Fire dancer

 At Bay View's Pumpkin Pavilion last weekend... witchy, pagan fire dancers under an autumn tree ... I'm a little weirded out by the purple light in the scary dancer-immolation photo. It showed up in a few others. Probably a delayed effect from the moving fire and slow shutter speed. Or not...

Pumpkin pavilion

 From last weekend's Pumpkin Pavilion in Humboldt Park, Milwaukee. Residents of Bay View (the coolest, hippest neighborhood) carved hundreds of jack-o-lanterns for the event, which also included fire dancers (photos to come).

Some things stay the same

Love the motion in this shot. Everything is in motion – my youngest cousin (swinging, yes, but also beginning the rapid change from childhood to adulthood). The season, the day. I was losing sun quickly, and I was losing battery power. Sometimes my camera gives me some interesting gifts when it’s running out of juice. Though things are in flux in this picture there are elements that remain the same: The cabin (in northern Wisconsin) has been there a long time – part of my aunt’s family history. The tree has been there a long time, as has the river directly behind me. The seasons will change – that’s a constant – and children will grow and maybe retain or regain their sense of joy in the moment. The memories will remain.

Transition

A few changes. New look.  Maybe a new focus. After all, Purple Houses has been my "journal of creative evolution" -- and, of course, evolution is a fundamental component of creativity. I preach to my beginning bloggers that regular posting is important -- clearly, I'm not following my own advice, and clearly, that's an indicator that something needs to change.

So what's the deal? I'm still writing and working on getting published and balancing the things I want to do with the things I have to do, blah blah blah. Not much else to say about that.

But I'm taking a whole lot of pictures. Maybe, I thought, I have more to say visually right now. I think the stories will come with the images...

Northwoods drive

Not sure why it took me so long to take a drive up north ... and the weird vortex of weather circling over Wisconsin this weekend gave it the perfect rainy autumn gloom. It was a weekend of reunions -- with friends and with a place that I often longed to leave but also loved to explore on endless drives. I found stories in its dirt roads and expansive woods, cleared my head under the muted cover of impenetrable clouds.

Steamy without the romance

Been trapped inside the house almost like winter -- stepping outside is like breathing soup. Glasses and camera lenses fog up immediately. Plus we've had a deer fly infestation for the past month -- they swarm, land in our hair and bite in the time it takes to walk from the house to the car. Both annoying and a danger -- they carry Tularemia, caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis, a potential bioterrorism agent, according to PubMed Health.

Miserable.

No more bull$%@#

Wow, time flies. Mostly there's not much to report -- and not much writing done. Back to juggling and piecing together an income, including by unloading some stuff on Ebay. As a child I amassed a collection of Breyer horses -- inexplicably among the sleek and stately equine models, one anatomically correct Hereford bull. Maybe I liked his benign expression. Anyway, he was the first to go. I received a lovely follow-up note from his buyer, who says he is the biggest bull in her herd. Better than the inside of a dusty box. I'm keeping my favorites but so far have made $60 on three models.

And teaching. And editing. And writing for a magazine. And applying for jobs. I'm determined to keep one day a week completely open for writing; that's worked once in the past three weeks. At least I got ahead during my stay at the writers' colonies...