Dread to Delight • One Fruit & Veggie At A Time
When something is beautiful, it simply is.
No qualifications needed.
No website apologies.
No pleas for privacy.
No excuses.
When the snow sticks, this is your road–and you better arrive early before the sun or wind makes it all disappear.
But, when something else that begins with an “s” sticks, it never goes away.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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This is officially ridiculous. We’ve had four inches of rain overnight. I took this photo at 7:30 AM. You’ll be happy to know I was parked.
In honor of this officially ridiculous car wash, I begin a photo essay of life in a downpour of rain or any other ridiculously unrelenting reality, like mother nature and human nature. The latter is also on display in my neck of the woods this week with the recent arrest of a black Harvard professor by a white Cambridge policeman.
The Professor gave a lengthy interview on Sirius Radio with sympathetic Oprah’s B.F.F., Gayle King, and the policeman chose to vent his feelings on sympathetic WEEI, the sports station I profiled recently HERE. I believe I suggested in that post that spawn of mutant genes usually call WEEI in great numbers in order to speak to their ancestors, the talk show hosts. I’ll try not to let that color my artistic impulses for, characteristically, I chose to photograph these alternate universes amidst this latest nor’easter.
So, forget your American Express card, don’t leave home without your camera, paint brush, or pen. What force of nature or man is officially ridiculous in your part of the world? I’d like to hear it.
I also like things with Roman numbers in them, don’t you?
©Pat Coakley 2009
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Ok, this is officially ridiculous. IT’S RAINING. IT’S POURING. THE OLD MAN IS SNORING.
This morning I had to get gas and passed by the station twice due to the heavy monsoon. Pass by? The attendant is THE old man in the rhyme and not a day under 85 years old. He’s not snoring. He’s working and there’s no overhang. He’s already bent over like a hook and that’s on a sunny day.
So, I figured I’d wait till the rain let up and went cruising through town back and forth taking pictures. When the rain eased, I returned to my full service station.
Whoosh! The downpour began again. Cars were lined up behind me waiting for service. Every pump row, (there are two) had cars waiting. The silhouette of the aging attendant appeared at my window, familiar to the undersea world perhaps, but not to me. There was so much rubber thrown over him, a tarp might have been the fabric.
I felt badly. I should have pumped my own damn gas at the self serve up the street with the overhang. But, oh, no…FULL SERVICE for me. I have to take photos while getting gassed up and while seaworld’s newest exhibit shuffles away with my credit card, a line of pampered drivers waiting their turn.
It’s raining. It’s pouring (and has been for 26 out of the last 31 days) and the old man is definitely not snoring here about 30 miles southwest of Boston. When he goes to bed tonight he won’t bump his head but he might not get up in the morning.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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I am leaving the house in a moment to got to the wake of the 95 year old mother of my friend of over 45 years. It is raining– as it has been raining for the past days–or has it been weeks? It seems forever.
I’ll drive through twilight and stop at intersections and return to taking photos in the rain which I started last year. When I started they dazzled me–the headlights, the traffic lights, then, with taking too many of them, I seemed to capture less magic. Perhaps. I was trying too hard?
I am a year older, closer to that purported burst of spectral white, so I think I’ll try again for weather magic on my way to bear witness to a natural beauty who did not have to try hard to dazzle.
Her name was Mona.
Sometimes thinking back and going back to beauty is the best way to honor a soft, sweet soul as she passes through the lights.
©Pat Coakley
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
©Pat Coakley 2009
Photographs Cannot Be Used Without Written Permission
When travel is not possible, walking dangerous– not the least of which is lack of visibility in a blizzard–look around your house. What is there that catches your eye, even if for a brief moment?
Answer: A photograph after storm #5 was over, back in early January, and I ventured out toward sunset.
This is another entry for my “Photography for Shut-Ins” series. Post a photograph taken on another day and remember to charge your batteries for the future.
Then, have another hot chocolate with marshmallow fluff.
©Pat Coakley 2009
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
If you were from Bora Bora or someplace that never sees snow AND you read my blog, you’d know what this picture means. The blurry disc of the sun shrouded by gray clouds.
This is my fourth in the Before the Storm series. But, we have had more storms than that. O, way way way more.
So, off again we go into the breach a poet once said.
Yes, again.
And, as my father used to say, “This one looks like a beaut.”
I don’t like it when the National Weather Service sends me storm warnings that include the words “the jackpot, 10-15 inches, will pile up in the heavily populated Boston Providence Route 95 corridor”.
Ah, that would be moi.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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Here are others in the Before the Storm Series:
It is still February and choices must be made. A. Get up early to ice fish. B. Get up early to photograph those who ice fish. Answer: B.
Despite the snow having melted, the ice still holds fisherman and, if they are to be believed, (after all aren’t they the teller of tall tales?) even their pick up trucks. Some February thaw days have made the top of the ice look unfrozen and dangerous to anyone deciding to walk never mind drive over it. (See HERE for an example of that)
But, In the early morning of this late February day, there was no question that it was still frozen and underneath the ice a fish, most likely a perch, was about to make a poor food choice.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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This is the parking lot of the athletic field and the pond (outside of photo to right) in my town. It does not get plowed so one has to wait till a thaw or else have a four wheel drive vehicle to get in (and get out) to the pond’s edge.
I drove for the first time in months down to the pond’s edge and took photographs of the pond, the morning sky, reflections on the ice which still supports fisherman. But, as it turns out, leaving the pond was more interesting to me. I made a series of photographs of different exposures and ended up thinking this illustrated our February thaw better than anything else.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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Icicles are going to be Photography for Shut Ins 101.
I am testing these shut-in waters a little too seriously these days as my back has gone out and people are coming over for lunch to have my new favorite thing: Onion Soup Gratinee! (Click HERE to see my pot and the recipe)
Only problem is I can’t lift the french oven into the oven so I called my neighbor and he’s coming over at 11:30 to deposit the pot of cast iron into the oven. My luncheon guests can haul it out.
But, in the meantime, I am doing field work for my new niche. The icicles are beginning to melt but the weather forecast is for a dramatic swoop into single digits by tonight.
One thing is central to shut ins: weather. It’s fascinating.
©Pat Coakley 2009
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
My journey to the Inaugural begins. I take shots behind the wheel where ever I go, right? Today, Friday the 16th of January, there is already gridlock in Washington, DC according to washingtonpost.com.
I am homebound in 2 degree temperatures, fearful of crowds and cold and so many other things and, yet, I feel hope. So, I decided to get to Washington, DC the only way I know how: with imagery.
Over the course of the next five days I’m going to use whatever creativity I have on the working hard drive (no, my main computer is still not back) and anything I can steal from TV–as another of my little known or needed skills is TV Photography–to explore why this inaugural is like none other in my 63 year lifetime.
Welcome to my front row seat to history.
I’m beginning by driving right on to the White House lawn which is totally in keeping with my actual driving habits.
©Pat Coakley 2009
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
I am not a baker, butcher or a candlestick maker but I’m about to become a drinker. Christmas cookies keep burning. Baking is more a science and not for one who has the attention of a mayfly. I’ll display the results in another post, provided I can stay in the kitchen for six minutes straight. [...]
