01 First Thoughts:

… Fiona, evil dog… she is determined that i will not sleep… she got restless at 1:30 AM, for 1 1/2 hours i tried to ignore her, she would not settle down… i got little more than three hours sleep… my whole day will be disrupted… this has been a pretty sucky week between restless dogs and mother-in-laws having car accidents… the one good thing happened yesterday, a young woman friend was highly complimentary of some photographic work i shared on FB…

… right wing conservatives in Tennessee have gone bat shit crazy… putting an end to vaccination outreach for children… not just COVID, all normal childhood vaccines… the state’s director of vaccination programs was summarily fired for sending out a memo reminding vaccine providers that teens older than 14 didn’t have to get parental permission to get vaccinated, which is actual state law… a whole lot of unnecessary sickness and death will be the result… why?, because politicians are stoking the culture wars in hopes of getting elected… the situation is so bad that Fitch, a bond rating company, is considering lowering the United States Government bond rating from AAA status… because of the political situation… there has to be a better way… maybe politicians need to be a professionally licensed class of workers and there should be severe penalties for disinformation…

… i am fed up with just about everything that intrudes on my life right now… just about everything…

08 First Tomatoes!

… of the season… three San Marzano’s…

07 Today I Learned:

… who Olivia Rodrigo is…

06 Micro Poems:

… a couple today…

Upon hearing about my mother in law’s car accident…

Unintended acceleration– what consequences!

… and…

In an antique shop window– goddess Kali for sale.

05 Scenes From a Walk:

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04 Walking:

… Main Street walk… staying close to home in case H needs me…

… right now, sitting by the falls on Roundhouse property…

… when i arrived, a young, redheaded woman avoiding passing me in a narrow space… i don’t blame her…

… along the way, i photographed a statue of the goddess Kali in an antique store window… i also wrote a micro poem about it… it occurs to me that when i photograph religious statues i should look up their cultural significance and record it… this would be useful for possible photo assemblages in the future…

03 Photography:

… an article by Miss Rosen, one of the small number of women photography critics… in it, i learn about Prince Street Girls, an iconic documentary work by Susan Meiselas… the reference to Meiselas gives the article footing in photographic history, some gravity, but the Zine being reviewed is a fashion Zine… Miss Rosen presents, but doesn’t critique the effort… since all proceeds from sales of the zine are to benefit a charity serving the neighborhood of the creators, one could imagine Miss Rosen writing the piece to promote a good cause… the zine itself lacks the compelling depth of Meiselas’ work… young womanhood as imagined by the fashion industry…

02 Daily Read:

Haiku by Issa…

… one about a staring contest with a very large frog… this is a famous one i think… i look up the cultural significance of frogs and find an article on the usc.edu website that has this to say about frogs in Japanese culture…

In Japan, the frog is usually seen as a symbol of good fortune associated with magical powers. Because the Japanese word for frog is “kaeru”, which is pronounced in the same way as “return”, travelers carry a small frog amulet with the intent of returning safely home.¹

… another article on frog symbolism confirms the above and adds the moon as an association with frogs, the three legged frog and the moon, the three phases of the moon…

… the frog is associated with rainfall and good harvests, and is a symbol of spring, the seasonal reference in the poem… that the artist has a staring contest with the frog presents a kind of stand off moment… is it reluctance to pursue a spiritual journey?… is it a latter stage in life confronting youth?…

… another poem about being a devout Buddhist while killing mosquitos… Buddhism argues respect to all creatures, even the annoying ones… some sects can barely walk through the landscape for fear of killing something unwittingly… yet, there are annoying creatures that can actually make us sick… we kill them regardless of our devotions… mosquitos are a spring-summer reference… the poem perhaps about spiritual journeys having difficulties…

… here is an article about insects and Japanese culture that is more general in nature…

