.

The Art of My Living

Spring flew by, and lots of stuff didn't get done. There are garden beds still unplanted, neglected because there were too many other things to do or it was raining on the days they might have been tended to. My back has its limits now too.

Harvesting was also victimized by time. The asparagus made it into the freezer, but the rhubarb never got canned or frozen, nor did any rhubarb pies emerge from the oven.

On the positive side, all the rain we've had is growing collosal potato plants. Tomatoes look happy too, and corn and soybeans are in, up and doing quite well. All of our wood is cut, the woodshed rearranged and partially filled. Grandson learned to ride a bike.

I "created" an office for myself at work from an ugly space piled high with computer parts and accumulated "stuff" left by previous employees. Some spackling and three coats of limey-yellow paint, a few framed photos, and I now work in a personalized, pleasant - albeit a bit small - space. Downstairs, the reception area and hallways are hung with more photos, my own gallery of sorts.

The push is on to be ready for next week's Arts Fest in Morristown. Last year I bought an Easy-Up booth and five gridwalls to display framed photos. The grids are 6' x 2' and make a sort of back wall. This year I've added three more to give me a three-sided display near the front of the booth. My photo cards will be displayed in a new revolving table-top rack, and I've bought black heavy cotton fabric to make table drapes - if I ever find the time to put them together.

My latest print order arrived Monday, and I've been busy signing, matting and bagging them. WUMB streams music through my computer as I work, and how I enjoy doing this final putting together of my creations!

The Creative Spirit gallery's juried show selected three of my five submissions, one of which you can partially see as the current background to this blog. The show opening was last Friday evening.

What a blessing this old love is.

Spring

So here it is: spring. Actually, it's half-past spring, but the falling snow makes that hard to believe.

Since my last post, the biggest change in my life has been my return to full-time work. That sounds worse than it is because much of what I'm doing is photography and video work. No, it's not very creative stuff, but I do enjoy it. Today I filmed and photographed the H.R. director of a private not-for-profit agency that provides care for developmentally disabled people. It was nice to hear someone talk about the value of the work they do and to listen to him speak proudly of the many people employed by the agency. Kind of nice to know there are folks whose sense of self-worth comes from helping others, not from stock market gains.

With spring (when it REALLY comes), will come some non-work photography. Next week my Toronto chum arrives, and we'll be off "pootin' around the North Country," as she puts it. Then off to Washington, DC for Mr. Wizard's mother's 90th birthday. The last we heard, she had to be let in by the security guard in her building. She'd been out dancing until midnight!

I've had no time for blogging. I'm even way behind in email correspondence, but today, with a few minutes to kill before heading home from the office, I decided it was time to put a more seasonal background photo on the blog.

To any of my "old friends" in Bloggerville who might have been alerted to this post, my warmest greetings and wishes. I hold you in fond memories of fun, games and sometimes pretty serious stuff that we shared when I was blogging regularly.

Happy spring!

Wiz
.
.

Yesterday was the "official" launch of my new website, WizenedEye.com. The issue of the music is still unresolved, but of course there is the "Sound: Off" button to kill it when the visitor becomes REALLY annoyed by the endless repetition.

It is no surprise to either me or Mr. Wizard that we just had a conversation on Flash programming. Yes, I am interested in learning it. So many things to this photography business: building and maintaining websites, establishing and maintaining good gallery relations, participating in shows and sales, submitting photos to juried exhibitions, managing many thousands of image files - and of course actually taking photos.

Heard this on a Canadian TV show called Being Erika. I thought I should write it down somewhere, and why not here? Canada. Such a good country in many ways, especially in the encouragement of the arts.

Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow. -- Alice Mackenzie Swaim

No particular reason for this post except to remember the quote.

.
Hmmmmm... some of you are still out there...
.
.


.
.
.

..

Swan Song

.

I hope your visits to this site have been enjoyable, but most of all I hope you have stopped to consider that your own existence springs from Nature. Life of any kind - even human life - depends on a healthy natural environment.

.

As I turn to walk off into the woods and leave active blogging behind, I thank each of you for coming here, for your thoughtful comments, and for your friendship.

.

And with that, the Wizened Wizard turned and took the path less traveled into the forest.

.

.

.

You are always welcome to visit Wizened Eye, my photography site.

.

.

.

.

Namaste, Becky

I have a friend whose name is Becky. In my blog and in her blog, I call her Shaman (although she insists she is not a full shaman but a shaman in training). She is the nugget of pure gold in the mountain full of pyrite, the echoed melody in the canyon, the right blend of woman-power and vulnerability, competitiveness and giving; and every day she gives us poetry.

