Rocking-chair Pad Face

Posted on 01 January 2025 by Isabel Gibson

A mo’ai from Easter Island?

Sam Eagle from the Muppet Show?

A platypus somehow blown way off course and beached on this inland desert?

In any case, it’s my first accidental face for 2025. Get that rocking chair its prize!

 

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Faces | Tagged | 4 Comments

But, And Yet

Posted on 01 January 2025 by Isabel Gibson

What was I thinking? I had the perfect How it Started, How it’s Going set-up and I failed to get the before photo. A proxy photo will give you an idea, but this adjacent closet in our temporary abode in Tempe still bears my imprint from last year, when I stacked all the pool towels that had been stuffed all higgledy-piggledy into their assigned space, first folding them so they *could* be stacked.

How it started (proxy photo)

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, How it Started | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Heron and Cranes

Posted on 28 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

Some of us are independent. Loners, even.

Great blue heron, fishing

Some of us thrive in crowds.

Sandhill cranes, hanging out

Some prefer small groups.

Sandhill cranes, browsing/gleaning

Different strategies–*wildly* different strategies–can work equally well, but it’s good to know who we are.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Fauna | Tagged | 8 Comments

SUV Reflection

Posted on 28 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

I don’t get out at night much, but when I do, sometimes I find a nice reflection in a vehicle.

Here’s one from several years ago in Myrtle Beach.

Here’s one from this week in Texas.

It’s a wonderful world, innit?

 

Posted in Another Thing, Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Built Stuff | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Sun Also Rises

Posted on 28 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

The sun did not rise this morning.

That’s a steal of, or as I like to frame it, an homage to, a line from The List of Adrian Messenger. In that 1959 detective novel, the sun did not rise in London due to a “pea souper”: a thick, thick fog that blotted out the sun (and that hid a cunning murderer, as it turned out). Today, the sun did not rise in Texas due to a thunderstorm so broad, and with clouds so dark, that the sunrise never broke through.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Seasonal Travel; Seasonal Wishes

Posted on 21 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

I can’t claim that travel expands the mind, but I have observed that it expands the waistline and the photography portfolio.

As we headed south from Ottawa en route to Phoenix via Myrtle Beach, we passed through upstate New York. Just a few weeks ago they’d had a few feet of snow dumped on them, apparently to celebrate American Thanksgiving.  It’s a local custom, I believe: as a Canadian, I don’t really feel qualified to comment on it. Now that snow was mostly gone.

But all the water in that snow had to go somewhere. Some of it sublimated, likely; some lay in the fields, clearly (but also muckily); some ran off into streams, creeks, sloughs, and ponds, certainly. I’m used to waterways being high in the spring: seeing them high-from-snow-melt in late December was a first.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Fauna, Photos of Landscapes | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Doggie-bag-thingy Face

Posted on 21 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

The hardest thing(y) about this face was figuring out what to call its location. Being for leftovers, it’s not a takeout box. Being a box, it’s not a doggie bag. Quora to the rescue again: it’s a to-go box. I think I knew that. Sort of. Remembering the things I know is getting harder all the time.

Anyway, I present herein a to-go box. With heavily lidded eyes and a chiseled Roman nose.

Posted in Photos of Faces | Tagged | 8 Comments

I’d Like to Come Back

Posted on 14 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

This week seems to be all about lids and cycles. Who am I to fight fate?

Of course, it could also be about humour in marketing, or about making a personal connection to affect behaviour.

Wait a minute, you say. We can’t have a personal connection with a metal jar lid, can we? Well, all I know is that *this* jar lid got its wish, at least as far as I could grant it: I threw it in the glass/metal recycle bin. It’s up to someone else to finish the job. And that brings in one of my mother’s favourite quotes.

It is not your duty to finish the work,
but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.
– Pirkei Avot, 2:16

It’s true, you know? It’s connections, all the way down . . .

Posted in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

And Around We Go

Posted on 14 December 2024 by Isabel Gibson

The screen in front of me is not quite the dreaded Windows blue screen of death, but it *is* the black screen of endless updates. In the middle of the screen a message huffily informs me that the downloaded updates are installing and I should sit down and shut up. Perhaps I paraphrase, but I can almost hear it sniffing, impatient with my impatience.

Be still
and know that I am updating.

Below this imperious message, a small arrow chases its own tail around and around in a circle, the hamsters being otherwise engaged, I guess. Continue reading →

Posted in Feeling Clearly, Laughing Frequently, Mortality, New Perspectives | Tagged | 10 Comments