For @Mattsontomlin

You are creating
What your heart dreams of doing
It is a big deal

Thank you for inspiring these words, Matt. Please remember them when the mundane threatens to take over the divine.

Gettysburg in Spring: Monuments & the Battlefield (Part 1 of 4)

Last week I took a trip to The Gettysburg National Cemetery and Battlefield with another fantastic person that I met through Twitter.  He is Dave Pringle, owner of  Fusion Photography in Hummelstown, PA.

Earlier this year, on a whim, I visited Gettysburg in Winter.  (Part 1 & Part 2) I then decided that I wanted to see and photograph this special place at other times of the year. As Spring is definitely here and never seems to last very long I wanted to go before that special light green so indicitave of the season is replaced by the darker greens of Summer.  So, I tweeted my buddy, Dave, and we made our plans.

To keep this post from being monstrously large I have decided to break it down into a few different posts.  I have grouped the photos by themes.  I mentioned yesterday a couple of new themes I seem to be exploring right now.  Two that have resurfaced here are "The photographer photographing other photographers" and "Abstract designs and shapes particularly where edges meet".  In addition to these reoccurring themes I have three other distinct groups of photographs from our shoot in Gettysburg.  They are "The Battlefield and Monuments", "Nature", and "Roads & Paths".

The photos in this first post will be those of the monuments and the battlefield.  Only seems right to do these first.  In the earlier Winter posts I talked about the sadness I felt while I was there.  The day we went down was a gloomy, overcast, grey, misty, rainy day.  Those feelings were still there.  But not quite as intense.  Anyway, here they are:

Happy Anniversary & a trip to CREATE South

Yesterday marked the 4th anniversary of this blog.  I can't believe that it's still going strong.  There were a lot of moments (like all of 2008) when I thought, "Why bother?" and almost closed it down.  But the biggest reason this is here in the first place is to make me put my thoughts down and examine them.  From the mundane to the sublime.  And, at the four year mark I feel like I am just starting to really do that.  It feels like I am just beginning.  I guess that is a good thing in many ways.  I could do with out the new kid feeling when it comes to all of the tech stuff but *sigh* I guess we take the good with the bad.

This weekend is going to be a whole lot of good.  I'm heading south for a few days.  To a one day conference called "CREATE South".  This is the 3rd year for the conference, my first attending.  I'm really nervous about stepping out of my comfort zone and going somewhere completely foreign to me.  But I am also really excited to meet in person some of the people I have been talking to on twitter for a while now.

I am hoping to meet a lot of great people, put some faces to the twitter names, and learn as much as possible about the changing world of technology  and social media and how it all relates to the arts and my yarn business. 

I'm taking the camera and the blackberry (like I ever leave either of them at home) and an open mind.  Hopefully, I'll have lots of cool stuff to share when I get back in a few days.

So, time to hit the road.....

The Many Roles Art has Played In My Life

I mark the milestones of my life with art.  When I look back at the various ages and stages I have been through there is always some form of art as accompaniment on my soundtrack.  I have been enthralled by, curious about, dabbling in, experimenting with and pursuing art in its many forms as long as I can remember.

At the age of 5  I first asked to take piano lessons.  I played up until about the age of 24 when work and family and finally everything else became bigger priorities.

I drew horses both real and imagined all through elementary school.  

My great-grandmother showed me how to crochet a granny square (and play solitaire) when I was ten.

I was immersed in horses for all of my pre-teen years (drawing, riding, and reading horse stories). I read  (more than once) every book Marguerite Henry (author of  Misty of Chincoteague) and  Walter Farley (author of The Black Stallion) ever wrote.  I figured out how to turn a granny square into a blanket for my model horses by adding chains of stitches to act as the belts that hold a blanket in place.

In my teenage years I taught myself to play the guitar  and played keyboards in a high school band.

I discovered boys early in my teen years.  Flirtation is an art that I excelled in naturally. As an aside there is an expression I heard long ago that rings very true with me.  It is: Girls use sex to get love.  Boys use love to get sex.  Neither is satisfied.

I wrote a lot of poetry in high school and college.  Very heavy on the angst of that period in a young person's life, very light on actual talent or craft.  Lots of whining.  Lots of grand theatrics about trivialities.  But like every person between the ages of 12 and 32 I didn't know what I didn't know.  I was my own person who knew best for me and I know everything so screw it all and get the hell out of my way.

