Through The Window

SUNDAY POSTER

This week our poster is in the form of a Christmas Card. I wrote this poem and selected this picture to donate to the LivingWell Cancer Resource Center in Geneva. It will be posted on their Facebook site as well. It conveys some of the difficulty of fighting cancer . . . but also the strength that fuels so many cancer fighters and survivors.
Merry Christmas!

SUNDAY POEM

One of my poem posters for LivingWell Cancer Resource Center. While the photo is too summery to be right for the season, living our lives well is truly the essence of the season. We all live in GIFT TIME, don't we?

SUNDAY POEM

SUNDAY POEM

Only a puffy set of clouds could background this true story, a poem that developed from an appointment with my oncologist. Some poems are called "found poems," happy conjunctions of words that somehow become poetic. This description of a good day at the doctor's office was a joy to write; it had been of course a joy to view.

SUNDAY POEM

SUNDAY POEM

This is a recent poem from among my cancer-fight writings, backed by a photograph from Windsor Castle outside London.

SUNDAY POEM

Today we begin looking at another set of posters I have been working on. As I was generating the quotes and quips I have been featuring each Sunday, I also began developing some of my photographs into posters with poems I have written concerning the fight against cancer. One of my best, I think, was written late in 2007 in the aftermath of my second cancer surgery. It remained a poem in black and white until this year, when the poster project got underway.
In my effort to use photography to promote the work of Living Well Cancer Resource Center, I have donated several poem posters for use in their work with those fighting cancer. Proud to be able to try to boost the spirits of my fellow cancer fighters and survivors, I will be posting some of these here on Sundays as well.

Rainy Morning on the Desert

It was tempting to stay away from the ballpark on Friday, as I had to get the car back to the airport by noon to catch a flight. There was plenty of time to go to batting practice, but there was a rain falling. More than a drizzle, less than a shower, but a lot heavier than I prefer to use my camera in.
So I got moving, headed to the ballpark, and wound up with some good photos to end the trip. And I wound up with a poem as well.

MISTY DRIZZLE

Last morning in Mesa, changing plans because of a flight time change,
I step outside to walk to breakfast and see clouds, gray clouds, home clouds,
Not the wispy high-sky summertime clouds I expect above me in Arizona.
In the buffet line, I mention seeing more clouds today than ever out here,
Then plan a few photo stops while enjoying the cereal and banana.
When I walk back to the room, a misty drizzle falls, and I need no reminder
It is time to head home. Just as soon as I get to one more batting practice,
Ignoring the continuing rainfall, watch the sun come out, visit with more fans,
Collect a few dozen more photos, and grab a pair of major league foul balls.

Ready to Play . . . Centerfield

In a previous century I played quite a lot of centerfield, and I managed to collect these images in that location at Fergie & Friends. One is a father with his son, tossing a ball and running in the grass, looking a lot like Eric & I would have looked in the early '70s. The other was Rick Miller, for Red Sox and Angel, whom I had spoken to at length before the game, who was the subject of a story earlier in the day, and who is one of the subjects of a poem written later that night. I had a bit of fun turning the image into what appears to be the sort of picture I would have taken back in the '70s -- a color slide.
The Rick Miller story is a highlight of the trip for me. For details, just read the poem:

FUNGO STORY TOLD TWICE

Watching a minor league Cub coach hit fungo, a long slim bat in his left hand,
A ball tossed in the air by his right hand which then grabs the bat and hits a grounder
One and then another and another for the purpose of practice and instruction.
We talk about him, my new acquaintance Jack and I, about the lost art of fungo as
I tell him at length about Jimmie Reese, the greatest fungo-hitting coach of all time,
Recalling a time when I saw Reese, then 77, working Angel center fielder Rick Miller,
Hitting balls to the left and the right nearly off the wall unless Miller caught them.
Miller would win a Gold Glove that summer after that workout, skilled at both ends.
Recalling that Reese was able to pitch batting practice by fungo batting strikes.
Mentioning that Reese had been roommate to Babe Ruth’s suitcase in the Twenties.
Recalling that Reese worked for the Angels until death retired him at 92.

Later at a different ball park, I told much of the same story to Rick Miller, now 61,
Retired and playing as much golf as possible, pleased that others remember Reese.
The story was the same this time but with the difference that Miller helped tell it,
Asking me if I knew that Jimmie Reese had been able to fungo-pitch BP.
Thanks for the help and for listening, Rick, you now have a bigger role in the story.

