Blue Heron Returns

Only one day after my post accepting the angelic egret at the retention pond and rejecting the blue heron in my backyard pond, there he was, but on neutral territory. So I have decided I can accept him there; any fish he finds would be 'fair game.'

I found him standing in the reeds, looking west. My pond is due east of the retention. Of course, when he took off, he headed east for about 50 yards, and I wondered if I should get back into the car or leave it there and run home to chase him before he tried to catch his dinner. Then he turned north and powered his way out of sight. Impressive flight power for a large bird.

So any neutral ground is OK, blue. Just stay out of my yard.

Violators Should be Prosecuted

Just beyond the retention pond at the end of our block is a walkway that dead-ends in a corner of a forest. The forest is not large, certainly not a forest preserve or anything, just a small stand of trees with some wildlife that in other times of the economy might have become another strip mall.

A recent walk there yielded one photograph and one poem that need no further introduction:

VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

No Dumping Violators Will Be Prosecuted reads the discarded sign
Bent corner, still bolted to its green steel post but uprooted
And dumped in a corner of the forest with a score or more of
Beer bottles, broken sticks, cups and fast food boxes;
Highly unlikely that anyone will ever be prosecuted.

Blue Heron

A recent post showed a current photo of an angelic snowy egret about to light in a local retention pond. The description talked about a couple of years ago when our own koi pond was stalked by a blue heron and as I read over it, I realized it sounded very much as if I thought the heron had a distinctively sneaky personality.

If it sounded that way, I am pleased that I captured the feeling I had at the time. This critter stood on a berm overlooking the koi and had a look that suggested attendance at a rich buffet, filled with fresh food. Here we see the beady eye checking out the seafood.

Glad I was able to chase him often enough to protect our current school of nine koi. As long as the egret stays down on the corner, he is on my good list. This fellow is always on my bad list.

Context Means Lots

Context. As a writer and as a former English teacher I understand the power of context. Whatever it is we are considering, the elements that surround it and affect it mean everything. For example, two years ago a great blue heron found its way onto the berm around my pond and stood there, eyeing the koi below. I chased him and thought I had scared him. I had not.

He returned and gored a four-pond koi. The fish was apparently too large for the heron to eat, and the bird got no meal from the deal, but the koi wound up in my pond skimmer and died soon after. I had to string fishing line all around and across the pond to prevent the heron from returning to finish his meal. A great blue around or in my pond -- in that context -- is something I do not wish to see again.

Yesterday as I took a walk down my block and got to the retention pond only about two hundred yards away, a snowy egret was standing in that pond eyeing the surface, apparently looking for an unsuspecting fish. When I got close enough for a photo, he spread those impressive wings and flew across the pond. That mere two hundred yards -- that differing context -- made all the difference. No fishing line, no chasing, just some photography. My favorite shows the massive wingspan just as he was about to fold the wings and step back into the water. Wonder if he found a meal.

He is welcome down there as far as I am concerned -- as long as he stays down there!

Globes & Puppets

The last post visited Kindergarten and remarked how attractive and varied and interesting the room was to challenge the minds of the learners. Among the images that caught my eye were a rack of globes and a stand of puppets, all plush and ready to act out just about any story.

It was a place any one of us would have enjoyed as our Kindergarten room.

Grandparents' Day

Kindergarten does not look the same as it did over 50 years ago when I attended it, nor the same as it did over 30 years ago when our children attended. The room is interesting and colorful, with places to sit and read, with interesting things to play with and listen to and read, and with charts and pictures all over the room.

They even have a collection of puppets, which appear to be ready to act out any story, and my granddaughter Gianna, who was pleased to have all four grandparents in attendance, showed us her favorite puppet, several of her friends, and her favorite books and games. It was a wonderful morning for all, especially for the grandparents.

Happy Shakespeare Day!

A wonderful holiday for former or current English teachers and students, drama lovers, language experts, and pretty much everyone else.