Reading has always been important to me too.  When I was in first grade and my mom came for a parent-teacher conference I was told to wait out in the hall.  They left the door slightly ajar and didn't realize I could hear them.  The teacher told my mom that I would always be a slow reader, below or just at grade level.  I was in the remedial reading group.  The teacher just sort of shrugged her shoulders at the whole of me, what could she do?  It wasn't until four years later when a family friend gave me the first six books in the Nancy Drew series that I began to read.  The books were brand new, the spines hard and firm, they had that 'new book' smell, and Nancy Drew with her pumps and cardigans was so cool.  Then in seventh grade I had the opportunity to take a speed reading class.  I jumped at it.  The memory of my 1st grade teacher's words came rushing up out of my subconscious pushing me to improve myself if only to show her. (note: I have never remembered her name or her face and we moved away from there when I was ten but I have never forgotten her words!). [ Note: Choose your words carefully.  You never know what will stick in someone else's soul and once said, can never be un-said.]

Through my teens and twenties books have always been a huge part of my life.  I haven't read most of the classics but I am OK with that.  I do love Shakespeare (even took a course on the bard when I went to Penn State).  Emily Dickinson, ee cummings, William Blake are among my favorites.  My dad lent me "From Here to Eternity" at the age of thirteen.  The sex scene on the beach was shocking and amazing.  It opened my eyes to the power of words and sexual imagery.  From there he gave me The First Deadly Sin, The Second Deadly Sin, and so on.  I have loved detective stories and cop fiction ever since.  A boyfriend in college insisted I  watch "The Osterman Weekend".  Of course, I then had to read everything Ludlum ever wrote. 

I got hooked on photography in college.  Eventually earning an Associates of Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degrees in the subject.  The kinds of photography that speak to me the most are documentary, sports, nature, and portraiture.  I love math and science so of all of the arts, photography presses more of my buttons at a single time than anything else.

I combined my fascination with "the boys in blue" and photography while a senior at the Moore College of Art.  I was stumped for a topic for my senior thesis and out of frustation started thumbing through the yellow pages.  I got to the "public safety" section and a lightbulb went off.  I had seen a book of black and white photos taken in New York City where the photographer (sorry, I don't remember the photographer's name or the title) followed NYC beat cops and took some amazing photographs.  I called the Philly police dept and  amazingly they said, "Yes".

That was the coolest 6 months of my life!  I spent the bulk of my time with the mounted unit.  I even rode one of the horses on the lawn in front of Independence Hall!  I also spent a fair amount of time with a K-9 training class.  Then there were the two beat cops who worked "Jeweler's Row".  Maybe now that we have a scanner I will take the time to scan some of those images in...

When my husband and I were still just dating he took me home for that all important panic attack inducing meet-the-parents visit.  I was delighted to find that his mother's obsessions are quilting and cross stitch.   I learned both of these arts from her.  I stopped doing cross stitch out of frustration.  Frustration that I do not have the drawing talent needed to create my own intricate patterns.  Frustration at the necessity of always refering to a pattern (I'm a wing-it kind of person).  And, finally frustration that it aggravated my carpal tunnel syndrome so terribly.  With quilting I know the mechanics but I don't enjoy doing it.  I do, however, enjoy the design process associated with quilts.  Gayle (my MIL) and I are currently finding our way in this area.  She loves the actual making of a quilt but always works from someone else's pattern. So we are a good fit together except that she prefer the much more traditional style of quilts whereas I love quilts that are more modern and abstract.  Oh well, it is just another beginning.

I have gone on and on about knitting, dying, and spinning.  I won't bore you here with more of that.  If that is stuff you don't, in fact, find boring then try this link for my Dyed Bright Here blog.

I am  a HUGE fan of Twitter.  The previously promised post about twitter is still stewing in the back of my brain.  I will serve it up when it is ready....soon.  I have stumbled upon a huge number of writers.  Some of these people actually earn a living (or part of one) with their writing.  But, most pursuit it either as a part time job or just as a hobby they would love to earn a living with.  A few (like me) just find the ability to string together words in such a way as to tell a story, convey emotions, make the reader feel something fascinating to say the least.  Writers use the same words as you and I.  Or should that be you and me?  There is an art and a craft to choosing better words.  The best words.  And putting them together in such a way as to impart feelings.

