The Summer Queen has been in darkness. The Summer Queen surrenders to this. To him she reveals her wine and secrets. For a time they join. Fire and Frost in marriage.
Through a Midwinter clearing, the forest greets a snowy evening. Year after year the Holly King, passes the torch as it was intended. Through a Midwinter clearing. A final kiss and a new beginning. His Summer Queen wearing his wreath, soon with the sun she will be ascending.
Soon with the sun she will be ascending.
Happy Winter!
If you are a subscriber to Xplane's mailing list, you've probably already received a "Happy Holidays" greeting email from them. For years I've received so many Xmas cards digital or analog I can't distinguish one from another, they all just ended up in trash.
But look Xplane did it again, an eCard you would keep and forward to other people, that's one big achievement you know. Follow this link to download the "Visual Cliché Find-it…" poster and have fun!
So how did Xplane get me to keep their 2008 eCard and anticipating one this year? Here's what they sent last year. Thank you for making a difference Xplane!
Been a whopping 7 days since my last post...that's atypical..
It's not tuesday but i have some pros and cons to discuss. so:
pros:
-Finally got together with a friend last night - had a gooood time...need to get together more often
-T has been much better lately since the breakup
-Sarah and Kristen should be coming in town soon and I'm looking forward to finally meeting them after two years of being vox neighbors!
-My tree makes me smile
-Got a couple new Snoopy's
-Every Rankin & Bass production ever made. Genius.
-The amusing pictures in my head of dressing up Baby Girl as Santa and Mary as Mrs. Claus, having them sitting in rockers sipping hot cocoa. Baby Girl (Santa) would also be eating oatmeal because of the Wilfred Brimley resemblance. She would not be discussing diabetes, however.
-The fact that my head works like that is a pro and con in and of itself.
And, here's a little elf:
In Note & Diary Style Book volume 4, a magazine I love, there are 3 pages covering how Spanish photographer Itxaso Zuñiga recorded her journey to Gobi desert in a Traveler's Notebook. I found some interesting techniques by just looking at the way she did it and I'm sharing with you all photo journaling lovers.
- Play with cut-out window of a page to show part(s) of a photo beneath that page. It can be as simple as the example on page one of the magazine, but you can have a lot more fun doing something more complicated, e.g. shoot a photo from inside of a beach house looking through the windows, take another shot of the beach from outside, use the first photo with cut-out windows on a page to show part(s) of the second photo in the next page.
- Take a lot of people photos with shallow depth of field, select one as the key image on one page, put a collage/mosaic of the rest of the people photos on the opposite page. This creates a simple 2 pages of lives you met in your journey, which already tells a lot of the place.
- Use the same technique above but change the topic to "Sky", "Cloud", "Flower", etc.
- Intentionally take a lot of sky, eye-level and ground photos. Use these stock photos to compose a collage, say 5 x 7 photos. On the top rows you put various sky shots, on the bottom rows ground shots. Put either one large photo of an eye-level shot or just follow the grid to fill in photos of objects/scenes/people you shot during the trip. This creates a collage with a central theme but not as obvious because the whole collage is obscured by "background" shots.
- To match a rough theme using a Polaroid (soon to be reproduced again!), peel off the white protective frame to make a square photo which the unexposed chemical formation can be seen on the edges.
- Keep the words simple. A few keywords which capture your feeling is already enough if you decide the journal is more visual. In an example of Itxaso's page, beneath a Polaroid of the Mongolian family she wrote "Nomads Generosity Strong Hospitality Humble Pride".
- Put glue evenly on a page and sprinkle sands and dirts on it. You brought back a piece of the land you once walked on in the journey. Same trick works for plants, feathers and human hairs :P
Lastly, as I often mention in our Travel Photo Cafe talks, to create a beautiful photo journal, equip yourself with a few layouts in mind before the trip, this will help you take more useful shots, collect more interesting objects and create better layouts because you are effectively stocking up useful contents all the time.
From the Museum of Post and Communication: The "Squatting Dog" is an icon of phone designs: 1929, Siemens presented a phone in a radical new design language. Housing and receiver are fused, the apparatus is made of black Bakelite with contrasting white dial is only slightly greater than the then usual phone. The striking design of the phone, which officially bore the name "Model 29", led to the nickname of "Crouching dog" or "ham bone".
Check out the museum's specific page of Hockender Hund in German.
Mystery Couple Starts "Magical" Chain Reaction
It played like a scene from a holiday movie
-- a mystery couple, who didn’t leave their names or numbers, walked into a
restaurant, finished their meal and then set-off a chain reaction of generosity
that lasted for hours.
That’s just what employees at the Aramingo Diner in Port Richmond said a man and a woman did during their breakfast shift last Saturday morning.
“It was magical. I had tears in my eyes
because it never happened before. I’ve been here for 10 years and I’ve never
seen anything like that,” said Lynn Willard, a waitress.
Willard and other waitresses told NBC Philadelphia that the couple started the chain reaction by paying double: for their own meal and for the tab of another table of diners at the restaurant. There's no evidence that one group of diners knew the others.
“I could not believe it … and it continued
and continued, it was very nice,” said Willard. “They asked us not to say
anything until they left, but we said ‘Merry Christmas, that person picked up
your tab.’”
For the next five hours, dozens of patrons got into that same holiday spirit and paid the favor forward.
The diner’s manager said not one person was
concerned about price of the check -- which averaged between $12-$30.
“It was a surprise to all of us, the girls were even taken aback,” said Linda. “Those who took the check also tipped the waitress. So nobody had to do anything other than pass it on and that’s what they did. They just passed it forward.”
It’s a true holiday story that proves how a small gesture of kindness can create some magic.
Are any of my Voxy neighbors participating in Whiskerino? Two friends from Glasgow are doing it and while I can't grow a beard myself (not that I've really tried), it's fun to watch their daily progress. Plus, they're coming out to Nashville for the big finale and I'm *thinking* of taking a weekend trip! You know I love Voxy meetups, so let me know!
...I'd wear these (and technically they're 4.5" heels).
That's right. You heard me. And you'd oogle my footwear, I'm sure of it. Alas, my walking technique is more refined with much less heel involved. Damn you Gwen Stefani & your cute shoes.
