LAZEE DAZE...

Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.

~ Alexis Carrel, French surgeon, awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology (1912).

WEEKWORD = INERTIA

My period of inertia is coming to an end!!

Yesterday's workshop, on California Common Core Standards, and another one Tuesday... 

ummm,

my "summer brain" and "lazy days" 

are coming to an end.

This picture was taken in the 
SPRING

:: when the rains were done :: 

:: the pollen had drifted to the pond surface :: 

:: the ducks were sliding silently ::

:: through the thick muck ::
(I think the ducks were experiencing
SPRING INERTIA!)

Not the best picture!!

You could say I was experiencing 

I-N-E-R-T-I-A

when thinking about 

going for a camera run to find another picture!

Be QUICK about it, 

and skip over to 

KATY's @ CREATING MISERICORDIA

to see who else has participated in

WEEKWORD!

COME PLAY ~ WEEKWORD...

:: hanging on ::

KATY @ CREATING MISERICORDIA  is hosting WEEKWORD. I'd lost contact with my WEEKWORD buddies & Carmen let me know that a WEEKWORD PORTAL had been set up, making it easier to find the word & host for the week.


If you haven't participated in WEEKWORD, it's easy, encourages you to "think outside the box," it's open to anyone with a blog, & you meet a lot of new bloggers when you visit their websites!


I hosted WEEKWORD at the beginning of 2011! you can CLICK HERE to learn about WEEKWORD....


The word this week is: I-N-E-R-T-I-A


As the summer winds down, I begin dragging my feet (ummm... enertia?), thinking about going back to work. The GREEN GUY represents my "current mood" ~ I'm "hanging-on" to every moment of my time off this summer!!


This picture is just a "teaser" to get you interested in participating... visit KATY & leave her a note that you'll post your interpretation of INERTIA.


There's a WEEKWORD button (sidebar) that Carmen created for the :: WEEKWORD PORTAL ::


You're welcome to add it to your blog ~ encourage participation ~ and post your interpretation of the word of the week (poem, drawing, picture, trivia, story, etc) on your blog. The host for the week will leave a list of all the participants, then you can visit & leave comments.

TAKE A PICTURE...

Arcata, CA ~ public trash can "art" (April 2009)

"TAKE A PICTURE, IT LASTS LONGER!"

I remember girls saying this during my elementary school years! At the time, it was sort of a "snotty" way to respond to someone you thought was staring at you...

This phrase has an entirely different meaning now! I take pictures to DOCUMENT...

Avila Beach ~ November 2010

...the places near my home.

...to remember special days. The Avila Beach picture was taken on our 6th Anniversary ~ we decided on a "stay-cation" (hot tub, couples massage, coffee at Joe Momma's & a walk along the beach).

street musician ~ Chinatown, San Francisco (spring 2009)

...to remind me of interesting people I've seen...

Library of Congress ~ April 2011

...and places we've traveled.

Spring cleaning 2011

...to remind myself of where & how I spent time on a particular day! 

backroad to Cuesta College ~ May 2011

and of the "silver linings" in my daily life. This is the view on the back road to work... pretty amazing, eh? 

To take pictures, I don't need to travel to far-way places, although, we have... 

Lake Bled, Slovenia ~ June 2007

On our Eastern Europe tour, I took pictures with a Kodak camera that has been passed along to another family member!! I currently take pictures with a Canon PointShoot & Canon Rebel!

I'm learning to use the "creative settings" on the Canon Rebel & develop my "creative eye" --- so, you may notice some pictures that fall outside my normal "gratitudes" while I participate in Kat Sloma's "Finding Your Eye" (pink button on right hand side of blog) online photography course.  


This post is my homework, in which we were asked to explain,"Why we're exploring photography." In addition to documenting what I see, my photography is quickly becoming a creative outlet, and more importantly allows me stay connected to family, friends & blogger friends!!!

SWEET FACE...

Lola rests after her walk ~ 7.22.11

cute freckles!

downloaded photos this morning & edited a few

doesn't this resemble a "boudoir" picture?

LOLA looks like she's sulking, but she's NOT!!

:: Lola's boudoir picture ::

definition for "boudoir"

a NOUN ~ meaning, 

"a woman's bedroom or private sitting room" 

{originated from French, literally:

room for sulking in, from bouder - to sulk}

Are you sulking about anything today?

weather?

summer coming to an end?

vacation mishaps?

