Month: August 2008

The cicadas are buzzing easily in the green leaves outside my office window. The Little Blue Heron that has decided to call my pond home has been awake for a few hours now, it’s breakfast complete with frogs, tadpoles, insects; mine with juice, vitamins, coffee, and toast as I watched her walk slowly on stick legs…It is sunny today, and is supposed to be quite hot, in the 80s, but the nights are deliciously cool, ideal for sleeping. This is a steady weather pattern for the next few days, and summer is turning a corner, bending the morning light as it moves from view. Sunbeams now stream through my eastern windows, waking me unlike my now unused alarm clock.

School officially begins on the 8th. I cannot access my on-line art course until tomorrow, but that’s alright. I have begun some reading for my ‘Commie’ class. but I want to finish two books this week and begin some others. Then it is paper writing time…My first telephone lecture/discussion is on the 18th, but I would like to have one paper all but finished by then.

I have discovered that a good friend of mine used to be the staff photographer for a local weekly and still has all the darkroom equipment. All that is missing is the room itself and the chemicals. Chemicals I can get, it’s the space that seems to be a tough nut to crack. So anyone with any ideas, short of setting up in my bathroom, please share…

It’s Sunday, the day before Labor Day. I feel distracted and odd. Maybe I should get out of the house and go take pictures…Just drive. I’m allowed to do that.

Johnnyboy

My mind is ticking along tonight so I have been tossing and turning in bed for about an hour. Blogging will help, I hope. At least I will have updated some things. Then I’ll try sleep once more.

It has been advised that I receive 16 credits for my past career instead of 12, which is great. I hope they grant my wish. That means after this next semester I will only need 20 credits to graduate!

This is how I plan to spend my final three semesters…

8 credits consist of a capstone Senior Thesis on history, probably Balkan in nature. The other 12 (three classes) will probably be artistic in nature, specifically photographic, and all involving a darkroom. I will have to cross-register at Hudson Valley Community College but it will allow me to take B/W Photography I and II and Color Photography and developing. This goes a long way in giving me enough undergraduate credits to fulfill requirements for an MFA program; where, I do not know, but probably within the SUNY system.

Mom is doing well. The Caregiving Women are saving my life, and my sanity. I was able to go to a wonderful presentation of Dylan Thomas’ ‘Under Milkwood’ last night that blew me a way. I didn’t worry once about how she was or what was going on at home.

I went back to a meeting tonight that I had not attended for about 4 months. It is a Big Book study in nearby Cataractburg, one that I have always enjoyed and benefited from. Unfortunately, aside from one or two old faces, the attendees were all new and somewhat dim in thought. It is a good lesson for me in remembering what I can bring to the meeting instead of what I take. I hope I helped others. Anyway, someone asked me to be his temporary sponsor. He’s a nice guy who has had trouble staying away from the substances that baffle and bedevil him. So guess it was a good idea to go.

Tomorrow I am driving another fellow to his out-patient alcohol program twenty minutes away, waiting for him for two hours, and then driving back. I’ll bring my camera and a book and get some work done. I’m shooting on 35mm film these days, so it will be a nice change.

I’ll try to update more often.

Johnnyboy