, but not bad. This morning, I had that same idea again, and Faithful Reader (also a Reader of Minds?) already had it prepared for brewing. Thanks, Faithful Reader!
On the second day of my vacation, we all went to Niagara Falls. I had never been there before, but I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a huge and famous waterfall, but it also has a sappy reputation, thanks to all the honeymooners. Now, as a soon-to-be honeymooner, I still don’t get why it’s such a honeymoonish destination, but I do think every American (and Canadian) should see it at some point in their lives. It’s amazing.
It’s hard to capture the majesty and scope of the falls in a photograph. At the same time, it’s almost impossible to take a bad picture of the falls. Almost all of the pictures I took were acceptable. Choosing just one of them was the hard part. This picture gives you some idea of Niagara’s size and the amount of mist that it generates.
After oohing and aahing over the the view from the side, Continue reading
For our family vacation this year, we managed to talk my mom into renting a cottage on Keuka Lake (one of the Finger Lakes in New York state) instead of the usual Chesapeake Bay locale. Not that Maryland isn’t nice, and not that we don’t enjoy hunting for sharks’ teeth, but we all wanted a change, and we remembered Keuka Lake fondly. My grandparents used to have a cottage on the lake, and we vacationed there every year during most of my childhood.
This is a view of the lake from the cottage we rented this year. The dock, boat, and Adirondack chairs belonged to the neighboring cottage, but the scene gives you a good idea of how nice it is to be on the lake. Our dock was a little less photogenic.
Traveling down memory lane is a dangerous activity if you love your memories too dearly. Continue reading
The woods were dark and lonely yesterday evening. The clouds had prematurely aged the day, and the looming threat of rain kept all but the serious joggers at home. It was so quiet that I heard every rustle as various creatures moved around in the brush. The primitive part of me wanted to imagine they were mischievous spirits.
After spending part of last week walking in the wild woods of my youth, I suspected this very tame path would pale by comparison. It did, but not just because of the comparison. The blasting heat of last week finished off most of the flowers. There was too much wilted green and crunchy brown, and not enough softness, freshness, or color. I didn’t snap a single photo.
I guess it’s a good thing I took so many pictures during my vacation! Those pictures will be coming soon.
I am grateful for my washer and dryer.
My mother bought them for me when I first moved into my condo and they came with us when we moved. They have saved us hundreds of dollars over the years and provided oodles of convenience. Thanks, Mom!
I know this will sound a little strange given my usual reading choices, but I’m a fan of Stephen King. He writes in a way that’s so easy to read, it’s as if he’s communicating telepathically. I love that. I also admire his success, and I approve of his obvious respect for writing, for reading, for books, and for his fellow authors. I think he understands the many relationships between them. He certainly understands the important effect of a book’s physical properties on the reader. He says,
Books have weight and texture; they make a pleasant presence in the hand. Nothing smells as good as a new book, especially if you get your nose right down in the binding, where you can still catch an acrid tang of the glue. The only thing close is the peppery smell of an old one. The odor of an old book is the odor of history, and for me, the look of a new one is still the look of the future.
I hope to meet Stephen King someday, in real life. I already met him in a dream once. It was back when I was in college, before I considered myself a fan. In my dream, I was mowing the lawn and then I went through the bulkhead door into the basement, and there he was with some people that I took to be his family. He told me that if I ever wanted to be a writer, he would help. Years later, when his On Writing book came out, it had a bulkhead door on the cover. I thought (and still think) that was an interesting coincidence. Sure, the symbolism is obvious, but I grew up in a house on a slab, so bulkheads were almost completely foreign to me.
King’s name came up in the news earlier this year. While promoting literacy, he said, “The fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that.”
A lot of people took this as an insult to our troops, but that’s faulty reasoning. If I say, “That person is a girl. Her name is Pamela,” it does not follow that all girls are named Pamela. To infer from King’s comment that everyone in the army can’t read is the same kind of faulty reasoning. Some nonreaders may have no choice but to join the army, but that doesn’t mean that every person in the Army is incapable of reading. What he said was simply that your job options are more limited if you can’t read, and that’s true. If you can’t read, you can’t be a teacher or a doctor or president of the United States. That’s just the way it is.
People in the limelight risk controversy every time they open their mouths. No matter how carefully they phrase things, someone will find a way to be offended. I just hope that King is able to let this kind of stuff roll off his back, because his success as an author makes him an ideal literacy advocate, and we need him to keep fighting the good fight.
When I came home from my walk the other day, my camera loaded with new pictures, our house guest said something like, “So your walk isn’t really for exercise, but more for picture taking?”
And my reply went something like this: “I walk to exercise both my body and my soul. On the first round, I go slow and take pictures of anything that interests me. That exercises my soul. On the second round, I just walk, and that exercises my body.”
My soul needs as much exercise (if not more) than my body does, so I take a lot of pictures. Almost everything interests me, even fungus. Here are some of the pictures I’ve taken on my walks.
Can you believe that the second and third pictures are of the same mushroom? And that only a few days elapsed between pictures? (For the record, the third one was taken by Faithful Reader, but at my request.)
Bugs are interesting, too. How do you like these little beauties?
I don’t know why they were just hanging around. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were dead tired.
I really enjoy the picture-taking part of my walk.
How do you exercise your soul?
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