New Year's Eve Weekend: Teenagers Spent the Afternoon Discussing Algorithms of Rubik's Cube

 A part of the New Year's Eve weekend was spent with my brother's family. During the afternoon, I was caught up in a discussion among my eleven and twelve-year-old g'nephews and nieces about the various algorithms used to solve Rubic's cube, and which was the best. In the picture above Luke is explaining to his mom how the version of the cube he has in his hands is vastly superior to the one she is holding (off-screen), which happened to be one of the original cubes. In the background, Knox is showing his sixteen-year-old cousin how to solve the scrambled cube. 

Then it was time for the annual Wearin' o' the Funny Christmas Hats picture. After each person has selected one from baskets of about a hundred or so silly hats, we group up for a picture. The man in the green hat is one of my nephews, Cyril, along with his wife, Molly. My own hat had a kind of velvet-covered spring with a dangly star that reminded me of The Grinch's dog.

The girl above is my g'niece Audrey, while the boy below is her cousin, Lennex. Teenagers.

And these are just a few of the faces who make up my family. My niece, Theresa, has a large family of her own. We really don't have a place large enough to accommodate everyone, should we decide to all be in one place, at one time.

Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving with the Wrights ... About Half of Them

 

Ordinarily, I think of my family as rather small ... until Thanksgiving, when just the relatives from my brother's side comprise a gathering of almost two dozen people, ten of whom are teenagers, or nearly so. It was decided this year that the cut-off age to sit at the kids' table was forty-one, meaning Joseph was finally allowed to sit with the other grown-ups. (Really, we need a sarcasm font.)

The teens are all involved in sports ranging from taekwondo to lacrosse to wrestling. It should be no surprise that they wanted pictures of themselves in a pyramid. It began innocently enough when my nephew, Joseph, posed for a picture with his wife Laura, and their triplets, Knox, Lennex, and Tallulah.

Then Joseph made a stack with his brother's daughters, Audrey, Kinley, and Maggie plus a couple unidentified stragglers (i.e., grandnephews).

The girls then contemplated a pyramid because, you know, a mysterious cult called "cheer". As it turned out there were just enough kids to make that particular stack.

With some engineering guidance, the kids began their pyramid.

TA-DAH! In no particular order, they are Knox, Lennex, Tallula; Audrey, Kinley, Maggie, Dylan, Declan; Luke and Savannah.

Happy Holidays! May you find cheer in the coming year and always thereafter.

Autumn Is Here, For Sure

 Yesterday, my big adventure was to go downtown for a vaccine against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), as well as an updated pneumonia jab. Luckily, the pharmacy is located inside the neighborhood grocery so I could buy a couple packages of salad, apples, and a bottle of pop before I left for home.

The walk from the bus stop to the store passed under a line of lovely trees displaying their response to the changes in light and temperature. Consequently, I walked along with my eyes taking in the little cathedrals of color as the sun passed through the jewel-like leaves.

Eclipse On A Cloudy Day

It rained all night and well into Saturday morning. I went outside to see whether there was any chance of seeing (I use that term inaccurately as there was no chance of my looking directly into the sun) the eclipse. I did locate the orb's general placement, aimed my camera, and Poof! This is it. Eclipse seen on a rainy day, 2023. 

There is an indication of a bright circle with another, more shadowy segment in its upper left quadrant, so my image looks like the eclipse was at about forty percent. 

However, the first eclipse that comes to mind for me is Eclipse, one of the three foundation sires of the Thoroughbred horse. As a horse-crazy child, this animal's name was a fact that was incised into my brain in about third grade: Matchem, Herod, and Eclipse. I'll forget to buy toilet tissue or perhaps miss my brother's birthday, but I won't forget Eclipse.

 

 

Scuffed

Some days, the best abstract art can be found on the ubiquitous aluminum light pole. There are hints of gray in there, leftovers from the tape used to post notices of lost pets or rumage sales.

 

Autumn Gold and Goose, Er, Geese

 With comparatively few green leaves remaining and increasingly more of its "gold" falling into the Downtown Canal, this picture illustrates the passage of time spoken of by the Robert Frost poem I posted a day or two ago. Soon, all that will be left are the black branches, themselves awaiting the "first green" of spring.

Now It's Autumn

 

I woke up at 5:30 A.M. Saturday and I knew the inevitable had happened: my feet were cold and now it is autumn. Yeah, yeah, the calendar says the Autumn Equinox was just two weeks ago but it doesn't matter; fall arrives the minute I feel the need to put on a pair of warm socks. When my feet are cold, I'm cold all over so there'll also be an extra blankie across the foot of my bed so the rest of me feels, well, just right. This situation will remain until near my birthday in March when Spring arrives. Until then, it's socks for bed, socks to wear around my place - with slippers, socks with my shoes and boots.

