Category: Perspective
Happy Earth Day 2021
Please, PLEASE let’s not forget that just last year, when all the machines and engines and factories shut down, for about a minute, our grandchildren, all over the planet, got to see what the sky is supposed to look like….
Fun with Photography; soliciting reactions…3/31/21
OK, starting from the premise that all “Art” is in the eye of the beholder…
I had a great time snapping shots of our recent Worm Moon, the first (and least dramatic) of four Super Moons this year.
“Worm Moon” is what the full moon of March is called. According to the Old Farmers Market, the title “Worm Moon” refers to the time of year when the ground thaws enough to allow earthworms to come out of the soil.
Although my Earth Steward/Angel friend Karuna might love the name Worm Moon (she has a thing for worms), luckily there are several other names to choose from for this particular spectacle including Eagle Moon, Sugar Moon, and my personal favorite, Crow Moon. (Karuna’s Blog…read anything in her Nature category!!! What a contribution she has made!! https://livinglearningandlettinggo.com/)
Anyway, here are some photos, and a couple of multiple choice options on which I’d love your input, especially if you happen to be one of the amazing photographers I follow…like Marilyn, Cee, Jules, Nancy Merrill, Nes Felicio, Whippet Wisdom, V.J. Knutson, Debbie Smyth, Leya, Amy, Arati… (uh oh, I guess I follow way too many photographers to list them all…sorry.)
I do not see myself as in the same ballpark as any of these talented photo artists, but I sure learn from them….about beauty and cleverness and composition.
Moonrise Saturday, March 27, 2021
First, I went out to see the moon rising, armed with only my rapidly aging, but much loved phone, a Galaxy 8+.
I really like this phone’s camera, especially for close up shots. But with it’s just so-so telephoto capacity, it’s lousy for capturing celestial bodies.
Moonset March 28, 2021
The next morning I got up in time to watch the beautiful moon setting, but this time, brought my little Canon Power Shot, with its great telephoto lens…amazing for a point and shoot camera.
Here are some Moonset shots, a couple I really like. Also, some opinion-questions I am really hoping someone wants to answer!
1.) The one on the right is what my camera captured. The one on the left is just slightly darkened with computer. Which is better?
2.) What I’d like an opinion about is with these next five photos is about position in the frame. (I kinda like the second one as it seems to demonstrate something geometrical or even spiritual…)
3.) The next four are all imperfect (not clear enough, something blocking part of the shot in each) but I like a couple. Do you like any of these?
4.) When I looked at this one on the computer, it startled me because somehow I had captured TWO, maybe THREE moons???
But then, mystery solved and all made sense, several photos later…(Boy, does my lens need cleaning or what?!)
5.) Here, I am experimenting with two versions of the same photo…do you prefer one?
6.) This last one was a total accident, but it turns out, it’s my favorite. No idea why. Opinions??
Thanks for traveling through photo-space with me. Please consider sharing any reactions or feedback in “comments”.
Oh, and, by the way, during this whole time prepping and writing this post, I never once thought about the world going to hell in a handbasket*…
Pandemic?? WHAT pandemic…??
PS Seems appropriate to include one of my favorite music videos. You may have seen it before…
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket
Spirit Lifter–Day 363 of being “grounded” 3/4/21
My best friend craves the desert. My son does also. My partner comes alive in the mountains. My two other best friends have to be in the center of a huge city, surrounded by history and art.
Me? Well, I don’t know where the phrase “Happy as a clam” originated, but I must be part clam, because I am never happier than when I am on a long, flat beach, staring out into the ocean…
It’s really the way I have survived this year of lockdown and isolation.
I picture the ocean, the beaches I have loved, and the amazing lifestyle I had the pleasure of growing up in…
So when my only friends left living in my childhood stomping (well, SURFING) grounds sent me this article, I was delighted! I could FEEL this experience, with all my senses.
I hope you have a place in your mind you have been able to go to during this last tumultuous and devastating year.
Wishing you safety, health, and peace.
With Love,
ChosenPerspectives
Spirit Lifters–Day 330 being “Grounded” 1/30/21
I am running out of things to binge-watch on Hulu and Netflix….
I’m not talking about “couch potato” binge-watching. Honest.
It’s mostly for the cat. Honest.
I recently read the perfect explanation (justification?) for my binge watching on my dear friend’s brand new blog (Lisa Chandler Jewelry)
The Prismflash Studio Construction Zone
She wrote: “…as a jewelry artist of 20+ years, I’ve never had a studio space. I’ve always created jewelry ad hoc on my lap since 1999 when I began. I like having the TV or an audiobook going in the background while I create (tell me a good story!).”
My binge watching is really binge listening. It’s background comfort and distraction noise while I am doing other things…like my covid-craft projects, or paperwork, or culling through a life-time of “stuff” in an effort to use this time wisely. Like continuing my age-appropriate down-sizing.
I sound like a hoarder…and truthfully, I guess I actually am. I save even the most unlikely scraps of memorabilia…you know, just in case. Every photograph, letter, trinket, ticket stub and card, represents something meaningful, an important memory in my life.
