Saturday’s Songs – He Can Only Hold Her by Amy Winehouse
This Saturday’s song came to me on Tuesday and I prepared this post right away that evening, knowing no other song would top it for me this week. Though I’m a big fan of Amy’s, I’d never before heard He Can Only Hold Her.
Of the versions I listened to for this post, the one I’ve linked to is my favorite. It’s also the version I first heard. It has a great ’60s-’70s groove with a tremendous horn sound.
The opening riff sounds like something Jimi would have gifted to Amy, knowing that she’d one day join him and the other super-talents of the music industry who left this world in their 27th year.
In my opinion Amy Winehouse was the top female talent of her time, despite her demons.
In memory of Amy, how about getting up and dancing to this song!
Three Tips For Photographers New To The Gridspace Theme On WordPress
To save you time, this post is written for photographers using or interested in using the WordPress theme Gridspace. If you don’t use Gridspace and don’t have plans to, feel free to leave this post now and move on to whatever it is you have to do next! But, as always, thanks for visiting!
Yesterday, I posted about the recent switch I made to Gridspace for my photography site.
I’m posting briefly today as a follow-up to that post. I want to share a few tips that might help any of you photographers who are using Gridspace or who might be interested in doing so. I love WordPress. This is my way of “giving back!” Hope it helps you!
1) I think photography is best enhanced by a black background. With Gridspace, a user can select a black background through the customized settings. So, where “>” means “go to and click on/select”:
>dashboard>customize>theme options>select a theme style>black
(A slightly longer but maybe more familiar route is:
>dashboard>appearance>customize>theme options>select a theme style>black)
2) If your images don’t show in the squares on the grid, i.e. you have some dark gray grid squares, try this:
For old posts that you’ve migrated from another WordPress theme to Gridspace:
>dashboard>posts>all posts>select “edit” for the post you want to fix>set featured image (you might have to scroll down your page to find this setting, and once you select it, it will take you to the media library)>find and select the post image from the media library>set featured image>UPDATE (This is important! You have to update your post after every change, including this one!)
For all new posts, I plan to “set featured image” as I create each post to that site. So, once my post is complete, from my “new post” page, I’ll:
>set featured image (you might have to scroll down your page to find this setting)>find and select the image from the media library>set featured image>UPDATE or PUBLISH
3) to reduce the empty space within the grid, that is the area that is solid black and appears as if grid squares should fill it:
>dashboard>settings>readings>”Blog pages show at most” – set to 9 or 12 to make the layout multiples of 3 (if you are using a 3 column grid)>SAVE CHANGES (This is essential to capture this setting or any others on this page! Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the Save Changes button.)
I found these tips and more at the wordpress.org forum page for Gridspace.
I hope this is a help to those of you using Gridspace. These were the three immediate things I needed to resolve when I first migrated TheRipestPics to the Gridspace theme.
Here’s a glimpse of how the Gridspace theme highlights my photographs. I love it.
Update: I have since changed the layout of my photo site to “square” and I think it better showcases my photographs. It’s a two-column, square thumbnail grid, allowing more space for each image. To choose from three layout options in this theme (including “square”), here’s what you do:
>dashboard>appearance>customize>theme options>thumbnail orientation>(choose vertical, square, or horizontal)
With square, it will look like this:
Gridspace theme in customized “square” thumbnail orientation
My Photography Site – TheRipestPics
I’ve been busy working on my writing and photography websites this week.
Here at sublimedays is where I do my social media writing. And I sometimes enhance a post with one of my photographs.
But I have another site, TheRipestPics, where I display my photography. It’s pictured above.
Since the time I started posting photos to TheRipestPics (early 2012), Wordpress has come a long way with its theme offerings for photographers. Yesterday, I decided to switch to a gallery theme for my photo site. I chose Gridspace ($79) and I love the look. I am still working out some kinks, reading helpful comments over at the wordpress.org forum.
If you have a few minutes, please visit TheRipestPics and enjoy my photography. You’ll find a nice array of images – many gifts from nature! I like what I’ve done with the Galleries page and plan to add more galleries soon.
