christening

One of the best parts of being home for the holidays this year: meeting our new (first) niece, Rika. This morning we woke to a white frosted glaze over the ground and every branch. The family headed across the field to the little country church for Rika's christening, and Derek and I are honored to be one set of her godparents. She was really beautiful in the embroidered dress her grandma made her.

As the morning's excitement settled into the afternoon, we had a chance to pull on our boots, grab a saw, make our way to the back of the pasture, and cut down the perfect Christmas tree. 

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We're kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols.                                     -Clark W. Griswold

So we cut it down, drug it back, and stood it up- little full, lotta sap.

why do you?

At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect- a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and it is part of the biography by which we want to be known.

-Robert Adams[1]

I've been thinking a lot lately about photographs. Not why we make the photos that we do, but why we make them at all. So I'm wondering, why do you make pictures?

[1] Adams, Robert. Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews. New York: Aperture, 1994.

car-free

Three years ago I quit driving my car and started walking everywhere. (Happy anniversary, feet.) It started as an experiment- I wanted to see what it would be like living in rural/suburban Midwestern American without a car. This was interesting from the start since our subdivision didn't have a sidewalk leading out. Originally, I was searching for a sense of place, narrowing the otherwise overwhelming task of understanding/knowing a community to the area which I could travel on foot. This is how I'd always chosen to see a place when traveling somewhere new, so I applied it to where I lived. After a year of daily walking in DeKalb, Illinois (my final year of grad school), we moved to France, and it's how I've learned the landscpe here (if not the language). Up until this past March, Derek also managed by bike and bus, until he needed to make frequent, anytime day-or-night trips to a further work facility. Which, okay, I'll admit I benefit from a ride home from the grocery store (but I'm still not driving and make the 6 mile walk to get there). It's not quite the same as my previous independence, but I don't think I'll go back to owning a car or driving. Three years, and walking over 10,000 kilometers has given me lots of thinking time and has reached into all parts of daily life (it's also worn the soles off several pairs of shoes).  I could babble endlessly on what walking has taught me about distance, about values (American and French), about spacial relationships, about weather, about myself, but here's something someone else said, and I like it: 

 All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.  ~Hal Borland

sat on side of hills

“I tried to hitchhike through Provence, outside Aix, where Cézanne painted, ended up hiking 20 miles but it was worth it …  sat on side of hills and pencil sketched drawings of the Cézanne country, dull red rusty rooftops, blue hills, white stones, green fields, hasn’t changed in all these years … mauve tan farm houses in quiet fertile farmer’s valleys, rustic, with weathered pink powder roof tiles, a grey green mild warmness, voices of girls, gray stacks of baled hay, a fertilized chalky garden, a cherry tree in white bloom (April), a rooster crowing at mid day mildly, tall Cézanne trees in back … etc. just like Cézanne nein? Then a rattly old bus through Arles country, the restless afternoon trees of Van Gogh in the high mistral wind, the cypress rows tossing, yellow tulips in window boxes, a vast outdoor café with huge awning, and the gold sunlight …”

– Jack Kerouac in a letter to Ed White dated 28 April 1957