—c’est juste un petit garçon.
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Tire Swing, School Yard
Once upon a time when Gramps was big and I was littler than Akiva (as the story would begin, as told to my children), Cate & Dan & I went to a playground somewhere near our old house in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Ari and Mom were probably there, too. Which is to say, I am certain Mom walked us there & she wouldn’t have gone without Ari, tho I certainly don’t remember Ari being there at all. What I do remember is the tire swing.
I remember Cate & Dan were playing on the tire swing. They were swinging wildly back & forth, laughing loudly. I remember I wanted to play, too, but they wouldn’t let me. Or perhaps I tried but they immediately swung too wildly before I got a grip, and I cried to be let off. Or maybe I cried for them to stop so that I could get a grip on the chains, and they told me to get off. Or maybe Mom took me off, but either way, I wasn’t on the tire swing. I wanted to be on the tire swing, but I had to wait until they were done.
After what seemed like an interminable amount of time but was likely only eleven hours hours or perhaps ten minutes, Cate and Dan jumped off the tire swing and ran away. I didn’t like the fact that they ran away from me any more than the fact that they played on the tire swing without me. Mom said it was my turn, so I had to get on.
The problem with swinging on a tire swing alone when one is three or four years old is that it is nearly impossible.1 Whereas Cate & Dan had each other to pump with, I had no one. I knew how to pump a swing standing up, so I tried to pump the tire swing. As I pumped I must have leaned slightly to one side, because the tire swing began to spin. I didn’t want it to spin. I crouched toward the center to get a better grip on the chains, and the tire swing began to spin faster! I leaned in further so as to keep from flying off. The swing spun faster and faster! The world was a blur! I could not stop it! I started to scream. Mom must have thought I was screaming in delight, as she did nothing to save me. I started to cry, and the swing kept swinging, faster, faster! It was horrible! I wanted to stop! No one was helping me!
After far too long, the swing stopped spinning. Maybe Mom had stopped it.
“Are you done?” Mom asked.
I was crying too hard to answer her, so I walked away a little bit and collapsed on the ground.2
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- The average age to overcome the impossibility of swinging one’s self on a tire swing is five.
- If I was annoyed at Mom for not saving me immediately, I had the right to be so, at least for 10 minutes. Akiva, on the other hand, has the right to be annoyed at me between the ages of puberty until his mid-thirties for letting him wear knee-socks, shorts, & loafers on the playground at age five.
Johnville Bog & Forest Park, Back Entry
On a cool late August day, we walk around the fence on the far side of the Johnville Bog parking lot to enter the bog the back way. Fence, boulders, and signage are all there to try to keep four-wheelers out of the protected area. In my observation, most people driving four-wheelers have little regard for protected areas.
The back trail starts up a steep eroded ridge.
It goes through a disturbed woodland rife with four-wheeler trails.
The trail emerges from the small woodland on top of a rocky ridge.
Below the ridge, one can see the extent of four-wheeler disturbance.
This whole area was once boreal forest bog.
Now, little grows outside the protected area but a few scattered poplars.
We walk through the disturbed area into the forest park.
Tall trees grow here.
We walk through the woods, into the bog.
Black spruce, tamarack, cottongrass and Labrador tea
bring back the sights and smells of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Mouths agape, pitcher plants beckon.
I love this place.
Close-Ups of the Colony
At hutch #1, the turkeys—
roost above the rabbits.
Never trust a turkey.
Tucker & Clover produce two basic colors of rabbit:
agouti—
and cream.
They taste the same.
All the rabbits like the little hutch with the hole.
The pint-sized ones go under, the quart-sized ones go inside,
half-gallons flop where the rocks are and hop on the roof,
and the gallon-sized hoppers flop about under the lean-to sides.
Rabbits love to be pet on the bridge of the nose.
Tucker checks up on a young-‘un hiding in the sticks.
Feeding station A is at hutch #2.
Rabbits poop a lot where they eat, so we are continually cleaning & moving the hutches.
Wabbit nose.
Never trust a turkey.
Feeding station B is under the yellow A-frame.
The cool sand under the fire pit is a popular flopping place.
Zap is out!
Never trust a turkey.
The Rabbit Colony
This is our rabbit colony. As I am actually telling you this story a while after the photo was taken, I’ll tell it to the end.
We had two adults who were together from late March through October. They are inside an electric poultry netting, which they respected. There was once one young rabbit who liked to squeeze through it, so we isolated him in the finish compost bin for about a week until he got too fat and broke the habit. We named him Zap. When he was big enough, we ate him.
Outside the electric netting is a chain-link fence. At the bottom of the chain link is poultry wire, which kept any escapees from really truly escaping.
