A friend, an expert photographer, led a photo shoot to St. Augustine, FL for the last evening of the Night of Lights. Each year the city adorns itself with white lights for the holiday season through January.
Though the rest of the town was beautiful, I was particularly taken by the lighted Francis and Mary Usina Bridge over the Tolomato River that fronts the historic city. My friend loaned me his tripod, enabling me to shoot this photo. It was my first serious attempt at nighttime photography.
The blue hour is the time after sunset that the sky remains blue before it suddenly turns to all black. Even with a layer of clouds, the blue showed through.
After all these years of work, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. It takes extra effort to learn to retire.
I officially retired at the turn of the New Year. I intentionally timed that major life event to coincide with the calendar and our annual winter trip to northeastern Florida. It just seemed logical.
After having worked my entire life, I decided to phase out of employment gradually. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, or what retirement would look and feel like. My hope was that this snowbird time would help me reorient my routines and priorities.
My wife and I are still relatively new at this snowbird business. We are downright raw rookies at retirement. Parking yourself on the ocean’s doorstep has served as an excellent approach to finding our way through this new, uncharted territory.
I knew this particular geographic location well enough from our previous visits. Neva and I have wintered on Amelia Island, Florida’s northeastern most barrier island, for the last few years.
Cutting the ties to my part-time jobs would be the challenge. On our prior trips, I especially kept a close eye on events at home out of necessity. I daily maintained the social network page of the coop-marketing group I facilitated.
Meanwhile back home.
I had township trustee issues and responsibilities to hash out from time to time. If snow was in the Northeast Ohio forecast, I couldn’t sleep well even though I was 800 miles away from home. I kept wondering how the road crew was doing.
Occasionally, residents would contact me to report a problem. Despite sketchy cell phone service, I’d have to try to communicate with the other trustees or our workers. Sometimes multiple calls were needed just to complete a single conversation.
Now that I was retired, all that was history. Those responsibilities disappeared. I will admit, though, that I have done a lot of the same old wondering this first month off the job. Old habits die hard.
I still checked the weather, both for home and for Florida. I did so more for comparison than anything else. I wanted to see what friends and family back home were enduring.
Magic in motion.
For our part, I focused my attention on the tide charts and when the sun rose and set. That way I could time my morning and evening photo shoots and plan our strolls on the beach. Of course, when you’ve camped yourself where the ocean is your front yard, alluring tactile distractions abound.
It’s much more enjoyable to walk at low tide than high. Shorebirds linger by the tidal pools and sandbars probing and fishing for food. The moist, flatter, firmer sand made for easier walking, too.
I also watched the weather forecasts to plan day trips to nearby state parks for events like outdoor lectures, photography walks, and plain old exercise. Saturday mornings were reserved for attending the fabulous farmers market where we purchased locally grown produce, homemade goodies, and fresh, locally caught shrimp.
I know. It sounds like a tough life.
I hope I don’t come across as rubbing it in. I just wanted to assure you that life on this side of retirement seems to be working out, excuse the pun, perfectly.
Neva and I will enjoy this life of bliss while we can. Once we return home, this version of retirement will come to an abrupt end.
So far it’s been hard work learning to retire. But I think we’ll survive.
This was another year filled with daily doings of drama, dopiness, and downright dismay. Likely due to all the year’s politicking, here are few that failed to make the headlines in 2016.
January 3 – Police in Gladwin Co., Michigan, investigated a hit and run car-buggy accident where the buggy ran over the car, and then took off after the horse spooked.
January 9 – The Downtown Soup Kitchen in Anchorage, Alaska served “Bullwinkle’s chili” for lunch when someone donated a road-killed moose.
February 3 – A research study found that residents of Oregon were the fastest talkers in the U.S, while folks in Mississippi spoke the slowest.
February 12 – Girl Scouts set up outside a San Francisco marijuana dispensary and sold 117 boxes of cookies.
March 4 – Because of another unusually warm winter, Alaska had to import 350 cubic yards of snow to start the annual Iditarod dog sled race.
March 16 – A report said Ohio had 1,300 farms with at least a century of family ownership.
April 26 – A man who stole a woman’s purse in Washington, D.C. was arrested after he jumped the fence at the White House to avoid police.
May 6 – The Social Security Administration announced that for the second year in a row, Emma and Noah were the most popular names in the U.S. for girls and boys.
May 25 – Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., reached a record low of being only 37 percent full, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
June 8 – A Vermont newspaper, the Hardwick Gazette, announced an essay contest with the winner becoming the owner of the paper.
June 14 – A Chinese national was fined $1,000 for leaving the walkway, stepping on the fragile travertine crust, and collecting thermal water at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park.
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July 7 – Scientists in Iceland painted a long stretch of asphalt bright colors to discourage Artic Terns from frequenting the highway that provided warmth and camouflage to them.
July 30 – Daredevil skydiver Luke Aikins, 42, jumped 25,000 ft. without a parachute into a net in Simi Valley, California for a new world’s record.
August 7 – Four men with knives accosted the head of security for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as he left the opening ceremonies.
September 8 – The Daldykan River in Russia turned blood red after passing a nickel mine and a metallurgical plant.
September 12 – The Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York reported that August continued a streak of 11 consecutive months that set new monthly record high temperatures.
