My Blog

This year began badly. Probably not a good time to write my first blog. I spent the Christmas holidays in Cedar Hill, Texas with my daughter Mary and son-in-law Rob. We had a wonderful time.

I got back to Milwaukee on January 4th. Four days later I felt a cold coming on. This is especially bad for me because I have emphysema. Before long I had pneumonia. Except for doctor visits I was home bound until late February. I'm almost back to normal now - that is to say: short of breath, hearing impaired, a bum right shoulder. Considering my age, not too bad.

During my illness I was able to work on my website. My concentration was spotty but I struggled through. Last November I "graduated" from Photoshop Elements to their big bore CS4. It's a joy to work with its many powerful photo-processing features. At the same time I purchased a new computer with enough RAM to handle huge photo files. Just two weeks ago, in anticipation of better times ahead, I upgraded my camera from a Canon Rebel XT to a Rebel X1i (low-noise ISOs up to 3200!).

There was a time (it seems like yesterday) when I carried a camera bag with two SLR bodies and two or three lenses. No more. For some time now I make do with one DSLR body fitted with an 18 - 85 mm lens. It works fine for the kind of people photography I like to do and serves adequately for the occasional landscape.

My forays have shrunk in size, restricted to easy walking distance from the best parking spot I can find. Despite these limitations, I expect to find rewarding images with my new camera; with CS4 and my new computer I'm digitizing film images from my backlog, and upgrading images on my website. My good friend, Ron Wallace, has moved my computer equipment from the damp and chilly basement into my sunlit first floor ex-dining room. Things are looking up, looking good. I'll use this space to write about it.

Throughout my life, even before the photography bug bit me, I'e found pleasure in reading. Books were the closest companions of my youth. My wife, a voracious reader, shared that love. In Joan's work room I recently came upon a small stack of books by an author writing under the pseudonym, Miss Read (Dora Jesse SAint according to Wikipedia). I can't recall her ever mentioning them. Three were dog-eared from use but four paperbacks appeared to be pristine. I started to read one and found it delightfully clean, simple, and old-fashioned; full of quirky humorous characters, a mild mix of Charles Dickenss and Jane Austen - Joan's kind of book.

I suspect that Joan may not have had a chance to read the newer volumes. I've continued to read one called "Fresh from the Country." I feel that I'm reading it along with Joan.

The Lovely Words:

A gathering of words by a fine writer can alter my mood, lift my spirits. I will end each of these blogs with such a selection from my favorites, chosen not for its subject matter, but simply for its structural elegance.

This is from The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh:

"His strongest tastes were negative. He abhorred plastics, Picasso, sunbathing and jazz-everything in fact that had happened in his own lifetime. The tiny kindling of charity which came to him through his religion sufficed only to temper his disgust and change it to boredom."

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