The Spotted Towhee

This spotted towhee was feeding along after most of the other birds had finished.  This single bird has been at the feeder on and off all winter.  

Day 2

Project:  A picture a day for a year

February 22, 2015

About a week ago I got a new camera. I've been taking a lot of pictures since. With inspiration and encouragement from Debra Beck, an old UW friend, I've decided to work on the project of taking and posting on this blog a picture a day for a year.

To be realistic, I know I may not be able to post every day, but rules for myself are that I must take a picture a day...either with my Nikon or iPhone, then post as often as possible.

Here's my first effort, poor as it may be in illustrating what I wanted to show, canyon winds.
It's kind of hard to tell much from this picture, but the wind is really blowing the branches of this pine around.  I need to learn how to show the motion I want to capture without ending up with one big blur.

The canyon winds occur when a front crosses the area from the east or northeast.  The front  moves across the high plains and bumps up against the Sandia Mountains.  Looking for an easy  route through the mountains, the winds find Sedillo Canyon and pour down it.  Today we have had gusts to over 63 mph with sustained winds about 40 mph.  This puts all our bushes and trees in a frenzy of motion.  That's what I wanted to capture.  I hope by the end of this year, I'll be able to.

Tuna for Dinner

     Bit by bit I'm learning about life in the high desert of New Mexico.  One of the things I've learned this fall is how much dogs and coyotes like tunas.  No, not the kind that comes in a can, though they do like that, but the kind that grows on prickly pear cactus.  

The purplish growths are the seed pods of the cactus, called by some, tuna.  

One day last week the dogs and I were out walking on our usual path in the open space.  I started noticing purple poop on the trail.  On closer examination I saw that it was filled with seeds.  This answered a question:  Does anything eat the tuna?  Evidently, coyotes do.  Down the path we went, then the dogs started stopping and rooting around near prickly pear plants, something they have learned the hard way to avoid.  Root, root, root.  Chomp, chomp. Evidently, dogs like the well ripened tuna too.

Dream a Little Dream

I've wondered why some people remember dreams and others don't.  Articles on dreams suggest that you write down what you dreamed immediately when you wake up. It's hard to imagine a life where anyone would do that.  Most of us who launch out of bed do so in response to some urgent calling whether it's a crying baby, an insistent pet or a full bladder.  No time to say, "Hang on while I write in my dream journal."  For the rest getting up is such a struggle that adding a journal writing stop would probably mean they would  deem it another reason to fall back to sleep. 

Like most aging people, I've acquired many aches and pains I didn't have when younger.  Aches and pains which keep me awake or wake me during the night.  These nighttime twinges have taken the place of the nocturnal ruminations of my working and parenting lives when I worried about situations at work or what might happen to my children. There have always been things that bubble to the surface demanding attention when everything else shut down for the night. 

The result of these and other interruptions was that I didn't sleep very soundly.  I didn't spend much time in the land of REM sleep.  I know I had dreams, sometimes bits and pieces stayed with me, but not the way some other people seem to remember their dreams, vividly and in detail.

That changed a couple of months ago when my trochanter brusitis got so bad that I would spend most nights searching for a comfortable position which would allow me to fall asleep.

After a couple of weeks of this, I starting taking a couple of Aleve before I went to bed.

Then I began to sleep, and I began to dream.  My dreams were vivid, odd, and wonder of wonders, I could remember what seemed like big chunks of them.  

In the way of dreams there were strange happenings and juxtapositions with the wrong things and people in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But, I remembered them.  I could parse them.

Now I wonder if this change is due to better sleep, or the effects of yet another drug in my system.

One of Life's Unanswerable Questions

Why do people leave bumper stickers supporting candidates from past elections on their cars?  Win or lose, you'd think they would get them off at the first opportunity.  If your candidate won, I'd think that when they screwed up, and they will screw up, you wouldn't want everyone to know that you supported the jerk.  On the other hand, if your candidate lost, even though there is some satisfaction in being able to say, "I didn't vote for the jerk who got elected," everyone knows that candidate you did vote for would have eventually screwed up if elected.

Veggie Burgers

I decided that women's basketball is like veggie burgers.  If you order a veggie burger and expect it to take just like a hamburger, you are bound to be disappointed.  But, if you appreciate it for what it is a very different and perhaps more wholesome burger, then you may really enjoy it.  Watching a women's game of basketball isn't the same as watching a men's game.  And we shouldn't expect it to be.

Inspiration Point

Somewhere, I read that New Mexico is like one big artists' colony.  There are a great many artists of all stripes and abilities here.   Classes, workshops and other instruction are readily available.  As well as opportunities to exhibit your works.  A vibrant market for art supports those who have enough skill, and they are many.  Last week, I attended one example of the many opportunities to experience art. I went to the New Mexico Art Photography Exhibit at the state fairgrounds.

I was happy that only a few people were at the exhibit hall when I went it. Few people meant that I could study the pictures in peace.   I was greeted at the door by a friendly fellow who told me all about the exhibit and gave me a card to fill out and a brochure with the exhibitors names.  I was to select my favorite photo for the people's choice award.   Later,  I found out that this man was one of the most famous of the local photographers and an able teacher of photography. Here he was greeting people and handing out exhibit information.

I walked into the main room which was, of course, belted with a rows of photographs of all sizes.  As I looked at each picture, it became apparent that all the photographers were enormously skilled.  Some of the photos in this room had purple "Best of Category"  ribbons attached.  I'm not sure what the categories were for the ribbons didn't say, nor did the cards with the photographer's name on them.

Making my way through the six rooms of photos, I wondered, over and over, how they choose the best?  Certainly, there were some that I liked a better than others, but I don't know if that was because they appealed to some personal aesthetic or if they were of a better quality.

When I went into one of the rooms,  the fellow who had greeted me was giving a critic of a landscape to a woman who was obviously the photographer.  She drank in every word as I listened to their exchange. The points he was making were infinitesimal tweaks of her work.  But then, that's the difference between good and great.

I made two circuits of the trying to select the one photo that I liked best.  I got it narrowed down to  about ten or so, but came no closer to selecting a favorite. I put the blank ballot on the table and picked up a membership form for the local photographers club.  I had gone for inspiration.  I came away, not daunted, but certainly with a greater sense of how very much I have to learn.