November Hill Press is pleased to announce that the first photographic calendar, featuring many of the November Hill family, is now available in our brand new Zazzle shop.
You may see and buy the calendar via the link on the sidebar to your right.
The calendar is in advance of the nonfiction title, Partners In Zen, which is forthcoming in 2011.
billie hinton’s camera-obscura:
life and lessons on November Hill Farm
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Saturday, November 06, 2010
the november garden
I've been astounded at how our garden began to deteriorate in late August and then miraculously seemed to regenerate itself. Suddenly the tomato vines greened up and began to set fruit again, the sweet peppers took off like they were trying to win a contest, and the eggplant went nuts. The beans gave a valiant new crop, the basil went ballistic, and we watched one particularly cute rapscallion grow like, well, a weed.
I kept meaning to take photos but decided yesterday I HAD to since we're looking at a very cold night tonight and I doubt the plants will survive it without being pampered, which I am not planning to do at this point in the season. Well, except for the rapscallion, which is winterized!
And as you'll see, I've had some assistance in the garden lately. A certain garden helper has been very steadily picking peppers for me and bringing them in.
I kept meaning to take photos but decided yesterday I HAD to since we're looking at a very cold night tonight and I doubt the plants will survive it without being pampered, which I am not planning to do at this point in the season. Well, except for the rapscallion, which is winterized!
And as you'll see, I've had some assistance in the garden lately. A certain garden helper has been very steadily picking peppers for me and bringing them in.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
elkmont, continued
More shots of the Wonderland outbuildings and the remains of the main building. As is my usual style, I walked around snapping photos without really checking to see the results (most of my photography years it wasn't even POSSIBLE to check the results and I have never really gotten in the habit of doing so now that it is) and mainly pointing and shooting to capture the same scene my naked eyes were drawn to. I mostly used a 50mm lens back then and now always start that way before utilizing the zoom feature on my little camera.
When we got home and I had a chance to look at the photos, I was absolutely thrilled with this particular set. Although I wish I'd been able to get the entire building before it was demolished, getting these photos captures the essence of the place for me and I know I'll use them in the future when I want to visit the Wonderland, either for my own interest or for book research.
These photos are the kind that I would have lingered over in the darkroom had I taken them 25 years ago and done the processing myself. I know that first one with the broken window panes would have been incredible to watch in the developing tray, as it came into form on the paper. I miss that aspect of photography - what made it magic for me - the alchemical process in action.
I guess I should say that none of these photos have been photo-shopped in any way. I don't crop or change the color. I will rotate as needed but that's it. And although I can shift them easily into black and white, I rarely do - I miss using my Nikon with Tri-X film that I knew well enough to be able to push it, distress it, and experiment with it having some idea of what I would get in the end. I love grainy, contrasty black and white shots, and I just don't know how to get that with a digital camera.
One of these days I'm going to get all my Paris photos online - I have no idea what that will mean technically and how long it will take, but it will be a fun and lengthy project that will keep me busy for awhile!
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
and a note on voting and political parties
I can't help myself today. This is not a political blog and I'm actually not a very political person, even though I grew up in a home where both parents, particularly my mother, were extremely interested in and involved with state politics. Maybe the early, heavy, exposure to it is what pushed me away, but on some level I just think the whole thing is a distraction to living a meaningful good life.
Yesterday my husband came home, picked me up, and we drove together to our polling place - the small activity room of a country church. I actually love this as a polling place because it reminds me the moment we drive up that we are part of a community of people - all the people who live around us - not just Republicans or Democrats. They all live and work and breathe and shop and hopefully find some time to play. They all experience difficulties in budgeting, parenting, aging, communicating. They are all human.
My human-ness kicked right in - I immediately balked when I saw there was a line. This has never happened since we moved to the farm, and I've enjoyed the years of waltzing in, voting, and waltzing back out again. But there we were.
A young black woman in front of me turned to ask if I knew who I was voting for - was I going to vote Republican? I said I would likely vote for some of each, depending on what I knew about the candidates.
It wasn't clear to me whether she was voting one way or the other, and in fact, neither of us ever said we "were" one party or the other - but we spent about 15 minutes talking about what we knew about the candidates and the issues. She talked about her views on a referendum issue on the ballot, and I told her what I knew of several candidates I particularly wanted to support. We bemoaned the fact that we simply didn't know much about some of the candidates, and we made time for a few jokes (husband leaned on the voting machine at one point and I envisioned something going wrong and the entire network news descending on us) and about a traffic stop we'd encountered in our community a few weeks ago in which the young officer made reference to gangbangers (I think he was having wishful thinking - it is so quiet here).
Then I realized that one of our neighbors was working behind the table and she saw us and asked how we're doing. I told her we have new neighbors with horses coming soon and she was excited to hear this and asked me to call her later in the week and fill her in.
