Sidetracked Charley

Connected I confess. I will be 70 this summer. And one of the greatest things happened to me 13 years ago Christmas eve. I was involved in a ski accident which compressed three discs in my neck and knocked me into my right brain - literally. Witnesses to the accident said I was hit hard enough by a speeding skier to fly into the air and land on my head. The resultant closed brain trauma CBT or shaken baby head injury turned off my left brain control and let my right brain run completely free. It is why I paint, why I photo edit in such wild colors, and why I do not use manuals to learn technological devices. Hell, I confess, I cannot read manuals any more. Once when I was a technical writer I wrote them. I translated accountants to computer programmers and computer programmers to management. Boy, that wasn't easy. Since the head injury I have adapted to digital cameras, digital post processing programs, laptops, tablets, and my latest, the ipod. And all without cracking a ...

Sunset on the Sturgeon Moon New Mexico may be the land of manana (not necessarily tomorrow but some day to be named in the future) because of sunsets (and sunrises). Or it may be because it attracts artists, writers and other introverts. Believe it or not we do not move here for fiestas. And those that do will soon leave. A few of us old timers were sitting around at the art reception yesterday talking about what we know and those newcomers do not. And we were laughing over tales of how they were going to transform our sleepy little community. Nobody ever asks if we want it transformed. If they did the answer would be no. We moved here because in the midst of performing some task on the computer or cleaning the kitchen we will look up and see the clouds transform as the sun sets and drop everything to grab the camera to catch yet another stunning sunset or sunrise. The camera is not necessary; a cup of coffee will do. Actually the sunrise or sunset is also not a requirement. A...

Will it rain? It has been a busy week but one rather without focus, and so when I paused this morning to contemplate my weekly blog I had to revert to an old trick which was to look back at the week past photographs.  They remind me of where I was and what I was doing. I was definitely watching the weather. No, this blog is not about clouds as last week. It is more about watchfulness or expectancy -- will it rain? Will it freeze? How well will the polytunnel do this spring? When should I plant the tomatoes outside? My attention was divided between a friend's health, new fronds on the Sego Palm, waiting for acceptances on exhibits, Mardi's adaptation to new diet, what to do about the destroyed garden shed, whether to build a new one. The list is long. Tomatoes in tunnel tepee Sego Palm's new fronds Cleaning up mess of exploded garden shed All my friends think I do so much but I have to admit to just staring at things this week. Yes, I got the drip irr...

Awaiting the rain by J. Binford-Bell To call forth the rain you must first create  the clouds. J. Binford-Bell Nothing may be quite as boring to a photographer as a clear blue sky. A clear sky shows no promise of a great dawn or spectacular sunset or flashes of lightning. So this week when we finally had clouds I left my house early with my camera and a mission to record them before the sun made them vanish. Or it rained. I was hoping for the rain. We are all hoping for the rain. But to have rain you must first have clouds. The humidity level needs to get out of the single digits so any rain that falls from the clouds reaches the parched earth. Rain in the distance by J. Binford-Bell There is an expectancy about clouds and rain in the distance. And a sense of unreleased tension which is almost electric. Just rain. Really rain you want to scream. Give me lightning and thunder and the pounding of rain on the metal roof so I can sleep. It was that sort...

Spring Rain by J. Binford-Bell Raining.Not snowing. But a gentle rain that reminds me more of California in the winter than New Mexico in the spring, expect it comes and goes indicating some cloud movement over the mountain. Thermal lift of the air up the sides of the slopes breaks up solid clouds and also takes the moisture streaming in from the south and builds thunderheads to entertain us. The weather station at the Albuquerque Airport used to keep track of the days the sun had shown. Definitely the vast majority of the 365. Even if that shaft of sunlight was fleeting and in the distance. Light by J. Binford-Bell Rain in the east is an entirely different animal. I got so depressed in Washington, DC one fall because the sun did not ever seem to break through. I even started putting hash marks on the bathroom mirror with an eyebrow pencil for each continual day of rain. I felt so much like a prisoner. But rain in New Mexico is a rare thing and a fleeting thing so oft...

I found this wonderful early black and white photo of New York with her head in the clouds as it were. I was Googling images in black and white for use here on Sidetracked Charley. For reasons only another eccentric artist could understand I find myself wanting to stay with B&W here or monochromatic color images. I was soaring through the ether to avoid having to rein myself in and plant feet firmly to the ground and get to updating my inventory spread sheet, etc., which I blogged about on Creative Journey this morning. Mother would have said I was woolgathering , and these clouds do look like cotton wool. Well, I have always had my head in the clouds . But to get down to eart h, let me confess that I haven't a clue what this blog is about. I think I begun it just because I wanted to post this picture and not do the boring work I know I must do. That old law firm of Delay, Delay and Delay. But then once I began to type I realized the many cliques that decorate our language w...

When I first bought my house here in Black Lake I had my dining room table at the window facing east and would sit and sip my coffee while watching dawn creep over the mountains or the huge clouds build during the monsoon season. That window is now the door to my studio; a studio I designed to take advantage of all that beautiful sky. The process of building it, however, shut me up in the recesses of my house with my computers away from the dust of construction and all the windows I had so dreamed about. I have long ago moved back into all those forbidden spaces but somewhere I lost the habit of morning coffee spent before a window watching the clouds turn pink. I begin my day on the desktop computer looking at a corner and blinds down on the western view. It is still dark at that time, and if the blinds are open I feel exposed to the traffic (odd word for my little lane). Two days ago it occurred to me that I should take my morning coffee into the studio and boot up the laptop instead...