October 1 – Having survived both World Wars and the Auschwitz concentration camp, Yisrael Kristal, 113, finally celebrated his bar mitzvah in southern Israel.
October 18 – A 52 – year-old Youngstown, Ohio man reported to police that at 5 a.m. a woman robbed him of his pants and underwear, but not his wallet or cell phone.
November 8 – The website WorldWideWebSize.com reported that there were at least 4.75 billion Internet pages.
November 27 – A group called Cards Against Humanity convinced thousands of people to donate more than $100,000 to pointlessly dig a hole in the ground, dubbed the Holiday Hole, over the period of several days as a Black Friday spoof.
December 4 – A Florida woman wandered for 12 hours in a park after taking a wrong turn in a half-marathon in Venice, Florida.
So there you have it. As you can see, the presidential election wasn’t the only silliness on the planet. Let’s all hope for a better 2017.
Shunning is a discipline method used by many of the Amish when a member of their church blatantly breaks with their established traditions. Leaving the church after having joined as an adult is the most common reason people are shunned. Shunning involves ignoring and avoiding the offending person.
I climbed a small embankment on this snowy day to photograph this beautiful workhorse. To my surprise, the horse turned its head away from me when it saw the camera. Now I know the Amish don’t want their faces photographed. However, I never had a horse do this to me. This beauty watched me exit my vehicle. The horse then assumed this position as I photographed it. Once I put the camera down, the horse bolted away to join another workhorse in the snow-covered pasture.
Sunshine in northeast Ohio in November and December tends to be a rare treat. When the sun does shine, all of God’s Creation soaks it in, including this lovely female Red-bellied Woodpecker. She took a break from enjoying lunch at the peanut feeder to warm herself on a chilly late fall day.
When I saw this scene one morning a few days ago, I had to stop and take a photo. I loved how the sun backlit the burgundy leaves and highlighted the farm implements seemingly placed haphazardly around the farmyard.
By now, the winds and rains of late have stripped the color from the tree until next year.
November’s Super Full Moon had a lot going for it. It was the biggest, closest, and brightest super full moon since January 26, 1948. I don’t remember that of course since I was a little more than a month old then. Besides, I doubt my mother bothered to take me outside to look at it on a cold, Ohio January night.
When this moon was exactly full, it was already below the horizon in Ohio. I decided to shoot the super full moon before it sank below the western horizon. I’m glad I did because as you can see in this photo, clouds and fog lingered in the west.
“November’s Super Full Moon” is my Photo of the Week.
A day after I cleaned up the leaves from our yard, the rain, the wind, and gravity conspired to undo my work. It was to be expected, especially when a grove of deciduous trees surrounds your house.
I sat by the office window and watched the spent leaves rain down like snow showers in January. A gusty northwest breeze twirled the faded leaves every which way, performing independent pirouettes in a splendid ballet. Their curtain call played out on the front lawn.
I’ve seen this performance before of course. Every year about this time. However, this fall’s frolic struck anew at the melancholy that I felt about the scene, the season, my station in life.
Perhaps the steely sky with its dense layer of leaden clouds set the mood for the day. It couldn’t have been the Indians loss in the seventh game of the World Series or the lack of sleep from watching the previous week’s worth of late-night contests. When you’re a Cleveland sports fan, denial is an all-consuming trait that blinds and dulls one’s wits.
Yet, here I was in my stupor enjoying the unfolding act, blah as the elements were. The living picture painted before me seemed just about right for the occasion, and definitely for the season.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one hung over from too much adrenaline-driven loyalty and sleep deprivation. However, I couldn’t help but sense that my malaise was so much more than that.
Seasonal changes do that to us, especially as we age. Like the falling colorful leaves, the Greatest Generation is also fading fast. They bequeath their burdens to their progeny, unworthy boomers who think they have changed the world for the better when it’s clearly the other way around.
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Perhaps it was because my wife was still fulfilling her autumnal obligations in Virginia. Only the delicious day before I had taken lunch and supper alone on the porch. I missed her company and her cooking.
The blustery day wore on as dreary days can do. But in the process, a slow metamorphosis transpired. I would have noticed it earlier had it not been for my manly self-pity.
Patches of blue began to divide the gray cotton rolls roiling overhead. Even the wind subsided, providing an intermission to the leafy operetta. I began to take notice, to think outside myself, to seek the wisdom of others through writings and paintings and photos.
I called my friend Dan, who only recently had lost his father. I had missed the viewing and wanted to visit to express my sympathies. He invited me up to his place in the early evening, which I accepted.
Dan wanted me to arrive about an hour before I showed up. I wanted to shoot the sunset first. The sky had significantly cleared by early evening except for a few high clouds, the kind that often makes for a splendid sunset. Just when I thought the western drama had waned, a fiery encore danced across the sky.
I stopped the car just a quarter of a mile from Dan’s. His observant wife Anna saw the vehicle and figured it must be me. It’s a good feeling when your friends know you so well. They welcomed me into their humble home, and I gleefully shared my photos.
When the clock struck 8, I knew it was time to leave. Otherwise, I’d likely still be there, conversing and listening and laughing, though life had fallen heavy upon us like the morning’s leaves waltzing to the grass.
Roadkill Crossing 
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