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Aloft

11/27/2013

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

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

Dixon'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

Sporting 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

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!

Aloft

Aloft

Corpus Christi in November!

Photos of Our Trip, November 8-10

Honors and Readings

Ken Dixon at the Museum of South Texas

Nighthawks Reading

Genome Project Made Personal

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