11.19.07
11.12.07
Dowling Community Garden at night (well, at 5:30 PM, which is the same thing as night in November at the 45th parallel).
This print available at Etsy.
11.10.07
The same boo lights, but through the Minolta Maxxum with slide film.
11.8.07
11.7.07
11.6.07
11.5.07
11.1.07
How about something a little lighter after all that Halloween Sturm und Drang?
Back at the start of October, we took our last “camping” trip of the season; we were planning to go in the tent, but the weather was wet and grim, so we ended up at a friend’s place up north, in Outing, Minnesota.
In front of their place was a simple swing–a board on a rope on a tree–that went far out over a steep hill. The big kids–Jack and Peter, 6, and Ella, 7–demanded “rocket rides” on this swing, which involved a big push over the precipice. I was only too happy to oblige.
10.31.07
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe
A … happy? .. Hallowe’en to all!
10.31.07
Jack and Peter (and condemned pirate skeleton) framed by the guillotine at our friend Paul’s Halloween display.
10.30.07
Another of the creepy characters at Paul’s Halloween display.
10.29.07
The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
And so it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the church-yard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
The Unknown Dead by Henry Timrod
More from Paul’s creepy Halloween display.
10.28.07
. . . though I don’t think this is the sort of babysitter who will teach you the sign for “peace”, or sit on her hair, or have a boyfriend called “The King of Romance” (apologies to Dar Williams). This is the sort of babysitter who prefers to separate the heads of tots from their little bodies and has been known to roast little limbs for a midnight snack.
We visited our friend Paul’s house in Apple Valley to see his elaborate Halloween display, with creepy characters, eerie sounds, and disturbing gravestones. If you’re trick-or-treating around 136th Street Court, follow the screams to this spot if you dare: Paul promises good Halloween loot, but there’s a price to pay for it . . .
09.25.07
Somewhere in Eden, after all this time,
does there still stand, like a city in ruins,
forsaken, doomed to slow decay,
the failed garden?
Ina Rousseau, Eden
I’ve added my story Summer Reading to the Stories page of this site; it seems that Somewhat.org has left the building, and with it some wonderful little gems (as well as a couple stories of mine). They aren’t even available in the Wayback Machine. More about “Summer Reading” here.
Now see these:
04.1.07
Taken on the Lake Street Bridge (aka the “Sri Chinmoy Peace Bridge”, I’m not entirely sure why) between Minneapolis and St. Paul last autumn.
Oh, yeah–Poisson d’avril, tout le monde!
Eight selections today:
02.19.07
Four selections:
02.16.07
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, Autumn Song
Four selections:
02.15.07
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems–not to suffer pain?
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, Autumn Song
Featured on the Daily Dickinson site.
Some leftovers from last autumn–the temperatures in the basement have been far too cold the last few weeks to spend any time over the sink with black and white chemicals.
Four selections:
02.14.07
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, Autumn Song
Some leftovers from last autumn–the temperatures in the basement have been far too cold the last few weeks to spend any time over the sink with black and white chemicals.
Three selections:
12.18.06
Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
George Herbert, The Flower
Featured on the new Daily Dickinson site…
Two cullings for today:
12.17.06
Three cullings for today:
11.29.06
From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.
Ode To Maize by Pablo Neruda
Brownie Hawkeye Flash (with reversed lens), at the Dowling Community Garden.
11.28.06
Brownie Hawkeye Flash (with reversed lens), at the Dowling Community Garden. Like the garden shed, I’ve visited this birdhouse a few times — with the Yashica and the Sawyer Nomad last winter. Here it is in the autumn.
11.27.06
Brownie Hawkeye Flash (with reversed lens), at Mother Earth Gardens a few days before Halloween.
The pumpkins have since been evicted, of course, to make room for balsams and Frasers and holly and ivy and such; we rode our scooters through their lot on Saturday to take a first assessment of the available trees (we’ll wait until December this year before buying, since we didn’t have Auntie Betsy’s early tree example at Thanksgiving this year).
11.26.06
Brownie Hawkeye Flash (with reversed lens), at Dowling Community Garden, Minneapolis. The same shed is featured here, as captured by the Spotmatic last year, and here, as captured by the Lubitel about the same time as the above. It’s interesting how different cameras and different conditions can produce such different images of the same object — if one were just patient and persistent, one could capture the whole range of emotion on film by just sitting still.
11.25.06
Brownie Hawkeye Flash (with reversed lens), at Dowling Community Garden, Minneapolis.
Featured on the Daily Dickinson site.
10.12.06
10.11.06
10.10.06
10.9.06
10.8.06
Read more
The
Dowling Community Garden is on the edge of the boys' school; if they're cooperative in the morning (which can be a challenge...), we walk through the garden on our way to school. They enjoy looking at the flowers and vegetables, and lately have enjoyed the crunch of fresh frost under their feet. I enjoy walking through the garden myself, and after dropping them off I often walk back through the garden with a camera or three and look for little hints of magic in the changing seasons. [
Hide the verbosity]
Our first taste of frost came a few weeks ago, followed by a warm spell. Taken at the Dowling Community Garden, a “victory garden” on the edge of the boys’ school.
12.17.05
Lakewood Cemetery, October 26, 2005.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o life shall run.
