Everyday Roz

Easter Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:22:00 +0000

Sorry, Easter. Sorry I never managed to come up with a firm, reliable tradition for you. Besides the baskets-full-of-candy-dyed-egg-thing, I mean. And that is almost good enough for the entire day. But we've never quite figured it all out. Is Easter a BIG holiday? Do we invite all the family over for a BIG dinner? We have a few times, either here or at another house (apparently we all all similarly inclined towards confusion about the nature of celebrating Easter...) but the traditon never took hold for any of us. I am thinking a few things here.

1. Easter is just too religious for our family. Christmas is nice as it is at base, simply a celebration of a birth. Easter flat out celebrates one of the miracles of Christianity and none of us are actual believers. So greeting someone with a "Happy Easter!" seems almost hypocritical, particularly if you are not handing them jelly beans or Hershey eggs.

2. The weather is so unreliable here. Today we have light fluffy snow falling. Pretty! It is quite the Currier and Ives scene. And listen! Is that the sound of snowplows grinding down the streets? Pretty far removed from spring grasses and tulips and little girls in pastel-colored dresses collecting flowers from the garden. (Although I do have a memory of lilies of the valley in bloom once during my childhood. Must have been an extremely late Easter that year.) And Easter egg hunts? A foreign concept here due to winter condition prevailing the majority of the time.

3. The date is so terribly changeable. My understanding is that we have t least a four week span here--I decline to go consult a perpetual calendar (though I do love those things)-- but I am certain Easter has been held as late as April 19. And today of course is March 23. This gigantic gap messes with the holiday spirit in a dangerous way for some of us. We need more predictibility!

4. Never figured out what to eat for Easter dinner. There was a long span of vegetarianism around here and the idea of a ham or a lamb roast was just too meaty to contemplate. Turkey (although not a vegetable, yes, I do undestand that) was an alternative but...nah. How about piles of candy instead? Got to get to work on those chocolate rabbits sometime. Make it today, around six PM!

Sorry, Easter. But thanks for all the candy anyway.

St. Augustine Triple Exposure

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:01:00 +0000

When I started digging around my hard drive looking at photos to make into triple exposures, it dawned on me that photos that didn't really work on their own for one reason or another--bad focus, too dark, off-center subject-- were ideal candidates for layering with other images. This one uses a close-up of James, Jacksonville at sunset seen from the freeway, and the Indian River logo from a store selling citrus. Piled together, they evoke the sleepy funky nature of our trip to St. Augustine.

Triple Exposure

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:12:00 +0000

September 15, 2009 was my dad's 90th birthday. I know, awesome! And he really is an amazing man--handsome and smart. We had a party that was pretty fabulous and I got some fairly good shots. It happened that right around that time I figured out how to create a type of triple "exposure" by layering photos and messing with the opacity. This one features my dad and his birthday cake, my nephew James taking photos (so meta!) and, less obviously, some Norwegian candy emblazoned (naturally)with Norwegian script that James brought back from a trip to Scandinavia. It's really wonderful for me to show these triple layer photos to people and to observe how intently the picture is studied. It can be work to find all three elements but people are invariably excited to do it.

Every Nail & Staple Tells A Story

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:49:00 +0000

You've seen a thousand of these, I know. Telephone poles on street corners, with "Lost Dog" or "Handyman for Hire" notices stapled on. I've been awed by the simply uncountable number of tacks that evidence a neighborhood's long, long history of missing pets and men in need of work. And look at this pole--look at the texture! Want to run your hands over it, don't you? I mean bleeding palms aside, I know I'd like to, but I can't. I know exactly where I took this photo but a day or so later I drove by and was shocked to see that this pole was gone. Ripped right out of the ground. Making way for new street corner technology, I presume

Washington Avenue Bridge/Weisman Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:53:00 +0000

We're on the Washington Avenue Bridge crossing the Mississippi River and that pile of hammered together metal shapes is the wonderful little Weisman Art Museum, designed by Frank Gehry. It sits on the East Bank of the University of Minnesota and picks up the blue of the sky (and the water, when not frozen) pretty intensely, all day long. I've got to try and get a photo of it when the sun is setting--it must look like it's on fire!

Like the tilt?

Roadside Winter Landscape

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:46:00 +0000

I like the way this photo came out--it's bleak and busy at the same time.

Sound of Music, Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:58:00 +0000

Full disclosure--just ate an M&M off the floor.

