Month: September 2012

by

The 100 Year Bicycle – Chicago Cubs

What is a 100 year bicycle? Well, it’s one that only gets you where you really want to go about once every hundred years or so, and surely a Cubbies bicycle would qualify 😉 The picture below seems an even more apt metaphor for their perennial exercise in futility.

Ah, for shame! It is unkind to kick a team when it is down, though when else would one kick the Cubbies 🙂 And perhaps it is foolishness to be so mean and tempt the wrath of the baseball gods when one’s own team, the St. Louis Cardinals, are up in the wild card chase by a mere 3 games. All kidding aside, though, this is one sweet looking bike. So cool. Such sharp colors, a cool custom fork, and I do love that walking cubbie bear logo.

by

Autumn, Then Winter Haiku Contest – 2012 – Fall, Winter Poetry

Well, it has been far to long since this blog has held a contest of any kind, so it is high time to do so. So, though most of you come here for the photography I suspect, we will begin with a haiku contest which was the first contest I ever held here.

So, if you are interested, check out the details. Pay attention to all the instructions if you would like to win!

Also, Lord willing, coming in November will be the second iteration of “A Christmas Carol: A Photography contest.” Check out the first contest here.

by

On Grief in the Young – Some Poems from Das, Housman, and the Sons of Korah

Last night at tutoring I saw the teen son of man who was killed in a car accident last week. As he was busy with his tutor, it was not the place to go over and offer a word or a hug, but when back at home I wondered what I would say to him. Upon reflection, here is some poetry from Das, Housman, and the Sons of Korah, respectively. The image of a continent sinking is from C.S. Lewis’s account of his feelings when his mother died.

__________

what could i who’d known
such loss tell him; knowing is
none of the battle

what is there to say
of continents sunk, mountains
cast into the sea

walking new landscapes
joys tucked behind shadows in
the contours of grief

__________

Twice a week the winter thorough
Here stood I to keep the goal:
Football then was fighting sorrow
For the young man’s soul.

Now in Maytime to the wicket
Out I march with bat and pad:
See the son of grief at cricket
Trying to be glad.

Try I will; no harm in trying:
Wonder ’tis how little mirth
Keeps the bones of man from lying
On the bed of earth.
-A.E. Housman from A Shropshire Lad

__________

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
-Psalm 46:1-3

__________

The last is comfort, indeed…but comfort which I confess even after all these years I am still learning to believe in.

by

Man and Bicycle – North Broadway, Chicago

Normally I am not very enamored of photos in which a photographer has seemingly arbitrarily tilted the camera to add some drama, unless there is some plane or line in the scene itself which is being accentuated. And, in truth, I only first set these two photos on their sides because photos with a “portrait” orientation appear much larger on my blog than those in “landscape. They actually look quite fine oriented the other way – tilt your monitor on its edge and check it out 🙂 However, once I had rotated these 90 degrees, I found that I quite liked the effect, as it made the figure of the man and bicycle more or less vertical.