A Minor Tragedy

Everything seemed to be going so well. Elizabeth and John have not gotten along for years, but they have been cordial to each other. I told each of them that the other one is my child and I love them both.

John is staying in the travel trailer. John was in an auto accident last winter. His back was wrenched and now he has a pinched disk. He needs an operation and today he is going to see a specialist and find out about an operation. John was working and trying to get his life back together when this happened. He took himself off state disability...not that they have paid him anything...so he could go back to work. He is in constant pain. In the past he has had problems with drug abuse. It cost him time with Hailey and a big part of his life. He is staying clean and determined to make things right.

Elizabeth has been living in my guest house with her boyfriend, Dennis, and his daughter, Ashley. Things for Dennis have been pretty good considering he is out of work. He had a place for him and Ashley to stay...and a nice place for his younger children to visit. He had a woman that not only loved him but cares about his children and she works! He did work hard getting our swimming pool patched up. Then E.R. Elizabeth and even the children helped with the pool. Dennis has beautiful intelligent children. They call me grandma. I haven’t met his oldest. It has to be hard for Dennis to be out of work when just a few months ago he was a working architect.

People let things get to them. Then they start drinking. Alcohol has ruined so many families. Dennis is spending a few days as a guest of the county now. After Elizabeth came over here and called 911, I got the two younger children and took them home to their mom. Dennis was going to drive away with them but was still in Elizabeth’s house breaking up her stuff. It took some convincing to get the children to go with me. Hailey went with us. I have a long palm lined drive to the road. I didn’t get out the drive way soon enough. Two sheriff’s officers were parked on the road and they talked to the children before we left. The boy had seen the fight and told the officer what happened. Dennis tried to drive out but my car was blocking the way and an officer stood in his way...then when I drove out the other officer drove into the drive way. His truck was blocked in. At least the children didn’t see their dad get arrested. The little girl cried all the way home. She loves us and was afraid that she would never see us again. Hailey hugged her and tried to reassure them both that we would see them again.

On the way back we picked up Ashley from soccer practice. She was in tears. Her dad had already yelled at her on the way to drop her off at soccer practice earlier and now this happened. From talking to Ashley’s mom when I dropped off the kids...Ashley can stay with us for awhile. They don’t get along. Until things get sorted. Hailey hugged Ashley on the way back and tried to reassure her that things would be all right and that she had a place to live.. Ashley was blaming herself. Once we were back in the house Hailey went to her room and cried. So it was time for her to get some hugs. Elizabeth said that Ashley has her room there and can stay.

I was going to take photos of Hailey yesterday...late afternoon...Hailey had agreed to pose. YAY! Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them too. There is always today and hopefully tomorrow.

The Lily Pond at Balboa Park

While waiting for class to start, I spent a lovely time at the lily pond. The lilies are beautiful so couldn't resist taking photos. Most were straight on pretty shots.

Started to paint with a lens...trying to make the photo look more like an impressionist painting. Met a lovely lady while doing this. She asked what I was doing and wanted to see my photos. She told me her name was Carmin and that she worked at the Senior Center. She was on a break so we talked until she had to return. She takes care of her seven year old grandson during the week and I told her about Hailey.

This is my favorite from the lily pond.

Making Choices

My family grew up and left home. I managed and lived at a mini storage. A few years before that my husband and I broke up and he moved away. So I was often alone at the storage...sometimes one of my children would move back for awhile...

Then Hailey came to live with me. She was about 18 months old. Before she came to live with me I used to enjoy a glass of wine or two but quit. I was Hailey's sole caretaker and I needed to have my wits about me. If I had to drive us somewhere I sure didn't want to have any alcohol on board.

My mother's uncle...my Great Uncle Burt was an alcoholic. He went for several years not drinking but when he did fall off the wagon he would not drive. Many times he walked over five miles to get home. Then when he sobered up he would get someone to take him to where ever he left his truck. After I learned to drive I took hum to get his truck a couple of times.

Now we read in the news about two moms that caused deaths by drinking and driving. They have killed their own children. No matter how drunk a person is they can make the choice to drive or not. They can choose to not drink if they need to stay sober to protect the lives of others and themselves. So many families have been touched by drunk drivers. My own cousin was killed by a drunk driver that ran a red light and slammed into the driver's side of my cousin's car.

When I think about drunk drivers I remember my Uncle Burt walking home all those miles because no matter how drunk he was he was not going to kill someone by driving drunk.

