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| Week thirteen! I am now one-quarter of the way through the 366-day photography project. With today’s update, I will start with last Tuesday. I went to Zumba in the morning. I have been doing Zumba twice a week since last September. It has been a lot of fun to dance. I’ve heard that, in some Zumba classes, the music is played very loud. Fortunately, that is not true in this class. If it were, I would run for the exit, holding my ears, and I would not return. |
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| I am always entertained at Zumba. |
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| After Zumba, I had an appointment for hair care. I drew a picture of the Butterfly Boy while I was at the beauty parlor. |
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| On my way home from the beauty parlor, I took pictures of Halloween decorations… |
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| … and of work being done on the side of the road… |
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| traffic control during the roadwork… |
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| a worker raking and another spreading grass seed… |
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| … more work being done at another spot… |
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| I can never get enough of the colorful leaves of autumn. I think that these are oak leaves. |
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| On Wednesday, I went to see the doctor. It poured all day! The sky was dark and gray and the doctor’s office’s parking lot looked like a lake. The doctor told me to get on the scale, which was preset at 265 pounds! I said, “Dr. Haq, I don’t think that I weigh 265 pounds!” He agreed that I didn’t and added, “We just do that to scare the patients!”
Dr. Haq gave me a flu shot. Then I walked on the lawn (not through the watery parking lot), crossed the street and went to visit the editor of the Island Dispatch. There, I found out that I had two articles to write by late Thursday morning (or early afternoon at the latest). OK. I can do that. I got a ride home because it was pouring really hard. This is how you write two articles and captions for photographs in about eighteen hours, which includes time for sleeping and eating. You make sure to eat all your meals. Nutrition is important. Besides, food tastes good. It’s the sleeping time that you sacrifice. I wrote and wrote and wrote. When my eyes crossed and did not uncross, I realized that it was getting close to four o’clock in the morning. So I went to sleep. Three hours later, I woke up, ate breakfast and went to Zumba class… in costume… |
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| … where I met up with the runaway bride and a sea captain… |
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| I am the bee, who was just buzzing around during Zumba. |
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| The instructor is Kayla. She said that Halloween is her favorite holiday. |
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| After Zumba, I went home and was able to finish and email both articles. One was about the fall festival at Trinity United Methodist Church and the other was about the groundbreaking for the living shoreline at the Sandy Beach Park Club. I was happy to have both articles written and emailed. I was even happier to see the articles in the newspaper on Friday! Seeing my stories and photographs in print never gets old!
Thursday was a windy day. By Friday, it was apparent what the wind had done. Some of the previously colorful trees were now naked. |
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| … while other trees maintained their leaves… |
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| Friday night moon… |
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| I turned on the flash and got this interesting effect. It looks as if there is a moon circling the moon and that both are surrounded by a dramatic red ring. |
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| Was it the moon? Or was it the fact that it was Halloween? Were there ghosts and goblins and vampires and zombies? My sister Diane’s eyes are bulging out of her head at the sight of something terrifying… |
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| … maybe a pumpkin with a sinister grin… |
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| … or this scary cat? |
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| My mom, my sister, and my nephew in the dining room. I am waiting in the living room for trick or treaters to come to the door. Once again, I was dressed in my bee costume. Trick or treating hours in Grand Island are from five o’clock in the afternoon to eight o’clock in the evening. During that time, we had eighteen children (with parents) come to the door. We had pirates and princesses, the Queen of Hearts, and various other characters visit us. I love to see the costumes and I am more than happy to distribute the candy to this collection of characters. The kids and the parents also enjoyed having a bee give them their candy. |
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| On Sunday, I noticed the part of the garden that didn’t succumb to frost or to wind storms. |
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| On Sunday evening, there was a concert at Saint Martin-in-the-Fields church, featuring Joe Tumino and Nan Hoffman, with songs of American history. Father Earle King was happy to serve as emcee, introducing both Joe and Nan. |
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| Joe and Nan sing a variety of songs. The earliest song was the Huron Christmas Carol, which was written in the seventeenth century. |
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| Most of the songs were from the nineteenth century. They told a variety of stories, including railroads, the Erie Canal, the Civil War, and the Underground Railroad. |
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| The songs breathed life into history. Nan had a set of toys that made fine rhythm instruments. The toys came from Appalachia and they added a lot of color to the story-songs. |
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| The Buffalo toy, dancing and making a rhythmic sound, was a big hit.
Keep following the progress of my 366-day photography project. Another update next Monday!!! |
I just left a long comment, and it went poof when I was fiddling with the posting options. Grrr. Anyway, this is wonderful! You never fail to take the routine and often bland life-scape and fill it with interesting portraits of people and things, and you help dullards like me become un-dullard der. 🙂 Keep on with your reporting and your gentle optimism.