www.richardjespers.com
  • Home
  • Books
  • Journals
  • Blog

Aloft

11/27/2013

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that
   cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd
   by your senses five?
William Blake
Born November 28, 1757

Aloft

If you’ve ever seen a photo finish
of a man or woman running, you know
for a measly fraction of a second
the man or woman runner is airborne.

That, for me, is the entire glory
of running, not that of winning races.
All those airborne fractions of a second
add up to endless hours of flight.

If you could put all those moments
together, how far, imagine how far
you might fly. Could you see yourself on the
moon, or some equally desolate spot?

Running always makes you fit, but running
can make you creature to a kind of flight,
defying gravity right before your
very eyes in one last photo finish.

—Richard Jespers

Corpus Christi in November!

11/25/2013

 
Picture
A WRITER'S WIT
A nose that can see is worth two that sniff.

Eugène Ionesco
Born November 26, 1912

Photos of Our Trip, November 8-10

GUIDE TO PHOTOS ABOVE: 1. I love how the sky opens up to make three perfect circles of light on the Gulf. 2-11. The various colors of canvas, the verticality of masts and pointed posts on which to tie off played against diagonal sail lines. How neon signs gleam at night. How the water looks a different color every other hour. 12-13. The Omni Corpus Christi Hotel Bayfront Tower on Shoreline Boulevard. Being eighteen stories up affords one a vertiginous view that makes the muscles in my legs quiver, as I lean over the balcony. 14-15. The Omni pool from eighteen stories up. 16-17. These photos feature the Nikon D3200 concept of layering two photos. 18. Strolling along Shoreline Boulevard toward the Art Museum of South Texas. 19. A view of the Omni from Shoreline Boulevard. 20. Palm-lined street leading toward the old Nueces County Courthouse, abandoned since 1977. 21-22. Old Nueces County Courthouse, built 1914. 23. Great Blue Heron, Gulls. 24. Dunlin 25. Dunlin 26. Great Blue Heron. 27. Great Blue Heron, Juvenile. 28. Brown Pelican. 29. Gulls. 30-31. Fountain near the Art Museum of South Texas. 32. I came upon what seemed like a Quinceañera photo shoot. Couldn’t resist the colors. 33-34. The Art Museum of South Texas. 35. A downtown church sits with dignity among all the other buildings. 36. Part of my ongoing series of photographing FedEx trucks in various cities (the first one appeared quite serendipitously between my camera and Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts). 37. A downtown eatery. 38. A colorful bus stop. 39. Renting a car is easy. 40. Holiday décor. 41. Antique jalopy. 42. These benches along Shoreline Boulevard deserve the sepia treatment somehow. 43. Gazebo on Shoreline Boulevard. 44. Segway tourists. 45. Roller blade residents? 46. HBO staff members interviewing in preparation for a PPV fight that night. 47-81. All of these photos were taken at the South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center. There is something melancholy about viewing exotic animals (and flowers and butterflies) out of context. It’s almost as obscene as staring at naked humans . . . in public . . . and paying to do it. And yet if we have not places like this, we might never see anything but a photograph of these rare creatures. 73-76. The Nikon D3200 overlays. 77-81. The Nikon also allows you to manipulate colors before the pictures leave the camera. Fun!

NEXT POST: A SHORT STORY . . . WHENEVER I GET IT TOGETHER!

Honors and Readings

11/17/2013

 

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

PictureDixon's Order & Disorder: "Maze"
For several decades Ken Dixon, visual artist, has provided exhibitions for the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas. On Saturday, November 9, the museum honored all the artists who have contributed work to its permanent collection, an exhibition entitled "Forty Works for Forty Years." For more details click on the museum link. Look below to view a slideshow of snapshots from the evening (all iPhone pics).

Nighthawks Reading

PictureSporting My "Burroughs" Look
For over five years I've been part of a writing group that meets at the local Unitarian church. For a modest annual fee, we meet monthly to critique and celebrate each others' writing. Our approach is positive, even when the piece under consideration may have some difficulties. As a result of this nurturing approach, we've all grown, and so has our confidence. New works are constantly finding their way into print because of our sensitive efforts to help one another grow.

On Thursday, November 14, we staged a reading of our recent works-in-progress. Barbara Brannon read a series of sonnets that trace the life of her adult daughter. Michelle Kraft shared a prose piece about how her childhood home in North Texas later became home to an Army Corps of Engineers lake. Marilyn Westfall, poet and leader of our group, read a number of linked poems, among others, about a recent trip to the Isle of Wight off the coast of England. Actor and playwright Juanice Myers organized a troupe of players to present her monologues limning characters—from an old woman regretting how her looks have faded to one that looks back at the fun times the alcoholics in her family provided. I read excerpts from the first chapter of my memoir concerning my twenty-seven years of public school teaching. Thanks to everyone who came, and to the Unitarian leadership for providing us with a place to present our work to the public. Below find photos documenting our efforts.  Ken Dixon, photographer.