Although I'd started out grumpy about standing in line, I ended up feeling reassured that what we do when we vote is more than throw our support behind a Democrat or a Republican. We mingle with other members of our communities, those people who most share our community's strengths and weaknesses. We might see our neighbors, we might meet new ones. We can use our vote to support candidates we truly want to see in office, or we can use the vote to encourage party diversity in what is a (to me) boring two-party system, neither of which generally represent my individual views.
For me, voting is not a duty. It's a right. And it is a choice. I have purposely NOT voted at times because I didn't want to vote for any of the candidates. I don't think there's any special virtue in marching obediently to the polls, voting randomly because you don't really know enough to make a thoughtful vote. There are many ways to express the right to vote - and I honor and celebrate all of them.
I also want to express my disgust for members of BOTH major parties who refer to the other side as stupid, ignorant, and whatever other negative adjectives get thrown about. What makes this country what it is? The fact that we all have the right and the safety to express our political views. Whatever they might be. We have the right as people to have a different point of view. We come to our points of view from many different places and experiences. We believe what we believe because it's psychologically comfortable for us to believe it. And there is a bigger picture to all this - we're all part of a bigger society - which grows and changes and goes through stages just as we individuals do. There's no way for us to see how the big pattern is shifting - but part of being on the earth is living through this shifting, changing community of humans who are all in different stages.
The best way to be a good citizen is to live your daily life with consideration and integrity. It's not about how many times you vote or how many people you called or whether you made signs for one party or another. Find concrete ways to make things better in your neighborhood, your family, your community - on a daily basis. Those small gestures are more powerful than anything else you do.
(and if you disagree with me, that's okay - I'm not here to debate or generate discussion - feel free to say what you like, but I won't be responding to comments on this post - I just wanted to write this today after experiencing the chat on Facebook yesterday - at some point I think it pushed me over the edge!)
Yesterday my husband came home, picked me up, and we drove together to our polling place - the small activity room of a country church. I actually love this as a polling place because it reminds me the moment we drive up that we are part of a community of people - all the people who live around us - not just Republicans or Democrats. They all live and work and breathe and shop and hopefully find some time to play. They all experience difficulties in budgeting, parenting, aging, communicating. They are all human.
My human-ness kicked right in - I immediately balked when I saw there was a line. This has never happened since we moved to the farm, and I've enjoyed the years of waltzing in, voting, and waltzing back out again. But there we were.
A young black woman in front of me turned to ask if I knew who I was voting for - was I going to vote Republican? I said I would likely vote for some of each, depending on what I knew about the candidates.
It wasn't clear to me whether she was voting one way or the other, and in fact, neither of us ever said we "were" one party or the other - but we spent about 15 minutes talking about what we knew about the candidates and the issues. She talked about her views on a referendum issue on the ballot, and I told her what I knew of several candidates I particularly wanted to support. We bemoaned the fact that we simply didn't know much about some of the candidates, and we made time for a few jokes (husband leaned on the voting machine at one point and I envisioned something going wrong and the entire network news descending on us) and about a traffic stop we'd encountered in our community a few weeks ago in which the young officer made reference to gangbangers (I think he was having wishful thinking - it is so quiet here).
Then I realized that one of our neighbors was working behind the table and she saw us and asked how we're doing. I told her we have new neighbors with horses coming soon and she was excited to hear this and asked me to call her later in the week and fill her in.
Although I'd started out grumpy about standing in line, I ended up feeling reassured that what we do when we vote is more than throw our support behind a Democrat or a Republican. We mingle with other members of our communities, those people who most share our community's strengths and weaknesses. We might see our neighbors, we might meet new ones. We can use our vote to support candidates we truly want to see in office, or we can use the vote to encourage party diversity in what is a (to me) boring two-party system, neither of which generally represent my individual views.
For me, voting is not a duty. It's a right. And it is a choice. I have purposely NOT voted at times because I didn't want to vote for any of the candidates. I don't think there's any special virtue in marching obediently to the polls, voting randomly because you don't really know enough to make a thoughtful vote. There are many ways to express the right to vote - and I honor and celebrate all of them.
I also want to express my disgust for members of BOTH major parties who refer to the other side as stupid, ignorant, and whatever other negative adjectives get thrown about. What makes this country what it is? The fact that we all have the right and the safety to express our political views. Whatever they might be. We have the right as people to have a different point of view. We come to our points of view from many different places and experiences. We believe what we believe because it's psychologically comfortable for us to believe it. And there is a bigger picture to all this - we're all part of a bigger society - which grows and changes and goes through stages just as we individuals do. There's no way for us to see how the big pattern is shifting - but part of being on the earth is living through this shifting, changing community of humans who are all in different stages.
The best way to be a good citizen is to live your daily life with consideration and integrity. It's not about how many times you vote or how many people you called or whether you made signs for one party or another. Find concrete ways to make things better in your neighborhood, your family, your community - on a daily basis. Those small gestures are more powerful than anything else you do.
(and if you disagree with me, that's okay - I'm not here to debate or generate discussion - feel free to say what you like, but I won't be responding to comments on this post - I just wanted to write this today after experiencing the chat on Facebook yesterday - at some point I think it pushed me over the edge!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)