Sidetracked Charley

Elk Dawn at Black Lake I am a writer of journals and blogs, a maker of goals and affirmations, a believer that the future is a gift we have the opportunity to shape. So with the last day of 2011 before me I pulled out my journal and looked back to the same time last year. And then the year before. I had begun 2010 with a lofty and extensive list of goals. I accomplished less than half. I was grateful I did that much but it did effect my list for 2011. That list is only 6 items: 1) Move beyond the events of 2010, 2) Be more positive in my outlook, 3) Set my own directions, 4) Set more adventurous directions in my art, 5) Look at doing poetry/art book, 6) Keep website more current. I have failed miserably at number 6 which now adorns my todo list for 2012. And I will admit that it took me almost all of 2011 to get number 2 and 3 accomplished. And I can still be overwhelmed by grief from time to time. I am busy working on poems to fit various pieces of my works and have tracked dow...

Laughing Marilyn Monroe by Bert Stern Pearls Laugh lines Laughter Non-airbrushed flaws. Blonde by Clairol Body by Mother Nature. No plastic no Botox no implants The real thing. Except maybe the laughter J. Binford-Bell December 2011

Christmas Morning Elk Every photographer knows what a gift it is to have a close friend, or in my case a sister, to go a photographing with. People that have not looked at the world through a view finder don't understand when we yell, "Stop. Pull over. No, back there." And other assorted exclamations of excitement. Nor do they see the necessity in going out at the crack of dawn in sub zero weather (-12 F on Christmas Day) to seek the elusive elk. This year's Calf Studying the Dawn Or to catch that early morning light on the surrounding mountains and hills. Most people miss this entirely. Dawn on Cat Scratch Mountain Dawn on Wheeler Peak My sister and I returned after the morning expedition to a Christmas Morning breakfast of eggs Benedict on homemade English Muffin bread. And then it was out for the afternoon off-road tradition begun last year. So Nikon and Cannon in hand and fur kids in back we set off to find unexplored territory and went throug...

I live in the mountains of northern New Mexico not Siberia.  Yes, we get snow. But the last totally paralyzing storm was 2006. We got 6 feet in three days. Things came to a stand still for about four days. And that was basically because all the snow clearing equipment in our area was pulled out for the plains. They got it worse just like they did on this storm. A friend just posted a story about a couple heading to Angel Fire to ski who got buried in snow outside Springer. Springer, NM is in the plains where snow is compounded with blizzard force winds and total whiteouts. They obviously were under the misconception that their SUV would get them through the closed roads. They were wrong. I blame the commercials. Pay enough for your vehicle and/or tires and you are suppose to be able to make it through Noah's flood. Wrong. Most of us that live in this rarefied atmosphere know when to stay home and hunker down and when we can make it through. I have lived in ...

I find it hard to believe the year is almost over. Been a relative good year. Especially in relationship to 2010. I suppose I should be thinking about a year in review blog but my focus at the moment is on the gathering storm. Storm reports are fodder for us locals. We all have our opinions. The tourist center and the ski resort are currently picking up on the weather report with the greatest snow depth forecast - 12 inches. But then this storm was suppose to actively begin at midnight and when I looked out the window at 5 a.m. there was not a flake. As I write this (9 a.m.) there is only two to three inches. I think I am being really generous with the three. But the ravens are celebrating over the trees. They generally go into this party dance when they know they might have to roost for a while. We all have our little signs we look for to bolster our opinion. I think maybe only about 6 to 8 inches at my house. It is wise to remember I live in the mountains. And weather and snow d...

Creative Journey: Talk of cold

That time of year again. How quickly it seems to come around these days. I love decorating trees. Love the smell of them (the fresh ones). It looked like I might not get my tree this year. For the longest time only one place in Angel Fire had trees for sale and they looked dyed and plastic, definitely were not freshly cut, and had no place to place decorations the branches were so jammed together. I considered a fake tree. Even went internet shopping for one. Disenchanted with that possibility I thought of any variety of ways to make a tree substitute. I had done one in college which was stacked tumbleweeds sprayed white and adorned with Christmas lights which my room mate and I swore blinked to Tchaikowsky's 5th symphony. I have used potted Norfolk pines also. And for several years when space was limited due to mask making for Mardi Gras just hung ornaments from the ceiling. I was dreaming up a mobile tree to hang from the studio rafters when I returned to my search for...