Genome Project Made Personal

11/2/2013

 
Picture
My late mother was half German and half Welsh, having arrived on earth with the birth name of Richards. My father was Dutch, both of his parents having immigrated to the U.S. in 1911. Yet I had always wondered if, in my mother’s lineage that included John Howland, who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower, there might be a bit of Native American or First Nations blood running through my veins. I wondered if there would be a way that I might find out.

Then I saw a program on TV about the National Geographic Genome Project. All one had to do was fork over $200 and send for a kit in which one swabbed one’s cheeks and mailed in the results. Last April, after a number of false starts—several swabbings were inadequate and NG mailed me a new kit each time, or they revamped it altogether so that one tested for both sides of the family—I received my results. Simply, the document showed that my deep DNA fell out like this: I was 41% Germanic, 41% Mediterranean, and 17% Southwest Asian.

In some ways I was not surprised, given what I knew about my family: the Danes, to whom my aunt had traced my maternal grandfather’s ancestors; my maternal grandmother’s parents who immigrated from Germany in the nineteenth century; paternal grandparents who came over from Holland in 1911. But what about the 17% Southwest Asian? Well, in examining the map [find download below this paragraph], I saw that my father’s people had tromped through that area ages ago and mingled long enough to acquire a bit of that particular DNA. It may explain some things about my family and me, but I'm not at liberty to say what those might be.
infographic.pdf
File Size: 425 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Why do I write of this? I’m not sure. I've always been curious about my family, but I’d love to learn more. I know, for example, that the Jespers family’s whereabouts can be tracked back to the same few towns in Holland in the 1700s, as recently traced by one of my cousins. And as I said, my aunt, on the other side, traced the Richards family to the 1600s. Where were we before that? All the fathers and grandfathers I’ve had? All the mothers and grandmothers? To think that my traits, adorable and infuriating as they are to those who love me, are owed almost entirely to this large family of people I never knew and never shall. Will the next generation leave behind more clues than our ancestors did?

If this subject piques your interest, check out these two websites:


https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/

If you participate in the study, be sure and let me know what you find out!

    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011



    Categories

    All
    Acting
    Actors
    African American History
    Alabama
    Alaska
    Aldo Leopold
    Andy Warhol
    Arizona
    Arkansas
    Art
    Atrial Fibrillation
    Authors
    Authors' Words
    Barcelona
    Blogging About Books
    Blogs
    Books
    California
    Cars
    Catalonia
    Colorado
    Cooking
    Creative Nonfiction
    Culinary Arts
    Deleting Facebook
    Ecology
    Education
    Environment
    Epigraphs
    Essays
    Fiction
    Fifty States
    Film
    Florida
    Georgia
    Grammar
    Greece
    Gun Violence
    Hawaii
    Heart Health
    Historic Postcards
    History
    Idaho
    Iowa
    LGBTQ
    Libraries
    Literary Biography
    Literary Journals
    Literary Topics
    Literature
    Maine
    Massachusetts
    Memoir
    Michigan
    Minnesota
    Mississippi
    M K Rawlings
    Musicians
    Nevada
    New Hampshire
    New Mexico
    New Yorker Stories
    Nonfiction
    North Carolina
    Novelist
    Ohio
    Pam Houston
    Parker Posey
    Photography
    Playwrights
    Poetry
    Politics
    Psychology
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Race
    Reading
    Recipes
    Seattle
    Short Story
    South Carolina
    Spain
    Susan Faludi
    Teaching
    Tennessee
    Texas
    The Novel
    Travel
    Travel Photographs
    #TuesdayThoughts
    TV
    U.S.
    Vermont
    Voting
    War
    Washington
    Wisconsin
    World War II
    Writer's Wit
    Writing


    RSS Feed

    Blogroll

    alicefrench.wordpress.com
    kendixonartblog.com
    Valyakomkova.blogspot.com

    Websites

    Caprock Writers' Alliance
    kendixonart.com

    tedkincaid.com
    www.trackingwonder.com
    www.skans.edu
    www.ttu.edu
    www.newpages.com
    www.marianszczepanski.com
    William Campbell Contemporary Art, Inc.
    Barbara Brannon.com
    Artsy.net
WWW.RICHARDJESPERS.COM  ©2011-2023
                    BOOKS  PHOTOS  PODCASTS  JOURNALS  BLOG