Out beyond what you can see, there is something else. Hidden from sight, but certainly there. When you drive along, or when you are out hiking, do you ever wonder what just what it is? Is there just more of the same? Is there a friendly, warm neighborhood of homes? Is there a huge, unseen lake? An industrial complex? A highway? Are there animals, watching you quietly, hoping to be unnoticed? Using the thick, green forest for cover?
Wonder always, and explore when you can. But, take care not to find it all. Hidden objects stimulate imagination – and uncovering them will limit the possibilities.
Deep dark forests hide many possibilitiesSmall dark areas can hide many things: Ogres, snakes, Sasquatch nests and poison ivy.
Have you ever been sitting with a drink, absentmindedly daydreaming, staring into that drink, watching the bubbles rise to the top and burst with a tiny spray of cool liquid that releases a pleasing scent to fill your nostrils? And suddenly you are struck by the image the drink creates. A beauty that you hadn’t noticed before. Strange shapes. Interesting colors. A little world all unto itself right there in the glass in front of you.
Or maybe you stare at the glasses themselves, the shadows they create and the patterns displayed on the surface beneath them. Circles of various complimentary sizes. Colors again overlapping. Something to contemplate with mindless thought.
Maybe you just think about how that cool, fresh water with ice in it is filtering through your body, adding liquid where needed to allow blood, nutrients and everything beneficial to life. And it tastes great, too! Even the lemon adds flavor, color and vitamins to an otherwise colorless fluid.
Hopefully, while contemplating your drinks, there are others around to provide stimulating conversation. If that is something you like. Regardless, there is still the presence of varied colors, sparkling ice, reflections of light and the feel of cool wetness on the outside of the glasses. Enjoy that, too!
Hey! Are you getting thirsty yet? Is it time for a drink? Well, go for it! It’s the Elixer of life!
Today’s prompt is “Note”. In describing it, WordPress refers to musical notes and written notes. For the latter they have suggestions for poets, artists and composers. I’m not a poet, nor a composer and I can barely draw. So I’ll have to wing it today.
One of the most interesting uses of the word “notes” is the way it is used in acting. After a play, or a practice for one, the director (or anyone else who has a position allowing them to comment) will provide “notes”. Notes are their viewpoints or recommendations for improvement or change.
Now, I’m an outsider when it comes to theatre or drama. I don’t need all the fingers of one hand to name plays whose titles I can remember. And, I’ve never seen Hamilton. My family will tell you, I fall asleep in most plays. So notes are not my forte.
I’ve only actually seen notes presented in TV shows like Studio 60. From what I’ve observed, notes can be major changes or minor recommendations. They can be given with great emphasis and even anger, or they can be presented gently with a smile and a little humor. Basically, they are criticism. Regardless, the emphasis of these notes is on change, and change is notoriously difficult to accept.
Maybe some of you reading this can provide some notes about my writing style – not that I will be willing to accept them. I know my writing is off-the-cuff, mental regurgitation with minimal emphasis on proper writing style, but I kind of feel comfortable with it. My purpose in writing is to merely to record some thoughts, extemporaneous as they might be. But, I also have a desire to improve my writing and possibly even be perceived by some others as having a little mental accuity in doing so.
Therefore, if you have some notes for me, feel free to provide them. And, I’ll feel free to accept or reject them. (You’re not the boss of me!)
The WordPress instructions for today’s prompt, Tempo, indicate that photographers could depict “motion” in a photograph (slow, medium or fast) to depict tempo. I’ll try. I’ve got several photos in mind, but the big problem will be locating them.
(Three days later…) Okay, I’ve spent hours and hours trying to find the photos I really wanted to use. However, I’m sequestered in Indiana and my PC is at home in Phoenix. All I’m able to search is the contents of my iPhone and iPad that I have with me. The photos I want (which show motion, but are not videos) were taken on a previous cell phone and have disappeared into the abyss of iCloud and Google related “out there somewhere” storage locations not easily accessed from this location.
Just to fill in the rest of this blog I’ve grabbed two photos which have moving water in them. The first was taken during a rain storm in Ajo, AZ during the first days of March. Water spilling from a rain pipe and splashing onto some cement blocks is frozen in mid-spill. That, if shown as a video, would depict a faster tempo. The second, taken on a cruise ship shows the ship’s wake to the aft with my shoes included. That probably would depict a slower tempo.
