Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Moonlight

Moonlight has been fascinating to me at least since Hurricane Opal in the 90s, when we lost our power for a week. I love to go outside on bright moonlit nights with low light pollution. One reason why I got interested in film photography is that it allows for long exposures without noise, which is great for moonlit photos. Check out this pile of chinotto oranges I took under moonlight over Christmas break:

Chinotto oranges, lit only by the moon (40 minute exposure)
The same oranges, lit by the sun during daylight.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Chewacla at f/138

Here's a series of pinhole photos I took at Chewacla late last year. I'm hoping my new tripod will expand my capabilities with this kind of work. All photos taken on Kodak Ektar 100 120 film.







The beauty of taking photos at f/138 is that a nail two inches away and a tree line a quarter mile away are equally in focus.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

36 Hours

A few years ago, I tried intermittent fasting for about six months. I did it mostly for health and cognitive benefits, which I had read about. Fasting reduces insulin resistance, for one, which is important to me because type 2 diabetes runs on my mom's side and my doctor told me I was at risk. My experience was positive. I lost weight, was running faster and further than I ever had before. I felt generally happier. When I had surgery, I stopped doing it.

In previous fasting, I just started by skipping breakfast, which was a big deal for me. I've always been a 3-meal plus snacks kind of person, and if I didn't have savory food and caffeine within an hour of waking up, I felt nauseated and cranky. The first hurdle in fasting, then, was to survive life without breakfast. At first I felt nauseated and weak, but after doing it for a few weeks, I started feeling fine without breakfast.

After that, I started eating lunch later, with the eventual goal of making my fasts 18-20 hours long. As I got used to that, my next goal was 24 hours. Of course, I wasn't doing this every day. Only once or twice a week, and eating anything I wanted on other days. The first few times I tried 24 hours, I became lightheaded, confused, and weak toward the end. Since then, I've become better at 24 hour fasts. Part of it, I think, was that I was dehydrated and low on sodium. Drinking water with electrolytes during the fast helped with the confusion and lightheadedness.

These fasts were actually easier for me because they weren't primarily religiously-motivated. With religious fasts, such as Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, or in Lent in general, I placed so much pressure on myself: pressure to succeed, pressure to have a "religious experience", pressure to appear joyful and not fasting. With my intermittent fasting, I had no such pressure. It was purely for fun and a learning experience. I didn't even care if I succeeded in fasting for the total hours I had planned.

This past week, I tried a 36 hour fast for the first time. The first time, I lasted 23 hours. I was invited to dinner and didn't want to pass it up, so I ate pizza and chips and beer after 23 hours. Oh well. The second time, I lasted 24 hours, but then I found myself alone in my apartment with all this food, and at my usual supper time my stomach started growling and I gave in. That time, though, I ate more nutritious foods: mixed nuts, lentil and kale soup, a navel orange, and two hard-boiled eggs.

Yesterday was my third attempt at a 36 hour fast. On Tuesday night I finished dinner at 6:30, which means I would not be able to eat until 6:30 this (Thursday) morning. I thought I'd list some joyful and difficult experiences from the day without food.

Joyful:

- After 18 hours, I stopped feeling hungry and became clear-headed, focused, and full of energy. It was almost euphoric.
-The focus I felt was unlike how I normally feel focused. Normally when I'm focused, distractions irritate me, but from about 2pm onward I was intensely focused and nothing seemed to perturb me.
-Normally I get angry driving on my commute home from work, but I found that I was actually driving below the speed limit and other drivers didn't faze me at all.
-I walked 20,000 steps yesterday, according to my phone. I normally walk 10-12k. I wasn't tired from the walking, either.
-After lunchtime, I didn't crave food at all, except that I was excited for it to be the next day so I could eat.
-I didn't notice it until this morning when they returned again after eating, but yesterday I didn't have even the slightest sexual thought. I was so intensely focused, I guess, there wasn't room for any distraction.
-I was happy to attend a social gathering in the evening, because it got me outside of myself from dinner time until bedtime.

