This morning I got to play music with some of the members of the Clarkston Community Band at our local Farmers’ Market. It was opening day at the market and the weather was perfect. Sunny and in the 70s with, at the beginning, no breeze to blow music around.
Ready to begin the next piece.
OK, so we were sight reading most of the music. And OK, we didn’t have all the instruments of a full band. And yes, we did dissolve into giggles in the middle of one piece of music we had optimistically thought we could pull off when it became obvious we weren’t going to make it to the end even remotely together.
Taking a break.
But hey, people stopped to listen, the Disney songs were a big hit with the little kids, and we got to spend a few more hours playing together at the end of our season.
You just can’t beat live music outside in the sunshine. I’d say it was a win for us and a win for people shopping the market on a beautiful Saturday morning.
It was busy around here last week. A steady stream of contractors and appointments filled our days. I had a rehearsal on Tuesday night and a concert on Friday evening. Husband had places to be and people to see too.
The calendar (paper, and hanging on a bulletin board in the back hall) daily squares looked black with scribbled appointments.
The middle school after the music.
Friday was particularly bad for me. I thought I was on edge because of the pending concert. There’s always things to worry about when a concert looms. Would we come in together on that one tricky entrance. Would we all end together, or were we supposed to fade out on that other difficult piece.
Friday we had two contractors working on things inside the house and two contractors working on stuff out in the yard. None of it went exactly as planned and I was stressed.
Friday was the last day of school and the students left messages in chalk on the sidewalk outside.
Even our concert venue was causing stress. We’d been booked at the local Jr. High which has a fine auditorium and where we’ve played many times. But at the last minute the school system told us we couldn’t perform there, as the school was going to be renovated, beginning on the very night we were to play!
We told them we only needed 2 hours, but we got bumped anyway.
Me too.
Our director, a retired middle school band director, got us approved to play at the middle school’s cafetorium. Yep. A cafeteria with a stage, probably similar to where most of us ate lunch growing up. I hadn’t played in a cafeteria since I was in 7th grade.
It didn’t feel promising.
“Please stop giving us the melody.”
But our group is resilient, and in the end it wasn’t half bad. The stage was acceptable, the dusty blue velvet curtain made a pretty OK band shell, the custodians had the lunch tables put away and 200 chairs set out.
And our audience showed up.
Our intrepid leader, retired Clarkston band director, Ms. Roland.
Most importantly, after my long week, it was cathartic to sit in the middle of a group of musicians and hear the music swell around me. Of course I lost my place a couple times when I was listening instead of concentrating. Or when I was letting my neck muscles relax and forgot to count.
I bet this is from a teacher.
But last night I listened to the recording and I’m pretty sure no one will be able to tell that one third clarinet didn’t play all her notes.
Our guest conductor, Dr. Klena from Oakland University.
Our concert was titled “Three Women and a Podium” and was filled with music composed by women. I was proud to be a part of that, and I enjoyed playing under the baton of each of our three wonderfully talented conductors.
Our Associate Conductor, Ms. Scheu, Director of Bands at Oakland Christian School.
On the drive home after the concert, the sun set in a most spectacular way. I stopped in a parking lot to watch. I thought about the week and the evening and the fact that I didn’t play everything.
And God smiled good night.
And I decided I was happy with what I did play and I was very grateful that I could, finally, exhale.
Be kind to yourself too.
I hope you all find your best way to let the stress of everyday life fall off your shoulders.
And if you’re somewhere nearby some of the Clarkston Community Band musician will be playing next Saturday at the opening of the Clarkston Farmers’ Market. I hope to see you there!
School’s out, the Farmers’ Market is open – – it’s officially summer!
Earlier this week I felt the need to be in the woods, so I grabbed my camera and my new lens and went out early to see what I could see.
Near the park entrance it seemed obvious that Mrs. Osprey didn’t want her picture taken as she sat low in her nest so I moved along.