December snow by J. Binford-Bell Winter arrived this week. All my bargaining did not work. Still with a forecast by NOAA of three massive storms we only got the second. And currently the third has been downgraded from 16" to as little as 8" additional. But it looks as if we are not going to escape the bitter cold. It is 6 F this morning as I write this and destined to only get to 10 F today. Plunging to -13 tonight. The good news is there is currently not a breath of wind. But it seemed like a good time to start a morning fire in the wood stove. The first blast of winter weather always seems so rude. Yes, it is bound to come. And yes, we need the moisture. But I really would rather do it without gale force winds and sub zero temps. But I can deal with both easier than summers in the triple digits. I can always put on more clothing but there is just so much I am willing to take off in public. And New Mexico, is by in large, just pretend winter. It comes and goes. I found...

I suppose it is natural to think of traditions during the holidays if only in the manner and style in which we prepare the meal and set the table. But a friend of mine here in blog land recently recalled an old man fishing that stood with his hat off in silence while a funeral convoy passed. I have not seen many funeral convoys or corteges of late. But then I live outside a small community that until recently did not even have a cemetery. But I do remember my Uncle Ray passing this bit of behavior to me on his lawn in Kansas City. My father also always stood in silence with his hat off and over his heart when the United States flag passed by in a parade. It is in there will all the other passed down knowledge given to me by my elders. And I was of the generation that believed traditions like wedding ceremonies held back progress in society. Age has changed me. I now see so many of these stumbling blocks to progress as glue that holds a society together. The fisherman that stood in...

I was reminded this morning when I considered my topic and searched my brain for a lead photograph that when I originally began this blog I used old photos I had searched in Google for. This was one of the first ones I used. Fortunately blogspot keeps them all in Picassa albums so I was able to get it back for today's topic of shopping in Taos. The wagons now have wheels but I don't know that the look of my fellow customers have changed much. Taos residents can be an odd lot. Especially at Walmart. First stop yesterday was Albertson's. I had made a list of items I needed for my after Thanksgiving open studio event and I am more familiar with their layout of products than Smith's. And I was trying to avoid Walmart to be honest. I seldom, if ever, go into Walmart once the holiday season has kicked off. I am obviously not a good American consumer. Albertson's also has the bogo sales on things - buy one/get one. They had extra thick organic pork chops perfect for s...

Mt. Wheeler with snow cap Finally got back from vacation mentally. And moved out of idle into a gear that at least got something done. Biggest thing was getting the desk moved out of the studio. It gives me so much more room and the person that came and got it is really enjoying it. With it gone it makes it easier to rearrange things and prepare the studio for my Holiday opening, November 25 and 26. Another boon to mentally returning from vacation is I got out the camera and snapped some more photos. Though honestly I was still thinking of fall when a snow capped Wheeler Peak revealed itself from under the clouds. The weather was nicer than I though given the really cold nights we have been having - like the single digits. And so my walk up the lane to look in at a friend's cats invited lingering to get that just right photo. Fir tree cones And then some lingering over captured images on the computer and Corel Paintshop Pro 4x. Seed Drill Some Modifications An...

Not sure where the last week went. Yes, there were little things I got done but there were also huge blocks of wasted time. Almost as if once back from vacation physically my mind took its own vacation. Yes, I caught up with laundry and I got all the photos I took edited and organized. Still need to upload to FlickR. But the list of things I was going to jump right back into like sewing projects (though I have the area to do them established) and cleaning up the studio (the bags are unpacked and no longer in the middle of the floor) are not done. Every other day I have been doing 20 minutes of light weights but not moving beyond that. I did join the Angel Fire Chamber of Commerce but I have not done a write up and e-mailed in in to the membership manager. It is the end of the first week of November and I have to get the peddle to the metal soon. No more watching streaming videos all day long. Or playing computer games past my bedtime. Yesterday the local firewood supplier delivere...