Also, can't stop thinking about "The Sound of Music" which aired on network TV last night. You all know the story, right? Young Fraulein Maria Wants-to-be-a-nun is sent by her convent's abbess to be governess for the emotionally dead dead dead Captain Von Trapp and his seven resentful offspring. Maria immediately brings MUSIC! back into their life. The Captain is so grateful he dumps his savvy, svelte rich blonde Baroness to marry boyish Fraulein Maria with her sensible shoes andlove of syrupy Tyrolean ballads. Sadly, I missed the first ten minutes of the movie so I didn't get to hear the gang of nuns back at the abbey dissing Maria in that song called How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria which incidentally we hear them sing at her wedding a mere three hours later! It's a fairly passive aggressive little ditty in which the other nuns all bond by making up mean stuff about Maria (...underneath her wimple...she wears curlers in her hair!--oh she does not--her hair is like two inches long!) before the Mother Superior kicks her out and sends her off to catch a bus to the Von Trapp compound. For her trip away from the convent Maria carries a carpet bag she stole from Mary Poppins and wears an odd, pieced-leather hat, sort of a snug fitting beanie with a huge floppy brim. Perfect for warding off rain and sun and attention from the opposite sex! I kid. She's totally cute and the hat is actually kind of appealing in a Curious George Man With the Big Yellow Hat kind of way

Anyway, I noticed a few little things I hadn't before, in all my many, many viewings of this classic musical starring the lovely and sexless Julie Andrews. Such as--oh my god, the butler is a Nazi! And an informer! He's constantly prowling around the Von Trapp mansion lifting an eyebrow and then before you know it there's a Nazi officer at the door asking probing questions about the Captain's sex life. Also, every single male cast member is outfitted in snug pants and was definitely directed to play it homosexual. Captain VonTrapp? Prissy and gay. Uncle Max? Flamboyant and gay. Fourteen-year-old Friedrich? Repressed and gay. Ten-year-old Kurt? Adorable and gay.

The movie is endless and is full of disturbing close-ups of Maria in which the Gaussian blur is so thick I kept turning the TV volume up so I could hear through it. Oh, but then the Captain gets behind the blur so they can smooch--just a little!--and rub foreheads together because that is spelled out in Julie's contract--"for every event where my lips must meet those of my co-star I stipulate no less than four(4) instances of upper cranial contact lasting at least twenty seconds." You just know Julie's kinky, in a sleep-with-stuffed-animals-until-she's-forty kind of way.

So what got me through the long, long LONG three hours of prancing and sneering from Captain Von Trapp (played by the perpetually annoyed Christopher Plummer)? Three solid hours of watching all seven Von Trapp children parade around outfitted in amazingly ugly "playclothes" that gifted needlewoman Maria whipped up from her bedroom curtains (um, Scarlett O'Hara ripoff or what)? Incidentally the "children" include a very sophisticated sixteen-year-old girl who spends the entire movie plotting to get her junior Nazi boyfriend (panicky and gay) to notice her. Tip--lose the chartreuse-paisley-apron-front dirndl, honey.

I don't know. I lay back on the pillows of my bed, tossing back cough drops in a contented stupor. The Sound of Music is just a beautiful movie. Those damn awesome alps, the camera swooping us here and there up amidst the clouds and down amongst the edelweiss. The charming town of Salzburg with its, its --is that a Roman Coliseum the family performs in? Amazing. The cobblestone streets and the old buildings and the stunningly symmetrical VonTrapp family mansion... just perfect. Oh and the gorgeous wedding in the enormous Gothic Abbey--sigh. It is all so ornate yet simple and lovely. I couldn't tear myself away, not even to watch Battle Tomato on Iron Chef. And when the entire family trudges across the Alps to Switzerland to escape the Nazis I sat straight up and drank in every detail of the scene. I cheered for them. They're going to make it! Hurrah for freedom! And lederhosen! Hurrah for strudel and schnitzel! And warm copper kittens!

(Wait--how does that song go?)

Originally posted January 9, 2009

America the Beautiful, ASL style

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:45:00 +0000

I wish I'd taken more photos of this man as he signed--passionately!--"America the Beautiful" at Lucia's graduation ceremony ten days ago. He did such a gorgeous job, truly conveying the patriotism and love for America's ideals and natural beauty that make "America the Beautiful" such a moving anthem. I've always preferred it to "The Star-Spangled Banner".

How about you?

Moon Over Rainy Lake

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:57:00 +0000

2009 was a really cold summer in Canada but the day we got to the cabin the sun was out and everyone was running around the marina sweating and yelling about how damn hot it was. While we unloaded everything from the car then loaded it into the boat I was in charge of Daisy and she and I tried not to take it too personally that all the ducks hanging around the dock dove headfirst into the lake as we approached. Yeah, they gang-mooned us.

Dandelion Daisy

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Mon, 25 May 2009 02:27:00 +0000

All the dandelions in all the parks around the city have all gone to seed in the past couple of days. They bloomed yellow for two whole weeks this year, competely untouched by municipal grooming machinery. It may be finances or something dreary like that, but I like to think that the city just decided that the dandelions blooming in the grass of the playing fields and along the park boulevards were just too darn pretty to mow down. Then this weekend every single one of them went to seed. Even I was shocked at the billowing clouds of dandelion fluff a small dog like Daisy managed to kick up just tromping through the grass on a normal walk.

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:09:00 +0000

Lifted from Cuteoverload.com. Happy Sunday!

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:57:00 +0000

( I've been gone so long--it just happens sometimes, I guess. But you are here-- thanks! )

I found this photo on the front page of the Washington Post today and it made me laugh out loud. The child pictured is apparently at a spa getting her hair done and undergoing various other relaxing and beautifying techniques. Ever seen anyone look so very not relaxed? And that chair...is it a chair? It looks like a character from some science fiction fantasy --oh, wait, I just realized it must be a bear--look, I bet there is a happy ursine face behind our blinded-by-cucumber-slices-little girl.

I've always thought that beauty salons and spas are not the place for children. There is no way in hell that Cucumber Girl here needs to be treated for imminent lines or bags around her eyes. Ditto with manicures or pedicures for nails the size of chipmunk eyeballs. Unnecessary and misguided. (Hey--just like my blog! Hee hee.)

Cue the bongos!

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:42:00 +0000

While in La Jolla, we stayed at a tiny house about a block away from a beach called Windansea. According to local lore, Windansea is a very famous surf locale, and has been in its share of surfer movies. Although fairly rocky in my non-surfer's estimation, there were always one or two surfers trying to catch a wave, no matter what time of day. Many of them were like this guy--can you sense the surf addiction vibe? He's gray-haired, his wetsuit is riddled with holes, the waves are stage one and the water temperature of the Pacific is probably in the sixties. No matter. He caught some, dude!

Say No More!

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:02:00 +0000

It frustrates me no end that I don't have the full story of how this family came to have two monkeys as part of their putative "coat of arms" bas relief tableaux. It's all just so improbable! I mean, I'm not sure monkeys had even been invented back in the days when knights roamed the woods and forests, plucking low-hanging plumes to stick in their helmets and dickering with large songbirds about the cost of appearing on their knightly shields.

Then I remember that this cosy cottage is in California, people. California. Innovators, all!Meaning they were waaaaay out in front of the rest of the country in everything, including the pot smoking/stoned architect department.

You dig?

Tidepool Seagrowth, Pink

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:27:00 +0000

What IS it with these photos of purple-y natural phenomena? First the frost photo (below)that has lingered at the top of the post list for weeks and weeks. And now--this thing (above). This is my favorite of all the three hundred pictures I shot while on a week's vacation in La Jolla. And it's true, one-third of those photos were of beached seals, mostly racked out in a truly impressive display of basking and lolling. And as such, most of those photos are amazingly boring. But this! This strange flower of the ocean! This crazy tidepool creature-harboring growth! This is pure excitement for a landlocked dweller like me. Check out the bubbles obligingly stationed at all four corners. Proof that this thing is really underwater.

Small Consolation for Atmospheric Brutality

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:44:00 +0000

This is one of my upstairs windows, the most artistic one of the bunch in my opinion. Whenever the temperature falls way down in the single digits (Fahrenheit) the various window panes respond by covering themselves with captivating patterns of frost. I have noticed that irregularities in old glass tend to create certain themes in the frost design. This particular window pane usually builds a wintery scene centering around a pine tree of ice crystals. So I was stunned the other morning to find this delightful ice mural of waves cascading beneath a stormy sunrise. (If you turn the photo upside down I think you'll see a pile of gingko leaves floating above some...some...yeah, I don't know what the rest of the image could be. Let's stick with the wave theory.)

Sunday Evening Project

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:16:00 +0000

This looks just a tad dangerous to me--I mean, check out the way that stepladder is leaning haphazardly against the maybe-in-need-of-repair bricks of that chimney. I know I definitely did not contribute to the safety of the situation by driving by three times before stopping to roll down my window, zoom in and snap several photos. Then I waved and drove away. I think I kind of scared him But hey, hopefully I gave Mr. I'll Be Up On The Roof If You Need Me something to talk about at dinner that night.

I mean, besides his broken leg...which he didn't get because of me, he shouldn't have been up there balancing so precariously in the first place. Right?

I'm babbling. I like this image. All black silhouette and pale sky with the ladder still managing to show its yellowness. Go, ladder!

