See more pictures from this morning’s walk @ Cove Island Park. More of the Cygnet and his Mom and Dad on FB here. And egrets here. And daybreak shots here.
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
May 12, 2023 by 18 Comments
Take 4…
May 11, 2023 by 14 Comments
Take 3
May 10, 2023 by 17 Comments
Morning Mom. I’m hungry…
May 9, 2023 by 11 Comments
Guess who has arrived?!?!
May 8, 2023 by 23 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
May 8, 2023 by 5 Comments
Perhaps then it’s no surprise that the idea of preening on social media makes Ruth Wilson physically recoil. In some respects, Instagram would be useful – somewhere her fanbase could find her smaller projects, for instance. But the very idea fills her with dread. She dramatises an imaginary feed: “Oh, heyyy guys. It’s Ruth Wilson herrre.” Then shudders. “The self is so important on social media, it’s created a very narcissistic society. Everyone is their own famous person; everyone can be the centre of their own world.” She jabs a finger at her phone. “But it isn’t human. It’s a constructed world. It lacks actual connection or feeling.”
What’s more, she’s watched friends become “obsessed. You can’t have a conversation because they’re looking for the next shot. Everything is, ‘What can I put out there?’ When they don’t get hits, they feel low, not validated.” She clicks her tongue at the performative feminism, the performative activism; the fact that everyone rushes to post on national whatever-whatever day. “Nothing is real. I don’t believe any of it. No one has real or strong beliefs. They are just dictated to.”
Quite apart from anything, being a slave to her phone would intrude on the things she loves best – “thinking. Just thinking” is one. She has a “restless mind”. Also, reading. […]
“I think back: brilliant, you made people so uncomfortable they had to leave. I think it’s important to face things you don’t want to see. Because only then will you grow. Only then will you live properly…Art should change the way you think. Art should change your life. Art can save you.” Wilson wants her work to be art. […]
Standing on that hinge between pre- and post-#MeToo was, Wilson says, “extraordinary. To actually witness Hollywood” – she makes a whistling sound – “shift like that.” The most disappointing aspect was the volte-face hypocrisy. “To see the survival instinct. You realise how fickle that industry is. There’s no moral backbone.” Attitudes, habits, the way people spoke changed, yes – but only out of fear of being caught. “People were like, ‘We’re going to have a meeting about how badly we’ve behaved and then we’ll all be fine.’ It blew my mind.
“It made me understand a whole swathe of human behaviour. So many people don’t really believe anything – only what makes them money.” Weinstein knew “how to get people Oscars”, so his behaviour was ignored. “They’re opportunists. You see that. But it makes you sage about what you want, what’s important. Do you want to live in that world? Or would you prefer to be doing something else, like this weird 24-hour play, where you can explore things in a safe environment?” […]
This is her safe environment, among artists who challenge. I’m not surprised that Katharine Hepburn – who won Oscars, but “paid no heed to the awards system” – is one of Wilson’s heroines. “I love her. What a legend.” She didn’t play the Hollywood game? “No. And I’m useless at playing the game. I don’t want to play the game. Like, what game? What does that even mean? That’s my answer. I can’t. I physically can’t.”
— Charlotte Edwardes, ‘So many people don’t believe anything – only what makes them money’: Ruth Wilson on being a Hollywood outsider ‘ (The Guardian · May 6, 2023)
Walking. And walking. And walking.
May 7, 2023 by 50 Comments
So, here we are. 1095 consecutive (almost) days on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.
And but for Paul pointing it out yesterday, I would have missed this Large milestone. On May 5th, it was 3 years on this daily walk, I mean 3 years, I don’t even need to count the damn days. It’s been 3 years.
And it’s just like DK, not to ponder how he’s changed, what’s changed, and not to reflect upon all the good that’s come out of this….but to focus on the edges of some nonsense. Paul had to remind me. Can you believe that? I’m forgetting a lot of important sh*t, and don’t even know it.
Every 100 feet or so, my hand reaches for the camera, and then gently sets it back to rest on my shoulder. I’m seeing Nothing worthy. All I see, is Same. Been here. Saw that. Done that. Tired of that. Posted that. 1095 days, on the same track, what do you expect?
I walk.
Stewing. Tired. Dragggggging. Wally’s snoozing. Susan will be asleep for another 2 hours. And here I am traipsing around a worn out track.
Mary Louise Kelly’s Act III: “Act III is the one where it dawns on us that there may not be an infinite number of acts, that we’d best get on with making the most of this one. Which prompts a delightful, nerve-racking question or two: What now? What next?”
I walk. [Read more…]
Saturday Morning
May 6, 2023 by 32 Comments
Photos from this morning’s walk @ Cove Island Park. Moon over Cove Island Park photos here. And daybreak sunrise photos here.
The A-Team
May 4, 2023 by 28 Comments
Wally and our grand-dog Sully.
Our Frenchie Brothers.
Top image is a photo from March 5, 2023.
Bottom image is a wonderful painting by Carol Tamplin, commissioned by our great friend Jan. What an amazing gift Jan! Thank you.
Guess.What.Day.It.Is?
May 3, 2023 by 20 Comments
Notes:
- Image Source: redmerhoekstra. Redmer Hoekstra is a Dutch artist based in Elst in the Netherlands. www.redmerhoekstra.nl/shop. Thank you Sawsan for sharing!
- Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again.
Of course we believe in fortune cookies.
May 2, 2023 by 15 Comments
Fortune Cookie Photo: Thank you Joan Perry. Thank you Ray for sharing. Pictures from this morning’s walk here.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
May 1, 2023 by 22 Comments
Act III is the one I’m staring down now. I confess to a quiet fear that it will prove anticlimactic. How to top Acts I and II? When I stalk the stage slower and grayer every year? When surely all the juicy plot twists are behind me? And yet, friends, there’s this: The stage at last is ours. The script all ours to write. We do actually, kinda know what we’re doing by Act III. Better, we may still have the energy to get up there and do it. Then there’s the fact that we don’t have much choice about the matter. Act III is the one where it dawns on us that there may not be an infinite number of acts, that we’d best get on with making the most of this one. Which prompts a delightful, nerve-racking question or two: What now? What next?
— Mary Louise Kelly, It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs (Henry Holt and Co., April 11, 2023)
With gratitude, optimism is sustainable
April 30, 2023 by 14 Comments
What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease…A question worth pondering with Michael J. Fox.
Watch entire video here on Youtube or here at CBS Sunday Morning.
Wally’s Great Adventures (69 – VOLUME UP)
April 29, 2023 by 27 Comments
hello friends, wally here. dad’s show quality dog training continues. hmmmmm. dad’s been taking me out for nature walks, which is nice and all, except both days we went it was pouring rain, and i was scrambling to keep up to him as he walks really fast. my belly (undercarriage as dad calls it) wouldn’t even clear the giant puddles so i was sopping wet. dad told me to stop complaining and keep up or a bear will eat me, which sounds frightening. somewhere along the line dad missed the memo that frenchies are in-door lap dogs. dad said enough hiding behind mom’s skirt and its time to start training on how to look fierce and scare bad people. so i’m working on that, as dad says i couldn’t even scare a little kitten, which wasnt nice. that’s all for now. nap time. have a great weekend. Your Scary-Wally.
Long Long Time Ago…
April 29, 2023 by 20 Comments
Mimi’s post dragged me down. Then I stumbled into this video, and for a moment the darkness lifted. How great is this…
Lightly Child, Lightly.
April 27, 2023 by 14 Comments
Their experiences in the world are involvingly varied: one was a nurse in Colombia, another an orchid keeper in Vietnam. But as I prompt them with questions to write about, I feel repeatedly surprised by how alike their answers sound.
What do you miss from your past?
The warmth of home, the smell of grandmother’s cooking.
What is life like in the present?
Confusing. Lonely.
What surprises you about Denver?
People sleeping on the streets. In my country they’d be with family.
When you picture your future, what do you hope?
Safe children. To feel at home. To live my dreams.
— John Cotter, Losing Music: A Memoir (Milkweed Editions, April 11, 2023)
Notes:
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Truth…
April 26, 2023 by 20 Comments
When you write something, it feels like you’re taking a bit of your brain out and letting other people look and judge – and hoping they won’t just be confused and mildly disgusted and ask you to pop it back into your skull, please.
— Rhiannon Neads, Why I quit Depression. I gave up believing depression had to be serious — there’s humor even in the darkest moments. Neads is a British writer and actor. (The Guardian, April 26, 2023)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
April 24, 2023 by 18 Comments
Modern life has clogged my skull to the limit. Technology has delivered an avalanche of options to preoccupy me at any hour; the notion of idle time that can’t be filled with some form of digital distraction is foreign to me, almost unnerving.
If you’re reading this column on a phone, or any sort of computer, you’re seconds away from all kinds of diversions—social media, digital games, the state of your 401(k), the latest celebrity embarrassment or political mess…
For me, the problem comes when I need to think for myself. If you read this column, you know that any kind of complicated thinking is hard for me, and perhaps impossible. My brain’s interior is not a series of mathematical formulas dancing around balletically, like it does for beautiful-minded geniuses in the movies. My brain is more like a slop-sink faucet, slowly dripping. Or an arcade machine that only plays 70’s-era Pong…
As I get older, I realize I need to utterly unplug. My ideas will not come from my phone, a Facebook post or the latest tire fire on Twitter. For me, they come from digital distance, from oxygen and exercise and especially from time spent outdoors. There once was a time I could get ideas from staring at websites, but not anymore. I get them from looking at trees…
I fear we’re getting worse. Technology just gets better, as those airport bookstores get smaller. I’m wary of our artificial-intelligence future, and the notion that we will lean on bots to think for us, writing code, speeches and even poetry. It sounds like more off-loading of our brain space to technology. And to what end? To watch more episodes of “Love Is Blind?”
I don’t want to sound like I’ve figured it out. I’m not saying this brain of mine is on the cusp of a breakthrough. My brain will not save the world. It barely remembers why it went to the supermarket.
But to get anywhere real, it needs to be uncluttered. It needs to be empty. I mean empty more than the usual. It needs to be bored. And for me that means: unplugged.
— Jason Gay, from “The Joy of a Totally Empty Brain. Modern distractions cannot compete with the inspiration of old fashioned boredom (wsj.com, April 21, 2023)
Live & Learn 