We have never bought a dog. Unless you count one female puppy that we rescued from the humane society the day before she was to be put do…
We have never bought a dog. Unless you count one female puppy that we rescued from the humane society the day before she was to be put down. That turned out to be our lovely Dorothy. We got her to be a companion to Toto. Well, Toto just had to have a Dorothy. The names are a nod to my small town Kansas heritage. But I digress! Dogs just seem to find us. Toto is the dog love of my life. He was our first and most magical dog. We had been in our new house about 6 months and were looking for our first dog, when my husband heard a noise in the backyard at 5 am one morning. It was Toto. He had been dumped during the night. He was a matted dirty mess. It was love at first site on my part. We looked a little for his owners but after 2 days we stopped. Got him groomed and taken to our vet for shots, etc. What emerged was one of the cutest dogs to ever live. The closest we can get to his heritage is that he’s a poodle/Papillion cross. For a time, I hid him afraid that someone would come looking for him. That was 18 years ago. We still have him! Next we got Dorothy. She was a honey with the humans in the family, but a tyrant of a pack leader. If I cried, I could count on feeling a wet nose on my hand. It was Dorothy giving me comfort. Toto had back trouble. Louis, our tom cat, had asthma. Dorothy got a virus and died when she was seven. Toto’s back trouble and Louis’ asthma went away with her death. Our grief at Dorothy’s death continues to this day. I keep my photo “Nose Grass” up on my page as a tribute to Dorothy and her beauty. Sid VanHalen was our second magical dog. He showed up the night before my mother in law died. Sid, a Basset hound, was 22 pounds under weight and had over 70 ticks. Sid helped us all get through our grief over the loss of a family member. He’s beautiful, stupid, and untrainable, but my husband loves him beyond belief. He’s my current muse. Ringo, a blue heeler mix, showed up 2 weeks before our daughter left for college. He’s the new pack leader and much more popular with the pack than Dorothy was. Ringo can jump. He once jumped the fence in our back yard and ate one layer of a cake that I had cooling on out front patio! Last winter, we moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We started across the country in a blizzard in a Subaru Forrester with 3 dogs and 3 cats. Everyone made the trip just fine. Toto spent the 3 day drive asleep at my feet on the car floor. Nights, we found pet friendly motels. This is not a trip that I would recommend to anyone, but we’re glad managed to keep the family intact.
Hey Everyone! / Flew back from New Mexico yesterday. It was a bitter sweet trip. We saw tons of friends that we have missed terribly since…
Hey Everyone! / Flew back from New Mexico yesterday. It was a bitter sweet trip. We saw tons of friends that we have missed terribly since the move to North Carolina. No where on earth is a beautiful as New Mexico during autumn. I took as many shots as I could work in around business and friends. I tried to show sides of New Mexico that the normal tourist rarely sees. Friday, I’m off again. This time to my hometown, Fredonia, Kansas. This weekend is Homecoming. I’ll be taking a ton of pictures. The real reason for the visit is to get my mother to her eye doctor in Wichita next week. Just checking in. Hope everyone is doing well. Pat
We’re back from the Thanksgiving round of visits to family members. We had a great time in Florida and New York. The main problem was pac…
We’re back from the Thanksgiving round of visits to family members. We had a great time in Florida and New York. The main problem was packing for both climates! Saturday we leave for Santa Fe, so I may be out of touch next week. Just wanted to let everyone know if we don’t have wifi at our friends house. We’re staying with friends from my husband’s job in Albuquerque and loading a Uhaul truck with stuff that we didn’t want the movers to touch when we moved last winter. We’ll be doing the I-40 drive home. It’s way less romantic than the old Route 66. Cleaning out the Santa Fe studio will be bittersweet as it was supposed to be our retirement home. But life changes and needs change, too. If anyone wants to buy a house in Santa Fe with a wonderful photography/art studio, ours will be on the market next spring. It has tons of storage and a fully working darkroom for anyone still into film. We bought it from the man who does the non-model shoots for the Peruvian Collection catalog.