By the way, my very first blog, SilverLining-MaryMcAvoy, which I began to write in 2007, is a photo-blog. It is hosted at Google’s blogspot. Though I don’t post to it anymore, it’s a gem of a site, not because of me but because of the mystery and beauty found in nature. The blog chronicles the four seasons in and around a tiny pond in New England, over the course of a five-year period. I was an amateur photographer when I began the site and an amateur naturalist as well. My development as a photographer and naturalist evolves in SilverLining, post by post. Sadly, I moved away from the pond and so the blog came to an end. But many of the images at TheRipestPics come from that time and location.
Here’s a sample of what you’ll find at TheRipestPics – it’s the image I posted there yesterday. This is an eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly enjoying the blossoms of a butterfly bush in Connecticut.
Actress Jessica Lange, who I remember best for her portrayal of the character Julie in the movie Tootsie, has recently published a children’s book titled, It’s About A Little Bird (October 2013, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky).
Lange, who is now a grandmother, is an accomplished photographer. She’s built this book around these two passions – her grandchildren and her photography.
I enjoyed this interview with Travis Smiley in which Lange shares that all of her photographic work is done with film and also, that she develops all of her shots in her own darkroom. I’m seriously impressed and humbled!
And that’s only the half of it. For each image in this book, Lange employed an old technique – hand-tinting of black and white photos – her own tinting of her own black and white photos. As she says on the book jacket, “Nothing was done digitally.”
Once you see a hand-tinted photograph, the look is not forgotten. The first time I saw one, I thought my eyes were deceiving me. I thought I was imagining color into the black and white photo. The image was only slightly colored and in only one area – the blossoms on rose bushes along a stone wall in a photograph of the English countryside.
For her book illustrations, Lange has fully colored the photographs – as was typically done in the era (mid to late 1800s) that this technique was employed. The end result has a wonderful quality that I’m sure children will respond to.
A Poem: Betty, With My Mother’s Eyes (Two Sad Hearts Meet)
Betty, With My Mother’s Eyes
(Two Sad Hearts Meet)
by Mary McAvoy
I am the stranger in your native town
but you greet me with a smile.
You forget we met last year,
when I was here a short while.
You say you’re 87 now,
the age Don was when he died –
three years ago, so suddenly,
with no time to say goodbye.
You say it was in ’55
that you and he came to this spot,
and it’s so hard to keep it up now,
making decisions with only your thought.
The leaves are falling and winter’s coming,
and we talk about the chill in the air.
You say you’ll be selling your home soon,
you’re thinking early next year.
You look away from me
and stare across your lawn.
I know you’re seeing something –
for me, too far beyond.
“We’d been on errands and just arrived back home,
when he reached across the seat.
He slumped over and that was it –
I never again heard him speak.”
We’re quiet now and I stand there wishing
there were more that I could do.
I hope that simply by listening
I am a comfort to you.
“I’ll be moving to one of those places,
as soon as the house is sold.”
You assure us both, “It’s not a nursing home,
but I can’t think now what they’re called.”
“Does the place have a name?” I ask,
hoping for a clue.
I want to know where to find you, Betty,
in the spring, when things come up new.
Because here’s the truth of it, Betty,
it caught me by surprise,
when we first met I could see it –
you have my mother’s eyes.
I know you’re not my mother,
you aren’t so like her I can see.
But when I look into your eyes, Betty,
it’s as if she’s come to me.
Something in the way you look at me,
I think you know it, too.
It hasn’t been chance meetings
when I’ve run into you.
As we say goodbye we smile,
though we’re both reluctant to part.
As I walk away you call to me,
“Remind me next year we’ve met!”
It’s all I can do through my tears
to reply to you, “I sure will!”
You’re the best thing in this living world
to help me feel near her still.
Closing Out Christmas on the Epiphany – January 6
In mid-December I posted about a house folk concert I’d attended. The night featured Martin Swinger and Connor Garvey. It was a wonderful time!
