For a few Saturdays in May I took a photo class at a local museum. I was served up with some serious photo envy of people's expensive cameras and their ability to take some excellent shots. Not all but some - and that to me was the greatest lesson - seeing other's eyes. You can learn so much from that - in addition to the technical lessons the instructor instilled. Some of which I am not quite sure of and some of which I am still practicing.

The photos I submitted were of downtown scenes you would not expect to see downtown. A home like feel to the space and place I called home - something I felt having worked down there for a few years. It really is a quaint little downtown, we don't even have a Starbucks, but I feel like this especially captures that as you don't really see a high rise structure. Though I have to say my classmates who submitted those were awe inspiring as they made the mundane buildings look beautiful and made Tampa look quite glamorous. To me that is what has been so much fun about photography - the varying ideas, angles, and images and what is conveyed through the lenses. It is educational and inspirational and completely fun - my new camera arrives on Monday so let the games continue.

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

We have an orchid that Magoo won in an office lottery type give away. She was beautiful with purple and white flowers. She died. I think she could be alive - all the flowers fell of the stem, so there is a chance she could grow back. I just am not sure how to make that happen. I am pretty certain though that I have to do something about it - whereas before all I did was add water. I am thinking that this was not the right step given my result. Or perhaps she needed a special type of water. For a time there Ginger only drank distilled water. There could be something about my house that brings about fancy water requirements. Some have fancy pants - I have fancy plants. I could do a good old fashioned Google search on how to care and not kill orchids.

Or maybe I ask the one person who knows how to handle beauty. It is quite clear these are not my orchids - they are alive and they are not purple and white. These are my mother's orchids - that she has managed to keep alive. A crazy feat. She managed the same with my sister and I as well. Equally as perplexing and crazy. So she seems to know what she is doing and she certainly has me beat on the orchid front. An easy task but definitely well played. But seriously we all know mothers are sources of all things brilliant and right. Aren't hers a beauty? So bright and vibrant. There is something feminine and provocative about the pistol and the stamen. Yet enticing and gorgeous at the same time. It is not about their scent but their delicate and tenuous positioning. They can almost be taken out of the flower category and placed instead into the artwork one. Tiny pretty delicate petals of dead artwork.

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

After tonight I want to run out and re-watch A Chorus Line. I had a ton of fun at the pops with Marvin Hamlish the composer of that music and other hits. Including the film version of The Way They Were, who does not just love that movie? And I really hate crying over movies when you are supposed to cry, because I cry enough when you are not supposed to and I cry enough in life. But that movie just makes sense because you knew she had to chase him over to LA and do her own thing but also that they were never going to make. The reality of that makes me cry because it is so simple and yet so true. When you think about it though it is the music that sets the tone for the movie and the emotion comes from the whole package, how well it all played together. What was so moving about tonight was how amazingly perfectly in line the symphony moved together. I cannot get over how they actually made the music. Tiny little violins making that much noise. Working as a machine but also as perfect individual units. Each with a task, often the same task, but also each a necessary element of the whole. Some with solos and others who were clear leaders but who actually spent most of the time working together as a team, blending in with the others. All as one. Really powerful and beautiful. I was so enticed and enamored by them. It was hooot seeing people in charge of these instruments, making melodies, and working to create a larger symphony. I get at thing, an itchy tingly thing, when people can move so well together and enjoy passions in the same form. It is quite emotional. It could've brought me to tears.

It was hot later on in the weekend as we sat outside enjoying the sun and the music. I swore this to Magoo in drunken whispers, that acoustic guitar players are hot. He can bang on those drums, so why not the guitar? Hot in the same way the symphony was - they master making sweet tunes, as he calls it, coming out of those powerful instruments. Memorable moving music. But really they do. A human able to exert that special talent and make brilliant notes is hot. Coming home after enjoying the tunes of the bar band, a bucket of beers and an afternoon by the water, to find your man listening to music full blast and cooking. Okay that is HOT. It was just so perfect. The smell of fresh sauce and the sounds of tunes from the TV - is the penultimate combination. Talk about working together. It is your way to connect and move together. Making music of your own and tantalizing pasta too. It is not just about the music, but about what those songs remind me of, how I can know every word even if I'm getting them wrong and feel absolutely great. Because that is what I do. Dancing in the kitchen in bare feet - a slight sunburn and the remainders of a beer buzz. Totally what summer is going to be about not just this one but the ones of the past and the ones you can only dream about. Summers are always so dream like, maybe it is the extreme heat and long drawn out days. It creates a moment in time to remember back to that song, that sound, the scent and all the memories. Suntan lotion, bug spray, sweat, salt and tired, that too much time in the sun and the pool kind of tired. The way A Chorus Line conjures recollections of younger days prancing around in socks and reminders of what is fun about music of all kinds - the singing along factor. In line together with older memories, making news ones connected to your friends, mixing voices together in ideas and poor poor harmonies. That is what I did at the symphony, in quiet tones under my breath, and at the bar louder and in my key, my drunken key. That's how the power of music gives into the passion and emotion, to sing and dance along to provide an afternoon and evening of entertainment, to make and bake memories and consummate relationships. Driving to work today even Ray created a not too distant memory, just the notes gave the ability to time travel and feel the warmth and goodness of that moment in December. The music makes the memory and creates a time that you cannot remember them as separate. Those songs will always go together with that image. The way the sounds coming from the TV had me dancing into the kitchen. The Moody Blues remind me of my parents, my mom humming along in her own kitchen, those kind of childhood themed memories. That song created a moment that was comforting, that made me aware of a home and what a house is all about, a connection to the past and present and who does not think that is hot?

