Friday, July 26, 2013

Following Butterflies

When the adults in my childhood wanted to inject themselves into my world, they all seemed to have the same quiver of ice breakers they would pull conversation starters out of to initiate an interaction.  " Hi, what is your name?"  or Well now, aren't you growing like a weed?"  

The question that I remember as probably the dumbest question an adult could ask was, " What do you want to be when you grow up?"  When I first had to field this question I had not even gotten my head around the concept of "growing up".  I was still struggling with the notion of simply existing.  But like most kids, I wanted to please the adults in my life, so I would hem and haw for a a time and if they did not offer a suggestion I could jump on board with, I would say something like, a cowboy, a jet pilot, and sometimes an Indian  At the age of say 6, what I wanted to be depended on what I was into that week.

I never did find anything I wanted to be when I grew up.  Oh sure I flirted with this or that career choice in my mind, but when it came to doing something about it, I just fell back on my struggle to simply exist.  My road to where I am now was not a clean, straight run.  I followed butterflies.  Not one career, but several mini ones were used to pay my way.  Not one of them though did I ever feel was a true calling.  When I became tired of one butterfly, I would find another.

My road wandered aimlessly with no destination in sight.  There was always another butterfly around the next corner and there always will be.

Later...........................................

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Inversion

Do I need to understand the technology that now rules many aspects of my life in order to take advantage of them?  For the most part, no.  Show me what button, what icon, what door to open and from there many of the gee whiz gadgets, processes and fun stuff is waiting me me to dive in. 

On occasion, .......hmm...well on more than a few occasions, I find my lack of knowledge and understanding creates some roadblocks in my progress through the digi-app maze.  I seem to be particularly prone to opening those pop up teases that entice me to foolishly once again "complete a short survey".  They suck me in with promises of $400 I-Pod, smart gadgets or $500 coupons off my next technological wonder down to Best Buy.  I keep thinking I am too smart now to get sucked in.  But no, those internet weasels are some clever.  More clever than I am, that's for sure.

Anyway, I took the above picture on my 6 year old digital camera.  A camera that is now I am guessing an antique based on how fast the digital world is moving along.  It still does the job for me, but I will say that the images it produces can be matched by the images taken on many of the new high falutin "smart phones".

So I capture this Kodak moment a few mornings ago while the dew clung heavy on anything it came to rest on.  I liked the image so much I rushed into my home office and downloaded it into my Picassa file.  Picassa is a free image program from the geniuses at Google.  It is not as sophisticated as the store bought image programs, but it has some nifty bells and whistles that a moron like me can figure out how to use. I can manipulate the images in all kinds of ways.  Crop them.  Inject text. Lighten darken, enhance, go black and white and of course reverse the colors, which is referred to on the tool bar as Inversion.  I made a copy of the original image and just to see what "Inversion" meant, I punched it.  The above image is the result.

Obviously I like this image.  Enough so I wanted to share.  I was going to make people guess what it was a picture of.  As I already have blown it with some serious hints, I offer up the original as a kind of contrasting bookend to what I started with.  It is a shot of two spider webs on the small Mug Pine I planted in the rock wall last year.


Keep it "tween the ditches..............................................