Saving and Sharing Those Photographs

March 7, 2014 / handmadebyjo / 2 Comments

My grandmother with my father. I can hear her laughing in the photograph.

With the temperature this morning hovering above zero and it having been that cold for what seems like forever more and more projects are sadly being started indoors. It’s usually about this time of year when small things start outdoors and move into the bigger spring things.

The past few days have seen a plethora of collections of old photographs being shared with me on social media. All of them are old and people have had to scan them. A cousin commented on how wonderful it was that we had all of these hard copies (pre 1950) to share and wondered about how this would continue. My entire career in photography was based on film. If in color another lab would process and print it, if black and white hours were spent in a darkroom. All along the whole process there was something I could hold in my hand. My negatives were filed meticulously by date and subject and I can still put my hands on them if I need to find something.

With the dawn of the digital age and my activity in it I have had to deal with keeping and finding my files in a whole new way. I still file everything by date (even though each image is time stamped), then each year is filed in its own folder. I then make copies of my files and keep them on portable hard drives – sorry, I can never be too careful. To add another layer at the end of every year I go through all of the files of photographs for that year and pick the best – the ones that would hurt me to lose. I have them printed and bound into a book.

I started doing that with my first digital camera probably in the late 90’s. I can’t say that we look at them a lot but they are there and I like having them. It’s really no different than all of those black and white photos my mother glued onto the black paper of her scrapbooks (or her mother before her).

What I consider the most wonderful part of this digital age of photography is the ability to share all of it – new and old – with your friends and family. Long ago I scanned almost all of the collections of family photographs as a way of preserving them, putting them in chronological order and sharing them. I’ve found I have a profound reaction when seeing photographs of my loved ones from long gone that I have never seen before. This has been made possible through the internet and social media. My great aunt passing spawned something that started out as a way for people to bond, share their loss and find joy in knowing those that are no longer with us. All of that happened but now it is helping us all to have a better understanding of who we are as individuals. Genealogy does that to some extent but this puts faces to the stories and the stories are told as the photographs are shared, by mulitiple people. It’s like sitting in a room with all of your relatives (many I have never even met) talking about people that you loved. You get so many different perspectives and then you learn that so and so’s child looks just like her Memere. It’s pretty great.

Today the take away for me it that my father’s family loved life and family so very much. They laughed – a lot. They were practical jokers and could laugh at themselves. We remember the French, the broken English and how all of it translated into love of family (whether we understood the words or not). We are diminished in a way by their passing but in sharing the photos and stories we see that it continues on in ourselves.

Throwback Thursday – Those Family Photos

March 6, 2014 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

I posted this photograph at the risk of my siblings never speaking to me again. I was looking for something totally unrelated and found a few of these taken at Perry’s Nut House in Belfast Maine in 1966.

Apparently this was the beginning of my photography career. The camera around my and my sister’s neck were acquired with Kellogg’s box tops I seem to recall. I used that camera a few times and still have it with my initials emblazoned on the front of it with a permanent marker. I’m not sure the photographs I had taken with that camera are even around anymore.

We all went through those incredibly awkward stages. Your mother took your picture standing in front of ridiculous things, dressed in ridiculous clothes. We pull them out every so often and think to ourselves “What were they thinking?” or “Who the heck was dressing me?” or “Were those really the only glasses available in the mid sixties?” What I am finding out, more so as I get older, is the importance of some of these images to other family members regardless of how annoying they are to me.

Distant family members set up a memory page for a branch of my father’s side of the family a couple of days ago and many photographs have been shared. I can’t describe the feeling of seeing pictures of my grandfather that I have never seen before. He’s been gone since 1976 and it feels like this tiny little miracle getting just another, new glimpse of him. We all have the same photos we look at over and over – more so after someone dies. It’s a finite number, you memorize them, inventory them in your head. When someone shares a photograph at first it is so unexpected, then it’s an image you take into your heart. It’s a pretty wonderful thing.