I do try to support local businesses but I no longer ski, have a complete stock of Angel Fire t-shirts, and cannot figure out the open/close schedule of our restaurants in off season. In spite of gas being 20 to 30 cents more per gallon than Taos I usually fill up on this side of the mountain unless I need to go to Taos for another reason. Since the Taos branch of Artisan's art supply closed these trips had become less frequent. As a solo household I often just picked up food stuffs at the local store. The Valley Market was recently bought and remodeled by Lowe's, a Texas chain. The remodel enlarged the store but most of the new footage has been taken up by a much expanded liquor section which is arranged so it cannot be avoided. My favorite brand of ice cream is gone. Organic foods are relegated to one half aisle across from wines. Whole wheat flour cannot be found. Their bread is that white foamy stuff that when wadded up makes a great cleaner for paintings. And your abili...

Painted Desert After I graduated from high school my father gave us the grand tour. Not the grand tour of a year in Europe which some of my later college friends enjoyed but two weeks with the family seeing the parks of the intermountain west. It was an ambitious list of must see's and early on two parks got cut: Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The argument was we lived in a painted desert and that you could buy petrified wood everywhere. So for years both remained on my must see list if for no other reason that they got cut. But there always seemed to be grander parks to see or more important places to go. But this vacation with my sister I at last made it to both. Let me say for the record that you can buy petrified wood everywhere. But the colors and scope of the painted desert, which continues into the petrified forest park, is not to be seen just anywhere. And for a photographer it should not be missed. I really want to go back. Mostly because the light changes ...

This last year seems to have gone so fast. And the last two months like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I have changed so many things it is hard to find equilibrium it seems. And it isn't just me but the world around me as we race from fall to winter in New Mexico. I normally post a weekly blog here on Mondays and just this morning (in the hours before dawn) realized it was Wednesday. Vacation with my sister begins tomorrow. We are off to photograph more of our beloved Colorado Plateau. This time the southern edge of it. Have cameras and laptops and will travel. Only this time we are doing it on day trips or overnight turn arounds. Works best with fur kids and changeable weather. I need the vacation. But not because it is a change of pace. Pace has changed a lot all on its own. A bit of boredom would be nice. No computer crashes, no extreme allergic reactions with a pet, no more friends being diagnosed with terminal illnesses, etc.  Same oh, same oh sounds very nice actually. But ...

Storm clouds I have been spending time with my Nikon D90 and my newest version of post processing software: Corel Paintshop Pro 4X Ultimate. So much time you would think I was enrolled in a post graduate level photography course. And in a way I am. I am using other photographers I know as my instructors and dissertation committee. I consider the things they post as assignments and take to the street or computer. Terry Atkins Rowe  has posted several very illuminating links on our D90 Ladies Club page on Facebook. And they have served as my text book. A recent one she posted was on achieving good black and white photographs. Frankly since I left my darkroom at college I have not been successful with B&W. And having my sister and friend, Terry, excel at it has been a bit intimidating. My natural tendency is to quit the table when I don't like the game or lose a lot. But this is about me, my camera and my computer. It is an inner competition with self and not j...

Facebook Report Card I don't do apps on Facebook so why I got sucked in with this one when I was tagged by a friend I haven't a clue. But once I had it posted on my page it immediately sucked me in. And it has not been a happy experience. Report cards were a major thing when I was a kid. We had to excel. And let me say for the record that this card would have been a major event at our house. C's and D's were never tolerated. Regardless of the fact that in the end I have a B average. Let me explain they have the friend number wrong. I have more friends (well, a few more) than that. But my grade school report cards often had a special note from the teacher that I did not play well with others. Not that I was mean or anything. I just found my classmates on the whole boring. I would rather sit in a corner of the playground and draw or write. Doing that in class because I found the teacher boring often also earned me the classic line, "Does not use time wisely...

Aspens turning First my sister found out she had won first place for one of her photographs in the 35th International show in Raton. So she made plans to drive up Friday morning after she got off work. Then the repaired computer at last arrived on Thursday. Its hard drive had been replaced so what was once suppose to be Charley VI and became Charley VII because Charley VI would not boot up should probably have been renamed Charley VIII because it has a totally new mind that I have been trying to set up. But I digress again. Friday came too fast and we drove out to Raton to pick up my sister's award. Her first big award for her photography so she was soaring for sure. Then Saturday we once again went four wheeling with her Jeep Rubicon. The Aspens were turning. Where oh where did the year go? And my weekend with my sister was all too fleeting. But she taught me to use the cloning tool on my photo editing program. How to successfully shoot macro pictures. And to microwave scr...

