Random Thoughts

Sunday my husband and I spent about an hour talking about photography. He is really encouraging. So today I took my camera when I walked across campus to a meeting.  And I saw a little garden that I had never noticed before.  I took some pictures.

Be prepared to be subjected to more pictures as time goes on.

This morning as I crossed campus on my way to the office, I passed this tree.

I pass it every day.  But today it came alive — or I did. How many other things do I walk past every day without seeing?

I had thought that I would try to take a picture a day this year.  But I didn’t remember at the beginning of the year, do I had decided that I would have to wait until next year.  Today I realized that eleven months of pictures is better than no pictures.  So are eleven pictures.

I am trying to force myself to focus more on possibilities than on problems.  It really runs counter to my nature, but I am trying.  This picture is a first attempt at that.  Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

They water the grass a couple times a week here.  I end up walking through the puddles a lot.  I have looked at them and said I should take some pictures.  Today I actually did.

Having lived in Albuquerque where everything was various shades of beige, I am really enjoying the lush green of the campus here at ENMU.  This is a shot from the corner of the Jack Williamson Liberal Arts building, where I will be located.  I think there is more green on this small campus than there is in all of Albuquerque.

I am fascinated by the idea of life elsewhere in the universe.  I have for many years participated in the SETI@home project.   I have loved movies about life out there for as long as I can remember, my favorite always having been The Day the Earth Stood Still.

A few years ago we took our son to Roswell, NM. We went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center.  We read all about the 1947 incident.  It was really fascinating.  But it was hard for me to believe that a weather balloon could be mistaken for a UFO.

Fast forward to May 31, 2008.  My last night in Albuquerque, my daughter and her family and I went to dinner.  We were walking to the door of the restaurant and looked up to see a weather balloon.  I commented to my son-in-law that I didn’t see how anyone could mistake that for a UFO.  After we got home, my daughter and I were coming in the house and looked up again.  We saw something in the sky.

I took a number of pictures, and they all came out the same: They showed a white globe.

Even though I KNEW it was a balloon and, at times, could see that it was a balloon with my eyes, I could not get the balloon to look like a balloon in the photos.  My daughter got her camera, and we both had the same problem.

Finally, after about a dozen pictures between us, we were both able to get the balloon to show up as a balloon in a photo:

It is easy to see how someone could have been confused back in 1947.  We were taking pictures with 8MP digital cameras, and they recorded a white globe.  Had we not seen the weather balloon in the daylight, we might not have been able to see the bottom of the balloon in the twilight.

It was really interesting to read the paper the next day and see a big article about it.

But none of this changes my belief that there is other life out there somewhere.  As Ellie Arroway says in the movie Contact:

I’ll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space. Right?

We are not big on celebrating holidays in my house.  We have lived in too many countries where we couldn’t really celebrate US holidays, so we are used to not doing anything on July 4th.  But tonight, sitting in my living room, I kept hearing fireworks go off.  Not firecrackers, which we had heard all day, but fireworks.  I went out to look and say that in the subdivision that starts about 2 blocks form my house they were having fireworks that rivaled many displays I have seen small cities put on.

I had never thought about taking pictures of fireworks, so these aren’t very good, but I gave it a shot anyway! (If you click on the pitures, you can see them larger.)

Many people have been very kind, encouraging me to get out there and take pictures. My life has been a little crazy lately, but I have been trying. This is one I took today as we were driving through Texas.

We had been going along fairly flat land — or so we thought. We came around a corner and got a breathtaking view that extended for miles. By the time I got the camera out, I had missed the best shot. But this one was pretty nice, too, I think.

Well, I had posted my photo to my profile two or three weeks ago with Flickr, but I wasn’t sure if I remembered how to do it or not. So I posted those pictures of my friends from the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project. It was really easy, once I looked at the FAQs again! Will I remember how to do it next time? Who knows? But eventually it will get easier. At least I hope so!

mel=nancy=marsha=gary

Originally uploaded by mckeand.

More Writing Project friends. This was taken at the October 2004 Showcase of Best Practices held in Hammond, LA.

Gabe
Originally uploaded by mckeand.

This is my colleague, fellow Writing Project teacher-consultant and friend, Gabe. This photo was taken during the writing mini-marathon he hosted at St. Joseph Abbey in November, 2004. He lives in Tucson now.