After the flurry of Christmas was over and I was going through photos of the season, I realized I had a pretty good video of Martin’s audience-participation version of the Pachelbel Canon that I’d shot with my phone, the HTC One. With Martin’s okay, I’ve added it to my YouTube channel and I’m happy now to share it with you.
Today (January 6th), is “The Epiphany” – the end of the Christmas season for Christians. I think it’s appropriate therefore to post this video as a final bit of the season’s magic.
First Sip of Coffee vs First Sip of Wine – No Contest
I sometimes try to discern which I like better, that first sip of hot coffee from my daily mug of java, or that first sip of my nightly glass of wine-with-dinner. The first opens my mind to productive thought, the latter signals time for quiet reflection and unwinding. Hmmm. I hope it never comes to picking one over the other! It’s a toss-up!
Saturday’s Song – When a Woman Loves by R. Kelly
With more than 9.5 million views on You Tube, this R&B tune proves its appeal!
It was brought to my attention last spring, and still, I can’t listen to it enough, though I’m always self conscious of the over-the-top production, from the sparkles on Kelly’s jacket at the opening to the circle of microphones surrounding him at the end, and pretty much everything in-between! But I love it all!
Kelly has spectacular range, wind and persona!
Enjoy! Especially if you have someone special nearby to dance with you!
Snow Storm In New England – A Photography Opportunity!
It’s snowing in the way I remember it did in the winters of my childhood – in huge quantities! It’s a beautiful snow. As someone said today, like “pillow feathers.”
It began to snow in the night last night and is expected to continue into mid-day tomorrow. The temperature is 3 degrees (F) this evening. Today, when I tried to take photos out a picture window, there was a layer of frost on the inside of the window! That’s how cold it is. (Fortunately, heavy drapes keep the cold from coming into the room.) I scraped away some of the frost and took pictures through the clearing! You’ll see them in the slideshow below.
Interestingly, my phone camera has captured a more realistic look – example above. For some reason my Nikon SLR started interpreting light in blue! I’ve edited them to tone down the blue but they are still kind of milky. I think the camera has trouble reading light when the snow is so white bright but there isn’t much light from the sun. Anyway, here are more images in a slideshow.
It’s cold, but it’s so pretty here in New England!
sublime days 
Sunday’s Snapshots
I love the reflection of this building in the canal water. To me, it could have been taken in almost any city in Europe. But it was taken in Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
For ten months through 2012-13 I lived in Lowell, Mass. on Market Street, in the heart of the downtown area. I’d moved from a bucolic setting to this struggling city of highs (young people bursting with art and literary potential under the influence of a wildly impressive art scene) and lows (abject poverty and the human sorrows that accompany poverty in an urban setting).
Lowell is one of three mill cities that was built in the 1800s along the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. Along with its sister cities, Lawrence and Haverhill, Lowell was a humming hub of the American Industrial Revolution in the mid 1800s.
To quote from a wikipedia page about the Industrial Revolution, “Lowell, Massachusetts, utilising 5.6 miles (9.0 km) of canals and ten thousand horsepower delivered by theMerrimack River, is considered by some to be a major contributor to the success of the American Industrial Revolution. The short-lived utopia-like Lowell System was formed, as a direct response to the poor working conditions in Britain. However, by 1850, especially following the Irish Potato Famine, the system had been replaced by poor immigrant labour.”
Evidence of this history fills the streets of downtown Lowell and makes for endless photography opportunities. This post focuses on photographs of one mill building that today is a condo complex.
Here’s the expanse of the former mill building, now housing condos,
The sun set as I took these photos, offering me some shots of sunbursts reflected off a pane of glass and, in the second photo below, reflected in the canal, too.
that runs along a canal in the heart of downtown Lowell.
When I was taking nature photographs near the house I’d moved from, I loved images of reflections on a pond near my house. I came to love reflected images on the canal just as much!
This is the first Sunday’s Snapshots, a regular feature I’m adding to sublimedays.
A point of interest – my second novella, The Setting of the Sun, is set in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and lightly touches on the history of the mill industry in that city. Visit the page on this site that is devoted to The Setting of the Sun if you are interested in reading about the book.
Share this: