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| Patricia Jones | profile | all galleries >> An Ordinary Day | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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It’s always dangerous to express an opinion when nobody has all the facts. That said, I can’t not express my view of the discovery of a plot in Miami to destroy the Chicago Sears Tower and other public buildings. If an FBI operative, posing as a den mother, infiltrated a Cub Scout troop, taught the kids how to make bottle rockets, and led a discussion about cool targets, would that make the children terrorists? That’s about the level of organized mayhem that the Miami group could ever have implemented, and they might not have been able to even formulate a plan without the help of their “al Qaeda” informant. These are not terrorists in the sense that Americans want the word to be used, although they may be disaffected people who need a reminder about the limits of freedom in the U.S. or a group that invites ongoing monitoring. We are really the guilty ones: we allow the current administration to use the news media to distract us with this kind of skirmish in the war on terror at the same time that Bush and Cheney decry the irresponsibility of the media in reporting to the people on truly frightening topics such as the recently revealed secret program to track Americans’ bank records. How many examples of ill-conceived government-sanctioned invasions of our privacy should we tolerate before we try to figure out how to halt this behavior? I feel insulted, betrayed, and no more secure than before.
…”What are the subject lines of some of the emails Patsy received today?” Even if these, and many other equally ridiculously titled email messages, hadn’t been trapped by my anti-spam program, who in their right mind would open them anyway? I understand the economics of spam, which currently costs the sender so little, but would anyone be dumb enough to regard any of these as legitimate? Let’s not even mention the prescription drug and sexually tinged topics, which I suppose someone might look at. The most egregious offenders may be the senders who butcher the spelling of ordinary words to foil the spam filter. I’m a proofreader at heart and would like to take a red pencil to the screen! I use the free program ChoiceMail, a permission-based spam blocker which works effectively, requires very little time to maintain, and seems to have reduced the amount of would-be spam over time.
While everyone else with an iPod is busily assembling all the best tunes, much of my time at the computer in the summer is spent loading books on CD into my playlist. Then I can endure hours in the sun and dirt, “reading” these books as I plant and weed. I try to vary the fare, alternating worthy titles from my Must Read list with fun books that I probably wouldn’t bother with during the winter. I never walk out the back door into the garden without my headphones and iPod, and I have it positioned in my pocket so that I can pause and restart without having to touch it with my dirty hands. I’ve gotten so I don’t like to be in the same part of the yard where Ralph or a neighbor might be mowing because it really interrupts my flow. So far this summer I’ve enjoyed Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler, Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr, Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke while transplanting hundreds of seedlings and laying out the cutting garden. I had been wanting to read this last book for a while, but at 800 pages (yes, 800!) I was resisting lugging it home from the library and figured I’d never finish it without incurring a hefty overdue fine. This way I could listen to all 26 CDs on my own schedule, although actually the time flew by. By the way, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is about a cleverly imagined magical world and will become a fabulous movie some day. Already loaded on the iPod for my future listening pleasure are A Venetian Affair by Andrea Di Robilant, The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, Cinnamon Kiss, an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley, and The Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native, both by Thomas Hardy. How many people get to do their two favorite activities at the same time?
Composite, with a little help from Maxfield Parrish’s image originally used for a seed advertisement.
What could top the experience of designing your own obstacle course at the park playground and then following the path 51 times while Grandma rocks your sister in the stroller? You climb the steps, run over the deck, jump into thin air, land without falling, turn left, bounce up more stairs, go down the slide, and run around the perimeter to the starting place again. To heighten the experience, a new “friend” is right behind you and trying to keep up. You are invincible.
I came across a reference on a Digital Photography Review forum about a technique for photographing flowers against a piece of black foam core board. This material ensures that the background will not be a distraction and allows for easy digital manipulation, including darkening the background further or replacing it altogether. This is an Allium Bulgaricum blossom, from a spring-flowering bulb in the onion family. It towered over the tulips and seems suspended in time both in the garden and cut for an arrangement (more than two weeks and counting indoors, and it had been blooming outside for several weeks before that). For other examples of arrangements of my own flowers that I’ve photographed this way, see this online gallery. Since the Foam Core Addicts Society takes their art very seriously, I will take this opportunity to state officially that I’m not applying for membership until I’ve worked on my technique some more!