Almost Full Moon

Balboa Park on Sunday

To get a parking place I came early and waited for my photo class to start. Went over to the rose garden and enjoyed the roses...took some photos to make up for not being in class last week. This one was on the way to the overpass...just waiting for me to see the opportunity.

Took several rose photos but when I was ready to leave saw this and a nice reflection across the street. Tried this several times and like this one best.

Looking for a round punch...

Here too...this looks so fake but I swear it is just like it came from the camera except for downsizing the file.

At the Alcazar Garden waiting to get started...snuck off and took some photos...

Three tiers...

Close as I got to the umbrellas at the Organ Pavilion. It is a beautiful location but from this photo doesn't look like it.

Dorothy

Stromy

Pretty doesn't make it art...

My mother was an artist...not a pro or anything. She painted off and on for years and just when she was getting really good she died. Something a few days ago reminded me of a time we spent together at one of those bulk art sales and so I was inspired to write.

Pretty doesn't make it art. Often we look at a pretty bright oil painting that looks well done. It might be a sunset or an old building overgrown with flowers or a beautiful landscape or sea scape and think how wonderful that is. The artist knows how to paint a pretty scene. And does it over and over until they can paint that scene without even thinking about it. You can look through stacks of these paintings at the "original" oil painting sales, and see the minor differences...sometimes there is a slight change in color tone. I remember when my mother and I, back in the early 1970s, looked through one of those "original" art sales. There were hundreds of paintings many the same scenes over and over. She called it quickie art. Hotels and Motels bought this stuff in bulk.

I saw some of this quickie art out in front of Wal Mart today, and I could see that it was pretty. I remembered Mama and that day so long ago, and I smiled. I think it is fine if someone likes one of these paintings and enjoys seeing it on the wall. Is it art? How can it be art when it is meaningless, emotionless, rote?

We can fall into this trap when we take photo after photo of pretty scenes just as every other person with a camera has already done before us. I like taking pretty pictures but that doesn't mean that I want to stay in that rut for the rest of my life and not stretch myself and learn to do more with my camera.

Digital photography is a whole new world. Taking photos for me in the past was about recording my growing family and the things we did and the places we went. That is important for me...not that the world cares a bit. We don't want to see someone else's family sitting around the table at Thanksgiving. We do want to look at those old photos of our own families. So I would never say that recording is not what photography is about, or that it isn't important. It just isn't art.

With our digital cameras we can do things we couldn't do before. Not because it was not possible, but because we were limited. We had 24 or 36 pictures on our roll of film and because we were not pros had to pay for printing. Polaroid excepted, we couldn't take a photo and then quickly see what we had done. We didn't want to make mistakes. With our digital cameras we can make mistakes until we learn. We can try new things and if they work, fine...if not we can try something else. We can spin the camera, move it to catch an impression of our subject, or change the aperture and shutter speed to catch effects we would not get with "normal" settings. We can create art. We can have fun with our cameras.

Pool

After lots of work and a couple of months the pool was finally ready for water. A little last minute sweeping and the water was turned on. Three hoses ran for several hours. We all guessed when the pool would be full. I said 4am...I was right on. While the water was running into the pool the kids did some sliding.

This shows the deep end of the pool finally getting enough water to swim a little.

I haven't been in yet!

Water!

We don't have enough water in Southern California. Now the water districts have demanded that we cut back ten percent of our past use for the same month last year. We will pay a higher rate for the water we use over our limit.

Building is still going on...new houses and apartments or condos...and where is the water coming from to support all these new homes? Is it from the ten percent we must give up? Or does it even exisit? We had a well when I was growing up in Lakeside. I was a grown woman before there was city water down our road. If it were not for city water that area would still be farm land and dairies with a few scattered houses. Now it is wall to wall houses up one side of the road and down the other. It breaks my heart to see it. I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

I lived in five different houses on that road from the time I was a baby until we left when my children were still in grade school. They say you can't go home again and it is true even when you only move a few miles away.

Lilies and Light

Last night I went outside with my camera and a little led flashlight that I bought from Office Depot...less than $4. I took photos of my agapanthus by using a slow shutter and shining the light on the lilies. This was mostly an experiment, but I got a few photos that I liked.

This morning I was out at dawn to photograph these lilies.

For this one I changed the aperture to f22 and the shutter speed to 1/20 of a second. That darkened the background and softened the sunlight.

