My Tuesday morning started with rain. Lovely, silvery, crystal rain that makes the drab streets shine and the colors of everyday life vibrant. I made sure I had my camera AND memory card before I headed out the door. School is out until January, but I wanted to snap my view shots in the rain, so I swung by the college just for you guys.
San Gabriel Mountains (or not), 12-18
Naturally, it stopped raining before I got there. I tried to take my mountain shot without the parking lot, but my auto focus rebelled. I like my auto focus a great deal, much more than my manual focus, so I compromised and gave it some lines to focus on.
Construction, 12-18
I had hoped to be in the rain, to prove my “stoicism in ‘all weather’ shoots” to Steve Pulley. Oh well.
Boone Sculpture Garden, 12-18
As you can see it was still plenty drippy out. I decided it was the perfect time to introduce you to the sculptures in the sculpture garden.
The first thing you must know: there are only three…yes, three…whole sculptures in the sculpture garden. There was one more, but it seems to have disappeared.
“Bound Goat” by Jack Zajak
Close up of “Bound Goat”
Before I actually looked at it, I thought this was a bull. Hmm.
“Column Figure” by Stephan Balkenhol
Close-up of “Column Figure”
Column guy here is roughly 10 feet tall, including his column.
“Red Pine” by Deborah Butterfield
Close-up of “Red Pine”
Last week I learned something astonishing about this beautiful driftwood sculpture: it’s not wood at all! It’s metal! Cast bronze and scrap metal to be exact. Even up close it looks like wood: you have to touch it to believe it.
The lingering droplets of rain and extra-vivid colors were too good to pass up, so I took some flora close-ups, too:
Fountain grass
Pampas grass
More pampas grass
My favorite pampas grass shot
Raindrops on something green
These were the unedited shots. I played with some special effects on my paint program to make them look extra special in black and white, but I won’t bore everyone with those. You can view them here if you’d like.
Peek-a-boo!
The elevator in the parking garage has a mirrored ceiling. 🙂
I took myself to the Reyn for coffee, breakfast, nice people and a comfy corner to spread out my book notes. (In case you’re a new friend and don’t know, I’m writing a book for my grandmother, my Oma, about her experiences during WWII in the Netherlands.) I decided to tackle the beginning, the opening that describes her family and life before the war came. I thought it would be easy since she wrote a good chunk of it herself, and the rest she dictated while I typed. The plan was to simply organize the information into a decent opening. Easy peasy, right?
No, not at all.
As I went through my notes, I found lots of little mistakes. Oma has more than a touch of dementia, so I already anticipated something like this. During our interviews I had her repeat as many stories as I could without being obvious about it, just to make sure they were consistent. I didn’t think to double and triple-check background and family information. I can do my research and fix it all, but it’s time-consuming and she wants her book sooner than yesterday.
My biggest concern, though, is that making these corrections is beginning to alter the story: it’s becoming her story versus the story. But whose story is the story? Mine? This isn’t a book that’s going to be on any Best Seller lists, so in the grand scheme of things I guess it doesn’t matter if some of her details are wrong, especially since they’re true to her. If she was in her right mind, though, she’d want me to make the corrections. At this point I don’t know which is the more ethical choice: to correct or not to correct? It drove me to frustrated tears.
Back at Mom’s house the weather was funky. First it started to hail itty-bitty balls that looked like nonpareils. Then it started to rain big drops…
Big rain drops and proof of my stalwartness
…but it was sunny! Look!
Sun in the rain
Sun + rain = rainbows, so I scanned the skies.
No rainbow here.
Or here.
Nothing but clouds there.
Maybe it slipped through this cloud hole?
I never found a rainbow.
About ten minutes after the rain stopped, the wind picked up. It blew the clouds clean away, but somehow the skies were still dark. The mountains were illuminated orange, then pink, and wouldn’t you know the camera battery decided it was the perfect time to die completely. Which was okay, really, because the wind was freezing cold! It drove us back inside to scramble for any little bit of warmth or coziness we could find.
The wind blew through the night. It was calm this morning, but still so cold. We were thankful, though, that we didn’t get a windstorm like we had last year, that kept us cold and without electricity for four days. (Here are some aftermath shots from that exciting night.)
Whew! Quite the Tuesday!
Hope you all are keeping warm and holding your loved ones a little closer. ❤
J9 in L.A. 