The Line to Hear Rachel Maddow

Here are some shots I took on Saturday night while waiting to hear Rachel Maddow speak about her book, Drift. The venue was Centennial Hall st the University of Arizona. I think this was only my second or third time there, ever. The first time was to see Robert Goulet in a production of Camelot twenty years ago.

Here is part of the line to get in, which people tried to get around, on the theory that they had their tickets, so why couldn't they just go in? But pretty much everyone had their tickets already. It was sold out, 2,500 tickets. I thought it was appropriate that we passed the Women's Plaza of Honor on the way to the Centennial Hall entrance.

I never managed to capture the size of the crowd with my iPhone camera, but this gives you some idea.

An activist for the Green Party did her best to interest people in her petition as they passed by. Her dog wore a placard promoting the petition, but seemed personally uninterested in participating.

I just thought it would be fun to use a few FX on this shot.

One reason it took so long to seat 2,500 people was that most of the tickets included a copy of Drift in paperback. So they had to read each ticket to make sure the person was eligible for the book, give them the book and punch the ticket to prevent double dipping. Then they had to direct the person to the right entrance, where a fourth person handed out programs and a fifth directed the ticket holder to the correct seat. Quite a production!

Rachel Maddow got a long standing ovation at the beginning, and another at the end. Reference was made to a "blue dot" in a "red state," but this was more like a large, bright blue bubble. Rachel was her usual smart, funny, humble, endearing self. Foreign policy isn't an area in which I have a strong interest and expertise, but I do think the point she makes in her book is a valid one. 

After she talked for a bit, she sat with a U of A professor who moderated and read out questions submitted beforehand. Most of them were from U of A faculty, but that's okay. It was over all too soon, but considering the speaker had laryngitis it seems churlish to complain. It was still an enjoyable and thought-provoking evening.

K.

Round Robin: Dig the New Threads!

For this week's Round Robin Challenge: Threads, Carly asked to see, well, threads! Hmm. I can show you my sewing box...

...but I actually had a few other ideas in mind. I'd love to show you the entire thread cupboards my late stepmother Ruth had in Wilmington, with spool after spool organized on rows of spindles; but I was actually between cameras when I was at Dad and Ruth's old place for the very last time this past December. Too bad, because it was amazing! And I say that as someone who got a D in sewing in 8th grade Home Ec!

I was also thinking about the old hippie-era slang term threads, as in clothing. I had to buy some new threads this week, because a) I gave away almost all my short-sleeved tops last year due to weight loss, and had basically nothing left but Hawaiian shirts, and b) there were VIPs coming through at Job #2 on Wednesday and I needed to look presentable. So I got these:

But I'm not the only one I know who got new threads recently. Mother Clare at St. Michael's got a set of new vestments from the Benedictine Sanctuary a week or so ago. St. Michael's had lots of vestments already, in different colors for different ecclesiastic seasons; but they're all for tall men, not somewhat-short women. Mother Clare needed something she wasn't going to trip over. Here she is in her new threads at Easter Vigil:

I think the Benedictine Sisters did a nice job on these threads. They certainly used a lot of threads to do it!

Oh, and by the way, the people on the right, the ones dressed in white, are also wearing new threads here, in honor of their baptisms a few minutes before these photos were taken. But they're just in albs, nothing fancy.

Now let's go see some more threads:

Linking List
As of 2:49 AM MST, April 6th, 2013

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Teri
Teri H Hoover Photography
http://terihoover-crystal-iris-images.blogspot.com/

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sue - Posted!
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
http://susiesphotospace.blogspot.it/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

I will try to make the rounds this weekend, but I'm going to be fearfully busy. Thanks again to Carly for hosting this week!

Karen

Brains

I wants 'em.

Round Robin: Gates of the West

For this week's Round Robin Challenge: Gates, Carly asked to see any kind of Gates. I just did an entry about Gates Pass, the gateway between the city of Tucson and Avra Valley, where Old Tucson and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum are. But let's see what actual gates I've photographed. I haven't had time recently to go after this properly, but I'm sure I can come up with something!

This is the gate behind which Old Locomotive 1673 is usually locked up, down at the Historic Depot in downtown Tucson. Check out my Facebook page for a shot of me and my dad inside that same gate.

This sign is at the gate to the dog park between my house and my dad's place.

Here is the gate to the Rose Test Garden in Reid Park, taken March 9th, 2013. It was too early for the roses to look like anything much.

This one is Gate B8 at Tucson International Airport, 12/26/12. Exciting, huh?

I've used this shot before, but I like it too much not to include it here. It's a Tohono O'Odham maze design on a gate at Mission San Xavier del Bac.

Here's a late addition. Carly's entry reminded me of this very old shot, from 1986:

Cows at a cemetery gate, at a dead-end stretch of road where Route 66 used to be. And finally, there's this:

The St. Louis Arch - Gateway to the West! This is also from the 1986 trip.


Now let's see what gates the other Robins have photographed!

Linking List 12:06 AM MST March 23, 2013

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Ellen
Ellen's Photo Journal
http://ellensphotojournal.blogspot.com/

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Tara
Shutterbug Shots
http://shutterbugshotsforyou.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen

Round Robin: Gates Pass

For this week's Round Robin Challenge: Gates, Carly asked to see any kind of Gates. How about Gates Pass? This is the spectacularly steep road between Tucson and Avra Valley. I photographed it with my first decent digital camera back in 2005, and a number of times since then. Between my three jobs and my responsibilities with my Dad, I haven't been able to get out for a proper photo shoot, so let's dig into the archives, and see if we can find something I haven't posted before.

