On a cold November morning in Cincinnati, while we were waiting for the Turkey Trot to start, we huddled close to each other for warmth and our shoes made us smile….vivid splashes of color that would inspire us through the next 6.2 miles…a family tradition for several decades on Thanksgiving Day.
More recently, this vivid green was a nice contrast to the worn and weathered wood beside it.
Our eyes don’t always want to rest, sometimes they yearn to feast on color.
It’s not very practical to get out of a car when one isn’t supposed to be walking and there aren’t a whole lot of pictures to be taken between the bottom of my steps to the couch and the couch to the kitchen and the kitchen to the dining room and then back to the couch, so for this week’s photo challenge I’m resurrecting a post from last year.
Although I was responding to a challenge about abandonment, both photo shoots happened when I when I was a passenger in a car and I was able to convince the driver to stop so I could explore with my camera.
Sometimes fascinating places are found when you’re on the way to somewhere else.
https://pausesandclicks.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/weekly-photo-challenge-abandoned-in-louisiana/
Oh, the irony….of this week’s challenge being broken.
I’m on week four of the broken foot saga. On Tuesday a new x-ray revealed the sad news that it wasn’t healing and so I have another three weeks of not putting weight on it. I haven’t driven a car since May 4th. I’ve spent way too many hours on the couch surfing Facebook and reading blogs, trying to avoid feeling trapped. I miss my long walks with my dog. And I miss taking pictures as I move throughout my day.
So….broken describes me well right now!
And so I go to my archives to bring you pictures of the broken things that I’ve seen when my day included those five mile walks with Xav. Because, really, you don’t need to see yet another shot of my foot in a boot. The only thing that’s changed is the color of the sock.
And in the end, there’s beauty in brokenness.
Being broken is simply a reminder to appreciate what’s whole.
We’re all enveloped in something from time to time. It’s not always good.
But this, THIS is the best kind of envelopment.
Grandpa and grandson, completely lost in the moment, and in the love between them.
Enveloped in sheer joy.
This particular force of nature has put a crimp in my photography.
Gravity wasn’t my friend when I stepped off a porch step while I was sweeping it. I heard the bone break, so that particular force of nature, although not loud enough for most to hear, wasn’t so quiet from my perspective.
Conversely, my yard is full of whispers as buds unfurl and tightly budded flowers patiently wait to open.
Until I can put weight on this foot again, I’ll have to be content with watching the silent arrival of spring outside my window.
Although, I do have to confess to hobbling outdoors to grab these shots today. I mean, really, how does a person not walk for an entire three weeks?!
To read last year’s blog about peonies click here.
One of my earliest memories is waking up on winter mornings in Ohio, hoping to be the first person downstairs to gather the milk bottles that had been left on the front porch, right next to the morning newspaper. In winter the milkman would arrive before dawn and if we were lucky, the milk would be out on the porch long enough to freeze the top layers, causing the paper top to pop up, revealing the delicious frozen milk underneath.
I loved scooping that out with a spoon and savoring the icy treat, usually at the kitchen table, while my dad sat across from me, newspaper open in front of him, eating his soft-boiled egg.
Glass milk bottles and newspapers….they used to be on every front porch every morning.
In 2015 the milk bottles are long gone. Newspapers are less prevalent in the early morning landscapes of our front lawns as more and more of us read our news online but the industry is managing to hang in there and the news is still being printed.
In October I had the opportunity to visit the Omaha World Herald and my eyes were opened to the complicated process of newspaper production. My favorite fact? The roll of newsprint that feeds through this three-story printer is 10 miles long!
I was fascinated with the labyrinth of machines in the World Herald building and so I bring them to you in pictures. Visually, they offer you a window into the intricate story of newspaper production. However, this isn’t just an exploration of the industrial process, it’s also an exercise in finding beauty in the practical.
Eventually newspapers in physical form might go the way of the glass milk bottle as we find ourselves downloading them onto our Apple Watches but for now amazing operations like this continue to produce them and they still show up, like clockwork, on people’s lawns and front porches, on a daily basis.
And in some homes, dogs still have a job when they wake up in the morning. Even when they don’t look too excited about it!
To see how other bloggers have interpreted motion click here.
Today I bring you bright, beautiful, colorful fish that made me happy as the wind gave them motion and life.
I hope they do the same for you.
To find out more about kite flying in Omaha or to see more photographs of kites visit omahakites.org or omahakites.com. They are good people!
I seldom post multiple parts to a photo challenge but Sunday was so rich with images I can’t resist and splitting them up into several blogs is kinder to your sensory intake.
This particular kind of kite is called a Bol and it is truly poetry in motion.
We were big eyed boys
With the salt on our skin
And we’d throw our kites to the wind
And they’d fly on and on and on and on
“Circles”….Passenger
To see more kites in motion visit the Midwest Kite Fliers page here. They’re flying again this coming weekend in LaVista, Nebraska. You can also learn more about kite flying by visiting Jeff Kuhns here.
Sometimes you just have to turn the car around and seize the moment.
My husband and I were on our way home from church Sunday morning when we noticed kites in the sky, their color and motion giving life to otherwise invisible wind.
I’d forgotten how wonderful it is to get lost in the joy of swirling color, air currents and movement.
My thanks to Jeff Kuhns (omahakites.com) for sharing his art with a passerby. He was kind enough to tell me about a kite festival in a nearby community later in the day, so there will be multiple posts this week relating to motion and kites. Stay tuned!
pauses&clicks 