With the photos of me and my sister and brother I laugh at them initially, then I see our children and grandchildren in those faces. There’s the miracle, right there. We are blessed with the technology that now allows us to record with abandon but it’s only a recent phenomenon. My generation and all those before us have a limited number of photographs and I think, no matter how embarrassed you might be, it’s important to share them with your family. You never know what they are going to get out of it.

Meanwhile I’m thinking, “Really Brian, nice socks!”

Flashback Friday – Water

February 7, 2014February 7, 2014 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

For the past thirty years or so weekends in the summer have been spent on water. Our daughters know nothing else really, their entire childhood summers were spent in a boat, on a beach or in a lake somewhere. The photo above is a testament to their lack of fear. Cait was three years old giving us a thumbs up to tell us to go faster. The two of them were born to do this. Fast forward a few years and Cait is still about the speed (so in Amanda) with her whole goal being able to stay on the tube no matter what her father throws at her.

It’s always fun to watch and photograph. Twenty years of experience has made for some crazy rides.

Boating is about a lot more than pummeling your kids on a tube behind a speeding boat. It has always been about friends and family for us. Our vacations have always been spent on water with various other people sharing our experience. Some of them are avid boaters and have brought their own boats. Others spend a weekend on the water as a first time experience. These are the best times for me – introducing them to the joys of floating on the water on a hot summer day. Showing them the beauty of “our” bodies of water. There truly is nothing like seeing the landscape from the middle of a lake, it opens it up.

This is what boating is all about for us – gathering many for a day of fun and relaxation. Finding a beach, setting up your chairs, worshiping the sun, listening to the birds, reading, laughing.

And it isn’t just the kids that enjoy a day at the lake.

So it’s 14 degrees this morning and we had over a foot of snow two days ago, that could be why I’m waxing nostalgic.

End of the Season

January 6, 2014January 6, 2014 / handmadebyjo / 5 Comments

As quickly as they ramped up the holidays are now over. This is an occasion for me to breathe a sigh of relief. The last of the gatherings was this past weekend with all of my family together in one spot. That’s a rare event but a most welcome one. The preparations were made in the week before – I researched and made some Harry Potter themed food for my sister’s girls, my sister and my youngest. Yes, they are all well into adulthood but there is nothing more exciting than experiencing some of the foods that you’ve only read about. If I could have turned the living room into the great hall at Hogwarts I would have but alas my wand was nowhere to be found.

The traditions around the holidays for us center around food. This being the first time in 15+ years my brother and sister have been together for a holiday celebration lead me to bring out the suet pudding recipe with the two sauces. This is a dessert my kids have heard about their entire lives yet had no recollection of having tasted it. The recipes and mold came to me from my aunt when she passed the responsibility of making the dessert on to me. I diligently made it year after year until the girls were little and we began spending a good part of the holidays with Bill’s family. The Alixes were scattered and no one else even considered eating something with the word suet in it.

My sister and brother were ecstatic to see it as dessert and my brother ate three helpings. It greased the wheels of reminiscing about food and we talked about our comfort foods in exquisite detail. It amazes me the power of taste and smell to bring back memories from so long ago. It was also wonderful to have my siblings and their families all together to share in the stories even though they find some of the things we eat on the line of disgusting. You know, it’s never going to stop us from eating it. I think next time we get together I will make mac and cheese with tomatoes and serve a side of sliced onions and cucumbers in a bowl of cider vinegar and the three of us will sit around the table and talk about childhood. I’m not sure what the rest of the family will do for food.

A Year in Review

December 31, 2013December 31, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

January was spent trying to finish my thousand cranes – a resolution I make every year and never quite finish. I figure a couple more years and they will be done. I do recommend this to any and everyone. It’s simple to do and is one of the most meditative things I have ever done.

The weather was wintry and exquisitely beautiful. Each and every storm left behind a landscape that screamed to be walked through on snowshoes and photographed. The quiet that goes along with weather is restorative and I always look forward to a snowstorms aftermath.