Difficult:

-Time went by slowly while fasting. It was both a joy and a difficulty. I had a lot of time to think and to focus, for good and for ill. There was an hour when I focused on negative things. I found I had to occupy my time with other things, such as going for several long walks, taking photos in the woods, and taking a hot bath.
-At 11am I had hunger pangs which lasted until two hours later, before vanishing. I overcame them with a long walk. At dinnertime I took another long walk to prevent the same from happening.
-I became dehydrated in the afternoon because I didn't bring water with me to work. When I got home from work I drank a liter of water with electrolytes and a sprinkle of salt and I felt better instantly.
-I dreaded going to sleep on an empty stomach. Although I fell asleep easily at 9pm, I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't go back to sleep. I was totally wired, and all I could think about was that I could eat in three hours.
-When I woke up in the middle of the night, I was cold. I had to pile blankets on me even though it wasn't that cold in my room. I also felt weak, and when I got out of bed I was afraid I was going to pass out.
-I laid in bed, trying to go back to sleep, and I soon realized I wasn't going to finish the 36 hours. I compromised, saying I'd wait until 4:30 before eating, making it a 34 hour fast. During the last 30 minutes I prayed the Psalms from the Divine Office, but I don't think I comprehended anything and I frequently stumbled on the words.

At 4:30, I broke the fast. I had an ounce of nuts, oat bran and cheerios with a cup of whole milk, a cup of coffee, a blood orange, a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, two hard-boiled eggs, 3 cups of spinach and Swiss chard, two ounces of whole wheat pasta with a sauce made of beef bone broth, olive oil, and peeled plum tomatoes. I measured everything to one serving size to prevent myself from gorging. I was full and the food never tasted so good. I think you need to fast to enjoy the feast. It's important to have good food around when coming off the fast, otherwise you might eat chips or ice cream or who knows what else.

So, I failed the 36 hour fast a third time, but I learned a lot and had a good time, so I consider it a success.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Ode To My Family

I was sad to find out yesterday that Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of The Cranberries, died this week. I've always loved their song "Zombie", but a few years ago a friend shared another of their songs with me, "Ode To My Family". It's pretty amazing.


Friday, January 19, 2018

Marjorie

I think, if I were ever blessed with a daughter, I might name her Marjorie after my grandmother. I'm loving learning about her in these photo albums from my aunt. The latest one I've been looking through was a jackpot of information about her early life, and some more photos I'd never seen before. There were also a lot of birth certificates of English relatives going back to the mid-1800s. My grandmother was a McEune, but her mother was a Verinder, and her maternal grandmother was a Smith. I always heard that the McEunes were originally Scottish (McEune is a variant of MacEwan I think), and most of the men were fishermen. It seemed that the Verinders and Smiths were grocers and laborers, based on the birth certificates, which happily listed the father's occupation. The McEunes lived in Grimsby, a coastal shipbuilding city, which makes sense for fishermen.

My great grandparents. Both must have died during World War II
A letter from my great grandfather to his daughter, my grandmother Marjorie, from sea in Norway, maybe during the war.
My grandmother at 18
Another photo of my grandparents' wedding day
My grandmother with her older brother. I think his name was Norman. He gave her away at her wedding, so her father may have been dead by then.
The wedding reception
My grandparents, settled in in Alabama

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Long "Lost" Relative

I may have told this story before, but I found a photo today that makes me want to re-tell it. I was at a family gathering a few years ago, and this old man shows up with his wife and takes a seat next to my aunt and starts speaking affectionately to her. He has a strange accent, very Southern, but something different about it. I later found out he was my great uncle, my British grandmother's youngest brother,  Gordon, and he has been living a few miles away in Alabama since the 1940s or 50s. How had I never heard of him or seen him? That shows you how little communication there is sometimes on my dad's side. It's just assumed that everyone knows everything without ever having to tell anyone. In any case, it was great to know my great Uncle Gordon was alive!

