Everyday Stories 2012

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Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 6.43.46 PM2011 was a big year with many milestones and big events.  For 2012, I set the intention to make an image  to represent each and every day.  The guidelines for the project included the following rules:

1.  Only one page per day.
2.  Up to four images per page.
3.  Captions include date/day of week.
4.  Rules can be amended as needed.

Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 6.31.23 PMI set goals and published quarterly.

Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 6.20.47 PMScreen Shot 2013-02-03 at 6.10.50 PMI appreciate the self-discipline and daily accounting.  2012 ended up being a pretty wonderful year.  I have decided to continue the project into 2013.

Happy New Year!

Building a Shed with Dad

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One of the biggest projects undertaken has been the “Building a Shed with Dad” project.  The story really begins a decade ago when I purchased my first and current home and was delighted by the old white clapboard bungalow with a barn red shed out back.

Old Shed

I asked the few remaining old timers in the neighborhood for stories and was delighted to learn that the 9×14′ shed had been used as a living space by a young, newly wed couple for several years.  It was charming with a turquoise interior and old screen doors on two sides of the building.  I very much wanted to save this outbuilding and use it for a garden shed.

Racoons in the old shed

As I cleared the junk that had been stored in the shed by previous owners, it soon became clear that salvage would not be possible on this building.  For starters, termites had compromised the integrity of the wall and floor supports and it was occupied by a lovely family of raccoons that lived under the floor boards.  It was with regret that I asked Dad to demolish the shed so that a new one could be built in its place.

Foundation from Old Shed

Dad has been salvaging buildings ranging from old horse barns to public buildings like churches since his youth so it took him little more than an afternoon to dismantle the old shed and stack it into the back of a pickup. I felt ambivalent about its demise but was thrilled to find that the foundation under the old shed seemed in great repair and perhaps could be used on a replacement shed.

Foundation with Elderberry Bushes

Time passed and I focused on other more pressing home improvement projects letting birds plant a small grove of elderberry bushes around the foundation.  It stood this way for several years.  Finally, in the late winter of 2011, I asked Dad if he would be available to help me build a replacement shed on the same site using recycled materials he had stored at the farm.  He agreed.

Ideas Becoming Plans on Graph Paper

The planning process involved rough sketches by me of a shed-roofed building like the chicken coops on the farms of my family with a 2nd shed roof coming off the front for a porch under a clerestory of windows.  Dad said, “Anything is possible,” and I believed him.

With this “can do” attitude, we looked through the old windows stacked at the back of old barns at The Farm and started looking at old lumber that could be repurposed for my shed.  Our only limitation was the footprint of our old foundation.

Measuring Lumber

We visited several places where he had stored lumber for possible projects such as mine.  Ninety nine percent of the materials used on my shed would be materials he had salvaged from old barns or houses that were going to be demolished.

Construction Begins on Shed

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Living in One’s Element

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Life is good

I met Mrs. Green only once but she made quite the impression on my 10 year old self.  While I was staying with a friend, we took Mrs. Green a bouquet of flowers and in return, she offered us cookies and one of my first ”Ah Ha!” moments.  Mrs. Green opened a camel back steamer trunk filled with old photographs, journals, letters and postcards from what was already a long life.  She let me rifle through her collection of memories as she told us tales. Her adept storytelling, accompanied by the amazing artifacts of a life lived well, galvanized my attention.  I was dazzled and vowed to fill my own steamer trunk.

Snowy breakfast

My sister and I have been car camping together since the summer of 1989.  We sometimes head out onto the road for 1000’s of miles without staying at a motel or campground.  This was true even when we were driving a compact car.  In 2004, Shaunna bought the Honda Element and we have been traveling in luxury ever since.

The following slide show is a visual poem about small roads, living out of a truck, adventure, sisters and The West.

Living in One’s Element

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Walking in a Winter Wonderland

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Yvonne and Shaunna under the Cathedral Tree

Lincoln recieved 13.5 inches of heavy, wet snow that stuck to every surface it touched.  This was hard on some trees but for me and my sister, it was an invitation to wander. There is something exhilarating about being out and about on foot in weather that keeps cars parked.  Snow covered the now surreal landscape.  The weight of the snow transformed the ordinary into forms that even Dr. Seuss would admire.

Looking up into the Cathedral Tree

Much of the morning was spent exploring the neighborhoods between my house and Wyuka Cemetery.  Snow plows and 4×4  trucks with snow blades were our only competition for the side streets.  The two passenger cars we met were the ones we helped push out of the deep snow.

I took another walk about in the evening after dark.  It was a muffled and beautiful world.  Like Joel Meyerowitz, I too love it when artificial and natural light mingle in unanticipated ways.  Using only available light and long exposures, I delighted in the strange colors  being bounced around and reflected by the snow.  The cloud curtain became sheer and the moon started making guest appearances above the parking lot trees.  I would have done a cartwheel in response if only my boots were not so heavy.

Chocolate Skies over Lincoln with the Moon

Morning sunshine beckoned and I was dazzled by the ice crystals and shapes of snow that still clung to the branches.  I see many more walks in the days to come and life is good.

Elm Tree with Morning Snow

Glowing Tree Across the Street

Pee Wee’s Great Adventures

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Pee Wee at Wall Drug, South Dakota

This project began as a practical joke.  A friend treated a collection of  her closest family and friends to a fabulous Fourth of July celebration at her home.   Her hospitality was repayed with the merciless kidnapping of her cherished Pee Wee  Herman doll.  It so happens that I was shortly thereafter leaving on a road trip to Alaska.  The ransom notes arrived as photo postcards of his travels with text and images culled from ubiquitous tourist literature gathered along the way.  Who knew where it would lead!

