It may be February and rainy but signs of spring have sprung at Lake Lagunita. A chaise lounge had made its way to the lake bed and there were a number of new floating vessels bobbing in lake, which unfortunately is getting a more pond lake every day. To keep the ducks and students happy, another couple of days of heavy rain is needed.
In the days when she was a magazine editor, the female Dawn Jogger remembers discussions about “speed lines.” She recalls it had something to do with layouts – particularly “double trucks” (those being two page layouts to the uninitiated). She realizes she’s gotten kind of obsessed with the visual speed lines that are apparent thanks to the structure and fence along the Stanford practice golf course. She keeps photographing them. The fence and wires are parallel at one juncture but then the fence becomes parallel to the structure. Together they form lines. Ok, so it’s more interesting to see in real time when the morning light is just so. Plus the male DG (gimpy and grumpy) just informed her that in the newspaper world there were no “speed lines,” only “vanishing points.”
To “modern day” readers, this will seem a bit of a fantasy. To friends, this will seem like an illusion. To one couple, it’s another chapter that began in 1980.
Let’s get the illusion out of the way. The never-watch-sports male DG (that’s dual gimpy and grumpy), announced that not only was he watching Super Bowl XLIV today but he was doing so with beer and chips. Given his Pinot Noir proclivities, the latter is a bit of a right turn. But even more so is the fact that the female DG cannot remember the last time they’ve watched a football game together (she’s watched plenty solo).
That out of the way, let’s get to what will now seem like a “you’ve got to be kidding” fantasy. In January, 1989, the male DG traveled to Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium to photograph Super Bowl XXIII for the San Francisco Examiner. He didn’t actually work for the Examiner, but that paper’s home team, the 49ers, was in the Super Bowl and that paper’s publisher, Will Hearst, had a vision of an eight-page color wrap around its otherwise black and white newspaper. While the male DG was never, by his own admission, a sports photographer, he’d learned how to do something that few other photographers in the country knew how to do at the time – digitize color negatives and then transmit them over a phone line. Egad, how old school does that sound now. But it was a really big deal then. So he photographed the 49ers victory and transmitted the color photos from a trailer adjacent to the stadium. It was, at the time, a really big deal, one that led to the DGs move to northern California (glory, hallelujah!)
So today, 21 years later, they huddled together in front of the TV, talking about his trip to Miami two decades ago (which was not the time he was struck by lightening – that was while covering the Pope), remembering their trip last year to New Orleans and how the city is still largely not there, a fact that’s resurfaced leading up to this year’s Super Bowl.
For many, today is just another Super Bowl game. For the citizens of New Orleans, the Saints victory is another new beginning. To one couple, it’s another stitch in the fabric of a marriage.
The female Dawn Jogger gets up early so that she can go on a morning InMenlo assignment (the very interesting Alisa Clancy), which means she runs in the rain. (Well, a slight drizzle really.) And the only interesting thing she spies to photograph is a really unique mailbox. Just the kind of thing she used to feature on the stand alone First Blush. Unfortunately the mailbox was in area code 94025, so will be held for a spot appearance on InMenlo.
It’s the waves that caught the female Dawn Jogger’s eye and caused her to pause along her jogging route to take this photograph. . The road in the foreground still wet from the overnight rain. The appearance of what looks like terraces up to the structure on Stanford’s practice golf course. The rows of clouds – and even the electric wires. They’re all waves of sorts.
The female Dawn Jogger set out a bit earlier than usual this morning and the clouds from an inbound rain storm further darkened the predawn sky. She stumbled across the first and second fairways of the golf course joined by a group of desert hares. When she got to the end side of Lake Lagunita where the boathouse once was, she noticed that a major part of an oak tree had tumbled on the “beach” area. That’s what she thought she was taking a photo of. But the result turned out to be something more painterly. In the dim light, it’s the luck of the draw…
It was light enough this morning to see some of the heart decorations that sprout along a segment of Bay Laurel. That’s fitting because it was always around Valentine’s Day that the female Dawn Jogger would note that it was finally getting light in the morning. (The days initially get longer because the sun sets later, not rises earlier.) Of course the plunge back into darkness will happen in March thanks to Bush 2.
Once again the eye is capable of seeing more beauty than the camera. Trying to capture the shape and texture of the gnarly branches and birdhouse in the foreground and the ring of lights around Lake Lagunita in the background, the female Dawn Jogger took this photo two ways – with the flash on and off. Neither produced satisfactory results, even with some manipulation in iPhoto. The bird house doesn’t show up enough in the shot with the flash off but is too bright with the flash on.
The female Dawn Jogger realizes this would have been a relevant post if it had gone up shortly after dawn when the photo was taken. But alas, there was a equipment malfunction (actually computer malfunction – it wasn’t trusty Lumio the camera) that the male DG had to fix.
What this post is really about is stumbling upon things at dawn – the unexpected things. This morning it was the notice of a bake sale to take place this afternoon at Oak Knoll School. She presumes that the savvy bakers were well aware of the traffic – walkers, joggers, cyclists and autos – on Oak Avenue in the morning and took advantage of a convenient fence to promote the event.
It’s been a week of ups (wonderful celebration for our new rector, dinner with good friends, some fun InMenlo assignments) and downs. “A bad cancer” week is how the male DG would describe it, mainly due his left leg being somewhat more uncooperative than usual. It’s easy to start the mind spirally with “what ifs” and “oh mys.” To his credit, instead he decided to test the leg on a two-mile walk this afternoon. News was good – left leg behaved a tad bit better. And the first poppies of the season were open, thanks to the sunshine.
