California Fever

plunge

can i go deeper?
will my heart feel invaded?
i blindly submerge

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This week's prompt at Poetry Thursday has me quite excited.  Of course, excitement doesn't always translate into action.  ;) 

Although I fell behind while on my trip, I've been trying to get back onto the 37 Days Challenge shadow portrait bandwagon.  My shadows Flickr set is here.  The 37 Days Shadows Portraits pool is here.

I've also done a couple more Wreck This Journal pages since I returned.  That set is here.  The WTJ pool is here.  There's some amazing stuff there. 

Today is "Picnic Day" at UC Davis.  It's a HUGE deal.  It's the largest student-run event in the country, and it draws about 50,000-60,000 visitors to campus. (I just checked the website and they're implementing the 'rain plan.'  Bummer.  Yesterday was gorgeous, but we knew rain was in the forecast for today.) It all kicks off with a parade this morning at 10:00, which goes by half a block from our house.  Last year J was out of town and I walked to the corner with our neighbors (who've since moved) to watch the parade.  This year I think I might not go any farther than the wicker love seat on our teensy front porch.  I'll simply roll up the bamboo screen and watch from there.  Because at 11:00 I'm scheduled to meet up (on campus) with a group of Obama campaign volunteers to work the crowd.  The Sacramento for Obama group (which already has over 300 members--not MySpace friends, but members) coordinated this for us.  Those of us in the Yolo County for Obama group (we're just getting started) are going to join forces with them.  It will be my first gathering, even though at my.barackobama.com I'm the group administrator for the both the Davis and Yolo County groups.  I missed the March 31 meeting here in Davis (since I was working that afternoon in preparation for my bereavement leave).  Our next Yolo County meeting is April 24th.  Today I'll have a chance to meet the co-chairs of the Sacramento group.  That group is already doing fabulous things and planning a large gathering for all of the Northern California groups on June 9th.  I'm thrilled that Sacramento is going gangbusters.  Our poor ol' capitol city often gets overlooked by the glitzier L.A./Hollywood, San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley glamour.  But Sacramento's where we're making laws, baby!  I saw "Ba-ROCK's" on the Phoenix 4 Obama group's site a few weeks ago and thought it was a clever idea.  I biked all over town yesterday (while J was at a rehearsal in Sacramento) looking for rocks.  Didn't find any, but I finally found some bags of "accent gems" (clear flat-shaped 'rocks' in different shades) for $1/bag at the Dollar Store.  So I'll be spending my morning, Sharpie in hand, writing the Yolo County MySpace info on those suckers, as well as "Obama '08!" and *H*O*P*E*.  And let me tell you, that's a lot of info to write on such a small space.  ;) 

garden

Today has been a busy day.  It's also a gorgeous day--temps around the mid-70's.  We hit the laundromat this morning, making a break for IHOP while the washers were running.  Then I went to the library.  They have a small alcove where they sell hardcovers for $1 and paperbacks for 50 cents.  I picked up a few books for the road (including a couple for my brother and sister-in-law.)  I also picked up a golf-related biography for J.  Then it was on to the Dollar Store where I put together a small Easter basket of (non-edible) goodies for my coworker who'll be stuck covering the front office by herself all of next week.  After that, Jeffrey drove me to school.  I needed to pick up my bike, which I'd left there days before, and I'd forgotten to do a few things yesterday.  I worked for about 90 minutes, with a blues radio show blasting in the background.  When I'd finished, I got on my bike and pedaled over to our school garden to snap a few photos.  It's a lovely garden, don't you think?  Snapped a quick shadow photo (it's here) and headed off to Rite-Aid to pick up some toiletries and sympathy cards.  Now I'm ready for a nap.  J wants to head to Wal-Mart for a few things, but I'm hoping he'll let me stay home and curl up in bed with a book instead.  :)

Taylor's birthday

THANK YOU for all of your very kind and supportive comments.  I truly appreciate it.  I'm going to carry all of you with me as I head out on what will surely be quite a road trip...