Fishing

I was still on the ice at West Branch with these images captured when some words began crowding into my head, a poem began its inevitable writing. The pictures need no other comment than the poem:
















ICE FISHING
Stopping by the local forest preserve to collect winterscapes,
Stepping out onto the ice, carefully walking a good thirty feet,
I began snapping images of three parka-wearing fishermen
Gathered around a portable but sizable fishing shanty
Beyond the midpoint of Deep Quarry Lake this afternoon.
Changing the sun angle, I grabbed shots of the little camp
Including some twisty winding paths leading to the location.
Turning, I trudged back to where the shore will be in spring,
Wondering about men who would enjoy the frozen sport,
Trying to catch sluggish fish hiding two feet under an ice roof.
I thought about an old fisherman joke, one suggesting that a
Fisherman must be a jerk at one end of a line waiting for a
Jerk at the other end. Soon I began to wonder, too,
What jokes the fishermen surely must have about a man who
Walks out gingerly just thirty feet, snaps his photos, and hurries
Back to his car, not grabbing a pole and a beer, not sitting down.
No idea what the punchline is, but I am pretty confident it has
Something in there about a jerk, too.

Bisected Man

Just had to show you the "artifact" Picasso provided to the Art Institute. After all, it is the equivalent of reading a great writer's rough draft, so it is right not to display it under normal circumstances.

For me it was not just the interest of a favorite painting that might have been very different from the way I have always known it. More than that I can best say in a different format.

A POEM:

IN THE CLOSET 47 YEARS

To begin,

When Picasso painted his pink masterpiece
Mother and Child it was 1921, and the young
Family actually had the father included, squat-seated
Along the left margin, solid, bearded, curly,
Masculine, stolid; forming a cup-shape composition
Alongside the familiar Madonna-like mother and child.
However,

When Picasso completed his pink masterpiece
He had removed the man and restretched the canvas
Without him, with only traces of the bearded face
Visible on the new tacking margin.
The remainder was cut off for storage
By the artist himself in some symbolic closet:
Hair, beard, one leg, one thigh,
One buttock -- like half of a broasted chicken
Pulled off the spit and stacked in the corner.

Meanwhile,
She and the child were loved and admired for 47 years husbandless
Until Picasso located and donated the fragment to Chicago
During the tumultuous bloody year of 1968.
After nearly a half-century in the closet, but
Now on occasional display coupled with the
Ex-wife, the half-man is on separated display,
Still faceless and nearly-still-forgotten.

To conclude,

The feminine side of Picasso clearly must have
Moved the artist to lop off the masculine side of the masterpiece
So bluntly: No visible blood was shed during the amputation.

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.

Toddlin' Town for Theatre

Last month I saw a wonderful MACBETH; this week a rocky, excellent DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS. The phrase "Second City" is not heard as often about Chicago anymore, and of course Manhattan with its Broadway district is the most outstanding theatre area in the United States. But Chicago is certainly the runner-up as it hosts road companies, establishes touring success, and hosts outstanding resident companies. On the north side, the famed Steppenwolf Theatre still attracts large audiences, but the downtown jewels are the Goodman and the Chicago Shakespeare.

About a mile and three-quarters separates the two locations, one in the well-known loop and the other extending out into Lake Michigan. Each building is housed in historical buildings, Navy Pier being historic in its own right. The Goodman remodeled the former Harris and Selwyn Theatres and managed to reuse these wonderful stages after a period of time of disuse. In moving here less than twenty years ago, the Goodman left a location on the east side of the famed Art Institute of Chicago, opening up space for the new Modern Wing, opening in May.

While it was interesting enough moving from MACBETH to the ELMS over a period of four weeks, I recall a juxtaposition during the fall of 2006. Ben Carlson, currently the title character in Macbeth, was starring as HAMLET on the pier. Stacy Keach was heading the cast of KING LEAR at the Goodman. And I saw the pair in the same week. The result? A poem:

FIFTY-EIGHT HOURS BETWEEN SHAKESPEARES

Fifty-eight hours from Elsinore to Lear’s corrupt court:
Thursday matinee spent with the antic disposition of Hamlet,
Saturday night spent watching the madness and downfall of Lear.

