A few minutes ago I presented my Starbucks card. The barista commented, “one day this is not going to work.” The piece of gold plastic is old, by charge card standards. The plastic is split in several places. One fissure is patched with scotch tape. I am attached to the card. I’ve used it…
Another Independence Day weekend. Monday will be the 4th of July. We are planning a family gathering for breakfast in the morning, and then a viewing of the Independence Day parade. On the surface around here life appears to be good, never better for some. Are such generalizations warranted? Of course not but we…
Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles. -Fredrick Sommer Since my adolescence I have found photography fascinating. With a machine held in one’s hand, it is possible to make an image of the world of which we participate, a freeze-frame depiction. I felt the…
Yesterday we viewed from curbside the Geneva Swedish Days parade. I have enjoyed a good parade as long as I can remember, the magic, the exuberance of seeing and being seen. A parade is a meaningful social ritual, in a secular time is it not? I took photographs using my iphone 13 camera. However,…
I visited Mundelein where I once lived. We lived for many good years there. Now we live in Batavia to the west along the Fox River Valley. We moved due to a change in circumstance, namely both of us retired. The time was right to move closer to our children and our grandchildren. Now…
It is uncanny, the memories that a sound will evoke. Saturday at Great Lakes Dragaway, often the sound of an idling supercharged race engine could be heard. Sometimes in the staging lanes waiting to move forward to the starting line, or at a distance being tuned somewhere in the pits, — the undulating, rising,…
“Remember that life is short and death is long,” is attributed to artist Fritz Scholder. Perhaps he was channeling Epictetus? The insight could have come from the writings of a Roman Stoic. Time spent with family, with both Nature and community at hand – is time well spent. These thoughts come to mind on…
We live a short distance from Braeburn Marsh. At this time of year female snapping turtles move from their habitat into open view searching for a suitable spot to lay their eggs. While partially concealed behind a tree I took these photos a few days ago. The common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), its natural…
PHOTOGRAPHY is the paradigm of the inherently equivocal connection between self and world –its version of the ideology of realism sometimes dictating an effacement of the self in relation to the world, sometimes authorizing an aggressive relation to the world which celebrates the self. One side or the other of the connection is always…
The peonies are blooming. A short walk around the neighborhood is rewarded by a viewing of the color and variety of these blooms. A peony reminds me of fractals, when I examine one closely, an organic repeating series… Perhaps you are fascinated with fractals as am I. A fractal is Nature’s reminder that chaos…