Today in honor of Shakespeare Day, the reputed date of not only his birth in 1564 but also his death in 1616, I am taking out some tickets and looking at them. The tickets are for ROMEO & JULIET at the Globe, bankside in London, on Sunday July 5. A couple of days later I will be visiting Stratford. Rest assured the blog will have some of the results upon my return!

More Feathered Friends

We have several visiting songbirds of all sorts, many of which pop up in the branches of a Burning Bush right outside our dining room window. This affords me an opportunity to use the house as a gigantic "blind" as I shoot the birds from quite close quarters. Tiny as they are, they are skittish and even if I am completely invisible to them, they never perch for very long. Even the grey-colored birds are beautiful and intricate in their feather display.

Ducks also stop by every spring, often swimming in our koi pond. The first time I saw that from my patio door I had a strange feeling of recognition. Then I remembered that when Tony Soprano started on his journey through analysis and activity, his ducks were in a swimming pool. Mine were in a koi pond. No analysis needed.

Some summery looks at the garden in the next post.

Friends in the Yard

Once the weather breaks, it gets easy to forget about blogging. Almost a week since the last post, I decided to take a day or two to look at some other garden scenes, since we looked at the pond, the waterfall, and the koi last post.

We have been quite fortunate in the past few years to host several cardinals, both male and female and often in multiples flying, drinking, walking in the grass. One of my favorite locations to see the amazing reds is in our red twig dogwoods in the leafless months. The bright color jumps out to brighten a winter morning or one in early spring.

While we have been told that leaving bread out for the birds might not be a good idea for the health of the birds, we really don't worry too much about how much of the bread actually gets to birds. This squirrel ate half of the slice where he found it and carried to remainder off to save for later.

More shots of our landscape and friends in the next post.

Pond Opening

One of the truest signs of spring in Bloomingdale is the day when the crew comes out to open the pond, bathe the koi, mulch the yard, and make everything look and smell great. That date came last week, and the fish and the yard smile daily. As a matter of fact, I only took one day off from blogging for Easter; the other two were for the yard. It might be that the posts will not be as regular now that I can be out and working -- or relaxing and reading -- in the garden.

Anyone interested in pond work should probably contact Gem Ponds in Roselle, look at their web site and consider the upgrade they would provide to any sort of backyard getaway. They put ours in nine years ago, they do fall and spring maintenance and they help in case of any problems that might occur. Here is a link: http://gemponds.com/ to the site.

Thanks for the help, George!

First Magazine Cover

A couple of days ago I mentioned a magazine cover I shot long ago. I thought I would dig into my archives and run the cover, from the Illinois Parks & Recreation Association. It was thirty years ago, and I was a serious amateur with a Miranda SLR, two prime lenses and a light meter to govern my exposure as the camera was completely manual. No automatic shutter, aperture, focus, or anything. A great way to learn about photography, by the way.

The previous summer a young staff member had been working with a youth program developing what he called a Ropes Course. Strung high in tall oak trees, with the kids well-strapped in against falling, the course was a challenge and a ton of fun for the day campers. Asked to grab some photos, I answered as I always do: I grabbed Miranda and headed out to the course. Several shots were relatively successful, but this was my favorite. Apparently the favorite of the editors of IPRA Magazine as well. Early on I had noticed that leading lines will draw any eye into the image and make the viewer feel a part of the action.

For a short period of time, I had misplaced my copy of the cover and wanted to have it in my portfolio. With the bright idea of looking on the IPRA web site, I found an archive of issues with most of the 70s and 80s included. Unfortunately, this was at that time one of the few issues that was not pictured. Fortunately, I found my original and now have it digitized.

Have a Happy Easter. I will take a couple of days off and select a new topic.

Arizona Spring Adventure Ends

Night fell, the last game I saw ended early due to terrifically high desert winds, I made my way back to the hotel. It was time to head for Illinois and real life, regular season.

Long ago the concept of the vacation -- leaving a place to go to another place -- was designed to give us all that rest and recharging we need to come back to our normal schedule with vigor and interest. I love to travel, look forward daily to leaving, and I love to come home. Just as much.