Gotta respect a mother’s wishes.
“I haven’t showered in days and it’s early in the morning. Give me a break!“
As I walked toward the nature center and the beginning of the trails I realized I hadn’t thought to bring the birds anything to eat.
Well, I thought, they’d have to get over it.
Darn, I’m being attacked! Run for it!
I hadn’t taken into account I was the first car in the parking lot and that it had been raining for two days so people hadn’t visited these hungry birds in awhile. I was instantly attacked by an angry mob of red winged blackbirds as I rounded the corner. I heard their wings first and then felt one bounce off my head. Then another. They were everywhere.
I thought I was in a movie, and not in a good way.
“Look lady, hand over the seed and nobody gets hurt.“
I swatted some of them away and moved faster down the trail, blackbirds following closely.
I had managed to get out into the marsh, with only a few blackbirds circling my head, when I heard a Baltimore oriole singing his heart out.
Hiding behind a couple of leaves.
He seemed to be celebrating the sun as he sang in the morning light.
Then he moved out into the sunshine to show off.
As he sat there singing he began to preen, as if he was singing in the shower.
“Just need to get that little bit of leftover gnat out of my armpit…”
He was fun to watch and the blackbirds got bored and headed back up the trail to wait for their next victim. They could only hope that person wasn’t such an airhead.
Though the blackbirds had given up, other birds had not. A little titmouse quietly asked if it was true, that there was no food.
“Seriously? There’s no food?”
I felt bad, but I had to tell him the truth. I had forgotten his breakfast. I was amazed at how quickly he abandoned me, once he realized I was a waste of time.
I wandered off to look for other pretty things to photograph. I figured it probably wouldn’t be a bird kind of day given I was a bird feeder failure.
I had to stop and enjoy the view.
I felt lucky that the iris was in bloom and so very beautiful.
Golden iris in the morning light.
But while I was focused on the iris, my eyes glued to the viewfinder trying to get just the right composition, I heard wings again. And again I felt something largish bounce off the top of my head.
“Hey lady!! What’s for breakfast?”
The male red-bellied woodpecker was miffed that I wasn’t offering anything to eat. And he wasn’t afraid to tell me off either.
“Seriously???”
I told him I was sorry, but I didn’t bring anything. And I went back to photographing the iris.
There were the obvious yellow iris, but also these delicate, smaller, purple blooms as well.
Off to the right of me I heard a big uproar. Turns out Mrs. Red-bellied wasn’t happy either.
“Hey Mr! Get to work and bring home some bacon or this relationship is over!”
I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me for forgetting or him for being a bad provider. Either way she wasn’t getting anything to eat. He jumped to and got to work finding her something…anything!
“Now where did I store that fat ant from last fall?”
He looked everywhere.
How about some nice lichen, sweetie?
“This might be a nice change of pace from the stuff the lady usually brings.”
In between his forages for something natural to feed his demanding wife (who kept on complaining. Loudly.) he’d come back and dive bomb me for being such a disappointment. I kept looking for pretty things to photograph.
My artsy image from this walk.
He followed me almost all the way around a big loop, complaining and doing flybys. Eventually I moved out of his range and settled into a more peaceful walk.
What?? No food???!”
Of course most of the other inhabitants of the woods were equally stressed by my lack of responsibility. I promised them I would never ever forget to bring their snacks again.
“Inconceivable!”
I probably should just pack a snack bag for them and leave it in my car to be more prepared in the future.
“I would think you’d be more thoughtful, Lady!”
Feeling remorseful I headed over to the heron rookery to see what was new. I figured the herons wouldn’t be mad at me given I never feed them.
“And don’t come back here without lunch!”
But I’ll tell you all about that in the next post. I have to say a couple of my favorite images happened over there!
I took myself to Kensington a week or maybe more ago, hoping to get some great bird photos. There’s always something to see out there, and the warblers are migrating, so maybe…I hoped.
