The wren and the snake 1/21/2006

I stopped to photograph the cholla cactus. Then I saw what I can only assume is the nest of a cactus wren. In fact, three cactus wren nests! Who else would dare to go in there?

Well, apparently this snake, who never made it out.

The photo of the day is inside my head - Friday 1/20/2006

I saw a beautiful thing die today. A falcon darted out of the darkness that flanks Sierra Highway and into the light from the stream of cars heading down below. I thought he was going to make it. Enjoyed a second’s thrill in his flight before he connected with the windshield of the truck in front of me.

The photo of the day is a triple exposure.

Imagine the bird, alive and flying straight against a backdrop as dark as this exposure. Imagine the bird vaulted twenty feet straight up into the air. Imagine the bird, wings blown back from its fall, landing on the asphalt off your right fender.

It happened too fast for any shutter to catch, but it’s all there in my mind.

I burst into tears. I thought about turning around, braving the onslaught of vehicles, calling for animal rescue. But I know the falcon was dead before it hit the ground. The sound of the impact had reached me over the voice coming from my CD player. There’s no way that fragile body survived a sixty-mile an hour blow.

The rest of my drive felt like a funeral procession.

Usually, I’m good at rationalizing road kill. It’s part of the natural progression that things will die and that other things will live as a result of that death. The falcon was probably drawn across the highway by the shining eyes of a rabbit. I’m not a vegetarian any more, so how outraged am I allowed to be?

But something deep within me cries that falcons are supposed to be long lived. They’re supposed to glide and soar and cull the weak of other species.

And I’m not supposed to have to see one die. I’m not supposed to have to see my own beautiful fleeting life in the final flash of its cinnamon and rust wings.

When good fruit goes bad - Thursday 1/19/2006

It’s not my job to provide social commentary.

I just take the pictures.

How does he know? -- Wednesday 1/18/2006

In the nearly 13 years we’ve had Dodger, we’ve probably had a cake box in the house 3-4 times. As soon as he saw this, he went over and started trying to get into it. When I was putting things away, he went back and made a little progress.

It’s leftover coconut cake from Sweet Lady Jane’s. Wow. He’s right, it’s delicious. I gave him a sliver with some milk in a little bowl.

My writing group gave me an amazing celebration. Fondue, cake and & champagne. Thoughtful and beautiful gifts. As if being invited to share in their work and experience their dedication and talent weren't already gift enough!

Traffic Cop -- Tuesday 1/17/2006

At the corner of Barham and Cahuenga.

I want to take more pix of people. I think FrannieGirl’s fireman shot put the thought in the back of my head that cops and firemen, etc. are a little more public figures than just the guy drinking coffee at the cafe.

Almost got a shot of firemen down at the coffee shop, but then they saw me and started milling. This guy had to stay put.

Shot below is on Highland heading south, just past Highland. Sunset in Hollywood. Could today's road look any more different from yesterday's?

Roadrunner - Monday 1/16/2006

I was out for my little solo birthday hike around midday yesterday, and a roadrunner appeared in the path ahead of me! They are a pretty rare thing to see. Until we moved out here, I’d only seen one in my life. Since then, maybe on average once a year.

She popped into view at the left side of the trail, glided a few feet forward, turned and looked at me. Tail up, tail down, tail up. Repeated this about three times until she crested the hill.

I hope you haven’t strained your eyes looking for her. No, I didn’t get the shot. My camera was in my backpack and I just stood there grinning.

Of course, she was nowhere to be seen by the time I went over this rise. Wonder if she was watching me.

It felt like a very good omen. When I got back home, I checked my Medicine Card book to see what it means when a roadrunner wanders into your live. Had to check the table of contents three times. No roadrunner! I even had a picture in my mind of what the card looked like.

The creators of the book/cards provide blank cards so you’re free to design your own if an animal speaks to you. I never thought I’d have occasion to do it, but I sat down yesterday afternoon and wrote a preliminary interpretation of what the roadrunner means.

The whole encounter and subsequent thought processes gave me a big lift.



Bonus photo: tenacious weed.

N's cool cake - Sunday 1/15/2005

It was his first birthday. They didn’t have a Curious George themed cake, so his mom—my friend and coworker MM—put this together on top of a Madagascar themed-cake. I like the way he’s rising out of the lagoon.

The birthday boy was one of two babies whose moms brought them to work for about the first six months of their lives. We had a great time with them. Little S, who had also been in the office, came and sat on my lap twice! Quite a privilege.

It was a very relaxed, fun party. I ended up with lots of little cakey-fistprints on my dark brown shirt. Pretty perfect, really.

The road home - Saturday 1/14/2006

Just had to do this again as we came home from running errands in Palmdale. It’s been raining a bit off and on today, and these shafts of sunlight were just breathtaking. We stopped several times along the way.

See more progress on: Take a photo every day

The road home Friday 1/13/2006

It’s always great to get off the freeway and see this view. I love that it is immediately country looking.

This road gets flooded when it rains. Probably will be on Saturday.

Bonus - Thursday 1/12/2005

I thought yesterday was going to be a slow photo day. But then an online friend from London said he was going to the pub, and I thought that sounded really good. So I walked a mile or so to the local coffee house. Found I could do 3/4 of the walk on a trail, so that was nice.

I'm now completely frustrated because I can't get the images to load in the order I want them. Tried several times and all I've been able to accomplish is accidently deleting them, etc. Guess I'm being a byte-piggy today.


Dog along the trail. Someon'es best friend. Clearly not mine.

Actually, this is like one of those unfair paparazzi shots. This dog mostly seemed friendly, jumping up a foot off the ground and wagging his tail.


