Ever Present

We made it to the podiatrist in Gainesville and the doctor took a scraping to be sent off for analysis. He thinks it benign, but wanted to be sure. We went by Dollar General on the way home at Ellisville. I snapped several shots while waiting in the car. Melanie was buying food and snacks for mamma over at Paula's. We feel she is not getting enough during the day. We arrived and took the little mini refrigerator from the garage and set it up in her room. From there Allison called to say she was ordering from Cedar River, would we like to come over. We called Jordon from home and we all met over at Allison's and ate. My sister was there mostly all on the cusp of tears, having gone to the animal shelter over a week ago and still crying over it. She is a basket case of nerves in dire need of her doctor visit tomorrow.
She gave her long time dog to Tommy Bailey, who once she was married to. Tommy cried, as he loves Phoebe, or what Pheobe represents, a past gone for him as he tries and recover from a stroke.
All quite sad. I posted about Melanie, seemingly making light, but I said, we need the laughter to balance our many tears. So tonight I read three chapters from A Land Remembered. Quite the sad tale as well, amid the joy, the loss.
Tomorrow is Thursday, trash day. I shall try and return the 99 ink cyan for 200 cyan and hope they will. Either way, I need 200 cyan in order to finish printing for Mr Jones and the others I want to take to the Sidewalk Sale Saturday.

A Spring in your step

Easy to pick an unpublished photograph of Itchetucknee. There are plenty. This one was next to one previously published. This one showed the slant of early morning sun. We are about to head down to Gainesville for Melanie to get a biopsy on her big toe that has a fungus like growth. Being the oncologist nurse she is, naturally she thinks it melanoma bought on by all the radiation she had while battling H1N1 in 2009.
I was not going to post on Facebook today, but I am just too vain and self-centered. I am also one who loves misery. Misery in that I will sit back and grow angry over the usual eight likes. Then I will see Dave's post ticking into the hundreds and well....he is off to the races.

The rain came and now it remains just wet and overcast.
Peace out.

my Face movie

how the apps of Facebook rook so many in. never a moments dullness there. one does it, they all do it. we are all so enamored with our selves, our mugs, our posts, our photographs, our words. we have little time for reflection for that would mean missing something.
this is my contribution. i am not immune. i am just opposed to the sameness that parades daily on facebook with no originality. one shares, we all share. it goes viral. next thing on Leno.
once in the day when my church friends and other locals would comment on my stuff, they mostly no longer do, i would get so aggravated. they never, ever posted their thoughts, their stuff, always something from some other site or quote from scripture or some preacher.
i would say, i do not want to hear a quote or a preacher, i am interested in what you have to say. have to say besides you are having grits and cornbread over an open fire for supper. and on it went.
but it will never change. it is safe and lazy to just post other peoples stuff and everybody wants to know what you are eating.
deliver me....

Chill

My last boss at JCPenney would rant and rave constantly about this and that, did you do this? why not? did you do that? why not? One day I had all I could take. I said, Chill out. You would of thought I had confronted the Pope about the divinity of Mary. It was the beginning of my end with JCPenney.

I need to chill. I am taking the social media thing way too seriously. I am becoming the one I so despised.
It is not an enjoyable experience. It is a job. A drudgery. The answer may well be the getting away for awhile. Not the twenty-one day thing, but a mind set, a getting away emotionally and mentally that causes such consternation from being basically ignored.

Go forth and produce some work worthy of adoration. Take pen or pad and write some poetry and essay worthy of publication. This off the top of the head and shoot from the hip stuff is worthy of the can.
Take the time. Print it the best way. Frame it the best way. Place it in the gallery.

---Today is Wednesday, the 5th day of Feb. Clothes in the wash, dishes in the wash. Floors next. Animals fed. I will go with Melanie to her dermatologist appointment in Gainesville at noon today. She has a growth on her big toe nail that is either fungus or cancerous. They will biopsy it. Looking like rain today with an overcast sky.

Walk or Ride

The first photograph was put on FB earlier today. It got no reaction other than "vivid", then later, the usual, "beautiful". I took it down as yes, it was too vivid. I tried to take the vivid out. Problem was I took it originally on the vivid setting in the camera to originally bring out the rainbow. I wrote a long prayer analogy to the water running down the hill I was walking on down to the sea, at the speed of grace. The writing went unmentioned. I put the photo back tonight in the Metanonia album, giving the alternate title, the pathway of prayer. It too will go unmentioned. But there it is, the explanation.
The second is Col. Moores grave from the same day shooting back in 2012 in the Huntsville Methodist cemetery. There is some light reflection by the face that looks as if he is looking through a port hole. Something I just noticed tonight looking through the albums.
I have hundreds upon hundreds of photographs that have never seen the light of day. From a day of shooting, like today, over 200 shots, only one or maybe two make it to the FB. Less lately as in the past as I am growing daily more and more weary of the lack of response. Just not worth the effort I used to go to.
It is still a joy to get out and capture sky, earth and water, just less of a joy when so few share that joy.
They say, do something with no eye toward what people think. But, when you do something to minister to someone else, and it falls of deaf eyes, then the ministry is interrupted. That is why I tried to stress shares, but no one takes time. They do not care to take part in ministry.