This is one of my favorite trees, just before the nature center, a little island in the shallow end of the big lake.
But the entire time I was at the park I had camera lens focus issues.
The morning sun rose and lit this egret in the middle of his (or her) morning routine.
My images were so bad I almost forgot about them. But regardless of the quality, I’ll share with you the best of what I consider a pretty sad batch of images, just because no matter what I capture, even if it’s not much of anything new, I’m always glad I went to Kensington.
There was less light down on the water where I startled this young wood duck.
And I’m always glad to share with you my adventures, as tame as they often are.
The blue heron, drying off in the morning light wasn’t interesting in anything moving on the lake below.
A lot of the time on this walk I took pictures of plants. Because, as I told one photographer last year who was noticing me focusing on berries instead of birds, plants don’t move.
Thistle and cobwebs.
In fact, this trip to Kensington I spent most of my time looking at the way light played in the dark woods.
My artsy-fartsy image for this post.
Turns out it plays rather well, don’t you think?
But of course the birds kept bringing me back as they hovered over me, sometimes landing on my camera lens, asking for something to eat. They are very persistent.
Hey lady! Did you bring the suet balls or the peanuts today?
It’s pretty hard to ignore them, even if you aren’t happy with the images you’re getting.
A cedar waxwing kept his distance.
Sometimes I just feed them and don’t even bother trying to capture the magic.
Out of focus, but still fun.
Other times the birds and the light work together and I get something interesting.
A titmouse backlit by the morning sun.
I had so much trouble on this walk through the woods, capturing anything the way I wanted to, it got discouraging.
Early morning goldenrod.
Focusing on plants as a last resort I wandered some more.
More joe pye this year than I’ve ever seen before.
I eventually decided it just wasn’t going to be my day, and headed back toward the car.
Even the chipmunks turned away from me.
But just before I got to the parking lot I saw one more trail, one that headed out to where I sometimes saw unusual stuff. It wasn’t a long trail.
Noisy high iso, but the wings are still cool.
Maybe it was worth a bit more walking.
A whole family was enjoying a bug buffet.
And there I found a dead tree, quite a ways away, but full of some sort of woodpecker family.
I thought it might be a group of red headed woodpeckers. The light made it difficult to see anything but silhouettes. But looking at the images later I saw the yellow on the underside of a wing, and I believe this was a flicker family.
You took my gnat! I’m going to go tell mom!
Regardless, they were very busy hopping around the tree looking for bugs and flitting from branch to branch.
And while I was focused on them I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye, way down at the other end of the bridge. Something fliting around the touch-me-not flowers, far from where I was standing.
What is that, way down there at the other end of the bridge?
I shot blindly, not seeing anything in my viewfinder…
Why look! It’s a hungry hummer!
…but hoping for something. And the most beautiful female hummingbird showed up when I looked at the images at home.
I’ve never seen hummingbirds out at the park before.
She sure made me smile.
And then there was a noise on the other side of the bridge and I found this little female common yellowthroat. She made my day!
Isn’t she pretty?
So the moral of my story is don’t give up. Walk down that little extra trail even if all you’ve had before is disappointment.
Looking for lunch.
You never know what you’ll find. It could be magic.
I even found a chipmunk that didn’t turn his back on me!
It all started yesterday early afternoon when I noticed a lot of chatter on Facebook about potential aurora borealis that night.
I ended up just past the sign up on that dune.
Apparently the indicator numbers were good, and if it weren’t for that pesky 3/4 moon coming up early in the evening there would almost certainly be a spectacular show.
Love golden light, but not when I’m trying to capture the northern lights!
So many times I’ve seen notices of potential northern lights and so many times I’ve decided it wasn’t worth the 4+ hour drive over to the western side of Michigan on the off chance there might be a show.
So many times I’ve kicked myself when I see images posted the next day of what I might have seen if I’d gone.
It was a lovely sunset regardless of how the night played out.