- Robert Burns, “O, My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose.”
Featured on the Daily Dickinson site.
I get not-infrequent visitors to this page who appear to be searching for the poem from which I took the title. So as to be helpful, I’ll suggest that you go here for the full text, and here for more about Robert (”Rabbie”) Burns; and if this taste of Lallans Scots poetry whets your appetite, might I also suggest:
12.5.05
Outside the Fire Roast Mountain Coffee Shop.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Skating with Jack and Peter (who after one outing are as good as their Dad, but that bar’s pretty low)
- Warm blankets
- New storm windows
12.3.05
The last leaves are long covered by snow now; there’s more snow (a little more than flurries, but not much) coming down this morning. Those last bright days of autumn are just a blurry memory now.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Color film in the reversed-lens Brownie
- Weekend adventures with the boys
- Morning coffee
12.2.05
I stopped at the Dowling Community Garden one very foggy morning; here, a kid runs through the mist to the nearby school.
Things for which I am thankful:
- Granddad’s home-made Lincoln Logs (they’re square!)
- Fog
- Christmas storybooks
11.26.05
Jack post-dive into a pile leaves.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Good books
- Good beer
- Russian cameras
11.25.05
Jack mid-dive into a pile of leaves.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Days off from work
- Charlie Brown holiday specials
- Leftover turkey
11.24.05
It is, of course, Thanksgiving, and we’re off to the various family things–mother-in-law’s for the next installment of the soap opera, then to Auntie Betsy’s house to eat pie and hang out with Granddad, visiting from Maine.
Taking a page from Hello, where “five good things” are listed every day, this seems a good time to start listing things for which I’m thankful. So from now until the New Year, I’ll name three things for which I’m thankful:
- Jack and Peter (though very individual, I get great joy from them as a unit as well)
- Kelly (who continues to put up with me)
- Granddad’s visit (I was able to eat supper in peace last night while the boys tormented him, though I think he actually enjoyed being tortured)
11.17.05
11.16.05
.jpg "In Line")
Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis
11.14.05
11.13.05
The grave ’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
More from my afternoon at Lakewood Cemetery, and my first color roll through the reversed-lens Hawkeye.
I wish that I had the Hawkeye 16 years ago, when I went to Highgate Cemetery in London. At the time I was a Trotskyite anarcho-syndicalist with Romantic leanings, so it started as a pilgrimage to Karl Marx’s grave. But the Romantic side of me quickly took over when I saw all those weeping angels and empty chairs and clinging vines on the old side of the cemetery; the modernist bust of Herr Doktor Marx on the new side was lacking in all manner of charm, like a socialist realist poster among pre-Raphaelite paintings (or Julia Margaret Cameron photographs, though I’d yet to discover her). If I ever go back, I’ll bring the Hawkeye along, plus a few rolls of Agfa 100, and make up for the lost opportunity.
11.12.05
Taken at Lakewood Cemetery with the Hawkeye, lens reversed; I just love the dreamy swirl and blur of the backwards-lens-Brownie.
Featured on the Daily Dickinson site.
11.10.05
For a season that turns so cold so fast, autumn has incredibly warm colors.
Taken with the Lubitel on my lunch break.
11.9.05
From Mother Earth Gardens in South Minneapolis, again. It’s a cold, blustery morning, a rather sharp reminder of what’s on the way.
11.7.05
At Mother Earth Gardens, 42nd Ave. and 38th St., in South Minneapolis–our favorite place for pumpkins and Christmas trees.
11.6.05
I’ve had some good luck with color film in the Lubi; I first tried it out last month at the Afton Apple Orchard, where I got the boys to pose among the pumpkins. They’ve since discovered “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” which we watch several times a day for the fun of seeing Linus get rolled by the pumpkin in the opening sequence. Oh, to be four again…
11.5.05
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.
Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
(another of my obsessive pictures of Harry Wild Jones’ Washburn Water Tower, this one with the Lubitel)
11.5.05
Found at the Lakewood Cemetery; it was an incredibly sad, and oddly whimsical, and slightly absurd grave decoration, and much more interesting (and touching) than the usual wilting carnations. I hope that someday someone will leave a pumpkin at my grave…
updated 05/21/2007: third place selection in the Shutterday.com “Ground Score” category.
11.4.05
The other morning, as I drove down 28th Avenue S., I saw the most wonderful fog over Lake Nokomis. I had to stop and finish up the color roll in the Lubitel–after all, I wanted to drop off the Hawkeye color roll from the cemetery, and I was running a couple minutes ahead of schedule. Work can wait for fog…
11.4.05
A happy accident from the Holga; I think this was actually a developing catastrophe–you can see the circles from the backing paper–but there’s something magical about its imperfection.
11.3.05
The afternoon of my reading at the Coffee Gallery, I slipped out of work early and roamed Lakewood Cemetery with my Brownie Hawkeye. It was a gorgeous, bright autumn day, and the Hawkeye was loaded with color film; it felt very much like what the 19th century cemetery movement was all about, with the urban parks where the quick and dead can meet for a little relaxation.
11.2.05
A Lubitel shot from the Afton Apple Orchard; I love the Lubi with color film, if only processing weren’t so pricy.
