White

The Search for Roy G Biv has brought us beyond the rainbow, to white. However, I would be remiss as a science geek if I didn't point out that white light is actually all the colors of the rainbow, combined:

"Visible light, also known as white light, consists of a collection of component colors. These colors are often observed as light passes through a triangular prism [or a raindrop]. Upon passage through the prism, the white light is separated into its component colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, [indigo], and violet. The separation of visible light into its different colors is known as dispersion. ... each color is characteristic of a distinct wave frequency; and different frequencies of light waves will bend varying amounts upon passage through a prism."  
                                                                     ( Dispersion of Light by Prisms; The Physics Classroom )                                                                        

It was Isaac Newton who discovered that white light is composed of these different colors:

"Newton’s contribution created a new understanding that white light is a mixture of colored light, and that each color is refracted to a different extent. The different colors correspond to light with different wavelengths, and are refracted to differing degrees. This separation of colors is known as dispersion."
                                                                                        (Causes of Color: What is Refraction?)

 I'm not sure what type of caterpillar this is, but I think it's pretty cool-looking....

 A white egret at Hilton Head, South Carolina...

Bear grass at Glacier National Park...

A springtime favorite in my yard, paper white narcissus...

Clouds in Ohio, and in South Carolina...

This odd-looking Kentucky wild flower looks white, but is ever so slightly tinted with violet in places...

Seeds of the season with their fuzzy white parachutes, just before they fly away...

My son Colin's beautiful bride, Lindsey, in her shimmering white wedding dress last weekend...






For more beautiful examples of white found by others in the Search for Roy G Biv, visit the blogs of our hostesses, Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie Booth; they will link you up!  Thanks for joining me on my journey into WHITE; hope you enjoy it!

The Silence of Sycamores in Winter

You can almost hear the absence of sound...

it speaks of winter sleep,

and waiting;

the in-drawn breath of precious life force

 the close-held silence

 of nothing wasted.

The Sycamore
~ Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

I hope you all had a blessed and joyful holiday, my dear friends, wherever you are.

Creepy Halloween

Creepy Halloween sounds so much more fitting than "Happy Halloween", doesn't it?  Halloween is supposed to be creepy, because that's what makes it fun, after all.

Whether or not you believe that the gate between the worlds of the living and the dead will swing open on All Hallows Eve, a cemetery can be an intriguing place...

Please allow me to share with you some of my favorite "haunts'...

                                                                     Cemetery in Bloomington, IN

                                                              SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH

                                                                New Orleans Cemetery, photo by Louis Martinie


The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld....Virtually all present Halloween traditions can be traced to the ancient Celtic day of the dead. Halloween is a holiday of many mysterious customs, but each one has a history, or at least a story behind it. The wearing of costumes, for instance, and roaming from door to door demanding treats can be traced to the Celtic period and the first few centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that the souls of the dead were out and around, along with fairies, witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left out to placate them.  ( Jack Santino, The American Folklife Center)

                                       shop window in Richmond, VA

                                                                          St. John's Church, Richmond, VA

The oldest gravestones I've ever seen were here.  At this church, Patrick Henry uttered the famous words, "Give me liberty, or give me death."

                              This burial is so old you can no longer make out any words or carving at all.

                                                                                        A beautiful place.

                                                               SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH

                                                           SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH

All Hallows Eve

By Dorothea Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Hear bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

Who knew Dorothea Tanning wrote such things? Enchanting!

The End of the World as We Know it?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.  If the end of the world comes today, I'm going to be really mad, because I already bought Christmas presents...

Nonetheless, my friends, I wish you all a very happy and blessed solstice.  All hail the return of the sun!

Fall Photos

Winter is almost here, and as I sit here thinking about Christmas shopping, it's hard to believe how quickly fall flew by. Before I even knew it, I was trying to pretend I wasn't watching the first gaggle (that's the right word for it, I swear!) of honking geese speeding their way south.  "Noooooo, come baaaaaack!" I called, looking pretty silly to anyone who might have witnessed my fruitless pleading. Luckily, I was in my car alone, feeling a bit sad that summer was ending, because close behind fall follows the cold, gray season we call winter.

The autumn season is notoriously beautiful here in Kentucky. Without summer's sticky humidity, the air seems to glow- a freshly-scrubbed crystal clear blue. Temperatures are perfect, and the still lush green grass contrasts with the bright golds, crimsons, and oranges of the changing leaves. The trees have actually been mostly bare and brown for two or three weeks now, which is quite a letdown after such a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Here are a few of my fall photos for your enjoyment- a little taste of my life in Kentucky.  Goodbye, fall...

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.   
~Rabindranath Tagore

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~Albert Camus

  There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
~Henri Matisse

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
~Henry David Thoreau

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

 Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
~John Lubbock

 For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
~Martin Luther

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
~George Santayana

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
~Anton Chekhov

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
~Wallace Stevens

In the depth of winter I learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
~Albert Camus





Alright, winter, I think I'm ready for you, now...

Inspiration Abounds + The Pulse

First of all, I want to thank my new followers; I always feel it's a great compliment when someone follows my blog. I'm grateful to have you along for the ride.

Secondly, I'm happy and honored to have my photo featured today in Chapter 4 of Still Life, part The Pulse, an ongoing online collaborative project by Seth Apter of The Altered Page.  Seth is an inspiration to me because he seems to get 10 times as much done as any other person, and still manages to be a genuinely nice guy.  I'm pretty sure that if did all that, I'd be tired and cranky!  If you haven't seen the earlier editions, please check them out as well; there have been a wonderful variety of still life photos by amazing artist-bloggers who you may not have met yet!

I've enjoyed perusing all the photos so far; it's interesting to see what they reveal about the artists.  Sometimes the photo seems to "fit" them completely; others you would never guess in a million years. And you'll find many fascinating new blogs to explore.


Inspiration can mean many things to many people.  According to Wiktionary, inspiration means:

1. The act of inspiring or breathing in.
2. breath
3. The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm.
4. The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
5. A supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate moral or religious truth with authority; a supernatural influence which qualifies men to receive and communicate divine truth; also, the truth communicated.

 I was inspired by a visit to the blog of my friend Lynne Hoppe, who, in a couple of recent posts, featured glorious photos of some wild flowers that grow near her home in northern California.   Right now I'm referring to definition #4, though her posts are definitely also a breath of fresh air.  The flowers she posted reminded me of the astonishing beauty of similar ones I had seen in Glacier National Park, in Montana.  I live in Kentucky, so our wildflowers are completely different from those of the northwest.  (If you want to see what Kentucky wildflowers look like, I posted some photos of them here, here, here, here and here.)  Anyway, when I saw Lynne's photos, I was inspired to look at my wildflower photos from Glacier, and they made my eyes so happy, I thought, why not post them so people from all kinds of different places with all kinds of different wildflowers can see them too?  So that's what I did.  I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.

gentian

glacier lily

indian paintbrush

bear grass and ?

 forget me not

 columbine- these we do have in Kentucky

geranium

 saxifrage?

indian paintbrush

bear grass- Can you tell it's my favorite?

 bear grass, indian paintbrush, and ?

I apologize for not having identified most of the plants; I will hopefully look them up and make an addendum in the next day or so.