St. Patrick’s Day will be one of the most important days of the calendar year to me now, not because I’m Irish but because it was the day I talked to Scott for the first time. Given up for adoption in 1972 I had come to regard this moment as something that may never happen. I had left information on a website and through a convoluted chain of events was contacted through an intermediary. The rest of this year has been spent with each of us getting to know our new family members, a blessing in so, so many ways.

Sugaring this year was amazing although the snow was rather deep in the beginning. A lot of work gathering those buckets without the aid of snowshoes. It makes up for it when we boil and smell that hot maple goodness wafting through the sugar house.

Spring came in its normal time this year, no hot spells or odd cold snaps and the pear tree was happy.

I made my first overshot throw in wool and discovered a passion for weaving that far and away exceeds any other handwork I have ever done. My grandfather had wanted me to weave I think, I have a faint recollection of receiving a small, plastic kids loom when I was very young but without someone to teach me. This has been a special journey with a connection to just about every member of my family.

Every morning the weather cooperates this is what I look at as I drink my first cup of coffee. There is nothing like walking out the door in your pajamas and sitting in an Adirondack chair overlooking your land. Day to day the view is different, each having its own beauty. I feel very, very blessed to have this be such a big part of my life. It’s grounding.

The end of summer brings with it the fairs. I took full advantage this year. Heath Fair is one of my favorites with something for everyone. I also had some validation with winning a blue ribbon for my weaving.

Wood, wood, wood, we cut and split a lot of wood. It’s best when it’s like this – family all gathered to make it all go quicker and easier. It’s also more fun. Everyone pitched in and Chester thought is was awesome.

Chester started swimming this summer. He is a very hot dog when the weather is warm but loves playing fetch more than anything. This was the perfect solution. He was a bit of a panic swimmer the first day but after that he looked forward to coming to this spot each and every day we were in Rowe, sometimes twice a day. He is an amazing animal.

My garden had its issues this year but my popcorn, the experiment of the year was a complete success. There is no better feeling than finding out there is something new you can grow that’s beautiful and functional.

I went to Belfast, Maine to Fiber College this year and spent quality time with old and new friends and ate lobster every day. It was a fiber weekend for some but for me it was more about photography. I need to be alone to do my best work and I came away with images that were everything I wanted them to be. It was also a time to reminisce about childhood, we spent many summers up this way while I was growing up and I hadn’t been here in a good 30 years.

This autumn the foliage was more beautiful than I had seen it in years. So many of my friends shared exquisite images of scenes right out their front doors that were breathtaking. Photography slows me down and forces me to look at the details. The photograph above of the red tree was taken almost at dark. I drove by it in the center of town, said wow to myself and kept driving. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill I turned around to capture this. In my head I initially said “Oh, just take it tomorrow” but a few hundred feet down the road I realized that it wouldn’t be there. Those are the best photographs, the ones that catch that fleeting moment.

This fall I saw some of the most amazing sunsets ever. Enfield never looked so good under these vibrant skies. This particular evening it seemed that everyone I knew posted a photograph from a different place. It was like the sky made everyone stop whatever they were doing to watch. It’s comforting to know that the people I love were all looking at the sky at almost the same time and then sending what they saw to others.

Thanksgiving weekend was about family, our immediate family. What is usually a crowd was just Bill, me and the two girls, our nuclear family. It was the first time in so many years that it was just us and it was wonderful. It’s probably the most difficult thing to experience – the loss of your children to adulthood. The best time of our lives was raising our girls and they have both turned into amazing, remarkable women. It was good to have the opportunity to have them all to ourselves. For a treat Bill built an amazing bonfire to share with them and a couple of their cousins.

Christmas has come and gone, although the remnants are still in the house. A few decorations will return to their boxes in a week or so and life will begin its new cycle. There aren’t any resolutions this year for me other than to absorb the gifts around me. The time seems to go by so fast each year it leaves me breathless. I will spend the winter months planning the garden, weaving and cooking for the people I love. I will follow in the rhythm of the seasons and work the way I do for each year. It may seem a little dull but planning my life around what’s growing or the weather is the most comfortable way for me to live at this moment in time, you just roll with it. I take every moment spent with the people I love and savor it like a fine wine. Those times of love and laughter are what sustains me through any other trials that come along. The simplicity of it is all I need.

