Door to Door...

“I’m a door-to-door salesman. I sell doors. If I can’t knock on yours, because you don’t have a door to knock on, I know you’ll be interested in what I’m selling.” ~Jarod Kintz

Last week, when I went out to Northampton, Massachusetts, to visit my daughter Carrie, I took some pictures of doors.  Here are a couple I particularly liked.

Looking at these photos made me wonder in my mind where the best place I’ve ever been for photographing doors.  As way leads on to way inside my brain, it made me start thinking about Scotland and the doors I saw there.  So I went back in time and stepped through the portal into my computer’s memory and found that I had, indeed, taken a lot of pictures of doors when we were in Scotland.

  Here are a few.

Of course, we humans often use open doors as metaphors for choices we make in life or, when the door is closed, being blocked from those choices.  Alexander Graham Bell said, “Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.”  I think he was probably right.  But that didn’t keep me from spending a lot of time staring at my old photos of doors in Scotland, when there are probably hundreds of doors right here in Sturbridge that are waiting for me to turn the knob.

Willy-Nilly Friday Five…

1.  I actually got something done this week and here it is:

It was my first real attempt at Aran Crochet.  I enjoyed doing it and it turned out well.  I can see more of this in my future.

2.  I went out to visit my daughter Carrie who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts yesterday.  She was proudly carrying her “new to her” orange purse...a gift from her dad.  It is a pretty sweet bag, I must admit.

3.  After Carrie and I had lunch, we did a little antique browsing.  I do love poking around in antique shops even though I don’t really need or want anything much.  But I did find something yesterday that called out to me.  And it’s this:

I’m planning to repurpose this old ashtray as a fondue fork holder for our annual Christmas Eve fondue do.  I think that it will give it a much nicer second life.  I am rather enamored of the shape and color of the piece.

4.  After we left the shop, we saw this little fellow tied up waiting for his alpha.  Dogs tied to poles always look so lonely to me.  It’s like he’s saying to everyone who passes by, “Are you my mother?”

5.  Got up this morning to our first “snowfall.”  I am putting that in quotes because it didn’t amount to anything and by the time I was taking the dog out around 8 am, it was bright and sunny and sounded like it was raining out because everything was melting at a precipitous rate.  Other parts of the country have gotten hit a lot harder than we have.  But it’s early days yet.

Linking up to Tanya's Willy-Nilly Friday Five!

Good Stockbridge Fences…

Greg and I took an afternoon in October to make a trip out to Stockbridge, Massachusetts to the Norman Rockwell Museum.  We had just a matter of days left to see the special exhibit there titled “The Unknown Hopper” featuring Edward Hopper’s early work as an illustrator.  We were glad we did as we are both fans of Edward Hopper but had had no idea that he started his career as an illustrator.

For me, it was interesting that Hopper found his work as an illustrator constraining and only did it to make ends meet.  Once he sold his first “real” art and his career as an artist started to take off, he quit his job and dedicated himself fully to painting what he wanted, when he wanted. He said of his art, “Maybe I am not very human - what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”

This is probably Hopper’s most famous painting.  It has been imitated over and over again.

Rockwell, on the other hand, is well-known as an illustrator extraordinaire.  Today, most Americans are very familiar with his Saturday Evening Post covers even though he died in 1978.  Rockwell said, “Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.”

My personal favorite Rockwell illustration called The Problem We All Live With shows Ruby Bridges, a six year old African-American girl going into an all-white public school in New Orleans in November of 1960 as she is accompanied by four US Marshalls for her protection.  I find this piece to be very moving and heart wrenching.  This photo was published in Look magazine in 1964.

I make no judgment here.  Two different people, two different ways of looking at art.  Art and the admiration of it, after all, are among the most subjective matters on the earth.   I’m just glad that these two exceptional talents were able to contribute such beauty and insight to this world.

But I digress from my purpose for posting here today.  Today is Good Fences day and I did manage to take a couple of fence photos while we were out in Stockbridge.  They may not be art, but they are illustrations of good fences and  even though it was a very gloomy, grey day, I tried to give them my best.

Linking to The Run*A*Round Ranch's Good Fences!

Thanks, Theresa!

A little late fall color...

No words needed...

Willy-Nilly Fall Friday 5…

Baseball season is over.  This makes me sad.  I do have to admit that it was a fun World Series to watch though.  And there was no stress because I didn’t really care who won, although I will admit that I really liked the Kansas City Royals and had to root for them.  Oh, well…  Maybe next year.

I do watch a lot of television from Great Britain on Netflix these days.  You know, things like Dr. Who, Torchwood and Midsomer Murders.  I’m always surprised when people who need to defend themselves on these shows often pull out a baseball bat…a baseball bat, for pity’s sake.  Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t think they play baseball in Great Britain.  So why do all these people have bats in their closets and where the heck do they buy them?  They must be sold as weapons over there in the stores.  You almost never see a baseball bat used as a weapon on American TV.  I mentioned this today to Greg for whatever reason and his answer was short and to the point.  “That’s because,” he said, “American use guns.”

Are you sick of political ads yet?  I sure am.  We get them not only from Massachusetts but also from New Hampshire.  It almost makes me nostalgic for that Verizon ad with the bouncing, whispering couple with the baby that makes the salesgirl shush so as not to wake the kid.  I’d like to slap those people and I am non-violent by nature.  But those dunderheads are a breath of fresh air compared with all this politics.

The biggest leaf I've found this year so far.

I have sciatica and am going to physical therapy trying to get it under control.  I laughed about the first exercise that the PT gave me, which was to lie on my stomach for fifteen minutes three times a day.  Hey, even I can do that!  But I was told yesterday that I needed to roll in and out of bed.  Do you know how hard that is??  I always thought that it was kind of a figure of speech but apparently it is an actual way to get in and out of bed.  I haven’t mastered it yet.  I am afraid that I require further instruction.

I've already posted this photo on Facebook, but I think it bears repeating.  This is my mother, father and me all duded up and ready to leave for a Halloween party at my sister Cindy's house back in 1976.  Pretty funny, isn't it?!  I'm not dressing up this year.  As a matter of fact, I almost forgot all about Trick or Treat and had to run out and purchase last minute candy.  I need to start paying attention to the calendar.  Have a safe and happy Halloween!

P.S.  I'd like some help identifying this cute little guy who has been hanging out at our feeder.  He scrounges underneath and doesn't go on to the feeders.  He must be some kind of sparrow but what kind is the question.  He's a tad bigger than a dark-eyed junco.

Linking up to Tanya's Around Roanoke, VA

Willy-Nilly Friday 5!

Good Shaker Fences…

When daughter Carrie and I visited Hancock Shaker Village back in September, I got quite a few photos of fences.  If you are interested in the Shakers at all, take a look back at my October 20 blogpost.  They are a fascinating sect.  And they build Good Fences…

Linking to The Run*A*Round Ranch Report's

Good Fences.

Using my super power…

Being on Facebook, I have learned that there are lots and lots of t-shirts available for photographers.  Those are the advertisements that pop up most often when I go on to check on all the odds and ends my friends and family are posting.

  The t-shirt I like best has a camera printed on it and says, “I can stop time.  What’s your superpower?”  One of these days, I may just click on that link and buy one of those, because in many ways that is true.  Photography does give us the ability to freeze moments in time.

Still, I find myself wishing this superpower of mine didn’t require a Nikon and, in fact, wasn’t just a catch phrase on a t-shirt, because this has been a ridiculously busy month and a half for me.  I cannot put my finger on why exactly, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was born a slow and deliberate person and as I age, I’m just getting slower and slower and more deliberate.  Things just take me a lot of time and I can’t seem to change that.  So when I add in appointments and other obligations, the things I actually enjoy doing get shoved to the side…like this blog, for instance.

Yesterday, I thought I would have time to post something, but my yearly eye exam was scheduled for the afternoon.  I was happy to learn that my eyes are not showing the normal signs of aging that other parts of my body are.  I was told that there is no sign of cataract or glaucoma.  And the doctor was polite enough to not mention that when he looked though my dilated pupils, he could see that my brain was starting to atrophy and lose its elasticity.  I thought that was rather kind of him.  But those drops he used did put an end to me doing anything useful for the rest of the day.

Anyhow, thanks to the Nor’easter that passed through here last week, our fall color is pretty much gone.  Sure, here and there, you may spot a nice bright red tree, but mostly what’s there now are the coppers and browns of the oaks.

  Of course, the oaks never really completely let go of their leaves until the new ones come in.  Isn’t there a saying that says, “Stubborn as an Oak!”??  If not, I may have that one printed on a t-shirt, too.  There are probably people I know who would find that pretty appropriate for me.

Well, since I have it, I might as well exercise my superpower!  Here are a few shots of autumn that I have frozen in time.