On Paying Attention to What You See

August 8, 2011

How carefully do you notice what is happening around you?

This post is one I would have put into the Visual Viewpoints section on Support4Change if I had the time, but this will have to do. In case you haven’t visited there, it is a place that can tell you a little about me from the pictures I share for all photos tell something about the “viewpoint” of the photographer, for example, where she chooses to stand and the subject she selects.

Don’t know what, exactly, my pictures say about me, but they offer you a glimpse into the kinds of things I am interested in capturing on film (well, on tiny digital memory cards anyway)

In the case of the picture on the right, I was flying over the alps from Italy to Munich a few years ago. What puzzled me were the patches of white against the dark ground. It looks as though this is snow on a hiking trail, or perhaps on a ski run, but it is only the beginning of November.

Yet if it is snow, why would there be only white in these lines but not in the deep valleys Why are there breaks in the white, as though there is a deep hole filled with snow? But there wasn’t much snow on the mountains as a whole, so why did the “snow” create a pattern like this? There are other areas that are in the shadow more than these appear to be and I assume they would continue to have snow, so what makes these areas special?

I am puzzled by this and offer it here in the hope that someone who reads this page will explain it. My interest in it is a little like that of members of the Google Earth Community who examine Google Earth pictures to find anomalies that are interesting to them.

There are many who would look at this and only think of it as a beautiful mountain scene. If they noticed the white at all, they would ignore it or file it as an-unknown-thing-not-worth-pursuing. Yet doesn’t it puzzle you? Don’t you wonder what it means?

I share this to encourage you look with a bit more questioning eyes at the world around you, including pictures in print and TV. And then, when you see something that is a puzzle, that you try to find out what it is. There are a zillion things that I don’t know the why of, but whenever I take the time to see what they might be, when I ask questions about “why” they are the way they appear—even if I don’t find the answer—the mere fact that I’ve tried enriches my life.

If you know someone who might have an explanation for this picture, please let me know how I can get in touch with him or her.

What about you? How do you view the world? What is your viewpoint?

When you look around you, besides needing to watch where you are going as you navigate the world without running into something, are you interested in what you’re seeing?

When there is something you haven’t seen before, do you try to understand what it is, or do you let it become just one more thing that is a puzzle not pursued?

Finally, are you willing to pay attention this week to at least one thing that you haven’t known how it is made, why it looks the way the does, or its possible purpose—and then actually pursue the answer?

The Most Beautiful Sunset

June 29, 2011

Share your favorite sunset picture and win a most unusual picture of the Alaskan Railroad.

The Nature Connection is a short section on Support4Change that suggests a technique for pondering life’s mysteries, working through conundrums, solving problems and deepening spirituality. In it I present a Walk in the Woods of scenes in the forests of California. Introducing the slide show, I ask viewers to imagine all the people who have watched those same trees and rocks and flowers (or ones just like them on the next mountain over).

I suggest this because, for me, one of the pleasures of experiencing nature is the realization that we are on this earth for a very short time, a single link in a long chain that runs from untold centuries in the past to limitless centuries in the future.

Then recently I was looking at pictures of sunsets and thought of the singular experience of the setting sun. For example, if I were standing alone on the Samurai Beach New South Wales, Australia, and watching the spectacular colors form, deepen and disappear into the night, I would know that I was the only person to see that specific combination of colors, tones and intensity on that particular night.

Wanting to hang onto a sunset and keep it there just a little longer is possibly one of the most common experiences with share with others. We can’t, of course. But we can take a picture and try to capture our connection with the natural world through the expression of colors and clouds.

As I thought about such beautiful pictures, I thought it would be fun to have a contest for the most beautiful sunset picture. So if you send me a picture, I will enter you into a raffle for a very unusual picture of the Alaska Railroad that I took more than ten years ago, a kind of picture I suspect you probably have never seen.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to create several posts based on “The Nature Connection.”

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

How a Hunter Changed My Mind

June 3, 2011

Opening your eyes to a new point of view requires willingness to listen and to see things from another person’s perspective.