Pee Wee Postcards

I have always written on postcards with stories of my travels.  (After all, I’ve got a steamer trunk to fill.  See Living in One’s Element) Up to this point, they were store purchased stock photo postcards that did not often match my experience and certainly did not describe Pee Wee’s adventure.  So, I started constructing my own.  Digital photography and 1 hour photo labs have made this a cinch.  Making and writing on postcards enhances my travels and provides a satisfying record of the journey.  I make and send them by the 100’s.

Postcards by the Hundreds

The Pee Wee pictures are not attempting anything very meaningful content-wise.  They are absurd spoofs of typical tourist shots in typical tourist places.  They amuse me because he is such a foppish character, out of place in the rugged Marlboro Man landscapes of the mythic Wild West.    It was a  silly pleasure to make the photos and my sister was thankful to be relieved of  the  duty of posing.

Post Script

Pee Wee went on one more road trip to Texas and New Mexico after his epic Alaska adventure.

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24 Adventures in 2012: Summiting K2

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I love concept gifts.  They are the best.  For Christmas this year, my sister, Shaunna, gave me an invitation to 24 adventures yet to be determined and a kit which included a corvid mascot (black crow in this case), a roll of 24 postcard stamps and a small black journal.  A couple of days ago, I received my first postcard invitation to adventure.

Invitation to Adventure

I filled out the cleverly designed reversible postcard she made for this very purpose and sent it back to her.  The next day a card arrived with instructions and a provisions list.

RSVP to Adventure

She arrived with the mysterious announcement that only 6 women in the world have successfully done what we would attempt today.  There was a small tableaux of K2 related objects:  Pakistani scarf, Cliff Bars and books on the mountain, K2.  She handed me a Lincoln Telephone book and directed me to find K2.  (There is a city map in the middle of the book.)  She said she hadn’t peeked ahead of time.

K2 Tableaux

We discovered that K2 is located in the extreme north and east part of Lincoln with most of it outside city limits.  The interior of K2 is not really transected by roads so we mostly flirted with the perimeter roads of Arbor road on the south, 40th St. for the West, Bluff Road on the north and Highway 77 for the eastern wall of our rectangle.  (I 80 does cut through the extreme southern end.)

Discovering K2

We set out on our constructed adventure with a stop at Schlotzky’s Deli to take along for a lunch inside K2.  It is a small area and we circumnavigated the whole thing before finding our picnic spot behind a gas station, pointed towards a little boggy area with cat tails and willows.

Boggy cat tail area behind gas station.

Though warm for January (44 degrees), the wind made the sunny day quite brisk.  We explored some round bales and the serpentine willows that arch over the muskrat lodges.  The pond was frozen with dry cat tales blowing in the wind.

Willows over bog

Willows over bog

Round bales silliness

Round bales silliness

Our next stop was at a small creek that runs under 40th street to see what we could see.  I first saw a deer frozen in a death rictus.  Then another and another.  We counted six dead white tail deer including does and fawns that appear to have been dumped here without having been butchered, though coyotes clearly visit this place at lonelier times of day.  It felt a little dreadful.

Grisly find

The next bridge on Bluff Road also had a strange find involving deer.  It appears that someone threw a large cooler full of skinned deer flanks onto the frozen creek.  Contents shattered many directions upon impact.  This all felt in contrast to the beautiful sunny day around us.

Bridge on Bluff road

Our final stop was at a farm house that had a chicken coop with a repeating crescent motif.  I obtained permission to photograph and felt nostalgic listening to roosters posturing for top cock of the walk.

Crescent Chicken Coop

It was time to return home and though we barely left city limits, it felt like we had a full adventure.  Thank you Shaunna!

Parentheses

Wide open spaces

Element

Everyday Stories 2012: Winter. Vol. 1

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I do like to stop at the passing of one year into the next to account for my living.  Sometimes, this takes the form of a New Year’s Resolution but more often, it is a looking back to make sense of what I have done, where this has gotten me and the setting of intentions for where I would like to be in the future.  As part of this process, I decided to merge my interest in editing images into books with a daily mandate to photograph my everyday life.

Pages for January 22 and 23, 2012, Everyday Stories 2012: Winter Vol. 1

I end each day by adding another page to the book and when I have January, February and March completed, I will send it off to the printers as Volume 1.

Possible Cover for Everyday Stories 2012: Winter Vol.

Inside flap of book with the "rules."

Foreward of the Book

By the end of 2012, I will have four volumes with 3 months in each book covering the 4 seasons of the year and my day to day life in pictures.  It will be a visual diary.  I could see editing this into some sort of show too once the themes have revealed themselves to me.

Pages from January 16 and 17, 2012

This is an exciting project and has spurred me on to be more creatively involved in the intention of my life.

(Parentheses)

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Sandhills road, Western Nebraska

The idea of Parentheses came about when I was trying to get a grasp on an group of images for a photography show.  The images were of road trips, camping, hikes, cafes and diners.  The feeling was of being on an adventure and completely tuned into the moment.  These hyper aware moments that are often explored with the camera feel like they are embedded in life but emphasized and apart from it as well.

Parentheses