OMg

here we go again. put your photography on other peoples pages and they will OMg you. put it on your own page and they will ignore you. never have i gotten a OMg, i wouldn't know what to do with an OMg. Make notecards and such? probably.
i am no photographer people. i am no writer either. judging by you. i do not give a OMg. i will do it anyway. i say over and again, you are driving me from here. it is the Salinger way. go underground. resurface long after your death. people will go OMg, who was he?

went over from buying more Epsom Ink to pick up Pearce and run several laps around the lake. Well, I ran a bit, mostly walked and enjoyed the scenery. took him home to resume printing. spent over 80.00 today on xL cartridges, since the regular seem to run through quickly. got the cyan and opened it and it was a 99, not a 200 the printer takes! Printing on hold until tomorrow! Trying to print out all the shots of the Jones farm in Trenton, nearly thirty. Jones grandson said he would take them, we shall see. Doing mostly 5x7's in case he reneges and i am left holding the prints.
he will like the oil i know. i retouched it, filling in all the cracks and such.

after taking Pearce home, went directly to Alligator Lake and shot this photo. Love the sun on the cypress and reeds this time of year when they are brown or golden. One lone coot. simplicity. the mountain type cloud i took from various spots along the drive home.

OMg.......

Work for the Night

The prints from Jones Farm on the  computer, edited and ready for printing. I took the old painting from the late 70's and went ahead and touched it up with oils and put a layer of protection on it. The years have cracked the paint and chipped in places, fortunately, not on Mr Jones face. I was able to pretty much blend the new in with the old without too much obvious manipulation. I wasn't going to mess with it but decided it would look better if I did.
I am putting off the printing as the day is warm and I would rather be outside, which I have, raking and transplanting plants and tidying up the back yard. The chickens do a real number on the yard, scratching up every square acre in search of bugs. In pulling weeds, there is a certain weed, looks almost like a mint, small, that when pulled, stings you worse than a nettle. It has been over an hour and the numb fingers still tingle. One potent little plant.
I also plan to print more photos for Saturday's Gallery Sidewalk sale though I have too many already for people to choose from. I always feel though, I do not have enough of this and that, and am always guessing as to what will sell. I will re-print the four Rick and Kim purchased and see if they are yet popular. Then the circle church, that too. Then the rivers. Then the Olustee. Then the butterflies. On and on.
I re-posted the rainbow up on Blueberry hill along with the little essay, Walking on Water. I can hardly believe that I wrote it, though I had no other persons name on it, which I do if it is not mine. I liked it, but again, no one responded in any way. Only Melissa with the terse "Vivid". And I wonder as I wander.

Abandoned Pathways

Low and diminishing return upon investments. Investing time and energy and effort into attempting to strike a chord with an audience determined to get along without me. Eight to ten responses and responses of nice,pretty leave something to be desired. Then there are the I don't get it's, be clearer.
My interest is more in the writing than the photography, the photography mostly being a way to illustrate a thought. One recently made a useful comment. Rosemary has been a help in this area, offering input. I cannot get much from pretty, nice, beautiful, wow.
Even Susan in her same oaks and lamps and sunsets night after night get's quite the input. I do not like to play a same theme again and again. One theme is my constant moaning and complaining over the Facebook and blogger friends. There are about two dozen faithful, but I do not go beyond.
I will say it again until for some reason I am tired of saying it. My fellow photographer friends get share after share and comment after comment. My own friends share his stuff.
It begs the question, which no one is telling, yet in a way everyone is telling, your stuff just ain't worth the sharing on the level of your fellows. Get over it. Put up or shut up.
Tomorrow I shall try and do something that will get me UP.

Saturday I will have prints at the gallery for the yard sale. I am putting them in painted wash tubs that look like watermelons and fruits. I may bring the gourds as well. I will have the painting for Mr Jones coming over from Panama City from a hunting trip to purchase his grandfathers painting and other photographs of the home place. I thank Melissa for this, in that she put me on the You must be from Trenton page.
Old girl friends rock.

Anyhow, the word is UP....