Shadow #7 is here.  I ran errands after work and by the time I took this photo, Jeffrey was cooking a take-n-bake pizza and getting ready to head to a gig.  I walked to the park around the corner trying to find a slice of light in the setting sun.  Plopped my butt on the curb at the park and snapped--didn't even care what it looked like.  I was tired.  I am tired.  I'd made sure to cover anything that might come up next week at work, and my coworkers are all being very gracious in offering to help out any way they can.  I learned today that we not only get bereavement leave--we get up to 5 days for out-of-state travel for it.  So I'm able to take all of next week off with pay.  Even better, Spring Break is the week of April 9th.  That means that I'm off work for the next 16 days.  Just typing that almost makes me cry.  I've been really ready for a break--I just could have never expected my break would double in length because of a family loss.

The viewing is Wednesday night in Phoenix; the service is Thursday morning.  It looks like we'll hit the road sometime on Monday.  I'll keep you posted.  I'm hoping Marty and Chelle will bring their laptop--we'll see.

With everything that's happened, I completely forgot to mention here that TODAY is Taylor's 6th birthday.  I thought some of you might want to pop over to her blog to wish her a Happy Birthday.  I'm going to do that right now...

And then I'm going to put on my PJ's, grab the new Annie* and curl up in bed.  I might even have another good cry.

(*Hey, look, she's in Portland on Tuesday night.  The Bagdad is where they shot some of this film.  That Hawthorne neighborhood is my old stomping grounds.)

shadows #5 and #6

Forgot to take the camera yesterday and I was gone all day.  Made up for it by taking two shots early this morning on the way to work.  #5 is here and #6 is here.

shadow #4

Shadow #4

Come on, join us!  We're over here in the 37 Days Shadow Portraits pool.  It's fun...really!  ;)  Your 37 days can start anytime!

dreaming on Vox

It rained on Monday.  That combined with the fact that I fell asleep at 5:45 and didn't wake until 12:45 means that I missed shooting a timely shadow self-portrait for Monday.  You'll have to settle for a shot of my limp hand against the kitchen wall shot in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.  Maybe the sun will come out today...

If you're looking for something more closely resembling a 'real' post, I'm over on Vox this morning.

wtj 2 and shadow #2

New post at Ning about 'wreck this journal' and another shadow portrait.

wtj 1 and shadow #1

My first Wreck This Journal page (see post below).  Stuff picked up off the street while walking to Borders to buy the journal.  I call this "beauty is in the eye of the gutter"...because that's where I found an empty Beauty Rush lip gloss.

I can already tell that this could become really addictive.  ;)

And here's shadow photo #1 for Patti's 37 Days Challenge.

spinning

I don't know why I felt compelled to title this post that way.  Maybe because my head and heart are spinning at the moment.  I've just been by Patti's 37 Days blog...and she's done it again, at least for me.  She's created a brand-new 37 Days Challenge.  Actually there are two parts to it this time--an immediate action and a movement over 37 days.  All to do with our shadows.   

From Patti's blog post:  "Most of the shadows of this life are caused standing in our own sunshine."  ~Henry Ward Beecher

During my last year or so in the islands I began to occasionally photograph my shadow.  It gave me great pleasure to do it.  I don't know why--maybe because I don't like having my face photographed.  I typically look horrible in photos.  I'm not being self-deprecating--the camera loves some people, but it doesn't typically like me.  Years ago I had to stand-in for a celeb host on a shoot we were doing while the gaffers tweaked the lights.  Our director told me later that I looked good on camera--that I really popped.  Given that he was a friend, I thought he was just B.S.'ing me.  But maybe still photos just aren't my medium--maybe I need movement.  Although that was 15 years ago--I suspect that at 52 I'd just rather not capture my image anywhere.  :) 

But I am going to start capturing a daily photo of my shadow as part of Patti's new challenge.  And just to get the ball rolling, I pulled some old photos off DVD's and started a new "shadows" Flickr set.  I'm not going to count them as part of my 37 days of shadows--I put them there as a reminder that I've already dipped my toe in and that, yes, the water's fine.