This is the computer desktop image I’ve gazed at lovingly every day for the last year. Okay, Ralph’s not my father, but he was a great one to our two children, and he is my #1 Lifetime Achievement Guy. He has made my enthusiasms his own--doing the heavy lifting in the garden, trekking about the countryside and always trusting my elaborate vacation plans, encouraging my kitchen adventures. Understanding that there are some tasks of which I am constitutionally incapable (working on the roof, fixing anything in the bathroom) or to which I am temperamentally unsuited (cleaning up after meals that require the use of every implement and pan we own, getting places on time), he good-naturedly pulls more than his own weight around the house. We love going to the movies and eating unusual foods together, have the same (very sensible) ideas about politics, social issues, religion, humor, and money matters, and give each other space for enjoying our individual, un-shared interests (his sports and Brother Wease, my photography and reading). Lucky me.
When I first listened to Bruce Springsteen’s album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, I didn’t think about the artist or the concept (besides, a great deal has already been written about those aspects of the CD by more qualified observers). I was transported back almost 30 years when a family newly arrived in the United States sang some traditional songs from their culture and asked me to reciprocate with some “American” songs. Where to start? And what is American, anyway? My lame offering consisted of Home on the Range and The Erie Canal, the second because of Rochester’s local history. If only I had had this album then. The songs aren’t strictly American (for example, Froggy Went a Courtin’ goes back perhaps 450 years and is generally considered an English folk song, and the anti-war ballad Mrs. McGrath is Irish) but as a body they do a good job of capturing our spirit and history. Love, humor, storytelling, heroes, religion, political protest, and the westward movement are all represented and imbued with an olden days feel, thanks to the instrumentation. Springsteen has put his stamp on the tunes with some variations on the usual melodies and with lush harmonies that never graced a hoedown or barn dance, although that’s the predominant tone. If I had thought to sings some of these songs for my long-ago audience, they probably would have been confused about what those songs said about the essence of America. Now they’ve had all these years to experience that complexity for themselves. This is a picture of my friend Nghia, the matriarch of that family, my friends.
Millions of years ago, at least 17 glaciers ground south of the present-day Lake Ontario, leaving in their wake a free and plentiful supply of smooth, rounded cobblestones that were used in the 1800’s to construct beautiful, lasting houses. According to the book Cobblestone Quest, by Rich and Sue Freeman, more than 90 percent of the existing cobblestone buildings in the U.S. are found within 65 miles of Rochester, New York, and this book can be used to find most of them. Some builders used stones of uniform size or color while others favored designs in which larger stones at the bottom gave way to increasingly smaller ones near the top of a wall. The history of the majority of the buildings, including many lovely homes, has been reconstructed as appreciation for them has grown. For more examples of local buildings and some of their construction details, go here.
In the first few months of Corina’s life, her parents ran themselves ragged trying to alleviate her obvious physical discomfort and to jolly her out of her constant colicky grimaces. We all became experts at the “football carry” and were relieved over time to see her grow robust and calm. Now at nine months she scuttles about, mischievously heading for every mystery spot in sight—the open dishwasher, the staircase, the toy chests and bookcases, and the VCR. Shake the Cheerios box in the next room, and her eyes widen with anticipation. Put on the CD of Latin American lullabies, and she quiets down for a nap. Drag out the stroller, and she waves her arms happily, knowing that she will have an hour of Grandma singing, Daddy running, or the hypnotic and nap-inducing sight of the back of Felix’s head. Her favorite toy is the chocolate chip cookie counting toy, she actually likes silky tofu and prunes, and she’ll put up with just about anything if Felix is playing in the same room. Oh, happy girl!
To me, the most beautiful roses are in the broad group New English Roses. These roses have been bred to combine old forms (generally looser, cupped, or rosetted) and strong fragrance with the wider color palette and repeat flowering characteristics of more modern roses. The big name in this arena is David Austin on whose website you can see the beautiful varieties now available. This arrangement combines one of the most popular of the bunch, Graham Thomas, with honeysuckle and spirea.
Flowers go to a lot of trouble to help the birds and the bees do their job. It’s tempting to think that certain colors are especially attractive to pollinators; I’m absolutely certain that Japanese Beetles are partial to yellow roses and yellow Kerria blossoms, and the store-bought beetle traps are yellow, too. Bee Balm is vibrant pink or red, so that must be what bees prefer. But in fact, many insects see in black and white rather than in color. Flowers make up for this by having distinctive patterns to communicate where exactly a bee should be aiming. The Aquilegia or Columbine blossom atop which the bee is perched has a perfect target to guide its helper. Many lilies, Nellie Moser Clematis, tulips, and single peonies have similar lines radiating out from the center of the flower. This particular bee was very obliging and allowed itself to be nudged into place. It was dying of old age or may have been on its last legs for other reasons. It may not even be the type of bee that spends time in the center of flowers. But you get the idea.
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