I blame my Grandmother. She saved everything too. Like many in her generation, who survived the (first) “Depression”, she had more rubber bands, and scraps of used tin foil than god.
When I was a child, and basically had no one else who cared about me, I would spend hours at Gramma’s feet while she did pretty much what I am doing now. And every unlikely saved item she touched had a story. Each time she threw something away, she first thoughtfully caressed it, then reverently told me why she saved it.
And the things she kept, she would carefully wrap or fold before putting in her grandmother’s beautiful, carved wooden “hope chest”. Those things elicited a less emotional and much more fact-filled explanation, her justification really for keeping them.
“This was your Great Grandmother’s bonnet. She wore this in the covered wagon trip from Missouri to Salt Lake City. This has great historical value.”
I learned from both categories of her “things”, the trash and the treasures. I learned about our family, our history, our legacy…and, these downsizing events with my grandmother helped me finally understand my Mom.
This whole preventative isolation thing has me thinking about some monumental things; like mortality, aging, and use of my remaining time here…some of it, quite frightening and very painful. I know I am not alone in this…
Thus, the needed relief of instant, focus-shifting, binge-watching in the background.
When I started this Spirit Lifters series, using the word “grounded” in my titles was because that’s what my doctor told me. She said, in her straightforward way, “you are in all the highest risk categories, not just for contracting this virus, but dying from it so if you want to survive, you are grounded for the duration”, as in “Go to your ROOM. You are GROUNDED!” (She barely meant in a humorous way.)
Anyway, I woke up this morning with the profound realization that just as Mother Nature is “culling” our species, maybe even for the planet’s survival, all of this binge-watching, and crafting, and sorting, has provided us all with the perfect background for culling through our own lives….a meaningful distraction from the existential crisis we are all facing.
So being grounded by my Doc is exactly what has worked for me to stay “grounded” and centered through easily the most terrifying time in my life…
It was during one of these paper-sorting, binge-watching times I heard this song in the background. It was on, of all things, Bones. (I told you I am running out of things to watch…) At first, I thought it was Bono singing, but it’s Starsailor, a group I barely remember from the early 2000’s. It’s a beautiful, slightly haunting piece. The melody, by association, now grounds me when I hear it…..I hope you enjoy it.
Songwriters: Barry Westhead / Benjamin Byrne / James Stelfox / James Walsh
Some of Us lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc
There you have it. I hope, if you have actually read all of this, you will respond with a comment. Tell me what your favorite distraction has been during our year of pandemic.
A plea from a wall-climbing, screaming extrovert, with no one to talk to!!!
🤣
Spirit Lifters–Day 329 of being “Grounded” 1/29/21
Not sure if I have shared this before but it inspires me every time I watch it!
We all need this kind of determination right now!
Sound up! Breathe deeply! Enjoy!!!
(and if it doesn’t touch you, reach you, move you…Call your THERAPIST!! 😉)
Sprit Lifters; Day 322 of being “Grounded”(In case you missed it!)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amanda-gorman-inauguration-poem-the-hill-we-climb-reading/
I hope you can skip the commercials, and enjoy it again!
MLK Day 2021
Spirit Lifters-Day 316 of being “Grounded” 1/16/21
Photos and humor…both can shift my whole mood, can change a whole day!!
This one’s been around but it still cracks me up when I read it! My current favorites are #3, #5, and #12! Enjoy!
1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.
2. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.
3. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!
4. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her dog. It was obvious she thought her dog understood her. I came into my house & told my cat. We laughed a lot.
5. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.
6. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?
7. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do. Cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!
8. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!
9. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.
10. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.
11. Appropriate analogy. “The curve is flattening so we can start lifting restrictions now” is like saying “The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can take it off now.”
12. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask & asking for money.
13. The spread of COVID-19 is based on 2 things:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is
And here’s another chuckle!
Have faith in Pfizer’s Covid vaccine. Pfizer patented Viagra. If a company can raise the dead it can certainly save the living.
just seconds later…
I can’t decide whether I prefer sunrise or sunset, but in the winter, both can be a spectacular show to watch!!
Spirit Lifters-Day 311 of being “Grounded” 1/11/21
You may have seen the video below. If not, well HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I meant to post it New Year’s Day but got distracted by other stuff.
And now, all I can think of is the powerful question I woke up with this last Thursday morning…the day after the…uh, insurrection at the US Capitol.
I wondered out loud if the way I was feeling…appalled, furious, disgusted, extremely critical of those selfish, insane people, was the same way my elders felt toward me in the 1960’s when I was willing to risk my life for the things I believed in so strongly…Racial Equality and ending the Vietnam war!
I had to think about that for a long time.
I concluded that violence was the difference. Back then we marched, and sat, and sang, and lobbied, and yes, I even put daisy’s in the rifle barrels of the National Guardsman trying to stop us.
So today, I am watching this Fireworks Video differently.
Each explosion is a failed gun shot, blossoming into glorious proof of the miracles in life.
Here. Try it again….
Thanks, and be safe and healthy.