  Moving does not mean packing up the household belongings and hitting the road. As a child with a father in the military, and then later in my youth working for a major construction management company I got to redo my life on a regular basis via United Van Lines. Home was just where my parents lived. And given their lives not anywhere I had lived often. Now I have lived in the same house for almost 15 years and in the same geographic area for almost 23. I until recently would image moving house just to not have to be trapped. But I have at last discovered that movement can be a rather static thing. It can be just a shift in attitude. Or turning just a bit to be aware there is another path to follow. It can be not calling the same friends for lunch or belonging to the same board of directors. It can be like the newly emerged butterfly just quietly pumping its wings full so it can fly - a movement so still as to be almost no movement at all at first...

After having put Fedex and HP down in a couple blogs I thought I ought to say something good about a company. After the external hard drive crashed last October and then the computer service tech I took it to erased the hard drive on my desktop I signed up for the Carbonite Cloud . It is an ethernet back up service that takes the worry out of backup. I am an artist and I admit for losing complete track of time about backing up my computers. Or loading photos into my FlickR account. With the cloud I just have to be on line and anything new I post is backed up. And I can be on any device to access the cloud and pluck down information. I first used it when I had forgotten to download a file from my desktop to my laptop before taking off to a fair. Then again when the desktop failed yet again. I bought a new computer and upon receipt of it could immediately get the backupped data from the cloud and put it on the new one. Now my desktop (still under warranty with HP) has failed and jus...

My HP computer broke again. Mother board this time. And of course it crashed on the first day of Labor Day weekend. It was under warranty and I have a laptop, but my desktop is where I do all my company business and all my photo editing. And, of course, I had a deadline on getting some photos printed for a show I was accepted in. HP agreed that only 8 months old the computer was under warranty. They would send me a shipping box. It left their center on Tuesday with second day express shipping. It was schedule to be delivered by Fedex on Thursday. That delivery date was critical because I could then box the offending computer and call for pickup on Friday. With any luck it would be in the repair center on the following Tuesday at the latest. I cancelled all appointments to not miss the Fedex delivery van. I rushed downstairs after making the bed just in time to see it pull out of my driveway. No box on porch where most drivers leave packages, no box at my renter's...

Ernestine In the old days before technology ran wild you had a chance of talking to a real receptionist or a real operator. Note I did not say human. Ma Bell, the mega telephone company we insisted on breaking up, gave all their operators and service personnel a list of questions and responses from which they could not vary. One of Ernestine's lines on the old Laugh In comedy show was, "Is this the person to whom I am speaking?" I was reminded of Lily Tomlin that made Ernestine famous yesterday in a series of telephone calls to HP and Fedex concerning the undelivered package to ship my broken computer back in. Both have a set list of questions and responses from which they are not allowed to vary regardless of how inappropriate the are.  "Your driver failed to deliver the chemo drug package this week and my husband has died." " We are sorry for your inconvenience." "The funeral is Wednesday." " We apologize for any inconveni...

It has been raining this week. The grass as greened up and every wild flower that didn't bloom this spring because of lack of rain has burst into bloom. My neighbor has put his horses back in the field behind me. I throw on a hoodie and sit on my studio stoop with my camera and coffee. Life is good. And so is the light if you like taking pictures. What a rotten time to have my desktop computer with the Corel Paint Shop program down. So I have contented myself with cropping on my laptop. Meanwhile the list of things to do before winter settles in grows. But I just cannot pull myself away from the photographic opportunities visible from my stoop. Oh, well, maybe next week the weather and view will not be so nice.

If this is September can scenes like the one be far behind? Typing this from my laptop, Traveler. No, I am not traveling except in my mind. And once again my desktop is awaiting shipment back to the mothership of HP. I had cleaned my laptop of excess photos when Charley V failed and Charley VII was on order. That was end of November 2010. One thing would lead to another and I would not have my new desktop until almost the last day of that year. So when it failed yesterday I was well within my warranty time. Tech support always creates chaos in my not that orderly desk area. Which led last night to found things and lost things - including my temper. But in the cool light f predawn I find myself wondering where the last year has gone, how many photos it is possible to put on a hard drive in less than nine months, and maybe it is time while the desktop is gone to rearrange the office area like I thought last December. And is there a way to organize my  computer desk so when the ...