New Paris post

Please visit Paris Deconstructed for a photo gallery of Rouge de Paris (red in Paris).

Morning shadows

Click on photo to enlarge.

This still life isn't a perfect composition. But I couldn't resist the morning shadows on the wall, so I took it as is, dust and all.

The little girl in the photo is my mother, Barbara, born June 26, 1916, passed away March 29, 1997. The photo sits on Lesley's piano, which is still in our house until she gets her own more permanent place. I'm glad because Lesley plays when she comes home. Barbara was a pianist too, among other things.

Above all she was enthusiastic. Do you know the root of "enthusiasm"?

dictionary.com says (my bold):

possession by a god (énthous, var. of éntheos having a god within, -theos god-possessing)

Mom was enthusiastically full of God! (I think everyone is full of God, but that's another subject.)

Brown bottles and brownfields

I noticed these beer bottles and cans as I headed up the parking ramp this morning. I don’t think I can reach them, but I wish I could recycle them. They can be used in new container, brick and ceramic manufacture. Or, I could just give them to one of two friends who make homemade beer. (I actually find it rather sweet that the drinkers bothered to place them so carefully above their heads, rather than leave them on the parking ramp floor where they'd probably break and then be harder to dispose of. Or, maybe they forgot them, having intended to remove them, but after a few too many, well, you know.)

Speaking of brown things and cleaning up, have you heard of brownfields? I hadn’t until reading about them this morning on our University’s home page. I’ve heard of neighborhoods cleaning up empty lots and turning them into parks, but this is more. Apparently I’m a little slow on the uptake, because according to wiki, the term has been around since 1992 and the first EPA funded project was in 1994.

According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), “Brownfields are real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties takes development pressures off of undeveloped, open land, and both improves and protects the environment.”

Here at MSU, our Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, in partnership with DaimlerChrysler, is looking into ways brownfields can grow crops for biofuels. They’re looking into growing oilseed crops like soybeans, sunflower and canola, and other crops such as corn and switchgrass on abandoned industrial sites for use in ethanol or biodiesel fuel production. Many other organizations have been cleaning up brownfields for a while.

I am excited to hear about ways researchers, businesses and communities are cooperating to work smarter to care for our poor abused mother earth.

New growth

Today I'm bringing all the houseplants inside from the porch where they summered. I have quite a collection of these Christmas cacti, since I propogated them over the winter.

You know, I think summer is great, but it's in autumn when you reap the benefits of all that sunshine and warmth. You eat the harvested fruits and vegetables, and you see the new growth that sprouted in the warmth and light.

I've been reading in Tolle about space consciousness, and it comes well timed, because I've been overwhelmed with information overload. I need to be more conscious of empty space, and how it's needed to observe life and also for creativity. I need more stillness.

So all that grey space in the photo is for Life to expand.

I hardly ever read novels (I know, I was an English major, what's up with that?)

I wrote about Jonathan Swift in July from Dublin after visiting St. Patrick’s Cathedral where he was Dean. Also, he attended Trinity College where we stayed. I was taken with him and his revolutionary ways.

But I never read a word he wrote in all my years as an English major, or in high school, or as a child.

So this evening I scanned the bookshelf for a novel I haven't read and came across this combined edition of Gulliver's Travels and Baron Munchausen. Having just posted a photo of myself under a mushroom, I thought it must be time to go to Lilliput. I have no idea where this copy came from. My dad? A rummage sale? This edition has no date in it, but I think it's from the 1880's or 1890's.

In 1726 Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, a satire on the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Authorshop of Baron Munchausen is not certain, which you can read about if you click on Baron Manchausen in the previous paragraph, but it's sometimes called "Gulliver Revived." I don't know the story, but it was made into a film in 1988.

One reason I love old books is the beautiful embossed relief binding. Don't you think we've lost something, looking at the stack of books below? I'm sure the old methods of bookbinding must be too costly to be practical these days.

If you want to read about the "history of the book" (not this specific book, but books in general), which I think is fascinating, go here for the wiki piece.

The Island

I have a new post at Paris Deconstructed, about the island in the Seine where the Notre Dame sits. Bridges, bridges and more bridges.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRS. M!

Hyperreality II

Hyperreality

Do you ever do something obsessively?

I stayed home from work today, not feeling too well. But not feeling bad enough to lie flat in bed. So, I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop.

This means multi-tasking. (“Multi-tasking” is what we who have dial-up do so we don’t go insane. Sometimes we go plow an acre while waiting for a site to load.)