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Brief Note: Have you been checking out the Love Your Life Summit? It formally started yesterday and there is still time to view excellent interviews with some people who know a lot about becoming successful in adding love into your daily life.

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On Saturday we returned from ten days in Montana to celebrate the wedding of our oldest grandson and now I want to share an experience from that trip in a different way than I usually do. I’m turning the illustration of the picture I took into a puzzle.

When you click on the arrow, it will take you to the Jigzone website, where you can solve it easily, since I have chosen the 20-piece classic cut. Or you can make it more difficult by going up to 247 piece triangles, in which case you are either super smart or have way too much time on your hands.

By the way, can you tell if this is a typical, semi-irregular, or irregular elk? Do you even know what those terms mean?  (The answer is at the end.)

The picture was taken at the Elk Foundation exhibit in Missoula, Montana, last Saturday. We had a couple hours to kill before needing to return the rental car and catch our plane. So one of the places we decided to see was the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation exhibit.

It was a most interesting experience for me that began when we started to see a short film on elk. We had expected a typical nature movie about the life of elk, how long they live, their habits, etc. Instead, it extolled the value of hunting these majestic animals. Since I’m not a hunting enthusiast, I was put off by the movie and walked out to the lobby, where I got into a conversation with a hunter.

What he said completely changed my perspective. He spoke of the majesty of the animals and how hunting is needed to cull the herds and keep them healthy. With too many elk, their range becomes unsustainable. It is necessary to kill some of them in some way.

Also, as I thought about it, I’ve had venison, which is quite good tasting, and decided that perhaps this is a more authentic approach to eating meat. Buying a roast at the grocery store is a sanitized approach. We don’t see the slaughterhouse. We don’t see the steer being killed. With hunting for food, the hunter is intimately involved in putting meat on the table.

Of course, I am opposed to the useless slaughter of animals just for fun, which I realize is one reason many people are against hunting. But now I realize that keeping the environment healthy for animals is a reasonable approach to wildlife and habitat conservation.

What experience have you had in which a casual encounter with a stranger caused you to change your mind?

ANSWER: The more symmetrical an elks antlers are, the more regular he is.

Create Your Own “Burma-Shave” Sign

November 4, 2010

For several decades motorists enjoyed Burma-Shave signs lining America’s highways. Now you can see them again in a video of Historic Route 66 and can enter a contest to create your own “sign” to promote any cause you’d like.

This past July we took two of our grandsons for a Road Scholar program (it used to be called Intergenerational ElderHostel) near Grand Canyon. Fabulous time, except that I was having some trouble with the heat and decided I would skip the day trip down the Colorado River. Have wanted to do that all my life, but apparently have waited too long and the body objected.

Instead, while everyone else was out having a grand time on the river, I took myself for a ride along Route 66, the “Mother Road” of America. That’s how I was able to greatly enjoy the chance to stop and take as many pictures as I wanted without having someone along who was anxious to get moving. It’s also why I could capture a number of Burma-Shave signs in a video called “Historic Route 66 Between Peach Springs and Seligman, Arizona.”

You can see the video below. But first, in case you don’t know about Burma-Shave signs, a quick note of history can help you appreciate them more. And if you read to the end of this blog post, you’ll understand the Create-Your-Own-Burma-Shave-Sign Contest.

Burma-Shave was a brand of brushless shaving cream with lack-luster sales in 1925 when the son of the company’s owner suggested a campaign of highway signs. Sales took off when people began seeing five or six small signs posted along the highway; just far enough apart so that passing motorists could read a humorous rhyme as they traveled.

Some were designed to simply advertise the value of the product in a clever way. While others caught your attention because they promoted safe driving in a clever way. Always the last sign would say, “Burma-Shave.” Until 1963, when the signs were discontinued, it was fun to figure out the last part of the phrase before you could see it. As super highways became more wide spread and speeds crept up — a sign in the video mentions “a mile a minute” as dangerous — the signs were considered not as effective an advertising gimmick as they had been.