Got 'em! Here are three shots from almost exactly eight years ago: March 20, 2005. My Dad was in town for my graduation from University of Phoenix, and I took him to see sunset at the vernal equinox at Gates Pass.

On March 6, 2009 I was back at Gates Pass, this time with Cayenne and Pepper. It was the evening of what I still regard as the Best Sunset Ever. Here are two of the lesser photos from that jaunt:

Finally, in April 2012 I foolishly climbed up to the little stone building at Gates Pass in a high wind and bad shoes. All I had with me to photograph the occasion was my iPad:

Now let's see what gates the other Robins have photographed! And I think I'm going to do a second entry, with archived shots of actual physical gates....

Linking List 12:06 AM MST March 23, 2013

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Ellen

Ellen's Photo Journal  

http://ellensphotojournal.blogspot.com/

Jama
Sweet Memories  

http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Tara
Shutterbug Shots
http://shutterbugshotsforyou.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Karen

Round Robin: Give It Up - For Good

For this week's Round Robin Challenge: Give It Up!, I asked to see "something you've given up at some time in your life, or would like to give up, or wish someone else would give up." I could maybe get clever or esoteric or, more likely, depressing on this one, but let's go with the obvious for once. Where does a successful dieter go to look at all she's given up? Why, the supermarket, of course!

In July 2011 I gave up high carbohydrate foods. I've since lost over 130 pounds, but I've been stuck at 170 pounds since December. I've going to have to give up carbs even more stringently. Part of the problem is I had to give up running, or even walking long distances, after injuring my right knee.

The empty plate here had a little round layer cake for one yesterday. I bought it for my dad's 90th birthday, deliberately small because we can't help him eat it. He didn't eat it, either. Tonight my dad is in intensive care, but not because of some food he ate or didn't eat.

My healthy choice is not to eat even "healthy" bread.

And my candy consists of one or two squares of sugar free dark chocolate per day, and maybe an Atkins bar.

Please visit the other Robins' entries, and comment if so moved. The list of entries is below, but please do check the Round Robin blog for any updates and late additions:

Linking List
as of Saturday, February 23rd, 2013, 12:02 AM

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Sue.
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words.
http://susiesphotospace.blogspot.it/

Carly
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

I have a defensive driving class in the morning and my dad is still in intensive care, so I won't be around much this weekend. I'll try to check in when I can!

Karen

Round Robin: Frozen in Time

For Round Robin Challenge: Frozen, I asken to see anything frozen, literally or figuratively. I was expecting a literal interpretation for my own entry, even if it meant resorting to something like this:

This is my freezer tonight, full of freezer-burned meat, a few low-carb ice cream bars and a box of Good Humor bars to take to my Dad. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a new snow-on-the-Catalinas shot for you, but I'm not concerned about that right now.

What I want to talk about tonight is the freezing of a moment in one's memory - the freeze frame of a camera, the click of a shutter freezing that moment forever, or at least until the photo gets lost or the file gets corrupted. Or maybe it doesn't take a camera. The sight of something wonderful, or awful, funny or sad or ordinary, hits the eye and a synapse is formed to preserve the moment, probably imperfectly, in the human brain, at least as subject to degradation as the photograph would be. We can throw away pictures or frame them, but how much of a choice do we have as to what gets frozen in our memory?

Here is a moment that is frozen in my memory. This is my dog Pepper as of January 22nd of this year. Just out of frame is a wet patch of Pepper's bloody diarrhea, the first I had seen from her. She was already emaciated and not eating. One of her vets wanted to take out her enlarged spleen, not to cure her but mostly just to diagnose her. The other vet wanted to treat the latest health crisis indicated by the wet spots on the exam room floor before doing anything else.

Tomorrow morning, we're putting Pepper to sleep. She is in liver failure, her red blood cells, platelets and blood sugar are low, she's vomiting and dehydrated and her spleen, now even bigger, is pressing on her stomach. It doesn't matter that we never had the $2000 operation to take out the spleen. We could not have saved her. John is devastated, and so am I. "But it's Pepper! It's not fair!" he kept saying tonight.

 

This is the memory I would rather have frozen in my brain and on my blog: a sunny Sunday morning at Pantano River Park last summer, with the dogs panting but happy as we take a quick rest before returning to the car. I have to remember that Pepper had four good years with us before the last three months of awfulness.

And here is another memory to preserve, whether for good or bad I can't say yet. My dad arrived from North Carolina two days ago. He has little or no idea that the memory care unit at The Cascades here in Tucson is his new home, and probably has little idea who I am. He knows he has four children (actually a son, a daughter and two stepdaughters), and probably figures I'm family, maybe even one of the daughters. My calling him Dad all the time should be a clue, but we can't count on anything like that sinking in. But here he is, friendly and reasonably content after two days recovering from the stress of flying across the country to an unknown destination for an unknown reason. No doubt I will get used to his being here, used to his dementia, used to being a caregiver again, ten years and a few months after my mom's death. And I will probably be grateful for the memories I make now, finally spending time with him after decades of living at opposite ends of the country. But right now, this is not the memory I want, not the image I want frozen in my brain. Tough luck. It's what I've got. Along with the image of the emaciated, sweet, stubborn dog I have to say goodbye to in the morning.

Karen

With any luck, the other Robins' entries will be less depressing:

Linking List
As of Saturday, 2/9/13, 7:52 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sue - Posted!
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
http://susiesphotospace.blogspot.it/

Ellen **Welcome, new participant!**
Ellen's Photo Journal
http://ellensphotojournal.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com


Gill **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Stamping Lemons
http://stampinglemons.blogspot.co.uk/