So this time I decided to just take the chance. I left home at 5 p.m. and was at a dark sky park at Port Crescent in the thumb of Michigan, along Saginaw Bay, by 7:30.
Of course there’s no guarantee that the lights will show up. Or when they might show up. What was guaranteed was the arrival of the moon, about 9:30 which would wash any borealis out.
At last the sun gave up and sank, leaving those last bits of daylight reaching up into the sky for a few minutes more.
As you can tell, I sat on the beach and watched the sun set, and then I went back to the car, changed camera lenses, got the camera all ready to go with manual settings and attached to a tripod and snuggled down with a pillow and a blanket to wait for full dark.
Lots of people on the beach waiting for the next light show to begin.
I was pretty antsy and never did take a nap. I was worried that I’d be sleeping in my car on one side of the dunes while the light was dancing out over the bay on the other side!
The view outside my car window, is that faint green I see?
So as soon as it was close to dark I was out of the car and heading for the dunes. There were plenty of other people already out there, so I found a spot between photographers and decided to practice my Milky Way star focus skills while I waited. After all the moon wasn’t up yet, and I could see the Milky Way right there…even though I wasn’t thrilled with the composition, it was better than sitting around doing nothing.
No northern lights, so I might as well practice my Milky Way skills.
And in the middle of my second shot, with me and my camera facing south I heard the woman just down the path from me begin to squeal. I couldn’t turn my camera around fast enough, and when I did this is what I saw.
Be still my heart.
Well, not exactly saw, because to the naked eye it was just this moving mass of grey out over the black lake. But the camera saw it for what it was, stunning pink and green light.
I never saw the people on the beach below me until I looked at the imamges on my computer.
The woman next to me told her family, “See?! Aren’t you glad I dragged you out here for this!” I didn’t hear the kids’ answers, but I’m pretty sure everyone out there last night was glad they were there.
The light began to shoot up into the sky.
I kept clicking as fast as I could, trying different fstops, and shutter speeds. At one point I must have accidently touched the focus ring because I have a whole lot of images that are totally out of focus.
I’m not going to show you those. Just know it happens to all of us.
I like the people included in the image, it shows the perspective and sheer size of the dancing lights.
Luckily I knew enough to check the focus on occasion, so I was able to salvage the rest. Mostly.
After about 20 minutes over my right shoulder I noticed different light. It was the most beautiful, huge, orange 3/4 moon, creeping up through the limbs of a tree.
Uh oh. An interloper is coming to spoil the party. Notice the woman on the hill with her camera and tripod?
I wished I had my other lens on the camera (but it was back at the car). I wished I had two cameras going. But there was no time, so I kept focusing on those lights out over the water, knowing they’d soon be fading.
One of my favorite images from the night. Someone said I’d captured the one-eyed aliens, and I have to agree it looks like I have!
The moon crept higher and higher, and the lights began to fade. People began to leave, shining their flashlights in my face and into my frame as they climbed the dune to head back to the parking lot. I was loathe to go, the warm summer night and soft breeze off of the lake complimented the extraordinary sight of the lights dancing and shooting pillars up higher and higher in the sky.
A night I’m never going to forget.
I didn’t leave until the color faded away, and then I reluctantly put the lens cap back on and started down the dune toward the car.
Lots of people were still walking out over the dunes, headed to the beach. Every group stopped me, a person obviously carrying a fancy camera and a tripod, to ask if I’d seen anything.
I couldn’t begin to describe what I’d just experienced. I just told them all it had been wonderful but had faded now.
The soft faded color was a gentler version of what I had just witnessed.
I encouraged them all to go out to the beach anyway and stand under the stars to admire the beautiful moon. Most of them did.
As for me? I’m so glad I took a leap of faith and went north to see the lights. I’m so glad I didn’t nap the evening away in my car. I’m so glad the lights decided to cooperate and dance for those 20 or 30 minutes before the moon encroached on our party.