Bobo

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:59:00 +0000

What do you think of this guy? He's been a constant in my world since we moved into this house eight years ago. I often lean against the counter in the bathroom and contemplate his cheerful doorknob-y face as I brush my teeth. Once in awhile I'll reach over and adjust his deadbolt smile a little bit, maybe making him appear more quizzical or a bit uncertain (what I really should do, of course, is wipe his face more often). In eight years, though, I never thought to mention him to anyone else in the family. I did take a photo of him one slow, housebound day in January. I didn't like the way the flash illuminated his nose--I left the photo on my hard drive and forgot about it. Then two weeks ago a little notice popped into view on Flickr, for a group called "Facial Impressions". The creators of the group were collecting faces--faces found or accidentally created or just noticed. Anywhere, they said: In nature, or out on the street, or maybe in your bathroom. I immediately thought of Bobo, retrieved him from hard disc obscurity and posted him to the group.

He's done quite well there, garnering several dozen views and some appreciative comments. He's even been added as a "favorite" meaning there are some people out there who want to make sure they always know where to find Bobo's shiny comical face.

(I did finally think to ask around, find out if anyone else in the family had the same friendly relationship with our doorknob guy. No one knew what in the hell I was talking about.)

Ivy Vines

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:46:00 +0000

I know I may be alone on this one but I really love these bare ivy vines crawling all over this sort of crappy pink stucco building. They look so freaky yet so organic, and so much like everything else that is weird. Like the seaweed underwater that grabs at your legs or giant basement cobwebs that stick to your hands and face or maybe some terrifying large system of veins and capillaries. Nature is so repetive, isn't it?

Red Dogwood Branches, Still Growing

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:22:00 +0000

I went for a walk in the woods yesterday, hoping to get a photo of a Great Horned Owl who allegedly spends a lot of time in a certain tree. Apparently he had forsaken his old stomping grounds as there was no sign of any owl activity at all. But maybe I'll catch him another time! Meanwhile, I was more than happy to settle for a pleasantly invigorating tramp through the snow. I always love birdhouses so when we approached this one I swung my camera up to my eye to get a nice shot. Except I clicked too soon and got these handsome reddish branches instead. Although I reshot and actually have a focused photo of the (Purple Martin's?) house, I like the one above better. After all, these branches are here, slugging it out through Minnesota's tough winter months. Is there even anyone home at the Martins?

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Time to Eat

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:50:00 +0000

I really like this photo of a female cardinal caught with a large seed in her mouth. It's almost the same dimension as her eyeball, isn't it? Cardinals are such lovely colorful birds and I am happy to provide them with food during the long dark winter months. But dang. It's getting a little freaky in my backyard. Yesterday I glanced out the kitchen window and as usual there was a cardinal sitting on the bird feeder, busy excavating black sunflower seeds, and one picking around on the snow beneath the feeder, catching the good fall-off. But the odd thing was--the bushes all around the yard were filled with cardinals. Bright red, pale drab, red with brownish wings--there they all were, more than I could count, all quietly watching their species mate enjoy himself. Then, swoop! Another cardinal's turn! And so it went--quiet observing, then sudden flight. Quiet observing, sudden flight.

Guess word is out on the sweet new platform James built onto the feeder.

Miracles

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:50:00 +0000

Look at how white the snow is and how bare the branches are on this huge oak tree. It's a miracle, right? A beautiful, beautiful, miracle of WINTER. You want to hear about another miracle of winter? Girl Scout cookies. Just when you think you've almost made it to spring and everything is going to be all right, the dozen or so boxes of Thin Mints and Do-Si-Do's and Samoas get delivered right to your front door. And just look at you! Look at how helplessly you watch your pale, trembling hands rip open a box of Thin Mints. Marvel at how quickly you've torn into an entire sleeve of the weird minty chocolate crackers. Crunched them up! Gone. Gone. Gone. Phew.

Now shake the crumbs off your sweater. And be deeply grateful there wasn't a camera trained on you as you gobbled so desperately.

Blue Angel (Lake Street Mural # 77)

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I spied this this beautifully rendered mural while driving east on Lake Street last week. I don't know the context or the history but I am totally smitten with the blues and lavenders. On a more irreverant note I will add that I like how this starving orphan-type child seems to be reaching hungrily for the scabs of peeling paint. (Oh, don't you worry! I just know that winged shiksa has a mayonnaise sandwich tucked in a pocket of her giant nightie.)

Say What?

noreply@blogger.com (Roz) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:08:00 +0000

"When I was in high school, my desire was to be a sportscaster. ESPN was just kicking off, just getting off the ground, and I thought that's what I was going to do in life, is be one of the first woman sportscasters. Until I learned that you'd have to move to Bristol, Connecticut. It was far away. So instead, I had a daughter and named her Bristol."-- Gov. Sarah Palin

--Slate Magazine, Feb. 11, 2009