What is interesting is that the signs originally were not posted in New Mexico, Arizona, or Nevada because it was decided there wasn’t enough traffic to justify the cost. They also weren’t posted in Massachusetts, where roadside foliage and high land rentals made them less desirable.

Now, however, the place where you can see newly erected signs is on what is called “Historic Route 66″ between Seligman and Kingman, Arizona. The signs (now erected by the American Safety Razor Company) are part of an attempt to bring tourists, and their dollars, to communities bypassed when the interstate was built. Today Seligman, as you can see in the video, makes it a point to emphasize its connection to the old route that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles.

After you watch the show, you will find more Burma-Shave signs you may enjoy — and a suggestion.

Even if you don’t watch the video, please read to the bottom of the page for the Create-Your-Own-”Burma-Shave”-Sign Contest.

Hope you enjoyed those Route 66 and Burma Shave signs, although as I said, originally they weren’t in Arizona. But as a child I loved those signs and now, fortunately, the Internet has several sites with many of the slogans for those of us who are nostalgic for the pleasure of wondering what the punch line will be when we would see the red-and-white signs in the distance.

Before telling you about the Create-Your-Own-Burma-Shave-Sign Contest, here are some of the many signs that I have enjoyed in years past.

Ready for the Create-Your-Own-”Burma-Shave”-Sign Contest? Think of a rhyming phrase you could put on four or five lines (as I have done at the beginning of this post). Then add a final line as I did with “Support4Change.com” above. You can use these “signs” to promote a place, person, idea, book, website, relationship, cause, or anything at all.

You will note that I’ve waited until after the elections to offer this contest so I won’t have to sort through poems for or against political candidates. We have all seen enough ads to last us a very long time.

I will post all entries that are clean enough to be seen on a public road. Then, as a further inducement to encourage creativity, I will offer a prize of my latest book, Healing Relationships is an Inside Job (in PDF) to the entry randomly selected.

Use the comment feature below to enter. Good luck. Have fun.

How Has Travel Enriched Your Relationships?

June 21, 2010

Read how a trip to Machu Picchu is enjoyed by a couple who has learned how to travel well together.

As I started to type in the date on this post, I was shocked when I realized that it IS June 21. ALREADY. The first day of summer wasn’t supposed to arrive until Wednesday so that I would have time to send cards for my son’s anniversary. Darn. Life is moving too fast for me to keep track of all I need to keep track of. But then, it’s not so slow that it drags.

In any case, as I begin this post, YouTube is uploading a video I just completed on the trip we took to Machu Picchu, which was part of our 50th wedding celebration. In addition to videos I made earlier of our trip to South America — Impressions of the Galapagos Islands and How to Visit Quito — I will include the new video below to show you that people in long-term relationships can survive the trials that travel sometimes brings. By this time we’ve learned how to give to the other person when that is needed on a vacation, and when to ask for something we need.

On our vacations we have very few arguments (though I won’t say that in the past we’ve always seen eye-to-eye on what to do), but we’ve managed to balance some of what he wants (trains and dams) and what I want (museums and gardens). Of course, it helps if you both want to go to a special place, like Machu Picchu. And I can tell you that in this trip to the “Lost City of the Incas,” 7,970 ft above sea level, I needed his help and he liked having me along. Now I have four new travel rules if we go back there again:

1. Don’t fall as you get off the plane in Cuzco and twist your ankle.
2. Go anyway.
3. If you do need help, bring walking sticks. (While there were signs that walking sticks weren’t allowed, our guide said that when you really need them, they don’t mind. They just don’t want people, meaning children, to use them to damage the ruins. I wouldn’t have made it without them in the thin air.)
4. Bring your husband (or other suitable substitute). It gives you someone to help boost you up the higher steps and to share the memories with when you return.

When you watch the video below, imagine what it would be like to visit there with someone you love. Then ask yourself this question:

How do I allow travel to enrich my relationships?

Hope you enjoy this video as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.