After two days of straight-through driving, Monty and I stopped at Santa Rosa, New Mexico, just south and east of Santa Fe. We found a h…
After two days of straight-through driving, Monty and I stopped at Santa Rosa, New Mexico, just south and east of Santa Fe. We found a hotel right on the main drag through town, a little highway called Route 66. After a night’s rest we started out Monday morning on our drive westward on “The Mother Road”. Our first stop was just a couple of blocks down from our hotel at the Route 66 Auto Museum. What first attracted our attention was a bright yellow car up on a tall pole. We pulled in and immediately saw a vintage 1950 yellow taxi cab and an old pickup truck with a wooden truck bed. Bet you “youngsters” didn’t even realize that truck beds were once floored with wood planks! As we entered the museum, we stepped on the black and white checkered floors and immediately spotted Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean – no, Elvis is NOT alive. These were life-sized posters in the gift shop. We rested on a bench designed from the trunk and fenders of an aqua 1957 Chevy. Very cool! No need to wonder what happened to the rest of the car. We handed the $5 admission fee over the cashier’s desk, which just happened to be the front end of that same Chevy. Besides approximately 30 completely restored vintage automobiles, there was an impressive collection of vintage toys and signs and other memorabilia celebrating Route 66. Even if you are not a vintage car buff, you can’t help but be impressed by all the shiny chrome and fins. If you are ever near here, this is a stop you don’t want to miss! Further along the stretch of Route 66 in Santa Rosa there was evidence of long-closed businesses that suffered from the building of nearby Interstate 25. But more importantly there were many other businesses have stood the test of time and still remain open. It is obvious that Santa Rosa is working to preserving this section of historic Route 66. After leaving Santa Rosa, we picked up Route 66 again near Dillia and followed a 40-50 mile section to Santa Fe. For the most part, the two-lane road ran a close parallel to I-25 but sometimes curved away from the noise of the interstate. It was during these times, driving along in the rural areas of New Mexico that we experienced a taste of what the early Route 66 travelers must have enjoyed. I suppose it will be no surprise that I will soon be uploading some of the many, many photos taken on our road trip this week.
The workshop is finished! I spent last week at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops. It was an incredible experience. I’d recommend it for …
The workshop is finished! I spent last week at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops. It was an incredible experience. I’d recommend it for any amateur photographer who just wants to learn more and for any professional who wants to explore a new area of potential income. It’s an intense week of work. Many of the days are 12 hours long or longer. I plan to take more classes in the future, but before I do it again, I’ll spend more time training for the physical part of it. We hiked slot canyons, tried to stop for a picnic one afternoon and ended up on a Bollywood movie set that was on our picnic grounds, spent an afternoon at Jackalope pottery in Santa Fe, and Shidoni foundry and sculpture garden. Much of our class time was spent learning how to improve our images using Camera Raw. The link is below. This week I’ll be spending evenings catching up on Redbubble and posting a few images. http://www.santafeworkshops.com/
By Jill Carattini Master photographer Edward Steichen once remarked that the mission of / photography is to explain man to man and each…
By Jill Carattini Master photographer Edward Steichen once remarked that the mission of / photography is to explain man to man and each to himself—a mission he / found at once both complicated and naïve, but worth fumbling toward. / “Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper,” notes / Steichen. “The photographer begins with the finished product.” It is a / thought befitting of a scene from 2001, when the who’s who of the / country’s finest photographers volunteered their time for such a mission. / What they discovered is that when the “finished products” are the faces of / children in foster care systems across the country, photography offers the / chance of new life. Diane Granito is the founder of the Heart Gallery, a unique program that / uses photography to help find homes for older foster children, sibling / groups, and other children who are traditionally difficult to place with / families.(1) The program started in New Mexico in 2001 at the suggestion / of a local photographer. Space was then donated by a prominent gallery in / the city, where more than 1,000 people came opening night. The photos on / exhibit were the end result of the photographers’ attempts to coax out the / unique personalities in hundreds of children—a great contrast to the / typical photos attached to a child’s file. “They look like mug shots,” / said one of the photographers. “This is an opportunity to just portray / them as kids in their environments,” said another involved. “We’re / treating this as a living, breathing project.” Since its inception, the Santa Fe project has inspired 60 more Heart / Galleries in 45 states. In some places, the adoption rate after an / exhibit is more than double the nationwide rate of adoption from foster / care. Such photography earns a description worthy of its roots: the word / in Greek means “to write in light.” Those who work to find foster children adoptive families are used to / rubbing up against the public perception that most foster children have / serious emotional and behavioral problems. Sometimes, though not always, / it is an accurate perception. And a picture offered in a different light / does not change the child it portrays. But an image of a troubled child / at play offers the accurate light of hope. We all have many faces that could be portrayed to the world. If the / pictures that represented us to the world were pictures that showed our / worst sides, I wonder how different the circles of people around us would / be. There are definitely certain faces I would prefer not to have / captured in a photograph and placed in my file. While those close to me / have by now seen me in many kinds of light, it is frightening to imagine / my adoption being contingent on any one of them. Yet, our adoption as / God’s own was completed as we stood in the worst of all possible lights. / “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still / sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). As Christ died for the sins of / the world, he held dear even the pictures of us at our worst. While in prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with the many reflections / of his life. As a seminary instructor he was considered a saint and a / giant. In America they made him feel like an escapist. In prison they / made him feel like a criminal. There were days when he saw himself as all / three and all the stages in between. It was in such a convolution of / images that he asked: “Who am I? / This or the other? / Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? / Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, / And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling? / Or is something within me still like a beaten army, / Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved? / Who am I? They mock me, / these lonely questions of mine. / Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.”(2) Our adoption by God is our identity, the picture we hold as children until / the day when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, and / God will wipe every tear from our eyes. Neither death nor life, nor / anything else in all creation, can separate us from this love of God that / is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi / Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. (1) http://www.heartgalleryofamerica.org/About_Heart_Gallery/History.asp / (2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: / Touchstone), 348. —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-——- / Copyright© 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) / “A Slice of Infinity” is aimed at reaching into the culture with words of / challenge, words of truth, and words of hope. If you know of others who / would enjoy receiving “A Slice of Infinity” in their email box each day, / tell them they can sign up on our website at / http://www.rzim.org/slice/slice.php. If they do not have access to the / World Wide Web, please call 1-877-88SLICE (1-877-887-5423).