The shot below is from about halfway between my house and the coffeehouse. I live on the other side of this little mountain.




The obligatory sign shot. When you see them, you have to take them, don't you?



This should have been the first shot. They were blowing water through a hydrant down the block. I like the way some of the individual drops catch the light.

Mug shot Thursday 1/12/2006

Yeah, it’s Mary Englebreit. You gotta problem wit’ dat?

It was a gift from my coworkers and it makes me happy. It’s the one place where I know being called Miss Smarty isn’t even slightly a put-down. Probably why I’ve been at this job longer than any other in my life.

DMG's Disks Wednesday 1/11/2006

I didn’t know this when I took the shot, but DMG spilled a soda on her disks the night before and was drying them out. I just liked all the pretty colors.

I, myself, am a USB drive fan.

Medicine Cards Tuesday 1/10/2006

Medicine cards are something like Tarot cards, except they don’t seem as much aimed at divination as at being thought-provoking.

Or maybe it’s just the way I use them. Pull a card and the animal figure and what it represents help you look at your day or a problem from a different perspective. I like that they are animals rather than people holding cups or swords or whatever. Sometimes they are breathtakingly on-the-nose in identifying my hesitations or issues.

I don’t really know what to make of this sort of thing. I use them and enjoy them. There’s something about the element of chance that sparks the divine within us is what I think if I’m pressed to express it.

It’s sort of like writing from a prompt. The word “mushrooms” will give five writers five different stories. The same word on two different days will give one writer two stories.

Images and impressions are always flowing around us, and anything that surprises us into a moment of contemplation in which we capture one of them seems like a positive thing to me.

Angle of Repose Monday 1/9/2006

Goofing around, looking at our home library from a different angle. Playing with shapes, I guess. This is the ball part of a maraca peeking over the edge of a shelf.

Yeah, I stole the title from Wallace Stegner. So sue me. [But from what I hear, Wallace Stegner shouldn't be throwing any stones!]

Gloves of Doom (bonus) Sunday 1/8/2006

I propped them up so they’d dry out. One, however, looks like it has distinctly evil intentions toward the other.

Yes, I was down on my knees and elbows in my back yard. Is that wrong?

Pruning the Roses Sunday 1/8/2006

It’s hard to cut back the roses when they start blooming again after Christmas, but January is the time to do it. Here they are on the table on the back deck. Next to them is a piece of a succulant I broke off and will plant.

Also pruned the apple, peach and apricot trees and cut back the Thompson grape vine. And raked leaves, and cut up branches that had fallen down, and left some of them piled for next week’s trash. And helped D get the Christmas lights off the roof.

This also doubles as exercise for the day. I feel accomplished.

Waiting - Saturday 1/7/2006

The frog is there because a frog looking out your front door is supposed to welcome prosperity. We haven’t won the lottery, but things are moving along pretty fluidly, and that feels like prosperity after having struggled for a long time.

The dog. The dog is a door stop. I bought it from one of the catalogues that came to our house after my mother-in-law passed away and we had her mail directed to our house.

It’s a replica of a type of cast iron door stop that was popular as far back as the 20s or 30s I suppose. My grandfather made these in a foundry in Indiana. My grandma had one at her house until sometimes in the 80s when it was stolen.

It took me a couple of catalogues to finally give myself permission to spend $40 on a dog door stop, but I am SO glad I did. It’s not the one we had, but I love the way it lets me see my Grandma B’s kitchen.

I do have one of the pony doorstops that my Grandpa B made. It holds open the door to my writing studio.

Contrail Friday 1/6/2006

We were walking to the garage, going to a hoot (acoustic music jam, sort of) when I looked up and saw this. Oh…my picture of the day, just waiting for me over the hill!

On our way, we picked up a friend of ours who was just released from prison. He was in because he was drinking before he got on the road, and he crossed the center line on a canyon road and killed a gardener on his way home from work. Desperately injured the other two men in the truck.

I think it was a good thing for him to go. Before he went, he was very much torn up about it. He seemed afraid that his friends wouldn’t want to be his friends anymore. Honestly, it was hard to know how to be supportive sometimes, while acknowleging the gravity of what he’d done.

He wasn’t a drunk. He was a man who enjoyed good food and good wine. His experience is a solemn reminder of our obligation to be in control of ourselves when we get behind the wheel.Now he has paid in the time that the judge said he needed to pay. It was an awful ordeal. I know the night still haunts him, but now he can come back knowing he’s done the time, and we can all begin to move forward.

I think he’s appreciating views like this these days.

To the Library Thursday 1/5/2006

Absolutely HAD to go to the library last night, even though it made me hit the freeway late. I left an audiobook in the trunk of my car when I dropped off before the holidays. Owed $4.45 on a title I didn’t even like. Sigh. But it’s worth it. I get a lot of good out of the library. The audiobooks make my long commute bearable.

Libraries are one of the best elements of our culture and they need to be supported. I still buy books. I think I should buy books because I want to write them, and I want to support other writers. But the library is a wonderful way to get hooked on a writer.

Picked up some new stuff I’d put on hold, including the audiobook of “Blink,” which I started listening to last night. Very interesting. Not too earthshattering so far.

I noticed the light and the lines of this fairly new building as I was walking in and took the time to snap a shot on the way out. Usually I try to edit out the powerlines, but I think they work here.

This Little Piggy Wednesday 1/4/2006

This little piggy and three others hold toothbrushes, etc. on ST’s pink-tiled 1920s bathroom. They provide a cheery greeting on a cold morning!