Tag Archives: pictures
He rocks
There’s so much I wish I could say about him here. Stories about the way his mind is working and the tenderness of his heart. It would make this 30-day exercise a breeze.
But he is so remarkably becoming now. Anecdotes don’t do him any justice. You wouldn’t believe what I told you anyway. Most people don’t, until they stop talking and listen to him.
I wish more people knew what it is to listen to children. To stop trying to teach or entertain or discipline or coach and listen.
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Dharma spelling
My son patiently snuggled on my lap during a Sunday morning dharma teaching about living in samsara. As I took in my wise teacher’s thoughts about nurturing compassion in the face of bad drivers, mean governors and crappy news, he pulled out a pad of paper and some crayons.
Oh, imperfection. Impermanence. How beautiful it can be. I think this is the best phonetic spelling ever.
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The malevolent blue cardboard circle
Things are being purged from my mother’s house, sometimes leaving a trail as they go.
This was lying in her driveway April Fool’s morning. I don’t know what it originally belonged to. A game? A secret message kit from Lou Reed? A divining tool?
I hope this word isn’t falling from the trees.
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Construct your own narrative
For the past several months, I’ve been helping my mother out with a family project. We’ve been going through scads of old, deteriorating photographs, scanning them and identifying faces. Apparently, members of every branch of my family were armed with a camera from the moment they first one became commercially available.
Then I found this group of seven pictures in one pack, along with negatives that tell me they were taken in exactly this order:
What does it mean? What’s the story here?
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Self-portrait
One way to recycle a tire from NASA
This is a tire that was used on the front landing gear of the Space Shuttle Endeavor on a 1994 mission. I saw at least seven or eight kids of multiple ages do some variation of this kind of play (at the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta).
What a cool way to get closer to space.
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Scarecrow housewives of Franklin County
The six-year-old anesthesiologist
I’ve been helping my mother clear out her office this month, where the shelves are bursting with materials about art education and family history. It is no small project.
This is one of the pictures we’ve scanned and saved from disintegration this week. It’s my uncle, age six, in the O.R. of the hospital where my grandfather was chief of surgery “giving anesthesia” (it’s in quotes on the back of the picture in my grandmother’s handwriting). My mom, aunts and uncle all tell stories of accompanying their dad to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, where they watched him do his work – the work of fixing people’s insides, 1940s and ’50s-style.
Times, as they say, have definitely changed.