I always enjoy what she writes, and so often she creates word-pictures of the same things I'm seeing through my camera lens.

This morning I found some of myself in her poem:


Story Tellers

Story tellers
In times past, they were the shamans;
the ones who knew
the plants, where to find the hunting grounds,
and the sacred stories of creation.
In these modern times,
in my family,
there are story tellers.
They are the keepers of the line,
the ones who spin the lore,
the backbone of my who-am-I wonderings.
I have a friend who has a blog
she makes, and builds, sings
and maybe even surgically enhances
the past with photos and short amusing stories.
I read her truth and am truly entertained
but that is not all I glean from the years,
it is the wisdom and the knowledge
that I honor from those times.
And when all is told and listened to,
when all the names and places
are collected,
when all the old bones and old blood
are fashioned into lessons and elevated
to their rightful place I can sit and hold them
knowing of that man at war, or the woman,
the one who made the hats.
The story of my DNA
becomes re-tooled old leather
for me to wrap around my heart.
I am proud I came from them.
I am grateful too for the story tellers
for taking all those old bones and fusing
them to mine.
.
By Becky Harblin.... March 30, 2008

Dedicated to: Jane and Harold Harblin, Percy Harblin, Alvina LeFebevre
and blogger - Judy Andrus Toporcer

Gosh. (Blush). I learned the word "namaste" from Becky, and today I say it to her: Namaste, Becky. I bow to you, and to Jane and Harold, Percy and Alvina. Becky, I'm so very honored.

.

With Mixed Emotions

Our northern border has become a home to hundreds of wind generators. They are huge. About fifty miles east of my house, a large wind project is being built. This generator (and dozens more like it) have been erected and will soon be operational.
.

.

In principle I must like these behemoths. Energy from the wind is clean.

.

However, several hours before I took the sunset shot of the windmill, I took this photo of a huge flock of migrating snow geese. There were thousands of them; the two pictures were taken only a mile or so apart.

.

.

What will happen when the giant wind turbines begin operation? It is naive to think that migrating birds will not suffer because of our need for electricity.

.

.

No Comment...
.

.

............Sipress cartoon from The New Yorker, 3/10/08, p. 91
.
Behind the altar in the Baptist church of my childhood was a velvet curtain. If I ever did think about it as my mind wandered during Sunday services, I’d have thought it was simply a decorative touch, a bit of burgundy (or was it gold??) that matched one of the colors in the stained glass windows.

When I was about thirteen, my church-going contemporaries and I were herded into a baptismal class. The lessons “taught” to me there didn’t stick in my memory – but for the revelation that a large concrete water trough had been secretly lurking behind that velvet altar backdrop, and that one by one my classmates and I were going to be paraded into that tub and get our heads wet. In all the years past, church folks had been smart enough to do this sort of thing after all the young kids were sent down to their Sunday School classes. None of us had previously witnessed this strange event.

On “the big day” we donned some sort of white cotton choir robes, got in line, and then one-by-one waded into the tank. The water was waist-high, the minister asked me the pertinent questions, I answered as I’d been instructed to, and SPLOOOSH: the bastard tipped me over backward and under water. Apparently I came out of that tank a saved Christian; in reality I decided this religion was for the birds, or maybe the fish.

At some time after “organized religion” was washed out of me, some family friends came to visit. Their daughter Donna Jean and I were the same age but of ever more differing interests, making it harder and harder to know what to do during these occasional social get-togethers, and on this Sunday I said, “Why don’t we sew? We could make something.”

Donna Jean looked a combination of horrified and all-knowing while proclaiming, “Don’t you know that every stitch you take on a Sunday will be a stitch of pain before you die?” I must say that I didn’t know that…but not wanting to push her into doing something that she obviously felt was wrong (and apparently dangerous), I answered something like, “Yeah, oh, well, we don’t have to sew.”

My logical brain scoffed. I already had one foot planted in my father’s agnosticism and was secretly turning away from my mother’s Baptist church, and Donna Jean’s nonsense was laughable. Or was it? My mind raced. Had I sewn anything on a Sunday before?? I had. Yikes. Could Donna Jean’s proclamation be true?? Nah. But could I be sure?? Pain scared me. Building up a large cache of stitches of it that would have to be endured before death scared me not a little. We didn’t sew that day, nor did I sew on a Sunday for many, many years.

I’ve had pain now and then in the years since God’s ways were revealed to me by Donna Jean. Maybe I’m paying down the cache. Or maybe there’s a Christian equation that looks something like this:

(Life allotted) + (Sunday stitches sewn) – (Pain stitches experienced) = Time Remaining

Who knew God was a mathematician?
.