Luckily, with the Winter Solstice, not only will the days begin to lengthen, but I will begin counting down the days to Spring when I'll be able to take my socks off. 

A Robert Frost Poem Read by Tobias Menzies

This photo, which I took last April, shows both the early "first green" and the gold remnants of fall, so suited to this poem by Robert Frost.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold. / Her early leaf's a flower; / But only so an hour. / Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing gold can stay.

This reading is from A Poem for Every Autumn Day: A Light In Dark Times, with Helena Bonham Carter, Tobias Menzies, and Jameal Westman, joined by Allie Isiri. Directed by Paul Weiland this anthology was for the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

October Theme Day: Transportation

 

Recently, I was in the Fountain Square neighborhood of  southeast Indy to participate in a "paint-out." It had been many years since I had painted "en plein air" and it showed. All summer, it's been so hot that the weather bureau issued frequent air quality warnings advising people to avoid activity. Obviously, I took those warnings very personally. When I went to scout the area I wanted to paint I was looking for a place where I could sit quietly out of any direct sun. That spot turned out to be in an alley behind a row of businesses. What was otherwise pretty dingy looking had been brightened by graffiti, baskets of red flowers, and a striped beach umbrella. But the best part of the scene was the lavender bicycle with white-rimmed tires.

On the first day of every month, members of the City Daily Photo blog site post an image relating to an assigned theme. To see how other members have interpreted the theme, just click on the CDP badge to the right of this post, or on the link above.

An orchid got on the bus ...

 

A couple weeks ago, I was on my way downtown, when a young woman got on the bus, carrying a take-out meal in one hand and a potted orchid in the other. She told me she'd rescued it from the trash at her workplace; the owners use live plants to decorate the office and had thrown this one out to be replaced by new flowers. The woman had learned from her mom how to nurture and grow orchids so was taking this pretty creature home to care for. As in most workplaces, the orchid has been seen as a place-marker to be tossed aside when its usefulness had, in the eyes of its owner, become faded. It was pulled from the trash by someone who will tend and care for it as the beautiful bit of nature it is. 

Garden, the theme to Greet August

 

I took these pictures of a magnolia tree last April when the sun had not yet started its efforts to burn me up. I was thinking about that the other day and realized I've spent most of the past four summers hiding from the sun. I usually always wear a hat to protect my face and eyes from the sun's rays, but the actual heat is tiring. Consequently, I need to be out earlier in the morning, to walk and to take pictures. Even snakes are smart enough to realize that; you'd think I'd have figured it out years ago.

Composition in Gray and Green with Landing Light + A Rabbit Hole Story

 

There are two people in my little online world, Petrea and Dive, who periodically send me down rabbit holes. I'd sent Petrea a link the other night to a video that I thought illustrated the risk artists, writers, and performers face when posting any of their work online, that it will be stolen by just about anyone anywhere for their own use. I then proceeded to watch that video - again, in which a woman who is a fashion historian and seamstress, shows the differences in the quality of her work compared to the crappy knock-off she'd found for sale online. It's a wonderful video, full of quiet, snarky anger. 

I then went on to another of her videos demonstrating the creation of her version of Mr. Darcy's shirt. From there I went to the Etsy site where one can buy the pattern to make their own version of that wonderful, romantic garment. That shop offers a lot of period corsetry for sale, most of which seems to be made to order and is not inexpensive. While there, I found a corset from the 1810s, reminding me that I really wanted to know more about that period so that I could write more knowledgeably about a damn boat ride some people took down the Mississippi River in 1811. I made a note to myself that I needed to find out how builders of steamboats determined the most efficient number of buckets (paddles) to install on the wheels of their steamboats, then watched another of Bernadette's videos, one in which she evaluates the accuracy of the period costuming in various movies.

The movies discussed in the video range from the Vikings to the 1800s, with some time-traveling thrown in. Here she admits her lack of knowledge of certain periods and cultures and brought in several other people to discuss the historical accuracy of costuming in African, Indian, and Korean films. It was here that I was, again, reminded of just how large and rich the world is beyond my little parochial window. It amazes me to think about all the different sorts of people and cultures there are, of how beautiful it all is. There is so much out there to know and that I'll never be able to know enough is sometimes frustrating. But like Bernadette, I can be smart enough to call upon the knowledge of other people, such as the guy who knows a lot about the costumes in Korean movies, when I get out of my depth. Most days, that's just about to my ankles.

Climate: A Day Late, but It's My July Theme

 

I intended to post this picture last night, but I got home at nearly 11 p.m. and fell asleep shortly after. 