A Difficult Topic

December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 3 Comments

Each morning when I think about what to post in this blog I try to keep it positive and light. When I get up in the morning the first thing I do is make myself a cup of coffee and peruse the social media sites to see what’s happening with the people I care about most. Daughter Amanda shared an article that I just can’t shake. I shared it immediately but really feel like it deserves a wider audience.

The article was in the New York Post entitled “Diary of an Intensive Care Nurse” and Amanda’s comment was “The ugly truth . . .”

I rarely blog about my children, I don’t want to embarrass them or intrude into their worlds but this is an exception. Amanda went to school and earned her BSN from Elms College in 2009. I’m not so sure her career path happened by choice or coincidence but she ended up working the surgical side of a cardiac ICU for a number of years. She is a wonderful, highly intelligent, empathetic woman that anyone should feel relieved at being under her care. She is an amazing nurse.

Over the years we have had many a discussion about the very things talked about in the article. There were often conversations about the justification of the interventions used. There is always the question why – was it family? money? physician hubris? In her position you can only do the best for the individual in your care, your job is to keep them alive at all costs. You make them as comfortable as you can all the while knowing many times that the best thing would be to just let them go. I worked long-term care for years, many of those years in hospice (I have to say some of the most fulfilling years of my life). Dignity in dying has always been a topic of conversation. I have found more and more health professionals that will tell you that medical intervention is not for them. That DNR tattoo thing is something I’ve even thought about – more so as I get older.

People need to have honest conversations about death and dying because that is where we are all headed. We all dream of dying peacefully in our sleep but the reality is that death can be messy, it can be ugly. I have to wonder though if some of that ugliness would be far less if we just let nature take its course. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be proactive about our health. There are some health concerns that intervention makes your quality of life so much better. There comes a point though – a line – when intervention isn’t in anyone’s best interest. I know from personal experience that once you file a complaint with a physician there is a moment where you get onto that roller coaster and have to stay on it until the ride is over. You are no longer in control. The most empowering thing I have ever done is tell a surgeon that I would consider the surgery he wanted to do but in the end I told him no. I chose not to get on that roller coaster. It was not life threatening but it did show me that just because a doctor tells me I should do something doesn’t mean he knows me well enough to make the end decision. It is my life and health after all.

Read this article, then have a conversation with your loved ones about it. It’s not an easy conversation to have but in the end it’s better to have the people close to you know your wishes before you are in a situation that requires entering the health care arena. Hopefully you can find a strong advocate for your care. I know I have one in Amanda.

Let the Christmas Season Begin

December 9, 2013December 9, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 2 Comments

Every year we trek out to the power lines with a group of friends to pick out our Christmas tree.

Russell loves loading everyone onto his hay trailer and towing them out through the field to where the trees are. I opted out of the ride this year because in years past it has really scared me at moments. It’s not as if the bales we are sitting on are attached to anything. It looks like a tame ride in the photographs but once you are on the high tension lines it’s anything but.

Bill cut down the first tree he saw that fit the “small” tree requirement. It was also right on the top of the hill so there wouldn’t be any dragging up the steep, icy road.

Everyone fanned out beyond where we left the tractor and trailer. It’s some fairly rough terrain and the tractor was turned around and parked quite a ways back.

The kids were quick to pick their trees and trek back to the trailer. They were all with their babies and the wind had a bit of a bite to it. It’s nice to see them start the same traditions they have had most of their lives.

Finally the people looking for the perfect tree managed to find and cut just that. We harvest our trees on this stretch of the power line every year. The lines are on Russell’s property and if we don’t cut the trees down when they are smaller the power company will cut them down when they get bigger. The trees grow unfettered all along the road and they are as beautiful as any tree you would buy anywhere. I think more so because they just grew, no help from anyone.