• Read through my blogroll
• Read email
• Read newspapers online
• Start composing my next blog post
• Look at the new photo hunt season first week challenge at JorgDotOrg
  
• Organize photographs and look for something appropriate for the photo hunt

And that leads me to the next task. The photo hunt challenge this week is “something new.” I thought of the sumac trees out back that are just turning orange, which has been quite a theme for me this week after all (orange, that is). The newly orange leaves might be a nice seasonal subject.

I have a photo from under the sumac, looking up at the sky. But the sky is white, the photo taken on a cloudy day. Not very interesting.

Before photoshopping:


Hmm, maybe I can photoshop the sky blue! That’s where the obsessive behavior comes in. I’ve been photoshopping blue into the sky for hours now. (There must be a quick way to fill all the white with blue at once! But no, every white area goes like this: select tiny area with magic wand tool, edit, fill, ok, select, edit, fill, ok, select . . .you get the idea. If there is a quick way, and you know it, I don’t know if I want you to tell me now. Wait a few weeks. I have too much time invested in this photo. It might break my heart.) It’s like coloring, or finding puzzle pieces. It’s like playing a game. It’s mindless and when you’re not feeling well, mindless is good. It’s fun to do in between multiple tasks.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to wait for a sunny day and take another photo, you ask? Well, maybe. But then, I may have to wait several days, and by then the sumac will be entirely orange, which is fine. But I like how the leaves are part green and part orange in the photo.

Well, while photo-shopping the sumac, I opened an email from my brother Nelson saying that his son Dave in Sydney watches this site on wiki: hyperreality. Dave’s a smart guy, works in artificial intelligence, and I don’t have a clue, but I read the piece anyway.

Here are some examples of hyperreality from the wiki site:

Examples of hyperreality

• a sports drink of a flavour that doesn't exist ("wild ice zest berry")
• pornography ("sexier than sex itself")
• a plastic Christmas tree that looks better than a real Christmas tree ever could
• a magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer
• a well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal)
• any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts"
• the Gulf War, to the extent that America understood it: Baudrillard, in fact, claims that the Gulf War never even happened
• Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing' - 'creatio' is a noun) : Disney World, Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas
• TV and film in general, due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds

How about that! I was photoshopping a fake blue sky into a photograph while reading an article about hyperreality! I encourage you to read the piece and think about what you think reality is, and isn’t.

So, the photo. It seems obvious that the photo with blue is more appealing (maybe the blue is too dark though). But it’s a “lie.”

But then, as Nelson and I discussed, what photograph isn’t a lie? You can’t feel the breeze in your hair as you did when you took the picture, he said.

After photoshopping:

More autumn orange

Click on photos to see larger views.

Yesterday while mowing Don came across this mushroom in the path. He hopped off his John Deere and ran to the house to get me.

It's so unreal looking we half expected a gnome to jump out any minute. I don't know what this type of mushroom is called. Anyone know? Update from Mei Shile: The mushroom is an 'Amanita Muscaria'. The English common name is a 'fly agaric'. It's a psychedelic mushroom. So, no wonder there were lots of illustrations of these in the '60s and '70s. If you click on 'Amanita Muscaria' above, you can read the wiki article about this mushroom. One botanist even speculates that these mushrooms are the foundation (literally and figuratively?) of Santa Claus!


Back under the spruce tree you can see more of them.

Here's a big "duh." I didn't realize yesterday that the mushroom in the path (first three photos) and these under the tree were the same type. These under the tree had opened, and the ball-like one in the path hadn't opened yet.


Here's the same mushroom as the top three photos, taken today, opened up. That's Don's foot (not a gnome's) for size comparison. He wears size 11 American (that's 10.5 English, 45 European, 29 Japanese :-D).

Pumpkins in fog

Please click on images to enlarge.

This pumpkin stand has been out about a week now on the side of the road I take to work.


I'm reading William Everson's Birth of a Poet again, and this morning:

"If you think the cosmos is just a bunch of dead matter wheeling around and around in its own gyrations, a self-sufficient mechanism which just happened to happen, then nothing I say will make any sense at all. I am talking about the living presence of things, the unmistakable quivering energy alive in all things. Every form of apartness and togetherness is living and free, quivering and breathing. I bow before its majesty and before the living God, because the face of God is in everything."

Shabby chic in Paris

I hope you'll visit my Paris Deconstructed blog to see and read a new post about the Shakespeare & Co bookstore.