01 First Thoughts:

… late last night, a call from L to let H know their mother had been in a car accident along with P who was driving… injuries did not seem to be life threatening, but the plan was to get them off island to a hospital… this was proving difficult because of fog… h came to bed without news of their actual arrival at a hospital… the accident was caused, apparently, by P stepping on the gas instead of the brakes… there will be discussions in the family about whether P should be driving anymore… also whether M should be living on the island at all…

… we have been watching Outlander for weeks now, about half way through the third season which is starting to seem a little campy at times… in last night’s episode, Claire returns to Jaimie, Jaimie faints dead away… cut to credits…

11 Micro Poems:

…several in one post…

_ Returning to normal– one eye on the variants._

_ Squashing ants in the kitchen– doesn’t bode well for my karma._

_ Restless dog– is it really only 3 AM?_

_ To escape the rain– I buy coffee I don’t want._

… i think that’s it for today…

10 My Photography:

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… rather than use pano mode, i take multiple photos and stitch them together in Lightroom… i feel the results are better?… nothing to base that on… i will have to do a side by side comparison…

09 Scenes From a Walk:

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08 Ulysses Discovery, Obsidian

… a Micro.blog member makes me aware of Obsidian app, it’s got a free version so i download it to see what it is about…

… my immediate reaction is that it may be too complex for me… a steep learning curve and i am not sure i need the complexity…

… i decided to see if Ulysses has some of the functionality that was attracting me and discover a functionality that i didn’t know was there, creating custom search folders which means it is easy to gather together stuff on the same subject material…

… super excited about that…

07 Walking:

… feeling rather uninspired, tired, a little depressed… lack of sleep…

… i had ambitious plans for my walk, but i can’t, not today…

… we need to solve the problem with the dogs waking me up early… messes up my whole day…

… i give up on the walk, make my way to Kitchen & Coffee… J is in the house, a cheery round-faced redhead greets me at the counter and takes my order… a woman i recognize is sitting across from me, Liz is her name i think… a waitress somewhere in my past…

… i buy coffee beans, there are none in the house, H will be unhappy about that…

… J has filled out a bit, i might have noted that before, can’t remember…

… as i was walking and thinking, i decided i would like the night off from Salon… just sent K an email informing him of that fact…

… suddenly L is J… hmmm…

06 La Veneno, Spain’s Badass Trans Superstar:

… an article about La Veneno in Hyperallergic…

… trans women interest me… it’s the one form of alternative sexuality i could fancy myself being, except i think i would make an unattractive woman and i do enjoy heterosexual life… there is a biographical miniseries on HBO about La Veneno…

05 Art Installation by Sarah Sze:

Image of Fallen Sky installation by Nick Knight

… this article in Colossal catches my attention because Storm King, the installation site, is 15 minutes from where i live… we are fortunate to live near two major art installation sites, Storm King and Dia Beacon…

04 Creation Story by Aaron Canipe

… an article in Booooooom…

Aaron Canipe from Creation Story

… an all black and white project…

Seen through the lens of the South, this edit of work takes the viewer through a cosmological and primordial journey of a world created by a divinity disrupted…¹

… it’s an interesting set of images with an interesting concept for their organization… the creator suggests that it is a selection from a broader body of work, pulled together to tell a story the photographer may not have specifically intended in the beginning, but there are themes and you pursue them…

03 The Daily Read, Part II:

The Haiku of Issa…

… today’s haikus are a little enigmatic…

… one about a moth finding brightness in the chamber of a woman, and being burnt to a crisp… the woman’s chamber is significant and brings the poet directly into the action… there is no need to describe the setting as a woman’s chamber unless there is an intended double meaning, that the poet is drawn to the flame of the woman and metaphorically burnt to a crisp for his labors… it does not sound as though his visit was entirely satisfactory… i look up moths as cultural symbols and find nothing substantial…