The big dipper is more obvious once the main show is over.
And I’m forever grateful to my Milky Way teacher for instilling in me the confidence to stand by myself (along with 20 or 30 other photographers, all strangers, but all united in one goal) out under the stars and appreciate what I see overhead.
I haven’t stopped smiling since I heard that first squeal and turned to watch the magic explode above us.
That darn moon. Still beautiful even less than full.
Lessons learned: Don’t think about things too much, just go. Bring bug spray. Long pants and sturdy shoes are a must. Check your focus regularly. Don’t forget to stop and internalize the experience, it’s not all about the pictures. Encourage everyone else to stand out under the stars at least once.
And now I’m encouraging you. If you get the chance…just go.
Everybody has seen a moon image somewhere on social media today. Or maybe you saw the moon yourself last night, so many of us stood out under the sky as the full moon rose.
I thought about going to a darker location with a clear view of the horizon, but I couldn’t make myself go scout for a place like that before dark fell. So last night, about 9:30, I stood in my front yard and watched the moon rise above the neighbor’s trees.
It was sweet.
I didn’t even mind if I got the shot. It was just nice to be out under the stars watching the moon and thinking about all the people all over the country who were out there doing the same thing.
Night sky photography is a kind of community, even if you never meet any of the others you feel good knowing they’re out there looking at the same sky, no matter where they, and you, are.
Well. You may have noticed that I was not included in any of mom and my Auntie B’s adventures.
I don’t know how they could have left me out!
I would like to point out that I am a big girl now and I think I should be included in everything my people do! Don’t you agree with me?
Don’t you like the way my fur is starting to flow in the wind?
After all, I will turn 9 months old next week, and that’s pretty old if you ask me. Don’t ask my folks, they still treat me like a baby.
Well, OK, sometimes I DO still get a little bit scared.
Anyway, once mom and Auntie B returned home, with plenty of great smells on them I might add, I insisted on going with them everywhere, and a couple of days that everywhere included a local park next to our town’s small cemetery where my aunt could practice her bagpipes for an upcoming competition she will be in.
This is my Auntie putting in her ear protection. I noted I didn’t get any ear protection.
She said she hadn’t played in way too long and she needed to practice somewhere. I guess you can’t play the bagpipes just any ole place.
Wait a minute, mom! What’s she doing?
At first I wasn’t sure about the bagpipe sound, but mom urged me to come with her for a walk and we left my aunt to play in the park while we explored the cemetery next door.
I found out there were lots of whirly-gigs and flags flapping over there and I wasn’t too sure about all that at first.
Hmmmm….this stuff moves!
Then I found this little dog and I tried to talk to him, but he was more the silent type.
Hey buddy! Wanna play?
And then I saw this little boy and tried to play with him, but he wouldn’t move and suddenly that scared me so I went and hid behind my mom’s legs.
Maybe YOU will play with me?
That’s ok, right mom? Whenever I get scared I can hide behind you, right?
I’ll just rest a moment back here, OK mom?
Anyway, I practiced sitting pretty a lot, and getting my picture taken. My sister, angel Katie, says that’s just part of the game plan when you live with our mom.
OK, mom, I’ll sit here. But I’m not going to look happy about it.Unless you have cheese?
I’m getting pretty good at it too, though Katie says I need to be more insistent on getting my share of treats for the work I do modeling.
Sometimes mom gets kinda close, but I’m not afraid of the camera any more.
I’m getting prettier and prettier by the day now, so I don’t mind showing off.
Mom says it’s all about the light, but I know it’s really all about me!
Meanwhile my Aunt played on.
She played way on the other side of the park. It sounded cool!
And the resident cranes listened too.
Mom wouldn’t let me go say hi to them.
We all had a very good time, both days we wet to this park, and I guess I’ll call this a mini adventure, but I’m telling you, I’m up for something truly epic.
This was not really adventurous, mom. Try to do better, OK?
Change Is Hard 