I just cannot bring myself to tell the story of the full moon seen here. Just can't. Call it the magic of Arizona and leave it at that.

One final Arizona poem:

LEAVING TEMPE

One sees someone who walks at four in the morning in Tempe ,
Noticing she needs a flashlight to help guide her on the sidewalk and
Her hooded sweatshirt covering her head against the desert chill.
One sees someone, then heads for the airport toward a Chicago snowstorm.

Flowers in the Sunshine

As promised, a look at the bright colors that grow under the bright sun of Arizona. While I did see some reds, the colors favor the yellows, the violets, and the whites. And there are plenty to see among the xeriscaped areas all around Phoenix.

Flowers, Desert, Dark

Whenever I travel, my eye notices all flowers but especially flowers I might well not see at home. Since my entire life I have been a Chicago-city-or-suburbs person, travel to Phoenix meant desert flowers. I had not anticipated the beauty of the flowers on the desert, even though I knew that the power of the sun would yield generous blooms.

These two caught my eye in the dark on my first day. Next post will show a couple of the flowers of the day.

Desert Flyover

During the Cub-Rockie game I had that happy moment when I was just prepared for the unexpected and was able to get a tracking eye in time to take the photograph. Does not always happen but it always feels great.

I had seen biplanes in flight -- after all, Chicago has a wonderful Air and Water Show every August -- but never a tight squadron, never quite so colorful, and never crossing that wonderful high sky of Arizona. That fraction of a second to make the exposure and I was the proud owner of this image. Never noticed if they dipped their wings or anything to say hello to us, but I was happy to say hello then and I say it again now. Thanks for the flyover.

Remember Color Slides?

For a period of many years, all my photography was in the form of color slides. When I shot my first magazine cover for Illinois Park and Recreation Association in the 1970s, that was the industry standard for color publications and I always appreciated the rich, highly-saturated color.

Of course, if you remember color slides, you remember needing a projector (featuring bright expensive bulbs that had a tendency to go out at the wrong time) and a screen or a plain white wall. Lots of effort to set up and see. In many homes, people went several years without a working projector or any way to look at those slides. My house included. For the past two years, I have been digitizing my old slides, a few hundred at a time, adding the images to my digital archives. When I digitize, I dispose of the old cardboard-mounted slide.

But as a memento to that time, I often make up a digital photo in the form of a color slide. They make nice title slides when viewing the images as a slide show, and for me they are a nod to the past that I really enjoy. Here are the title slides for three days in Arizona: a vanity license plate noted shortly after arrival, a major league pitcher firing a fastball, and the Ernie Banks memento on the walkway outside HoHoKam Park in Mesa. Enjoy the slide show!

TRAVELING MAGAZINE Arizona Edition

The latest edition of the world's thinnest magazine -- my personal cover-only TRAVELING Magazine -- hits the newsstands (well, hits the blog) today. It is the souvenir of my spring training trip, of course, and includes a few elements already seen in the blog.

What I find most interesting about the Magazine Cover concept is how much it helps my understanding of my photo collection, believe it or not. Trying to work as an editor in capturing the multi-part essences of the event, things come into clearer focus. While I loved Big League Field of Dreams, for instance, the local softball/baseball fields were not the driving force behind the trip and no photo made the cover. I scheduled the trip with the Fergie & Friends game in mind, so the ticket-like ad for the game made the lower-right corner.

But the ad that mentions the celebrity game actually came from the HoHoKam Park scoreboard during a Cub game the day before. That game, depicted across the bottom as the base layer, becomes more important as I think back. I am excited today, Opening Day, for the Chicago Cubs 2009, and a lot of that comes from seeing the team in the warm sunshine of Arizona.

My feature layer, the uniform of Mr. FINALLY! with the number 09, was the center of an earlier post and was snapped during the celebrity game. But again, that game appears on the cover only in the two cuts that refer back to the current year of the ballclub. The date on the magazine is March 2009 and it looks to the current season, not long-ago good times. And all this crystallized in the text blurb "Hope Springs Eternal."