Bone honed

Olustee coming this February. Always a favorite event for me. They want me to volunteer with the gallery tent in the park for two hours on a Friday or Saturday. Show two works. Maybe, i will print up two 8x10's with poetry, one the poem I wrote on Olustee. Cannot hurt.
Today is Feb. 3rd and already I have been to Home Depot to get some varnish to cover the old oil of Tom Jones father I am selling to him Friday for a low price of $100. The grandson of Mr Jones also wants prints I took in August of 1976 on the home place in Trenton. He said he had no photographs of his grandfather. I am sure this all means much to him. I hope so. I only had three of Mr Jones, amazing, as today, I would have taken hundreds with digital.

Barn Storming

A man in Georgia messaged me on the Lost in Florida Facebook page. He said he travels Georgia and North Florida photographing barns and they are rapidly fading away. Well, one thing that certainly isn't in any dire strait of soon fading are the growing army of photographers covering every inch of the countryside in search of said barns.
I feel at times it was just another unnecessary brick in the already tall wall to make another such page devoted to such in the Lost in Florida Facebook page. Just last week this From Far Away or was it Old Florida or one of many such pages I saw invaded my "territory" and photographed an old house I frequently pass. They said it was in Columbia County, it was Union. They speculated who lived there. Another wrote that it was not a house but a store moved to the current location by Mr Croft from Lulu. And so this photographer who wants to sentimentalize everything was soundly picked apart. I suppose, get your facts straight before posting would be in order.
Point being, there is a plethora of such photographers capturing these old buildings before what I called the Termite people come along to tear them down for their grand homes, where they use the old wood on the walls and the floors. To the land owning, well-heeled and settled go the spoils of the past.
I am just trying to point out nice places to become lost in, yet the photographs that garner this most "hits" are the old buildings. So, I suppose we haven't reached saturation accompanied by boredom point yet, but it is coming, it is coming.

The Scalding of a Stokes

When I posted this photograph of me in Sopchoppy tonight on my mothers page, Meme Clara Stokes, it occurred to me this is the only known photograph I have showing my bandaged left arm. I would have to consult my mothers dairies if they go that far back to date it, but somewhere around two and three.
I was alone in the kitchen, there was a corded coffee pot on top of the stove, the water boiling. Out of curiosity I pulled the cord and the water came pouring down onto my left shoulder, scalding badly my entire left arm, chest and neck. One splash even made a scar on the right inner bicep.
My mother, teaching at the time, took a leave of absence to keep me. Korean war burn procedure was to wrap burns, not the modern day method of no bandages. It made the scars much worse, permanent.
I am a smiling little fellow here, unaware or non self-conscious. It was only toward early adolescence that I began to shy from not wearing a shirt while swimming, or allowing anyone to see the scars on my arm and shoulder. When I would have to show it to people, I cringed how people would do the OMG and all. The older I got, the greater the embarrassment. I recall in Monticello while in the 3rd grade at a summer basketball program. I prayed I would not be on skins team, of which I was. By high school and wearing the basketball singlet, I was pretty much over it, but it had a profound affect upon my personality.
The withdrawal, the shyness, the secrecy, etc., all in a small way attributed to the scars.
And now, even though I am not totally at home with the scars, I never will be, I now wear them as a sort of tattoo badge of me, who I am.
The best news to come from it was the doctors in the day and their pessimism saying I would never be able to use the left arm. That was proven wrong by the fact I was left-handed and enjoyed a certain level of ability at being one who could draw and do things minute and detailed.
And that is the rest of the story.

Have a good time

Up early and out in the foggy, raining morning to Watertown Lake. It was raining too hard to get out so I returned home. Meant to get umbrella but left again, forgetting it. Back at lake, about four miles away, the rain was slacking. Took a few shots of Martins darting over the surface in the fog. From there went into town and by lake Isabella where I took these three ducks, following along with them as they walked into the water. Came back home. Cleaned house. Watched Kentucky basketball. Going to Winn Dixie after the game.
Wrote the poem about the girls of Forest, Mississippi in my youthful teen days when I would spend summers there with my uncle letting me use his GTO. I had to be at least 16 in order to do that. Made friends with one of those old friends and was able, via my cousin Joe Bradford, to see pictures currently of another. I had to say they aged much better than I have.
It was true in the poem that I wound up in New Orleans, missing an exchange in Meridian. But it was going out, not coming back. Poetic license. It was a take off on three songs, Cat Stevens, Morning has broken, Wild World and Lou Reed, Take a walk on the wild side, one of the girls favorite high school songs.
Between my Aunt Irene trying to match me up and my Uncle, who was the principal at a junior high school, knowing all the girls, I was in a young fellow heaven.
The Miss Congeniality was before my time, but then again, a metaphor, artistic license.