Ten Months Down, Two to Go

October's favorite snaps.

Selfie with Sybil Gibson

Rainy Day Wedding Selfies

Live to Ride Selfie

NYC Blues

Lake Cheston Selfie

Pure D Luck

The Three-day Fall

Full Moon

What Remains

The Blues

Surfacing

from month-long sinusitis, still with a sore throat but with a photographic year-in-review.

January 1, 2014

December 31, 2014

Getting Ready for Trails and Trilliums

What I learned this week:

1.  Do not trust the art supply store salesperson who says, "We use artist's tape for hinging and affixing art to the backing board." Next time, buy two totally different products.

2. Learn how to set up a photograph in Photoshop so that there will be a wide margin of blank photo paper running around all four sides. This will ensure a more professional appearance.

3. Remember that reds and blues might blow out in printing.

4. Sign before matting.

5. Value the work more. Arrayed on my dining room table in their crisp mats, my photographs look pretty dadgum good.

for Trails and Trilliums

Stuff and Nonsense

Stuff and nonsense: that's what these are. But they're my stuff and nonsense, and I am thrilled.

My friend Arlyn showed me a book she and her husband made online, showcasing their art. She said, "You get two for the price of one!" She said, "Why don't you make one?"

So I did,

and the books arrived today.

They make my photographs look great.

They make me smile!

Centenary Year

Yesterday, a friend showed off some old photographs she had recently received of ancestors. Looking at them, I recognized 19th-century clothing, architecture, and toys similar to those in photos of my own "greats" long gone. I also thought, sadly, about the small black leather photo album of my father as a young man in the 1920s and '30s now missing, along with much of the physical evidence of his life. Too late, we often realize how precious the stuff of our lives can be, offering silent testimony to those who loved us that we lived and that we mattered.

At Christmas, my friend Betsy's father gave me two photographs and an obituary published by his men's club. (Daddy had been a member for 62 years when he died.) The photographs show my father and his best friend Arthur at Daddy's 90th birthday celebration. (This year marks the centennial year of his birth. He died in 2005.) One measure of a man might be his devotion to friends and theirs to him. If that is a true measure, then my father died rich, as his friends held him dear.When both Uncle Arthur and Daddy were showing the effects of old-age dementia, they still drove (long after they should have) to The Redstone Club luncheon every Friday. Sometimes, they would get lost and arrive late; sometimes they got so lost that they never arrived. Not long after both had died, my father's only sister also died, and at her funeral the priest said something like, "Bertha is surely in heaven now, in Billy's and Arthur's backseat, giving them driving directions."Even in death, perhaps, Daddy's friends provide good company.