More to the point, I went back looking for one more detail, one more graphic element that would complete the work. And I realize that on my first day, a quick "grab shot" that made me smile for a second before I forgot it, is one of my favorite photos of the trip. So often that little detail shot catches something that works in an event, and the Arizona license plate IT'S ALL GOOD really works for me. Acting as the magazine editor each time has helped me focus my memories in a way that makes the exercise completely worthwhile. And I wound up with an image I really like. Hope you enjoy the magazine!

The next post will show the result of my other look-back, clarify-the-memories project. Coming soon.

The Prospect in the Whirlwind

Some earlier posts have been strange experiments when a photo, often a panoramic, is distorted by what is called Polar Coordinates. Looking at the more logical picture here, Cub prospect Josh Vitters is tossing a ball underhanded from his third base position. The photo has a top, a bottom, and left & right sides. Imagine that the photo is printed on an easily manipulated balloon; the right edge is pulled into the circle and meets the left edge, upside down, from the middle to the top. The top edge has disappeared altogether into that single center point. The bottom edge has been curved and distorted into three sides of the second view.

Polar Coordinate experiments often produce interesting images (or uninteresting ones which should be rejected). Other times the experiment might do more. Considering the pressure on a young prospect, considering all the things that might indeed go wrong, considering injuries or lack of learning in the future, considering competition and bad luck: isn't every minor leaguer stretched out and wrapped into a whirlwind on his road to the majors? The more I look at this image, the better I like its poetic impression. I think it is a keeper.

A poem about how the whirlwind is manifested in Fitch Park through sight and sound:

CRUNCH OF CLEATS

Crunch of cleats, metal biting into concrete, is a traditional sound of
Baseball, one I recall as spectator, as umpire, as player, as coach.
Minor league spring training camp includes a hundred forty or more
Players, learning and working and trying to become the two stars
Who will dominate the baseball news in five to seven years.
As they move quickly from one drill location to another, they scrape
Out a furrow, digging through the smooth cement finish to the
Gravel underlayment, one after another, every spring, concentrating
On beating the path all the way to the major leagues.

Earlier posts also showed my personal magazine -- the one with just a cover, no other pages. The next issue is scheduled to appear in the next post.

Sunset on the Desert

On my itinerary for the Spring Training Trip to Mesa, I had included an effort to shoot some sunsets in the desert area. Since two of the three evenings would be devoted to baseball games, I set out for some pictures before dinner, with what I thought was plenty of time to locate an angle and a vista to feature in the sunset pictures.

While I am quite pleased with several of the images I collected, it was a wild but short chase. For one thing, the maps had indicated to me the location of various mountains right in the area, ones that had streets and development built right up to the edges. After I left the motel, I headed west to get out of Tempe and found myself behind one of the mountains. Driving a bit quickly to clear the obstacle I found that in my non-scientific opinion, light falls quite quickly on the desert. Perhaps it is the city boy in me seeing a difference, and perhaps the trip being within a week of the equinox had a effect, but it was a palpable difference to me.

Difference enough to generate this poem:

NIGHT FALLS QUICKLY

Night falls quickly on the desert with a perceptible though silent thud,
No lingering sunset, no streaks of tardily-departing light;
Almost as if someone had flipped a light switch and set it to
Off.

Giant Cacti With Wound or Bird

I was really struck with many of the giant cacti that I saw with gaping wounds, deep sores that seem to show the deepest fibers of the plant. To see a 15' tall plant with this gaping hole still looking alive and strong shows the tough and tenacious nature of the plant. Some of the scarred cacti are some of my favorite cactus photos.

The other image was a pleasant surprise for me. A larger plant, perhaps 20' tall, stood strong in front of a nice home in a Mesa subdivision. When I looked at the photo later, I thought I saw a tiny bird atop the cactus. A little magnification magic and I found there was indeed a bird keeping watch over the house.

