Catching Up

As much as I enjoy riding in cold weather the Vespa and I have been confined, of late, to morning and evening commutes to work. Cold is creeping into pictures. Maybe they’re triggering memories of cold hands and feet.

Over the weekend I clicked the submit button a few times to officially kickoff the holiday shopping season. On the way to my weekly 3 Prints Project meeting I stopped to look at Christmas trees. I wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit. Carrying a tree home on the back of the Vespa requires some snow. A thermometer reading of 27F isn’t enough.

The café is festive and I always enjoy a watching the world from a quiet corner. Notice there are no prints on the table at Saint’s Café. It’s been the no prints project the past few weeks, a symptom of bad planning, chaos and choices of sloth. Or I can search for places to unload blame for falling so far behind.

It’s obviously Junior’s fault. The athletic beast needs, demands, time and attention. Just because he wants to exercise and go forth in the world doesn’t mean I want to. He does pose well though. Doesn’t he look like he’s watching over a flock of sheep, waiting patiently to herd a stray lamb back or warn off a marauding coyote? He’s my boy, snoring softly at my feet as I type.

As managing editor of Penn State Ag Science Magazine there are times, like now a week before going to press, that I descend into some other kind of consciousness. Going through page spreads with a red pen is particularly seductive. And it’s changed me. I actually told the art director to reduce the number of photographs so I could keep more words. I look for the photography guild to appear any day now and rescind my rights to a camera.

Gordon arrived with two prints; one a portrait he made of me a few weeks ago at another Sunday morning get together where we both bemoaned the lack of production. I look more like my father as the years change me. No matter how much I look like him though I can never imagine him sitting in a café talking about photography or the challenges of a busy life. He would be too busy working.

A piece of breakfast chocolate cake and a fine portrait may just cause me to make those prints. I actually turned the heat on in my darkroom this evening thinking I might process film.

I didn’t.

Another local Vespa rider checking his phone. His girlfriend has one too. I don’t think either ride in the cold so the roads will be shy two scooters until spring.

I plan to fetch a tree on the Vespa when the time is right. Snow is in the extended forecast. For now I’ll leave you with a holiday scene of one of the village of Boalsburg’s Christmas decorations. And that will almost catch me up. Except for my long, epic Vespa camping tale that’s waiting to post, and a cold ride on a new Triumph Sprint.

There’s always something.