Lindo Park

For much of my growing up in Lakeside the lake was dry. There was a lovely boat house with a bridge across to dry land on each side of it. I remember running across that bridge when there was still a little brackish water left in the lake. I was about six or seven so that was in the late 1940s. The boats had long gone. After the lake was dry someone got the idea to scrape the bottom of the lake. Unfortunatly that removed the silt that had worked as a liner keeping what water was left from sinking into the sandy soil. It also was the end of the boat house as it had been. The top was moved and made into a sort of gazebo. For many years water was pumped from a well and that kept a small area near the road wet and full of tulies. We had a very wet winter in about 1952 but even that wasn't enough to bring back the lake. The east half of the lake was made into a Little League field and a raised road way separated the lake in two.

About 1978 we began to have several wet years in a row. It seemed to happen so fast. One day I remember watching the television news show cracked silt in the bottom of some reservoir and then a few weeks later it was raining cats and dogs...We lived in Ramona at the time and I was working down in Escondido. The road between Ramona and Escondido washed out at a bridge not that far from the Wild Animal Park. I had to drive to I-15 and through Poway to get home. The rain poured down so hard I could barely see the road. I was late getting home. After I came up the grade on Poway road it was stop and start traffic. When I got near Mt. Woodson a wrecker was bringing a car up to the road from over the cliff. Then on the way into Ramona the road was flooded over and several cars had overturned. I drove slowly and got through. When I walked in the door at home my hands were shaking and E.R. upset that I was so late started yelling at me.

Lindo Lake filled with water. The houses at the east end of the lake flooded. People got upset. Some water was eventually released from the lake to the San Diego River but not enough to clear the Little League field. Some people wanted the field brought back and others wanted to keep the lake. The Little League field is long gone. The lake had been dry for about thirty years and now the water has been back thirty years or more. People forget.

The park is a beautiful place. Glenda and I met at the REC center. Then drove around the lake and down into the park. Saw lots of geese. Though there seems to be fewer other birds than I've seen there before. Last winter some idiot person with the county decided to drain the lake down. The water is back up but not as far as it should be.



We took photos and had an enjoyable time. We drove over to the far side of the lake and parked where we had a good view of the lake. The boat house was moved back to a spot in the lake where it might have been originally. There is a built up island for it and a dirt walkway to it. Not ever the same as it was though. That didn't make some people happy either as it was a nice place to sit out of the sun where it had been for so many years. I took this photo of the boathouse a few years ago.



Glenda is a lovely person and in no time we had spent an hour and a half. Time to leave, but looking forward to more photo outings.


This is a painted with a camera version of the same leaves.

Neighborhood Watch

The helicopter flew around and a loudspeaker asked someone named Michael to surrender. It sounded serious but we went on doing what we were doing. Elizabeth and Dennis drove down the hill and Elizabeth called me and said that Valle Vista was blocked off at the fire station and that there was an officer down at the mail boxes. Elizabeth heard that the sheriffs were looking for someone that took off out of a house and they were after him. So we locked up. Ashley came over here too.

A couple of months ago I went to the Eucalyptus Hills Home Owners meeting. Good place to learn what is happening, but while there I found an even better place to find out...The Neighborhood Watch email list. I signed up.

I finally managed to get my computer started up. It is sometimes tempermental...wonder if that is because of the cat sleeping on top of it...and I read the emails from the neighborhood watch. Seems that it was a domestic violence situation. The girlfriend is the one that escaped from the house and that they were bringing in the swat team. Sounds about right as the helicopter was gone about the time the emails were sent...Anyway all is quiet now.

Geocities

A few years ago Geocities was a great place to have a web page. Geocities was once exciting and vibrant. There were volunteers that made personal contact with homesteaders. It felt like a real community. My Geocities neighborhood was SoHo. And I used Geocities to show off the free to use computer graphics that I created. Also I had my rose photos on Geocities for a very short time. I wasn't happy with the watermark that began to appear and then the advertising. Then Yahoo bought Geocities...that was when I got my Yahoo email address. I got a paid space to stop the advertising which got worse after Yahoo took over. Then one day, Yahoo would no longer accept class files on Geocities. I was using a program called Artistscope that turns photos into class files to protect them from being downloaded. So had to move all my rose files.

Geocities was not my first web page. I had one at Prodigy and then switched to America Online and a separate personal web page on Netcom. AOL limited online time. Netcom gave me forty hours a month! Netcom was sold to Mindspring and that became Earthlink. My main website is still on Earthlink.

As I got away from the computer graphics that I had been creating I stopped uploading to my Geocities site. Must have been a premonition or something because last February I took all my things off Geocities. Now Yahoo is closing them down...will be all gone sometime in October.

It is sad to see the demise of Geocities.