Fishing in Panama City, Florida, August 17, 1963
From left to right: (unknown man),  my dad, Uncle Roger, Great Uncle Gordon (I like his socks)

Gordon was left an orphan at the end of World War II. My grandmother found a family in Tuskegee who wanted to adopt him. That's how and why he came to the States.

My grandparents' wedding. Gordon is the smallest child.
The same church in England where my grandparents got married, photographed in the 70s. Life goal: visit this place.

Friday, January 12, 2018

Things never seen

On Wednesday I went to my Aunt Sheila's house in Dadeville. Since retiring, she has built a metalworking shop where she makes furniture and ornamental pieces to sell at local stores. She also gave me a tour of her greenhouse, where she's growing succulents in odd, small containers she finds at thrift stores. It was quite a sight. She's going to be selling them at the Pepper Place market in Birmingham this spring.
The reason for my visit was that I knew she had some old family photo albums that I had never seen. I asked her if I could look at them. Instead, she told me to take them all and keep them as long as I wanted. I loved seeing photos I had never seen of people I love. I have about 8 full albums, and there are more at my aunt's house I'll have to look at another time. Here are some of the photos I scanned:

My beautiful grandmother Marjorie and my Uncle Roger

My grandmother and one of my uncles and his cousins

Uncle Roger playing in a cotton field in his diaper (there were a lot of cotton field baby photos)

Uncle Roger (left) and my dad (right)
I love the cow and chickens

Aunt Susie and Uncle Pat
These Auburn sweatshirts are back in style

My dad and a date at a high school dance. You should have seen the love note he (or an impostor) wrote on the back. It was an outrageous confession of his deepest undying love for this girl (whom I've never even heard of). It seemed so over the top that I couldn't tell if it was a joke...but then again, it was high school.
The most tantalizing part about my aunt's photos is that she says she has a box full of uncategorized photos, mostly from England. She tried to find a photo of an English cousin named Patrick who she said looks just like me, but she couldn't find it. Next time, I hope!

Monday, January 8, 2018

Close in space, far in time

I was scanning more of my dad's slides today. It seemed so strange that I am literally about 300 feet from where many of these photos were taken, and yet they were before my time and totally remote to me.

These are my dad's parents, my English grandmother. This was near the end of her life I think, when she had cancer. She died before I was born. This house is across the way from my office. No one has lived there since my grandfather died in 2007 though.
Christmas, in the same house, early 80s. My dad is wearing the Nike shirt. My mom is in front of the TV. The rest are my aunts, uncles, older cousins, and grandfather.
Aunt Susie. She used to watch me on Saturdays while my dad worked. She died when I was 8. I have no memory of her being this skinny or deformed. She had polio. In all photos of her, she looks sad and never makes eye contact with the camera, yet I remember her as one of the most warm, gentle, and loving people in my childhood. I never cried as much as I did when she died.
My mom shelling peas at my Granny's house near Birmingham. My cousin and my mom's dog Nicholas are with her.
One of my school pictures. Look at that hair. And that Bugle Boy.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

The Last of the Blooms

In recent days it has dipped well below freezing here in Auburn. It pretty much means everything but the dandelions are gone. It was sad to see the camellias in full bloom turn brown and mushy. In any case, warmer weather will bring more flowers.

In the meantime, here are some photos I took of some of the last flowers before frost. All were taken with my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera and Kodak film.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Northern hemisphere native

Chapman's rhododendron (Rhododendron chapmanii), Southeastern US native

Salvia splendens 'Van Houttei', South American native
Salvia coccinea, one of the pink cultivars

Salvia buchananii, Mexican native

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), E. Asian and N. American native
From a recent hike at Chewacla
Moore's Mill Creek in Chewacla
White oak (Quercus alba)