Everyone makes the walk back while Russell drives the load of trees to the barn. The walk is one of my favorites, this is such a beautiful spot.

This year the difficulty came in figuring out who cut down what tree. Ours was easy, it was the smallest one. Everyone then goes inside to share a meal and hot chocolate and lots of desserts. I always bring an apple pie warm from the oven and really who needs any other food when you can have warm apple pie?

Little Things

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013 / handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

Every year for the 18 or so years of my daughter’s lives I photographed them around this time of year for the annual Christmas card. It was a personal challenge to send out the best photograph I could of them to all of our family and friends.

In the beginning I owned a photography studio in Enfield and was photographing many, many children – most of them were under 10 years old. There was a decided difference in photographing my own and someone else’s. The easy part is that these girls were conditioned to be photographed. I knew the words and ways to make them smile a natural smile and I had nothing but time to spend doing it. The difficulty came in the fact that they knew what buttons to push.

I would meticulously plan the dresses and where the photograph would be taken. I would dress them and drag them to the desired location and wait for the light to be just so or set up the studio before they arrived. Each session over the years had its problems (as every session always does). It also brought me great memories of the “behind the scenes” kinds of things that went on. They would manipulate me and I would manipulate them as parents and children will always do.

What seemed to every recipient of the yearly photograph to be of well behaved, well dressed little girls really was the product of hours of coercion, bribery, threats. It was also, in the early years, the power of bathroom words. Telling them to say something that they knew was considered a bad word took their minds off of the fighting between the two of them.

It’s this time of year that I look back fondly on those sessions – some great, some not so much. They are the fabric of our collective past and what makes up a little part of who we are now and our relationship to each other. I’m sure their perspective is totally different – everyone’s truth and story is but we are all on the journey together.

As the holiday season is upon us take the time to look at the little things that make up your traditions. Take out those old dusty family photos (God knows mine are) and reminisce about what was important to you then with the loved ones you have now. It can give you a fresh perspective on the journey you’re taking and bring home it’s the little things that really make up who you are.

How We Do It In the Sticks

November 29, 2013November 29, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

One great fire.

Five great kids (and Bill).

You never would have known it was 15 degrees.

The Day After

November 29, 2013November 29, 2013 / handmadebyjo / 6 Comments

If Thanksgiving is all about family then Moonlight Magic (Madness) is all about friends. The day after has always been a day of fun and reconnecting for us with this event. My sister-in-law owns a wonderful little flower shop in the Falls called Plants for Pleasure. For years that’s where the family spent some time setting up the shop for the opening of the holiday season.

Bridge Street in Shelburne Falls is shut down to traffic for the evening with venders on the streets and all of the shops open for business. It seems as though hundreds of people go and many of them we have known most of our lives. It’s a festive occasion and we plan out our eating from year to year strategically. From barbecue to Hager’s fried dough with maple cream there are some spots not to be missed.

Molly Cantor Pottery

Many, many crafters have small shops in Shelburne Falls and this event also acts as an open house of sorts. From glass blowing to weaving to pottery artisans display their wares. It is amazing to me the artistry that is center right here in these small hilltowns.

There is also our visit to the Shelburne Falls Bowling Alley owned by friends of ours from high school. This is really the best place to bowl in my opinion. They have taken the history of this place to another level with the decor and information on the walls from years past. Their bar is fun and the bowling is an experience. This is always on our must do list.

This year the cousins, all adults now, will be descending on the town as well. They love to get together and don’t have as many opportunities as they once did. I’m sure we will run into them multiple times during the evening and all plan to end up in Rowe for a bonfire in the garden. I’m sure it will be cold enough.

This is the kickoff to the Christmas season for us. There is nothing like reconnecting to make things feel more festive. Then to retire to the outdoors in Rowe, looking at an amazing starry sky, sitting by a huge fire, drinking a warmed Grand Marnier surrounded by family is the icing on the cake.

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