… another about scarecrows all being crooked… i look up the cultural significance of scarecrows in Japan and there is some… it is a folk deity, known as Kuebiko, representing folk wisdom, knowledge and agriculture¹… Issa notes that he doesn’t know about the people in the town but the scarecrows are crooked… is this meant in a corruption kind of way?… or just a state of general disorderliness represented by lack of attention to their scarecrows, which are deities after all… or that one can expect problems with wisdom, knowledge and agriculture from the town he is entering… he identifies the town as his home town, so maybe it is about memories and formative experience… is he talking about himself more than the town?…

… another about plum trees blooming in January in other provinces… this is odd, plum trees do bloom from January into February and are considered harbingers of spring… so Issa is saying they bloom in other provinces but not where he is… since he does not identify the province he is in, i assume it is metaphorical, something about old age perhaps?… reaching the place of having little life left to offer?… an article in Wikipedia² confirms the plum blossom as a symbol of spring and is believed to be a protective charm against evil… so the lack of blossoms is likely about old age and or lack of protection against evil… both?…

02 The Daily Read:

… yesterday i found and downloaded a book on animals in Issa’s poetry… i was expecting a book about animals as symbols of the culture… it turned out to be a book about animal ethics and what Issa has to teach us about treatment of animals… i believe that animals feel and think more than commonly given credit for, that one should always handle them with respect… i regret killing ants on the kitchen counter… i cause to be killed, or in some cases, kill animals to eat… so i am not that interested in the idea that we should never kill animals, that it is unethical to do so…

… Issa was a Buddhist¹, and worried about the karma of killing insects, yet he did kill insects… my perception is that Buddhism respects all life…

… nature is constructed such that one animal is food for another… it’s a cycle of life… humans perhaps have reached the place where they think about the consequences of their actions and are capable of offering respect to animals, even as they kill them… Native Americans are thought by many to have had this down… one takes only what one needs to survive… one takes with honor and respect… one gives thanks for what one is able to take… this is an ethics of resource treatment i can get behind… i am mindful of the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer in which the Native American attitude towards natural resources is laid out in full…

06 Micro Poem

… another one, i am having a rich day…

My mind a bone dry creek bed– my heart a gathering storm.

05 Micro Poem:

_ Folding toilet paper– the way my father taught me._

… this one came as a bit of a surprise to me… it’s about my father who has recently been accepted into hospice care which generally means he is believed to have six months or less to live…

… to say that my father and i have a difficult relationship is an understatement, so it comes as a surprise to me that i would write a poem centered on this small thing that is a little over the border to positive nostalgia…

… as for folding toilet paper, my father is a West Point graduate, neatness, precision, discipline and economy are important to him… yeah, i resemble that in perhaps a less obsessive way…

04 Getting back to routine Dr. visits:

… yay! i made an appointment to see my skin doctor for a routine exam… big step forward!…

… the pandemic knocked me out of my routine Dr. visits… i now have a whole slew of them to schedule…

… i don’t know about you, but i have a hard time making appointments when it’s been too long and i can start to convince myself that such a visit will uncover a serious problem…

… i try to tell myself that is what routine exams are about, finding problems while they are most treatable…

… alas, it becomes an enormous struggle with fear in my mind…

… i have set myself the goal of knocking them off one at a time…

… one down, a bunch to go…

05 From our front garden: 📷

… experimenting with the iPhone 12 Pro Max… the really close ins are 12x zoom… not bad at all…

**04 More questions than answers:**📷

03 On Photography, Max Sher:

Max Sher, from Palimpsests, published by Ad Marginem

… i love photography books… i have a small collection and love looking through them… i have long wanted to center my own photography practice around the making of books by hand, the artist object… this seems to make the most sense as a way to deal with the thousands of images i collect each year…

… because i love photography books there are a number of reviewers that i follow religiously… Brad Feuerhelm is one of them…

… this morning he reviews Palimpsests, a book by Max Sher, an emergent Russian photographic artist…

… the images are de-populated urban scapes in the tradition of Stephen Shore and New Topographics… they focus on places where the new is overlaying the old… it is highly recommended by BF… i wish i had an endless pot of money for photo book purchase and to build a library to house my thus ever growing collection…