Prison Blues

This my second attempt at making a video and my first posted here. The song is obviously not my creation but is Keb' Mo' performing his cover version of Johnny Cash's classic Folsom Prison Blues.

The images and poor production values are all mine.

Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

Bob Dylan stopped by the house last night. I wish. Actually this is me playing with the camera and a borrowed flash. For this photo, following instructions from the photography class instructor, I had bubble wrap over the flash to see what if any effect it would have. That wasn't quite enough to satisfy my curiosity so I also put bubble wrap in front of the lens.

I am however wearing the Bob Dylan t-shirt I bought when my wife and I saw him and Willie Nelson on the same bill at Metropolitan Park in Jacksonville. The hat came from the Animal Kingdom at Disney World. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat is on Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album.

I think it is a good example of how photos can open more questions than they answer.

Winter Of Discontent

Now/This/Mine is a melancholy time. Days repeat themselves. Up, then out we go. Back in, then down we go. One bland day blending into the next, each like a precious stone dropped forever into the well of time.

I do not miss the barren trees, the frozen toes, the steady stoking for warmth, the slush and the mush, the deep cold shadows as old Sol skates across the western sky. But the breath visible, the scarlet cardinal caught in a sea of white, wood smoke still clinging in the frigid air, fields of untrodden snow, hot chocolate and cold noses, children and mittens, these I miss.

Eventually winter wanes into Earth’s verdant eruption. But here winter is only a name , a pretense, a mockery with palm trees draped in twinkling light coats, St. Nicholas on water skis, mowing in January and February. More like a brown lull between the flaming days of autumn and the voracious green of spring.

Never feeling winter’s bitter bite leaves me longing. The rhythm is broken, the cycle of the seasons comes unchained. Memories of cold days so long ago, butchering hogs after the first hard frost, outdoor plumbing, frozen creeks, pneumonia, even death.

Time rubs smooth the jagged edges of memory.