Saturday Evening

The sun is almost down and most of my yard is in shadow now. Tuxie was gone for a couple of days but now is laying on top of my computer. Glad to have her back. I worry about those darn cats!

I sat out and had some coffee and enjoyed seeing the birds fly back and forth. The hummers are always there because of the feeder. We have a hooded oriole that likes to sip from the humming bird feeder. He is shy and will land on the top of the folded umbrella when I'm out there but will not land on the feeder. I got my camera but he didn't come back. I did get a couple of shots of the house finch at the bird feeder. The sun is all wrong but I like taking back lit photos. I took these with my 200mm lens and then cropped the photos.

Rokkor Lenses

With an adapter the old Minolta Rokkor lenses will work very well with my Olympus E series cameras. They are strictly manual but the fast clear glass makes focusing very easy and the light meter does still work fine. I had three of these lenses from the old days. Then decided to check out ebay. I now have six more of these wonderful lenses. I took these photos with my Oly E-520 and a Rokkor lens.

Capturing the Light

It is still about the light. My eye catches something that looks interesting to me, and it usually is about shapes created with light and shadow. I want to catch that with my camera. If I look there are bits and pieces of photographs everywhere. Not everything I take is worth a second look. But sometimes what I saw...what drew me to just that scene comes through and I want to show it to others.

In the Botanical Garden at Balboa Park, I saw an interesting plant...or flower...I don't know what it is. The sunlight was shining down creating shadows and splashes of bright color. We were doing bw but I knew that this one was going to be color. I took a few photos and then the sun slowly moved to light up the edges of a greenish leaf with a bright red rim. I had to capture that. I snapped away and was lucky to get one that I liked...I was not using auto focus and with my eyesight getting a clear photo is sometimes a problem.

Then the sun moved a bit and the light no longer fell just right to illuminate the leaf edge. Still I had captured a moment in time that may not ever be there again. I haven't gotten to where I can easily set up lights and create my own scenes though I have done so. I don't usually see in my mind what I want to photograph before the fact and when I do I am often not all that happy with the results. I may get there someday...

A child's smile, a certain rose, the light falling on a leaf, we can find these again but maybe not quite like the first time. If I have a passion with this thing called photography it is capturing the light and a moment in time.

Saturday Afternoon

Jackie, Hailey, and I planned to have lunch in Alpine. I didn't take my camera. On the way we decided to drive up to Pine Valley instead. So I missed some great photo ops. Still we had a great lunch at Major's Diner. They have a 1950s theme and super good food. Photos of Elvis and the very front end of an old shiny red car on the wall behind the lunch counter...head lights turned on and all

We saw some back country on the drive which is always nice. Though every trip to the back country we see more and more new homes. On the way back home we drove through Guatay along the old highway 80. Then we took a detour through Blossom Valley. Some beautiful houses there. We wanted to see Lake Jennings. They have the parking lot blocked off, though we could drive along the shore. Jackie said she used to walk her dog along the path around the lake but now there is a no dogs allowed sign. Things change. When I was at the storage I sometimes used to buy fast food and drive up to that parking lot and eat my lunch and enjoy the view of the lake. Peaceful.

Saturday Morning

Congratulations to Serena! Congratulations to both Williams sisters for getting to the finals at Wimbledon. It is hard to cheer for one when I want both Venus and Serena to be the winner. And they are.

Del Mar Fair

We went to the Del Mar Fair today. Got there when they opened actually before they opened and still had to wait in line. I got in the line while Elizabeth and the girls went to the ticket booth. The girls won large stuffies. I told them that they needed to remember that they would be carrying them...guess what...I got to carry Hailey's and Elizabeth...Ashley's. They had gone on several rides while I was taking photos with the group. Cell phones are wonderful. Easy to meet up with cell phones.

My sister got us separated back when we were teens living in Milton, Washington. We went to the Puyallup Fair with some high school friends of hers. She had a bad cold that day. While I was not paying attention, Barb decided to leave the group and find a phone and get a ride home. Those girls walked off and left us. No phones at the fair, and we couldn't find the girls. We walked and walked. Finally we walked outside to a drugstore. My stepfather was a fireman...worked twenty four hours on and twenty four off. It was his working day and my mother didn't drive. Barb was totally not thinking straight. My stepfather's brother in law agreed to come get us when he got off work several hours later. Barb wanted to wait at the drug store. But I took us back into the fair and we went to the grandstand show after I bought a box of Kleenex! That was one long day.

Ashley

Ashley and Hailey

Hailey
Carousel

Took several photos of the carousel just having fun with my camera.