9/11: what are you holding?

Not hatred. Not today. Not ever.

Love. Today. Forever.

Whichever way you look at it, let it push fear out.

Plymouth fall festival concert

Click on images for larger view.

Peter (our son) and Brian, with Mark on drums behind Peter and Mike on bass behind Brian

At sunset last night we rocked in a park in Plymouth to our son's band performance at the fall festival. This is our favorite gig for them, because a couple thousand people come, and they're really into it, unlike some of the clubs/bars where people are busy drinking, talking and flirting with each other.

Families wandered the square, ate corn dogs and funnel cake, and you could hear kids screaming on the Tilt-a-Whirl fair ride in the background (at first I thought girls were screaming over the guys in the band). Peter, Brian, Mark and Mike rocked it out, and on every side little ones and big ones were dancing, clapping and loving it.

Every time the band has played Plymouth in the park, these dancers have been smack in front of the stage enjoying the music by showing off their dance moves. The dapper gentleman in suspenders often twirls his cane when dancing solo. I kid you not, he was moving almost constantly for 3 hours. I'm amazed at both the stamina and the courage!

My favorite song of the night was when Peter sang and played a cover solo of "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix. He was fantastic! I could listen to him play guitar all night. He becomes one with the instrument, and then we all become one with the music, and it's pure bliss.

Cloud mountain

Click on image to enlarge


We may not have mountains in Michigan (no, Boyne "Mountain" is NOT a mountain), but we have clouds. Clouds are my mountains, when I don't have real ones. They loom and inspire awe, and give dimension to the landscape the way mountains do.

Time to meditate on a cloud, like a child.

Flap your wings

See this butterfly? He was flipping and flapping so eratically around the zinnias yesterday, I didn't think the camera would focus on him. See how tattered his wings are? His right one is almost half gone after a season of flapping.

Yesterday I read in Tolle his comparison of humans and ducks.

"When two ducks get into a fight, which never lasts long, they will separate and float off in opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few times, thus releasing the surplus energy that built up during the fight. After they flap their wings, they float on peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened."

"If the duck had a human mind . . ." Tolle writes on, and you can fill in the rest. He'd start thinking and analyzing the situation, hold a grudge for next time, maybe for years to come, etc.

So the point is, be more like a duck, flap your wings and let go of the story!

Visit Paris Deconstructed for a new post about my favorite resting place in Paris.

Reese Farm sweet corn

Click on images for larger view.

sweet girl with sweet corn

I'm trying to live in the moment. Another summer of eating fresh local sweet corn is coming to an end. I "stopped by" Reese Farm today (it's a good 50 minutes from our place), partly to buy our last dozen ears from the best corn grower in mid-Michigan, and partly to snap a pic for JorgDotOrg's photo hunt. This weeks' hunt: A Person (2 bonus points if they're holding a vegetable).

If this is all we have for supper on Labor Day, I'll be happy. And then I'll be sad. It will be over until next year.

THANK YOU, Reese farmers, for laboring to plant, tend and harvest the best sweet corn!

Contentment

The Onions by Auguste Renoir

Just when I was feeling sorry I don’t have an extra $135 to hop on a plane to see Lesley in NYC, or $900 for a snowblower for Don to clear the driveway this winter, or $700 plane fare for Peter to visit his friend in Milan, I read in my birthday book Celebrating the Impressionist Table (by Pamela Todd),

“Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet and Frédéric Bazille . . . lived on a stream of credit . . . often they were without money to eat, let alone paint. . . .Once, in Arles, van Gogh lived for four days on forty-three cups of coffee and stale crusts of bread, while covering canvas after canvas with a glorious explosion of vivid color. . . . Renoir kept Monet, his mistress, Camille Doncieux, and their son from starvation by bringing them scraps filched from his parents’ table. ‘We might not eat every day,’ Renoir wrote to Bazille, ‘but I’m content because Monet is great company for painting.’”

Jean Monet by Claude Monet (Jean is Claude's son by Camille Doncieux)

Le dejeuner sur l'herbe by Claude Monet

Contentment has nothing to do with how much I have, or don’t have. It has nothing to do with financial status. It has to do with what I value, and whether I believe I have enough.

“I might not have ____________, but I’m content because ____________.”

How do you fill in the blanks?

Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles by Vincent van Gogh

New post at Paris Deconstructed

More goats.

See how sculpture is like poetry. Read my new post at Paris Deconstructed about the Picasso Museum.