Next post will cover the quick sunset on the desert.

Cacti

One of the anticipated elements of any trip for me is the opportunity to shoot landscape, flowers, buildings and so forth that differ from what I might find at home. Arizona spring training is no different: they call it the Cactus League for a reason.

Cactus of all sizes and shapes can be seen nearly everywhere. And the two photos attached show not only the difference in the cacti themselves but in the surrounding landscape. One cactus, a part of a green, manicured lawn, is found in a rare environment -- the grassy background. Stones, gravel and rocks are much more likely to be seen in the normal xeriscape yard.

A few more cacti in the next post with some interesting detail.

Mesa Historical Museum

With my All Baseball All-the-Time Spring Training trip on its last day, I had a stop scheduled at the Mesa Historical Museum. Any museum that allows photography is likely to be worth a visit, but one that has an exhibit devoted to spring training baseball -- the so-called Cactus League -- had to be on my itinerary. It was well worth the visit, which was sandwiched between minor league practice and a Subway lunch and before the minor league games.

The baseball exhibit was not large but informative and had several photographs of Ernie Banks along with other stars. A nice collection showed several stages of turning a slab of hardwood into a baseball bat and they selected Banks for that display as well, a nice touch for me. The other rooms showed various items of interest to Mesa history, and wrapped around the outside of the museum is a collection of various farm implements that helped develop a city in the midst of a desert. Interesting and eye-catching.

Only a week ago I was headed for the museum and now I have processed my pictures and published my poems. A real whirlwind of a spring vacation. Some poems from Mesa:

SURPRISE ARIZONA

One of the suburbs of Phoenix on the Cactus League map is Surprise,
But I found my surprise in Mesa rather than in Surprise.
The air was hot even though just about eighty, no surprise;
The lack of humidity meant you would not sweat, no surprise;
Night falls quickly and turns quite cool, also no surprise.
I pulled out of the stadium lot today, drove along the Mesa Cemetery,
And noticed that dozens if not hundreds of gravesites are flooded,
Hidden under several inches of standing water. Surprise!

ALL BASEBALL

A lone poet on a baseball vacation, just three days but filled with action,
All baseball, all the time, no exception, be it three big league games,
Be it two minor league practices or two minor league games,
Be it an old-timers game with pictures and autographs,
Be it a visit to a softball field dressed as Yankee Stadium,
Or be it a trip through a local museum on Cactus League Baseball.
All baseball, all the time, extends even to lunch away from the park
Spent reading Shoeless Joe; extends even to the writing of this poem.

FARM IMPLEMENTS

Visiting Mesa for Chicago Cub Spring Training, I included the Museum
Which features a school-room sized exhibit of baseball pictures,
Enjoying the fact that Ernie Banks and the Cubs are features of the show.
After a turn through the rooms one should look at the outside collection,
Threshers and tractors and seeders and cultivators and sowers
All corroding in silence under the relentless Arizona sun.
Once I got home I looked at the photos and wondered
How tough were the settlers who took on the desert,
Defeating the sand and the sun and the drought to carve out a home,
And as I thought about the tools in the museum yard, I thought
Congratulations and Rust in Peace.

Welcome Milton Bradley

Like many Cub fans, I spent the winter on the fence. Milton Bradley had great numbers but also had blowups and injuries. Could he be the addition that would make us winners, or the subtraction that continued our desperation to have a winner? The jury might well still be out, but my impression after two games in Arizona is clear: the man is here to be a winner.

In the two games he had five hits, two of them home runs. But anyone can have two good games. He beat out an infield hit, hustled hard on a force play, made a nice catch in right field. He showed me a winner and a potential offensive force.

Before a night game at Scottsdale Stadium, the Giants' ballpark, only one Cub went to the rail and signed autographs. One. And Milton Bradley stayed there for more than fifteen minutes, making many young fans happy. And giving me a chance to get a nice photo of the signing. A tip of the hat to Milton Bradley, and welcome to Chicago.