The Gryphon's Feather Studio

The Sunday Snap

The Sunday Snap = weekly ideas for photograph making...

 

Sunday, October 31, 2010:

Shoot them NOT smiling

 

 

 

If it's a likeness, alone, it's not a success. If, through my portraits, you can come to know the subjects more meaningfully, if it synthesizes your feelings toward someone whose work has imprinted itself on your mind--if you see a photograph and say, 'Yes, this is the person,' with a little new insight--that is a beautiful experience.  Yousuf Karsh

iPhone Photo Friday

Happy Halloween!

heart song tonight

Touching my heart as I sing to the baby:

 

Simple Gifts" was written by Elder Joseph Brackett .   He wrote the music when he first joined the Shakers at Gorham, Maine, when his father's farm helped to form the nucleus of a new Shaker settlement. He later wrote the lyrics while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848. 

These are the lyrics to his one-verse song:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

 

Several Shaker manuscripts indicate that this is a "Dancing Song" or a "Quick Dance." The references to "turning" in the last two lines have been identified as dance instructions.

The song was largely unknown outside of Shaker communities, until it became world famous- thanks to its use in Aaron Copland's score for Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring, first performed in 1944.

And tonight, as I sat in the quiet dark, singing along to the lullabies on the cd in the player in Sunny's room, Simple Gifts came round and was just right.

Sent from my iPhone

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry:

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Here’s our Halloween poem for this year, in the thin dry voice of a ghost, as captured by Katie Cappello who lives in Northern California.

A Ghost Abandons the Haunted

You ignore the way light filters through my cells,
the way I have of fading out—still
there is a constant tug, a stretching,
what is left of me is coming loose. Soon,

I will be only crumbs of popcorn,
a blue ring in the tub, an empty
toilet paper roll, black mold
misted on old sponges,

strands of hair woven into
carpet, a warped door
that won’t open, the soft spot
in an avocado, celery, a pear,

a metallic taste in the beer, a cold sore
on your lip—and when I finally lose my hold
you will hear a rustle and watch me spill
grains of rice across the cracked tile.

I've lost my friend

I met Carol Parks a number of years ago online (just over a decade ago, perhaps?), and then in person, just a couple of years after that.   She came for my first class of the Artfest week, that year, and stayed for all the others- even though that meant paying twice for each of those two subsequent days, since it was too late to switch.  We connected, clicked.  She was beautifully crazy, and she shone with incandescent light.  Over the past four years, we became closer friends and I came to know Carol as a force of nature, a woman of grand gestures and ideas, of wild creativity, and sage advice.  I loved Carol.

And, now she is gone. 

I found out a few days ago, and since then, there is this hole, this space, this echoingly empty place in my heart that my mind rolls around to, where I think of her, and I cannot fathom that she isn't going to be in her chock-full-of art home, she isn't going to be emailing her latest fabulous ideas or her latest crazy news, we aren't going to screech with laughter, or cry tears of loss together.   Because, now the tears and the loss are mine, and she, beautiful spirit, has moved on to her next adventure.

My heart goes out to her tribe of friends, and to her daughters who have had a year of sorrow, losing their grandparents, and now their mom.

 

journal page spread in progress

Erase Hate Day

Erasing hate. 

 

Teaching love. kindness.

Respecting the dignity and the worth of others.

 

Sent from my iPhone

home

at last...

 

Almost Home

I'm packing and otherwise getting ready to head home from Portland, Oregon. I was teaching at the Art & Soul retreat. I have had a lovely trip and had so many nice people in my classes! There were so many familiar faces from other teaching adventures and from my online classes -plus I had the chance to meet new folks. (thank you!)  I had such a wonderful time with good friends, too. Lucky, lucky me!!

I do have to tell you - I miss my honey, my littles and my puppy!  I cannot wait to be HOME! 

More soon as I do need to sleep now....

artichoke flowers at the Portland Farmer's Market today

my brain

Sent from my iPhone

I get asked about my organzational system rather often.  I'm no role model, for sure, as my keys are missing and have been for a week.  But since you've asked, I thought I'd show you my system - my brain.  That's my brain up there in that planner. 

I started using Franklin-Covey planner products way back in the early 90s- those planners were big at Penn State when I worked there.  Franklin Covey came in to do  workshops and we were given a nice voucher towards a planner.  It was hard to find a good fit- with sizes and accessories.  Nowadays, you can mix and match between a few brands of planner to get it right- Franklin Covey, Day Runner and DayTimer... maybe even others, all have a 8.5 x 5.5" -ish page size that fits in the same size binder.

So, the book you see up there is my planner, and of course, it has a calendar. I use a month-on-two pages with tabs, and week-on-two-pages sheets that I stick inside the current month.  I like the weekly ones without hourly appointment blocks.  I also use to-do lists, "today "scheduling sheets with hour blocks, and notes pages.  All the products come from different brand names.  

The to-do lists are self explanatory, but it helps them seem less overwhelming if I make them in categories: House,  Kids, Errands, Blog, Classes, Computer, River, etc.

The "today" scheduling sheets go from 7am to 8pm. Of course, they are useful for planning a day with multiple commitments at set times; if I have an appointment at 9:30, and then a conference call at 1:15, then I know I have x amount of time between- what might I get done in that amount of time?  But, they are very useful for when I keep feeling like- where the heck did my day go?  Where?  But more useful to me, is tracking my time.  Our home is my responsibility- it was even when I worked outside the home- the laundry, grocery, cleaning - all of the blah blah blah in home keeping and kid wrangling are always on my to-do list. Sometimes I forget just how much time it takes to get those things finished.  So, tracking what I do in a day, helps me understand how long various things take and then I can plan accordingly, I also know where my day went and feel a heckuva ton better.

I use Notes sheets to write it all down and sort it all out, and then those get tucked into the most important part of that planner- the part where I keep my brain- the part that takes up two-thirds of this monster planner- the TABS!

The key thing that makes the planner incredibly useful are those tabs.   I have my whole life organized inside sections denoted by those tabs. I have a tab for each child, each online class, classes I teach at venues, notes from things I've read, all the paint colors I own, details about magazine articles needing written, book contributions I need to complete, ideas, travel info, class concepts, and of course, my book.  I print out important things (class descriptions, my table of contents, emails) on regular  8.5 x 11.5 paper, fold them in half and puch them to fit in the binder.   It really is my brain.  I empty everything I am trying to remember into that planner.

Yes, I could get apps for my phone and software for my computer.  Been there-done that. Computers go to sleep, turn off,  sit silently. I forget to use them.  I ignore the reminders and push notifications.  But my planner?  Oh, it is large and looming and full and well, I do like paper and books.  And, just seeing the big fat book on a tabletop is a reminder in and of itself...