The other thing that's had my head spinning the last few days is Keri Smith's new project, Wreck This Journal.  (I've already posted about this at Ning.)  She has a book by that name coming out in June.  She's created a new site for the project and is posting assignments and allowing participants to suggest instructions. And as wild as one's imagination can get visualizing some of those ideas, even better is that we can see what participants are doing because Keri's started a new Flickr pool where participants can post phots of their Wreck This Journal pages.  Check it out--there's some fabulous stuff there.

But what is Wreck This Journal, you might be asking?  And why would someone want to wreck a perfectly good journal? :)  Read the story on the Wreck This Journal site where she talks about creative destruction:

The intent of creative destruction is to move beyond aesthetic judgements of whether a mark/alteration is good or bad, but instead to allow the mark to exist as documentation of a physical experience or as kind of expression. While the term “destruction” has historically had a negative connotation, in this context it is used to imply simply “alteration."

Maybe it's just me, but these two projects--Patti's and Keri's--seem like wonderful companion pieces.  Shadow as a counterpoint to light...destruction as a counterpoint to creation.  I can remember sitting in a diner with Jeffrey late one night after a gig years ago and telling him that one thing I'd begun to learn as part of my (sobriety) recovery was that if I embraced my dark side, I wouldn't have to live from it.  I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but both of these projects call out to me for the act of embracing that which we sometimes innately turn away from.

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I've got a busy weekend.  Ciara has a championship basketball game this morning.  Her team of 9-year-olds is undefeated.  Rumor has it there's a pizza party afterwards.  My folks are in town for the weekend.  J and I will be heading to Mill Valley (one of my favorite California towns--Marin is my old stomping grounds) later because he has a gig at Sweetwater tonight. (It's a club I first started frequenting 27 years ago.)  ;)  Regular readers will recall me mentioning Bonnie Hayes.  She plays Sweetwater tomorrow night.  Her old pal Vicki Randle is also on the bill.  (I just have to plug them when I can because they're both so talented and I've loved their music for years.)

That's all just to say that I think I'm going to pass on Sunday Scribblings tomorrow and focus on these other projects this weekend. The prompt this week is "in the kitchen"...something I know very little about anyway.  ;)  But I do want to congratulate Sunday Scribblings on hitting the 1-year mark!

Have a wonderful weekend.

 

giving...just a little more...

If you're a fan of the blog 37 Days, (and who isn't?), then you'll be pleased to know that Patti has compiled a 2007 calendar with 12 of her (and our) favorite 37 Days challenges.  And she's donating her profits to support Meta's dream.  (And if you haven't read that "Forever Hold Your Penguin Dear" post about Meta, have your holiday hankies ready.)  How much do we love Patti?  MUCH.

If you live in (or near) Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont or Wisconsin and plan to attend events over the holidays (or at any time), please consider purchasing your tickets through Virtuous if they're available.  (We did.)  Their tag line is:  Helping People One Ticket at a Time.  They donate 10% of their profit from each ticket to the food bank in the community sponsoring the event.

Consider making a donation in yours or a loved one's name to Small Planet Fund--scroll down to read their 5 Principles.  Their grantees have included two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Here's the part where you're probably going to groan, "I don't want to hear about Darfur when I'm getting ready for the holidays."  I don't want to hear about it either (because this time of year is all about the pretty and glitzy), but I can't stop thinking about the millions of people in Darfur who've suffered in that incredibly violent humanitarian crisis.  Why do we have to resort to movie stars and Olympic athletes traveling around the world to meet with government officials, pleading for someone to intercede with the government in Darfur?  Shouldn't that be the job of our government?  Here's the latest field report from Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).  These aid workers place their lives on the line every day to help the victims of violent genocide in Darfur (not to mention all of the work they do everywhere else in the world.)  Please consider making even a small donation to support them. 

"The mother proudly showed the bundle in her arms, a 13-day-old baby girl, her age easily remembered because it was 14 days before that she fled her village in fear of the violence that followed soon afterwards. The baby girl was born under a tree and started her life as a displaced person." ~MSF December 8th Field News from Darfur

Please take all that support and love and generosity you've shown towards Taylor and match it in your heart for that little baby girl, so she can grow up and live a healthy life filled with hope.  Save Darfur is an alliance of over 100 faith-based, humanitarian and human rights organizations.  Please give them a look.  Thank you.