Well, the ex just dropped my 4 year old daughter off for her 2 nights here and she had gotten a haircut. So I get out my Olympus FE-310 …
Well, the ex just dropped my 4 year old daughter off for her 2 nights here and she had gotten a haircut. So I get out my Olympus FE-310 to take a picture. OH, NO! The LCD is broken! Cracked! All messed up! sigh I really love this little camera. Now I gotta find out how much it’s gonna cost to get it fixed, and just where I’m gonna come up with the money to repair it. Life just isn’t fair sometimes….
Hope this doesn’t come off as just another whine about having to move two years ago. Due to the ailing US economy and a great job opportu…
Hope this doesn’t come off as just another whine about having to move two years ago. Due to the ailing US economy and a great job opportunity for my husband, we’re splitting out time between Santa Fe, NM and Chapel Hill, NC. Mostly because we couldn’t sell the Santa Fe house. Both great towns, but Chapel Hill just isn’t home. When people ask me what I miss most about New Mexico, other than the food, I tell them the eccentric people. People from the East Coast of the US usually look shocked and make some remark about Chapel Hill being full of eccentrics. Usually, I say, “Not even close.” The first night back in NM, we usually hit Whole Foods for groceries and a noodle bowl. Whole Foods Santa Fe is a people watching trip. The latest look among New Mexico baby boomers seems to be gray hair dyed pastel. We saw a woman with blue and green stripes in her “do.” The topper was a “man” in cycling clothes with breasts, makeup, green hair in a ponytail and a mechanical parrot. If you smiled at him, he’d wind the parrot up for a concert. He ate his dinner then put on his cycling helmet, took his bird and groceries and rode off. Love it!
New post on my blog showing some photos taken with my Nikon FE slr. These are my first film photos. ...
New post on my blog showing some photos taken with my Nikon FE slr. These are my first film photos. cheers / jono
wow!!! awesome my Watercolor Painting “Santa Fe Waterfall.” / was selected to be featured in Color Me A Rainbow / White Challenge and Inv…
wow!!! awesome my Watercolor Painting “Santa Fe Waterfall.” / was selected to be featured in Color Me A Rainbow / White Challenge and Invited to Best of the White COMP! / so many wonderful insightful comments around my Art, soo much support and generousity…. / What a great community I AM GRATEFUL LUCKY & ALIVE!!! / luv-lite Nova Cy
It’s been five days since I started to get ill. My husband swears that I have the swine flu. As we live in a university community where i…
It’s been five days since I started to get ill. My husband swears that I have the swine flu. As we live in a university community where it’s prevalent, he could be correct. The up side of this misery is that I’m feeling well enough to get caught up on some computer work that I’ve been putting off. Here is the link to our house in Santa Fe. It’s on the market as of last week. We hate to sell, but it’s too much to take care of long distance. It’s also too expensive to maintain from 1500 miles away. It has a photography studio with a working darkroom. It was an addition to the original studio and was planned by a professional photographer. The original studio had a sound studio and a room that was used as a home wood shop. We’ll miss it, but my husband loves his work in North Carolina. http://www.santafeproperties.com/vp/ListingServlet?SITE=SANTAFE&ScreenID=LISTING_DETAIL_P&EXCEEDLIMIT=null&totalFound=0&cd_MLS=57846#
Cowgirl BBQ – Diner In Santa Fe, Albuquerque In April Series 2009” was featured in New Mexico Group 2009.12.17 ”!http://images-1….
Cowgirl BBQ – Diner In Santa Fe, Albuquerque In April Series 2009” was featured in New Mexico Group 2009.12.17 / Click Image You can tell a good place to eat / when folks spill out into the sidewalk / willing, waiting, enjoying the vibe. / Folks sitting in the open air, eating / imbibing, laughing, and socializing. / The waitresses wearing cowboy hats, / shorts, tank tops, and busy rushing / food and drinks to the tables, both / indoors and outdoors, under the string / of lights. The young male host finds / tables for any size group at the big / round tables. Another cowboy waiter / smiles and suggests the best beers / on tap, or even a wine list if you wish. / The smell of spicy foods and BBQ / grilling fills the air mixing with laughter. / The sun sets oranges and pinks in the / New Mexico sky making for a great / and most memorable evening. Thanks to the hosts of New Mexico Group for the honor of your feature! Jack in RI
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