USING UP CREATIVITY....

Will be spending some time with SLE & ACE... 


SLE has flown out to the BAY AREA to take the California Bar Exam... and ACE happens to live close to the test center! 


ACE & I will get out our scissors, glue sticks, pens & paper ~ she has such a "CrEaTiVE FLAiR" that I'm hoping it will rub off on me!


The three of us haven't been together since Thanksgiving!! can't wait!

A TRANSFORMATION...

Mom's atrium oasis ~ 7.16.11

"In nature there are few sharp lines."

~ A.R. Ammons (1926-2001)

more about A.R.Ammons

Archie Randolph Ammons began writing poetry while serving on a US Navy destroyer during WWII. Following military service, Ammons attended Wake Forest University where he majored in science and completed his graduate work in English at UC Berkeley.

After graduation, he was employed as the principal of the tiny elementary school on the island village of Cape Hatteras. Ammons followed this career, with work as a sales executive in his father-in-law's biological glass company on the southern New Jersey shore. 


Since it was difficult to get books published in the 50's, Ammons published his first book, Ommateum, at his own expense (in 1955). He sold only sixteen copies over a five year period. Ammons got his literary break after joining the English faculty at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in 1964. 


When his second poetry collection was published, Ammons experienced significant attention, as he went from total obscurity to wide acclaim. His Collected Poems 1951-1971 (New York, 1972), won the National Book Award in 1973, with this period of his life being considered his most productive writing cycle.


What an incredible story of transformation!! Ammons' story demonstrates how a combination of interests (nature, writing) transformed a person from salesman to college professor to published poet. 


Originally, I intended my blog post to find a quote to highlight my photo! I didn't anticipate researching the quote's author to find out more about Ammons background. What a transformation for my blog post!  


Do your blog posts EVER take a different directions than your original idea?

I SCREAM... YOU SCREAM...

current flavor in our fridge ~ 7.18.11

we all scream for 
I-C-E  C-r-E-a-M...

Yesterday, the third Sunday of July, was NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY... In 1984, President Reagan, designated July as National Ice Cream Month, because "it's fun to eat ice cream, and 90% of Americans consume ice cream regularly." (how's that for a reason to establish a proclamation?)


Reagan's proclamation encouraged all Americans to "observe these events with appropriate ceremonies and activities." America's top five favorite individual flavors are? drum roll, please....  vanilla, chocolate, cookie 'n cream, strawberry & chocolate mint chip.

My fondest memory of ice cream ~ waiting for the ice cream to "set up" while playing hide n' seek at the Huntington Beach trailer... space 39... near Lifeguard TOWER 9.


The JESSE family were trend-setters! we hand-cranked our ice cream for 30 years before this proclamation was established! BUT, in order to satisfy Reagan's Proclamation, it should be known that we followed the two mandates:

"appropriate ceremonies" ~ I know my family has consumed their share of ice cream... if you peeked into the windows of our home(s) you would probably catch us contributing to the statistics mentioned above. Many of our family get-togethers / BBQ's are "topped" off with a "chilly-concoction" over pie, mixed with root beer, eaten on a stick, or scooped out of the closest bowl, cup or carton.


The JESSE ice cream maker was a hand-cranked model, much like this one!

link for ice cream maker

"activities" ~ My fondest memories are "taking a turn" at cranking the JESSE ice cream maker. Ummm.... we loved pilfering a few pieces of rock salt... and watching the sloppy-wet towels being pulled off the top of the ice cream maker... and when they pulled the paddle out of the center ~ OH,  we would have loved to lick the ice cream off!  BUT, it was carefully scraped into all the bowls, lined up like soldiers and waiting to be filled with the brain-freeze delight!

Our recipe was more like "ice milk"... I can taste it now... tiny ice crystals of vanill-yyy softness! AND - it was always VANILLA - never any "fancy" flavors!!!


How did you celebrate NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY?  What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? or your favorite ice cream memory?

AN EYE FOR REFLECTION...

WHITTIER HOME TOUR ~ October 2010

I pay a daily visit to Kat Sloma's photography blog, THE KAT EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD. 