The picture was taken at the bus stop where I was waiting for any one of two scheduled buses. During that time a strong thunderstorm blew through, bringing straight-line winds that I was afraid might be a tornado. Until the winds, the shelter kept me dry. I raised my little umbrella as a shield against the rain, then took out my camera to record the actual raindrops reflected in the fabric of my umbrella. The rain was heavy enough that drivers chose to keep their cars on the inside lane, on the crown of the road to avoid the pooled water at the intersection.

No buses came. My cell phone is broken and the new one had yet to arrive, so I could neither check the transit apps nor call for help. At one point, lightning cracked above me - and you can bet I was not sitting on the metal seat!

Eventually, I noticed a bus coming towards the stop, but its signage read OUT OF SERVICE. The driver stopped, asked where I was going, then motioned for me to get on the bus, where I joined several other people, all of whom had been left stranded because the transit system does not have enough drivers to cover all the scheduled routes. The woman who was driving had been asked by her supervisor to drive the route for the bus to my neighborhood, as well as an additional branch of that route to another area. She made sure the other people, none of whom spoke English, got safely to their stop, then backtracked to my neighborhood. I arrived at my apartment's warmth at about 11 p.m., took off my sodden clothes, and sank into my bed.

A month ago, I made a little odyssey that involved shopping on one side of town, then going to see a movie at a theater on the other. Because of detours and traffic delays, trips that generally took two hours instead took three to four hours. While waiting for the bus home at the transit center, a security guard asked me whether I felt okay. In contrast to last night, the weather that day had been glaringly hot, in the nineties, and as I told him, I was "hot, tired, and flat pissed off." He told me about the driver shortage and the company's difficulty in finding, and retaining, qualified drivers. 

This brings to mind another sort of climate, that of one's working environment. I've heard this story repeatedly as well as having experienced it myself -- it's not that the people don't want to work, it's that they no longer want to spend their careers in a toxic atmosphere. When a company that pays well and is a union shop can't keep its workers, I'm willing to bet the management is the problem.

As previously mentioned, this photo is meant as the July theme day post for City Daily Photo. To see how other photographers around the world have interpreted the theme, click on the link or the badge to the right of this post.

So Bright They Looked Artificial

 

When I first saw these plants, I thought they were cheap, synthetic knock-offs. They brighten the area like spotlights. Fringes of delicate ivy dribble daintily from the edges of the pots, looking like lacy trimmings on sleeves.

Somebody really takes the time to consider the overall effect of these planters; It's been a while since I've seen anything as brazenly cheerful.

As Bright as the Summer, er, Sun

 On my way to the IUPUI Natatorium in Indianapolis, I walk past a series of large concrete planters, each dressed for the season in these bright colorful plants. I'd like to say they're as bright as a summer day, but the truth is, they're brighter; wildfires in Canada have produced enough smoke to dim the sun's glare for residents of states from the Midwest to New York. I can smell the burned wood. I chose to wear a face mask this afternoon, and I was not alone. A graphic on a TV news segment the last night showed Indianapolis's air quality to be the second worst in the world -- after Dubai! The photo below was taken at about 8:45 p.m.

Just So Pretty

 This was taken on a late summer morning when the water droplets still sparkled on the just-watered plants.

When Monkeys Fly ...

 

Apparently, they did. These decorate a home near the Indiana Landmarks Center in Indianapolis. Goth much, or just The Wizard of Oz?

Dunno What They Are ...

 

... but they're very beautiful. I see other varieties of this plant in big pots in downtown Indianapolis, but those are green and the leaves are broader. Newfields has wonderful things planted all over the museum grounds. I think this was part of an installation near the main entrance, made up of plants found in Monet's gardens at his home in Giverny, France. There were so many; some, like these, were taller than me, others more delicate and slender. These guys alone could easily make a nice series of drawings and paintings.

Daffodils are Spring

 

Nuthin' special to see here - just some daffodils enjoying a few rays of the new spring morning sun.

Forgotten

 This image is from a series of pictures I took last summer at Newfields. Unfortunately, I've lost the notes I made so I'm not able to tell you the name of the artist who was the subject of this installation, but I think it was Stephen Sprouse, a fashion designer who worked with Andy Warhol.

Tapestry

 I love color. It's my "thing", the driver of my urge to draw, paint, or take a picture. This image was taken last fall during my walk to a downtown grocery. I noticed the way the sunlight was filtered through the leaves of a nearby tree. The shapes of the leaves created a nice interplay of positive and negative space, and my heart just sang.

Magnolia

 

Magnolia. Just saying the flower's name makes me feel it was meant for sultry weather, not rain and cold just sneaking from under winter snow and ice. Yet here we are, still shivering in our warm coats and woolly hats while Mother Nature has sent the magnolias out in chiffon dresses.

From Winter Into Spring

 A couple weeks ago, I was walking from the Natatorium to the bus stop. I stopped to take a few pictures of the budding trees and was particularly taken by this tulip tree that, even as the spring green was emerging, still bore bits of its autumn color.