Oswego
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Camellias: the wondrous winter flower in Daydreaming on the Porch
I have a beautiful little book published in 1870 entitled “Flowers: Their Language and Poetry.” I can’s remember where I bought it. I think it was the used books place I used to frequent a lo...
Essential mysteries of photography in Daydreaming on the Porch
Photography is fascinating to me because it’s both descriptive and symbolic at the same time. Descriptive because it shows you something that looks like the world and symbolic because the best ph...
Questions in Daydreaming on the Porch
October 26, 2016 I dreamed a thousand new paths. I woke and walked my old one. Chinese proverb I sometimes find myself thinking about the future when I am no longer a caregiver and I have the n...
Hurricane madness in Daydreaming on the Porch
Hurricanes are elemental, monstrous forces of Nature. We rode out Hurricane Betsy in 1965 when it attacked and flooded New Orleans with 100 mph winds. I’ll never forget that long night of seem...
Worlds within worlds in Daydreaming on the Porch
I’ve been in the mood for digging back into the past today, having had a day off from work and a few rare and precious hours to myself to think and reminisce as I went through some folders stuffe...
Dementia Journal, 9/5/16 in Daydreaming on the Porch
I’ve been in some of the strangest and most introspective moods lately. Sometimes sad and depressed, but mostly rather stoical. It seemed to start when I crossed a very significant psychologica...
You'll never walk alone in Daydreaming on the Porch
Lately, I’ve been going to YouTube and listening to favorite old songs from the sixties. I guess as I get older, I get more and more nostalgic for that seemingly simpler time in my life. Certa...
Look up and behold the wondrous clouds above you in Daydreaming on the Porch
A nice lady at Colonial Lake Park saw me pointing my camera up at the sky and clouds at Colonial Lake Park yesterday and said, “Until I saw you, I never would have thought to look up and see thos...
In praise of trees in Daydreaming on the Porch
For me trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone…They ...
Dementia Journal - July 8, 2016 in Daydreaming on the Porch
You know it’s going to be a rough night when the caregiver for your parent who is leaving after a six hour shift, says to you, “Good luck!” And so another in a years-long series of nights taking ...
Traffic light epiphany in Daydreaming on the Porch
There’s a certain pathos about getting older that strikes me from time to time and at odd moments with a degree of epiphany that both delights and saddens. Certain mental vignettes can be quite ...
Dementia Journal, May 29-30, 2016 in Daydreaming on the Porch
A long stretch without a caregiver took its toll on me this morning. I was tired and sluggish and in a bad mood. We’d been waiting for the tropical storm to come our way, but the winds didn’t m...
To know and love a place in Daydreaming on the Porch
There’s no place like home. In life and in photography, a closer look at the familiar can often reveal truth and beauty [and] …sometimes the most revealing photographs are of the places we know ...
Aloneness and contentment in Daydreaming on the Porch
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” Goethe There was a time starting about 15 years ago and lasting for years after that, when the Internet opened up to the sociable, but in man...
The miracle of flowers in Daydreaming on the Porch
If we could see the miracle of single flower clearly, our whole life would change. Buddha There are always flowers for those who want to see them. Henri Matisse This Spring has brought us such an...
The glory of azaleas in Spring in Daydreaming on the Porch
When I was growing up in suburban New Orleans in the 60s, my mother planted azalea bushes in our back yard garden in the early 60s. They grew to enormous size and flourished where she planted t...
Nature's healing balm in Daydreaming on the Porch
“I have always been in love with the natural world… My life has been driven by the need to be surrounded and immersed in the beauty of Nature… It has been the central focus of my existence – has ...
Dementia Journal, December 13-14, 2015 and thoughts on aging in Daydreaming on the Porch
It’s a strange thing getting older — older as in nearing Social Security retirement age of 66 and Medicare eligibility. You start getting a lot of things in the mail about Medicare supplemental ...
Dementia Journal, Oct. 29, 2015 in Daydreaming on the Porch
Mom will be 92 in December. Physically, she holding her own. Two recent doctor visits — to our primary care physician and to the cardiologist this past month — came out okay. Blood work and vi...
Summer reverie revisited in Daydreaming on the Porch
There is probably no more beautiful river in South Carolina than the pristine Edisto River, whose watershed runs through a long swath of central South Carolina. I’ve long been intrigued and begu...
The voyage of life in Daydreaming on the Porch
As I approach retirement, I find myself looking back on the past more and more often, thinking of my friends, jobs and careers with increasing emotion, even pathos. There is something quite poi...
The perils and promises of nostalgia in Daydreaming on the Porch
“Today, researchers view nostalgia – ‘a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past’ – far more positively than their 19th-century forebears. Studies show that nostalgia can...
Dipping into the memory vault again in Daydreaming on the Porch
“And over the course of a lifetime, we forage, root and rummage around in our stuff, because that is part of what it means to be human. We treasure…“ Dominique Browning New York Times, May 29, 20...
Dementia Journal, April 29, 2015 in Daydreaming on the Porch
Mom’s dementia is getting worse, and she is more frail than ever. I constantly worry about her falling even though someone always holds onto her when she goes anywhere in the house. Her short-t...
Dementia Journal -- March, 2015 in Daydreaming on the Porch
March 4, 2015 I keep telling myself I need to write in this journal more often, but the subject is painful to explore and hard to recall, ironically enough, because there’s a steady drumbeat of i...