I'll be participating in Kat's "FINDING YOUR EYE" course next week, so I decided to prepare for the class by re-organizing some photos on my computer. 

Having just returned from a two-year work assignment in Italy, Kat is busy unpacking, setting up her Oregon home, prepping for her new online course, and continues to post CURRENT EXPLORATION themes (every two weeks) for her EXPLORING WITH A CAMERA series. The premise of this series is to think of your camera as a tool to see & capture the world around you.

The CURRENT EXPLORATION: Reflections in Glass closes tomorrow, Tues July 19th... so you still have some time to participate. 

Instead of: Reflections in G-L-A-S-S

I'm posting my "Reflections" taken at the WHITTIER HISTORIC NEIGHBORHOOD HOME TOUR last October. 

Parked outside one of the Craftsman homes, was this incredibly-shiny, black BUICK... 

...of course, the car was receiving as much attention as the house(s) on the tour. Along with plenty of other amateur photographers, I snapped a few pictures, and never really looked at them again.

If you look beyond the white-walled tires, into the hubcap, you can see the reflection of the Craftsman house we were about to enter.

Here's another view with a reflection of the street, behind me...

Lovely car, eh? the bit of orange reflecting in the bottom picture is actually an orange cone ~ the kind that transportation companies use to mark parking spots or danger zones.

If you'd like to participate in Kat Sloma's EXPLORING WITH A CAMERA series, sign-up on her blog, and you'll receive advance notices of the CURRENT EXPLORATION theme and deadline for posting... 

I've posted the link(s) for EXPLORING WITH A CAMERA and FINDING YOUR EYE on the right hand side bar of my blog.

Most importantly, if you want to increase your "creative eye" take some time to explore THE KAT EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD. You won't be sorry!!

START THE DAY WITH A....

SMILE found ~ Gimmelwald, Switzerland ~ July 2005

WORD CLOUDS...

alphabetized & designed "any which way" 

HAVE YOU PLAYED WITH WORDLE? OR HOW ABOUT PICNIK?
I spent some time playing with WORDLE and figuring out some possibilities for using it in the classroom. (who says teachers take the summers off?)

black background w/ half horizontal & half vertical lettering

WORDLE can be used to generate "WORD CLOUDS from the text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."


FYI - All of my samples include the SAME WORDS...

same format with white background & different color scheme

You can scramble the words, and create a new look...

black background is difficult to read! looks impressive though!

You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

same word layout with different color scheme

PICNIK was used to add borders to a couple of my WORDLE.


WORDLE can be found WORDLE...

PICNIK an online photo-editing program is simple to use... add frames, graphics... WELL, you just have to check out PICNIK also...


Have fun... how would you use these programs???

BEING IN THE "QUIET"...

:: our garden buddha ::

"... there is a luxury in being quiet
in the heart of chaos."
~ Virginia Woolf, modern feminist author

:: mom's atrium oasis ::

Do you have items to "focus on" when your mind starts filling up with the nonsense of everyday living?

:: on the bedroom altar ::

How do you deal with "quieting" your heart & mind?

JAMMIN' JOHN....

"fruit(s) of his labor"

Our kitchen has been a "flurry of activity" --- bubbling, boiling, burning (oops! I think the pot was too small or the product "multiplied" faster than expected)...


JPE (now you know his alias, "JAMMIN' JOHN") has been busy....

In the past couple of weeks, he's "PUT UP"... 5 1/2 gallons of jam!

:: 1.5 gallons of blackberry :: 

(today's product - still to be labeled!!)

:: 2 gallons of apricot ::

:: 2 gallons of strawberry ::

ME --- what role did I play? well, I wield a "mean sponge" and spray bottle of cleaner... plus I mopped the floor & washed his gray slippers! they were a tad "sticky"...

Jammin' John --- he's a "keeper"

AND, I smell the "tulips" and play with my camera....

"playin' with the camera"

OH - I spent 1.5 hours at physical therapy... urgghhh! it's hard work!!

SWEET SLE...

July 1977

"Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure;

where your treasure, there your heart;

where your heart, there your happiness."

~ St Augustine, Bishop, Theologian, Philosopher

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SLE!!!

MAY THIS YEAR


"BURST"


WITH HAPPINESS!!!


"1 - 4 - 3"