Lear cut a cake to award the geography of Britain to flatterers,
Stabbing the knife into the heart of the cake and the heart of Cordelia.
The rashness of Lear at eighty recalls of course the rashness of Romeo
At fifteen, nearly justifying the introspection of Hamlet at 30.

Gertrude Thursday was a sexual woman, a match to Goneril and Regan Saturday;
Lusting without question and each loving only herself,
While the suicidal Ophelia showed doomed beauty
And the naked body of Cordelia was an artist’s study in death.

Nearly ten minutes Saturday devoted to dragging dozens of body bags onto the stage,
Five minutes then set aside to dump the bags into the pit of hell in modern warfare.
The power of Shakespeare in tragedy is to show us how the gods kill us
For their sport … while the rest, of course, is silence.

Vancouver Monday Morning

Arriving in Vancouver Harbor, we watched the sun glint off the skyline of a beautiful city early on a Monday morning. Debarkation is never an enjoyment; after all, vacation is over and this is a travel day. We got through the lines well enough, were loaded onto a bus, and taken out to the airport.

On the way through downtown, I mentioned that the streets were strangely empty at 9:00 AM. Only when we were in the Customs line at the airport did we discover that it was a major holiday in Vancouver, and no one was at work unless they worked at the airport. It was a pleasure to go through U.S. Customs in the Vancouver airport. That's right, the cooperation between countries is so great that we went through customs BEFORE boarding the aircraft. That meant that we flew in and deplaned one heck of a lot more quickly than we would have from any other foreign port.

This blog has brought the trip to life for me nearly every day for several weeks. Hoping that people have seen the photos and enjoyed the trip, I now look for another topic to organize photos for a period of time. When I get the final idea, the next post will follow. Meanwhile, one more Alaska poem:

HOMEWARD BOUND

It has often been said that we leave a bit of ourselves
Wherever we happen to visit, wherever we happen to learn
It has also been said that we take a bit of those places
Home with us, tucked deeply in our hearts.
Those of us who love to travel must grow big hearts
To handle all these inputs, and those headed for Alaska
Better prepare themselves for the extra weight they will bear.
I wonder how speakers of Inuktitut, the Aleut language, would say
Things like "Thanks for everything" and "See you again."

Flowers of Skagway

Never having traveled so far from my Chicago roots, it was interesting to me to see the effects of twenty hours per day of sunlight on gardens and flowers. I had visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, on two previous cruises and had remarked that the flowers there in August look as lush as the flowers in Chicago in June. But Alaska has much more sun power than Halifax, it seemed to me.


Touring a garden in Skagway, I was struck with the intensity and clarity of the colors of all the flowers. The greenery, as well, was powerful and beautiful. This particular flower was one of hundreds on display, with a touch of rain on the petals, on an otherwise gloomy morning. Featured among these gardens were kale and other vegetables that were impressive giants in the well-tended landscape.


We get nowhere near as much sun time in Chicago, of course, and I doubt I would like to take the extra sun that Alaska gets in summer. After all, if there is twenty hours of sun on a day in summer, there would likely be four hours of sun on a day in winter. Hard to imagine. Believe it or not, though, I would love to not only take another cruise tour to Alaska, I would love to fly up for a long weekend sometime. In the middle of winter. It would be an adventure!

A poem:

FORGET-ME-NOT

Visitors learn much in beautiful Alaska, noting at times that the
Forget-me-not is the state flower, but no explanation included.
Shouldn't the state flower of this state be some giant showy beauty
Technicolor and about the size of a dining platter
Rather than the classy subtle attraction of the forget-me-not.

Forget-me-not? Who could forget this wonder? Ever?

TRAVELING Magazine

As far as I know, there is no current magazine called TRAVELING. And so I have named my personal Photography Magazine TRAVELING, with issues dated July and August of 2008 as our trip fell into both months. Each issue, by design, has no other pages, just a cover. And I had such a fine time doing the two issues that I retrofitted one from Manhattan and dated it to July 2007.

Working in Photoshop, learning how to handle layers and cutouts and how to resize and rework: it is all so interesting and it continues to open my mind to further experiments. Here I started with the base layer photo of Mt. McKinley and superimposed Wado, Richie Beattie's lead dog. The UPC code was borrowed from a Google image site, but since it will never be scanned it should suffice.