Rain from water spoutShip’s wake. And my shoes.
So, sorry for the poor blog quality – at least compared to what I had hoped to accomplish when I started several days ago. Maybe sometime in the future, after I’m home, I’ll find those other photos and update this post.
Whoa! This prompt is much like the previous one, Day 3: Song. At least it is for someone like me. Music, song, bands, performers… they all blend into a mishmash of sound that I can never identify. I’m a musical neophyte and troglodyte. An embarrassement to the rest of my family who know the words, titles, writers and melodies to literally thousands of musical pieces.
There are a very few exceptions. I CAN remember most of the words of “Happy Birthday”. And there are a couple of songs that I remember because of the impact they had on our family life when the kids were growing up. Jill and I used to drive around Phoenix with Carly and Zac in the car with the stereo playing. Their favorite song was a “They Might Be Giants” song, “Birdnest in your soul”. They would roll down the windows, blast the radio at full volume and sing it at the top of their voices. We also listened to Partical Man and Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by the same group. Disclaimer: I had to look up the name of the group and the wording of the song titles in order to type this paragraph.
It’s at this point that I would like to insert a link to “Birdnest in your soul” to illlustrate what we were hearing. However, there is probably all kinds of copyright redtape that I would have to navigate and I’m not willing to spend the time.
My Large Format photography instructor at Scottsdale Community College, Rod Klukas, was fond of saying that “Three is Divine” when talking about the number of subjects within a photo. That means that the following photograph, taken at Tumacacori National Monument must be divine:
“5 over 3” by Michael J. Hoogendyk
Except for the fact that there are many more objects in the photograph than three – five holes, a large beam, the three pots, along with the cracks, shading and sandy texture of the wall.
Personally, I’m not too happy about the fact that three pots are distorted (the left one stretched to the left and down; and the right one stretched to the right and down). I also am upset that I cut off the left-most hole at the top. But, I did show you a photo with three pots.
Continuing with the theme of “three” – I have three kids: Carly, Zac and Kimberly. Now THAT’s divine!
Today’s prompt urges me to do or say something new. New as in format; new as in never written about before; new as in new friends; etc. The biggest, baddest, “NEW” in my life is my granddaughter, Luna Sofia Campbell-Hoogendyk. She’s right at two months now, and because we came to visit her when she came home from the hospital, we’ve been with her the entire time. That’s because of the Coronavirus. When we traveled to see her, we ended up being self-quarantined for awhile in order to protect her – then stuck at her home due to travel restrictions.
Luna-Sofia, Age: 2 Months
Luna-Sofia, Luna for short, spends all her time nursing, sleeping, crying and pooping. Once in awhile, she spends half and hour pleasantly enjoying her surroundings, moving her head left to look at this and then right to look at that. She doesn’t yet have control of her arms, which tend to jerk all over the place.
She pretty much is on a 3 hour sleep and 30-60 minute nursing schedule, 24 hours a day. That requires some teamwork in terms of her parents, grandparents and Aunt Carly, who is visiting from NYC until the quarantine is lifted. Grandpa Mike and Nana Jill typically spend the 10pm to 6am hours with Luna unless she is nursing. Her parents, Zac and Kasey spend most of the 6am until early afternoon hours with her. Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Deanna come over most afternoon and evenings to hold Luna and have supper with the family.
Luna with Grandpa Mike
Luna and her parents on an outing to the park
Luna snuggling to her mom
Grandma Jill (Nana) (or Dad Mom) with Luna
Sleep Time
Peek-a-Boo
Chillin’ Out with Dad
Hiking with Mom and Dad
Picnic with Mom and Dad
Aunt Carly Time is Special Time
Bath Times are Fun Times
Car Seat Time means More Sleep Time
As you can see from the photos, our new granddaughter, Luna-Sofia has really been getting around. Several hikes, several car trips (especially to her routine doctor appointments) and one awesome picnic. All first-time, new experiences.