Lately, I've been writing a lot.  Mostly because I've been forcing myself to.  It reminds me of the time I used to spend sitting at the piano practicing every day.  I had to make myself go through the motions.  The scales.  The arpeggios.  The sonatas.  The etudes.  The preludes.  And then, once or twice a week when I had the time and the inclination, I got to riff.  To just let go and play anything and everything that I wanted.  To create music that fit my mood for the day.  I used to play most of Elton John's greatest hits and they were good for letting go.  Sometimes I just composed on the fly.  Back in the day, we didn't have computerized, digitized keyboards that would take down your work as you played it and put in on the staffs for you.  If I wanted to keep something past it's initial birth I had to memorize it.  Play it over and over again, and painstakingly transcribe it to music paper.  Yea, that didn't happen much at all.  To continue the comparison between practicing the piano and writing everyday, I have found that poetry, specifically haiku, is the type of writing that I can just let loose with.  A sort of written riff.  Something tells me you may be seeing a lot more of that here in the future.

Some thoughts on "following" on Twitter

Possibly the coolest thing about Twitter is that you "follow" people. By word of mouth or by searching out people with the same interests, or by finding their twitter name on a list. You chose whose voices you want to hear. Or be aware of. The people you "follow" don't necessarily follow you back. In the case of the celebs with thousands (or even millions) of followers they can't possibly be reciprocating the 'follow'. Yet they are keenly aware of how far they are 'reaching' out into the Twitterverse.  They just have their own personal list of who they chose to follow.

Your list of who follows you and who you follow is all public knowledge (unless you keep that under lock and key which is your right but defeats the whole beauty of twitter and is not part of this conversation. I am speaking only about public accounts.) .as is your entire stream of tweets. So, at any time you can pull up what someone has said, who they follow and what that person has said and who they follow...

I find this fascinating. When you see someone's twitter stream you see who they are having conversations with. Who they really listen to, who in their opinion has authority. Then you see who that next person listens/talks to and on down the line.

If the people you have chosen to follow in the first place have similar interests as you well then you will quickly find yourself in an entire community of like-minded individuals. You are making the acquaintance of people you can commiserate with, learn from, grow with, who can encourage you and whom you can also cheer on.

If, like most people, you have a number of different interests you will probably find that you have a number of these different communities residing in your twitterverse.

Personally, I first went looking for other knitters.

Then the occasional musician or actor or celeb that I enjoy and was curious about.

Then, came the SAHM's (stay-at-home-moms). Then, even though I am way past having kids (ok, it's only been 5 yrs since Jake was born but I was already too old then) I seem to gravitate toward some younger women just starting out on the Mommy trip. I am sensitive to the issue of postpartum depression having suffered terribly 16 yrs ago.

Then, I love writers. I personally love mysteries and a well written romance but the genre doesn't matter. Writing is something I will never be really good at so I admire their craft the way I admire any artist working in a different medium than mine.

I have also added a number of other artists just because they are well, artists. Photographers (I have two degrees in Photography), some painters, some IT designers, some print media types. No rhyme or reason here other than they are artists who seem to have something interesting to say.

Finally, because I have become an Etsy seller I also follow a number of other individuals from there.

I almost forgot, the reality show folks. I follow a bunch of folks from SYTYCD (So You Think You Can Dance) my favorite reality show because they work their asses off and the dancing is pure art not the simplified crap they do on Dancing with the stars. (Although a couple of SYTYCD alum are pros on that show too). Plus a few from PR (Project Runway) and Ryan Seacrest from AI (American Idol).

You would be surprised how many of the people from these different communities overlap. Like me, the people I follow also have a lot of different interests.

Nationality, religion, sex, sexual orientation, race, age. None of these things that so often divides us in the 'real world' apply here. I follow those who have interesting points of view, open minds, who speak candidly but not cruelly. I quickly 'unfollow' those who only use Twitter to sell their stuff. (I tweet about the things I list for sale but limit it to just 1 or 2 tweets per item.) I don't mind cursing so long as it is not all the time or gratuitous. Personally, fuck is one of my favorite words in the English language. I just try to use it sparingly in my tweets. I once lost followers instantaneously when I combined the words 'ass' and 'rape' in the same sentence. Oh, well. That is their prerogative and the beauty of chosing whom to follow. Or not.

So, that gives me what? Seven distinct communities that I am either a member of in some way or that I listen and pay attention to on a regular basis. They are:

The Knitters
A few musicians & actors
The Moms (young & old)
The Writers
The Artists & Craftspeople
The Etsy Sellers
The dancers, designers, and singers trying to break into their dream profession

They are me.. We are Twitter.

You can follow me @BrightEyedDyer