A poem about the piercing eyes of Wado and perhaps about politicians and athletes:

EYES OF THE LEAD DOG

Adventure in Alaska is built on the base of the intrepid dog teams:
Pure power to pull food and supplies or competing racers through the Yukon,
Sleeping in makeshift places well below the zero mark,
Finding trails hidden under drifting snow, avoiding obstacles,
And always lead by one dog, the lead dog, with the piercing eyes.

The lead dog will show you the eye of leadership, not just in the color,
But in the apparent ability to see past the drifts, through the darkness of
Twenty-two hour night, around or over the obstacles, always sighting on
Goals of the team, finish lines, towns or villages, where we need to be.
Eyes of the lead dog may not actually see all that the team needs to know
But the team needs to have confidence that the eyes of the lead dog see victory.

Whether he does or not.

Calving of Marjorie

After our captain had announced preparations to leave the bay, we lingered on deck a while as the ship began to move. Nearly spinning on its center, the other side of the ship was a better place to watch from, so we headed to our own balconies. On the way, we stepped out onto a public balcony that ran across the aft width of the ship. No sooner did we get there than we heard the exciting sound.

It sounded as if Marjorie were clearing her throat to catch the attention of her audience. And then a fairly significant chunk of the glacier tore lose and fell into the bay. Calving is as exciting to watch as pretty much any sort of creation. One thing had existed, that thing changed, and the result was an independent being of its own. Small, fated to a meltdown in the coming days or weeks, but the center of attention for its time in the sun. We saw three such calvings in a short period of time, and then Coral Princess was moving away. We dressed for dinner and looked forward to our stop in Skagway.

Two Poems:

BIRTH OF A BERG

Marjorie Glacier, marquee star of the Glacier Bay ice show,

Bright reflecty white but highly tinted with blue

Rubbed over with as cinders in places

Dripping at times, quiet at others;

Like all stars she commands the stage

Demanding total concentration for the act

And now she clears her throat like a grade-school teacher,

Her thunderous "ahem" turning every eye to the stage

And Marjorie calves once again, filing the sea with icebergs.

STILL AS A GLACIER

Glaciers might fit in many analogies

Cold as a glacier for example might work

Still as a glacier, however, makes no sense

To anyone who watched on runoff or calve

Marjorie Glacier

Deep in Glacier Bay we stopped, still, for over two hours near Marjorie Glacier. Clearly the image of the frozen river works here. In one image we see the vista, the width of the glacier, and in the other a closeup peek at the colors and intricacies we stared at for such a wonderful period of time. As the ship rested, people interested and speaking to one another but quiet, almost respectful, we waited for the glacier to calve.

If a glacier is a frozen river, when a portion of it breaks off or separates, that is called calving. When a glacier calves, the resulting ice dropped into the water below is an iceberg. While the very word iceberg is intimidating in some ways, most icebergs are quite small and would not be harmless to any sizable vessel.

A poem:

MOUNTAIN OF MEMORIES

First visit to Alaska is sensory overload
Glacier Bay is so surrounding with images and sound
A mountain of memories comes home with you --
And a mountain make of rock, not ice,
Since rock will never melt.

After nearly two hours waiting, without success, for a calving, the captain announced that the ship would begin by turning to leave. We would have nearly another hour to hope for the sight of a calving. The result will be in the next post.

College Fjord

Most cruises depart earlier than Coral Princess, and most first mornings are at sea. Meaning if you look at the horizon from an upper deck, you can see a complete unbroken circle and nothing else.

Waking suddenly the first morning and knowing we were to be in College Fjord, not docking but enjoying the scenic views, I felt immediately that we were stopped. Getting up and peeling back the drapes, I saw my first glacier. More blue than white, striped with dusty color in several areas.

I always pictured a glacier as a frozen mountain, but I immediately saw a frozen river. The colors, the sounds, the sights of this entire portion of the trip are etched in my memory as solidly as the images are saved in various places on various media. Something I will never forget.

A poem:

ALYESKA
When visiting Alaska you learn more about Aleuts than Eskimos,
Starting with the Aleut word 'Alyeska,' the name of the state.
These people called this country 'Great Country'
Which certainly is a name that lasts because it is a name that fits.