Make a Wish

by Laurie Allee

I didn't notice the shooting star when I took this long-exposure shot on St. Albans Drive (aka: Christmas Tree Lane!) in neighboring San Marino a few years ago. I guess it's just another Christmas miracle...

Want to leave a holiday greeting?  How about just saying hi?  Click the Community tab at the top of the blog to start a conversation.

then leaf subsides to leaf

By Laurie Allee

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost

Have something poetic to add?  Go to the Community tab at the top of the blog whenever you feel like leaving a comment or just saying hello.

Favorite South Pasadena Shots 2

by Laurie Allee

I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats, spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In their freckles live our savours.
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

--William Shakespeare
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene i

South Pasadena Abstract #7

"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real." -- Lucien Freud

(Or, the more drinks you have on Mission Street, the more artistic each venue becomes...)


Feel like getting real?  Talk to me.

Walking Toward the Big Sky

Even the alley behind the railroad tracks looks promising with clouds like this.

Ballerina in the Window

"Dancing is poetry with arms and legs."

--Charles Baudelaire

Noir Moderne

“I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.”

― Lawrence Block

Magic Hour in Pasadena

(The drive back home from Old Town last night was beautiful...)

Pondering on a Summer Morning

There are flowers on the table, coffee is brewing and the parrots are gathering in the camphor trees above my house. I know it's the big things in life that we always remember -- the births and deaths and graduations, the promotions and colossal failures and serendipitous acts of grace.

But I wish we'd remember more of the little moments. You know what I mean ... all their clarity, ease and boring, wonderful idleness.

I'm sure I won't remember these specific pink roses from Trader Joes. Not after a few weeks, anyway. I'll remember the concept of pink roses from Trader Joes -- after all, they're always there and always bright and ridiculously beautiful -- but I probably won't remember these roses. Little Bit picked them out the other day because "they looked like they needed us."

(Well, maybe I'll remember them now.)

Magic Window

(Timing is everything.)

Brainstorming

Rainy day bad idea:

Decide to do a big grocery shop at Ralphs, grabbing the umbrella with the broken spokes and wearing the wool coat that soaks up water better than a squeegee, getting stuck standing in the parking lot as an elderly woman in an 80s Lincoln Continental pulls out and then desperately tries to clean her wet glasses with her crocheted shawl as you helplessly watch your cereal boxes get soggier and soggier and you wish that you had included a bottle of scotch on your grocery list.

Rainy day good idea:

Put away the wet groceries, dry off and head over to Charlie's for great coffee, warm atmosphere and cool tunes. (Which is exactly what I did when I was stopped by the train crossing, and noticed this lovely shot.)

Electrical Storm

Today is the first of the month, and that means it's Theme Day for participating City Daily Photo bloggers. Today's theme is Electricity.

I think Dave Barry said it best:

“Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.”

Here, it looks like I must have been on a real bender: vintage streetlamps reflected on rainy sidewalks with a sky still illuminated by lightening and whatever that magical thing is filling the world with static after a storm passes through.

On nights like this, you might create a spark when you brush up against a stranger. Don't miss out. (Who needs drinking when the current of the universe can pass right through us?)

For more power shots, check out the other Theme Day contributions by my worldwide photoblogger community. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Kaldi: Dark to Light

I don't remember snapping this iPhone photo. In all likelihood it was an accidental shot fired off when I was checking a text. Either that, or Kaldi's intense dark roast saturated my creative brain, prompting me to subconsciously attempt an impromptu yin/yang study of one's interior shadow juxtaposed by community light...

Nah, it was just an accident. (But remind me to go back and shoot the scene with a proper camera!)

Fair Oaks at Night

Is it just me or does traffic look prettier in black and white?

Caution: Here Be Dragons

Did you know that Pasadena has a park made especially for little pirates? Last April, the city opened Reese's Retreat at Brookside Park. (Walk east from the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center and you'll find it tucked behind the pools.) Reese's Retreat is the region's first universally accessible playground for kids of all ages and abilities -- and it's so cool that the even the most exhausted parent will be tempted to get off the park bench and join in the fun.

The entire setting resembles a pirate ship, complete with bells that clang and wheels that turn and even a plank for the most scurrilous little scallywags to walk. There are multiple levels to explore either by climbing or by using ramps. The setting offers kids of all physical abilities a safe place to scramble around. Even the soft, rubberized ocean floor is wheelchair-friendly.

The design is beautiful, blending into the landscape both playfully and artfully with lots of natural elements and neutral colors. The playground equipment offers the standard variety of things to climb up and slide down, but it also encourages exercise of the imagination with enough high seas props to inspire your inner Jack Sparrow. (Honestly, try not to bust out a hardy "Arrrrrr!" while pretending to hoist one of the ship's sails.) In a word: wonderful.

It all makes me wonder why South Pasadena can't create something similar in Lower Arroyo Seco Park? We certainly have the right setting. For four years I've driven by our city's forgotten park and wished that the gorgeous space could be put to better use. Garfield Park and Orange Grove Park have lovely play areas with safe, charming equipment while Arroyo Seco Park looks like a forgotten leftover from The Wonder Years.

I know there is a certain hipster fascination with rusting jungle gyms from the 1960s, but wouldn't it be more fun to have a safe playscape that local kids (and their parents) could actually enjoy? Not to mention the fact that our large, isolated park area attracts a certain element that really should walk the plank...

I guess it would take a bit of pirate treasure to make it happen, huh?

immense sublime

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

--Victor Hugo

Shadows and Light

The afternoon light through my old water glass windows makes these wonderful shadows on the wall.

Simple, everyday things. So beautiful ... and always there if you just pay attention.

I am reminded of the old poem by William Carlos Williams. It has been repeated so much, it has almost lost its original message. (But not quite.)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Heatwave

Little Bit isn't the only one still running a fever. South Pasadena sweltered yesterday with yet another day of unrelenting heat. (My garden thermometer was 101 at 3:00PM.) What happened to autumn?

and the days dwindle down...

We might not have cool weather yet, but the afternoons glow with long, autumnal light.

It's definitely September.

Woe is We

The pundits have decided that America is depressed. It's "Mourning in America" according to CNN. (Not to be "blunt," but I'd really like to leave a depression in the head of the guy who came up with that headline.) The right is blaming the left, the left is blaming the right while the economy sinks further into its own sad malaise. If this were an old movie, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney would be figuring out how to put on a show to boost neighborhood morale. In our world, however, everyone is just arguing with each other on the Internet.

The talking heads are right. After months and months of economic woe, endless wars, record unemployment, natural disasters and every single bit of information ever known or ever to be known about Casey Anthony -- the country is seriously bummed out. We can't even watch a sitcom without being bombarded with drug company commercials about all of the deadly health problems we might have.

We all need cheering up. This is bound to help.