This weekend will promise to be hot too - temps reading in the high 90's. It is the start of summer and here that means six months of blinding heat. We are going to the beach and celebrating Memorial Day the way Americans do- making it hot, steamy and with good tunes - or really bad ones if you are me. In a bad music square off I will be the winner. But that is what the summer is all about. See the rest of the Sunday pictures on flickr.

Labels: Everyday Life, P.S./Photography Sunday

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

My Mother Taught Me:

Labels: Friends/Family, Listing, Open Letters, P.S./Photography Sunday

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

This past weekend Magoo and I road tripped it down to South Florida. We both grew up down there though literally it was a world apart. Our homes and lives were lived 50 miles apart, as he reached the outer branches of Broward and I was way the hell south Miami. His childhood saw open fields, horses, landscape, and chickens. We had traffic, 1/2 acres, city life and all things Miami. We spent the weekend intertwined between the two. Lounging with his brothers, sisters, nephews and parents and then drinking and eating with the Jewish folk of MIA. We squeezed in some time to visit my family too, Magoo swore we were in the Keys with the distance we drove south. This is a world where I-95 and I-75 both end, or begin if you want to be picky like that. Those who don't know also probably don't play but we enjoy games of Jewish geography. While this is reserved for, "do you know's" left over from camp or college, it works in other ways too. Waiting for our table at the bar on Sunday night meant running into high school friends. That is how it was in my Miami growing up. See how it was in Magoo's world. This may rock your vision of South Florida, I know it did mine. See here for my bored car shots and scenes from a South Florida neighborhood.

Labels: Friends/Family, P.S./Photography Sunday, Trips/Travel

Since I will be on the road this weekend and unsure of my Internet access on Sunday - you get a PS today. Consider it a Picture Saturday instead. These are pictures from the road. One thing I do enjoy about my job is the ability to get in the car and drive. It gets me out, it gets me easy billing, and because of where I live it gets me awesome scenery. These are shots from the road - some of the same I will be seeing again this weekend in my travels. The pictures were taken at various points between Tampa and Sarasota including the Sunshine Skyway and the Sarasota government building and them placed together in a mutli-exposure frame. It is kind of trippy, no? Have a good weekend wherever your road may take you.

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

This Sunday is a typical Sunday - or I would presume for most of America. We spent post-Easter gluttony at the park and reading the paper. Well he read, I pictured. Enjoy your Sunday with scenes from our last Sunday - including the 'bucks and the beach. Click for flickr.

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday

I'm starting a PhotoSunday section. A shot from the weekend or the week that I enjoyed or that may symbolize those events. I am not wedded to it and it maybe a collage or a series of pictures or even a link of them back to flickr. Something to enjoy on your Sunday afternoons when you are lazying around with coffee, the remote control and a belly full of brunch.

This is how we enjoyed our Friday evening. It began with a photograher's exhibit at a hipster coffee shop/wine bar. Because there has to be that /, which meant a lot of wine. Oh yeah and we also ate Greek, surrounded by Opa!, flying napkins and conversations tid bits of girlie bits and coke-a-martinis - rimmed with, well you know. We finally stumbled into the late show Blades of Glory - no beef to Will but I took a 10 minute napper. With wine and dark theaters a girl just can't be helped. Not when that photo was the start of the night - a series of shots shot by a photographer herself with her phone. She is just that good. Enjoy your Sunday.

Labels: P.S./Photography Sunday