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.