Distance. In the United States we typically measure it in terms of feet, yards, miles, etc. Most of the rest of the world uses meters and kilometers (KMs), referred to as the Metric System. One of the exceptions in the United States is large segments of the scientific world. For example, a scientific field in which I am an avocationalist is archaeology. Everytime we measure a site, or we record distances hiked, we use the metric system.
We recently documented a prehistoric site on the Agua National Monument. It was comprised of two habitation structures, nine grinding slicks, 30 Petroglyph boulders and several hundred artifacts like pottery sherds, lithic debitage, metates and manos. The site itself was over 100 meters long and 30 meters wide oriented on a NW/SE axis. It was located 2.1 KMs north of another well known reference point. (I’ve described it this way to avoid telling anyone exactly where it was located.)
One of the thirty Petroglyph boulders
Within the site the two habitation structures were located about sixty meters apart and the wall fall from each of the structures covered an area about 6 x 8 meters in size. The two major artifact scatters around the structures were around 25 to 30 meters in diameter. The individual pottery sherds probably averaged 3 to 5 centimeters in size.
My walks on the monument have all be recorded in KMs. So far I have walked around 1,700 KMs – mostly in wandering patterns much like the trail of an ant would create. I think the amount I’ve walked would have covered the distance from Phoenix to north of the Golden Gate Bridge in California. Impressive, but when you break it down into almost 400 walks or hikes over a dozen years, it really isn’t.
View looking south across a portion of the Agua Fria National Monument
That gives you an idea of measuring distance on several different scales and with several methods. And it completes my short blog for the day.
So… slowly… slowly… I… will… begin… writing… about… the… word, … … S. L. O. W.
Talking fast, like you were from NYC or someone in your teens or twenties, has never been my talent. I grew up in Englewood, CO and I thought everyone talked slower. Not with a drawl, but just slower. When I listen to some New Yorkers blather on at hyper speed about this, that and the other, I get left in the verbal dust. I start thinking about how fast they are talking, not what they are saying.
There was a point in my life where I felt as though my mental accuity was lacking. That people who talked fast were smarter. And that people who talked fast, who were smarter, looked at me and thought that I was a slow, dim-witted country bumpkin. No longer is that a problem for me.
Many years ago I came to the realization that one of my traits was that I was persistent. That I stayed with a project or a subject until it was finished – even if it took longer for me than for others. I might be slow, but I stayed with things longer than other people. That can be a tremendously valuable trait. If you work on a project for six months to a year (and others have finished in a week or a month), you have much more opportunity to think things through. To develop new ideas. To come across new data. To polish the product. And when you are done, you have something much better than if you had finished quickly.
So. Slow. That’s a good thing. Kinda like a slow cooked dish which has a long time to develop it’s flavor.
Today’s suggested WordPress word on Discover Prompts is… “Scent”.
Now, my olefactory sense is not the best. Right up there with my sense of taste – which is pretty crappy. So you are not going to read in this blog about a lot of my personal experiences with scent. Except possibly the odor of fire. Somehow, at least earlier in my life, I could wake up smelling smoke from a small dumpster fire a block away, or a mattress in the barracks smoldering due to a cigarette from some airman that fell asleep smoking.
One smell that is at this moment a topic of conversation with our family as we are self-isolated at my Son’s house is… wait for it… baby poop! I have a new grand daughter who is almost two months old, nursing and not yet on any food other than milk from her mother. And, big surprise, baby poop doesn’t really have a strong, unfavorable smell until they start food other than mother’s milk. Not sure why that happens, but the worst thing so far is just the sight of baby poop that has leaked out of the diaper, through the swaddling blanket and formed a small cake on the front of my shirt around midnight.
The Discover Prompt suggests writing about the smell of wild flowers. Again, I’ve gone out and searched for Spring wildflowers in the Arizona desert everytime I’ve had a chance. But, I’ve never smelled them. I’ve also spent three hours over the past two days looking through my iPad and iPhone for photos I took of those flowers. A visual depiction of the vibrant colors of desert wildflowers found in the hills north of Phoenix would do wonders in describing for you what I found, but didn’t really smell. No scents nonsense, as it were.
Anyway, no luck with the flower photos. So – done for today and on to the next Discover Prompt.
arizonamike 