The rabbits have a number of hides: tilted wheelbarrows, the pile of sticks surrounded by overgrown grass (they were 100% in charge of lawn mowing & chose to leave that grass long), two two-story hutches, a yellow A-frame, the fire pit, the finishing compost bin, and the little hutch with the hole in it. They liked them all differently but equally.
During this period of time, it was fine to keep the turkeys in with the rabbits, but when the turkeys got too big for us to pick up they also got quite interested in pecking out the rabbits’ eyes. We moved them into the space between the chain-link and the electric fence, to protect the rabbits.
In late October, the colony was invaded by a mink. It ate the entirety of a young litter, two month-old rabbits, and a rabbit that was relatively mature before we dismantled the colony. The grow-outs were brought to the balcony with the buck, the 12-week-olds were processed, and the youngest ones had, by then, all been eaten. The doe and one of her daughters were left in the lawn but locked up securely at night.
The River Singer
Akiva sings on a little island in the Coaticook.
Turkey in the Sand
Martin got more sand for the sandbox.
Akiva told him where to put it.
Akiva taught the turkeys how to operate a dump truck.
Turkeys are very observant.
After Akiva left, the turkeys played happily in the sandbox without him.
When they were done, they parked all the trucks neatly in one corner.
Kiss Goodbye
Mollie Miller
July 3, 1917 – January 28, 2021
Visit to Syracuse (the camera saga)
Today is not July 27th, 2020. Today is December 25th, 2020. It’s the tail end of Christmas day. The truth is, I rarely post my blogs on the day they are dated. The date you see is the day that the photos are taken, not the day that I write the post. I go through my photos, reconstruct a story from memory, back-date the blog post, then upload. So why am I telling you this, now? Why, after so many years?
Last spring, the children and I walked down to someplace on a close by river with Claudia’s family. I brought my camera and some water kefir. Unfortunately, the water kefir— an acidic, sticky liquid— exploded in the backpack & drenched my wonderful delightful beloved perfect awesome superb magnificent & all those other superlatives camera. Oh, crap. My $1,400 USD camera.
The camera worked intermittently for a while. First, the battery died quickly. Then the optical viewfinder was stuck on half-way useless. It worked long enough to me to order another camera, to be picked up at the end of summer in Syracuse. I bought the same camera. The software and some other aspects of it had been improved, which was nice. The price had also improved up to nearly $2000 USD, which I was not so terribly happy about, but the camera would make me happy, so I didn’t bother thinking about it. I’ve wasted as much money on foolish mistakes before. This would not be a foolish mistake.
I loved Lightroom. Did I tell you I loved Lightroom? I like to shoot RAW file format (unprocessed data) & do all the processing myself. It’s like being in the darkroom, only one is highly unlikely to receive chemical burns unless the computer explodes. So I bought the new camera. Unfortunately, I could not import the files into Lightroom. The old version of Lightroom that I own did not support the new camera. I would have to get the new version. The new version is the typical Adobe pay-per-month program. Even if I wanted to get the new version of Lightroom, I couldn’t get it unless I installed the newest browser on my Mac. However, both of my computers are from 2012 & are not compatible with the newest OSX browser. So in order to use my camera with Lightroom, I would have to buy a new computer. But my computers work just fine!
After bringing the camera home, I spent about a month trying to determine which development program would be best for my needs. I settled on ON1 Camera RAW, tho I can’t say I like it nearly as much as Lightroom. Nonetheless, I didn’t have to buy a new computer. However, I did have to clean up my old catalogue, organize a few thousand old photos and figure out a new way to catalogue and organize my new photos. To make a long story short, ON1 is really quite different than Lightroom.
After all that, I found that the program worked incredibly slowly on my computer. So I bought a speed-em-up, clean-em-out program to streamline all the garbage on my computer. Still slow. Finally, months later, I decided to use my relatively fast laptop for photography and my relatively slow desktop for everything else. I have yet to solve the problem of my need for another external monitor and a larger desk. I hardly know how to use the new program, which I find excessively large, disorganized, and slow. But, look! Almost exactly 5 months after taking the first photographs on my new camera, I have learned how to process & export them to post on my website for your viewing pleasure. I almost hate the program. I can’t even get a good consistent watermark across photos. I have to put a different watermark on each photo, depending on its orientation and output size. I haven’t got that square yet so you’re going to have to suffer with lousy watermarks this post. I’ve already spent two days trying to get me a good watermark. It’s just so non-intuitive. It’s un-intelligent. It almost makes me want to pay a couple hundred bucks per year for Lightroom and a few more thousand for a new computer. Which I would do, for certain, if I had nothing else I needed to do with money.
