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I was feeling a little bit…

Overwhelmed.

This morning.

I just have so many photographs to show you!

But some of the ones I like, and have carefully set aside for you, just sit there waiting for the right theme, or a good excuse, or an illustrative anecdote, and it never seems to come. So they just pile up some more.

I went out with my camera to think about it.

And I took 181 more pictures. Almost all of them of water and light, where the light looks like water and the water looks like light.

So I figured I’d better just show you some of the pictures I have piling up, because pretty soon I’m going to have scads of new pictures to share, and I need space!

You can write your own stories to these random pictures, or you can just look at them, or you can trade them on the Internet for Internet tokens.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2021 Life is a Fountain, All rights reserved.

Just one precious picture of lil’ Dan.

 

It has been a long time since I have nudged anyone over to Life is a Fountain. Everyday here I used to put a little link down at the bottom to some special place in Life is a Fountain. But the main attraction always seemed to be this newsletter, and I simply couldn’t keep up with making both this newsletter and an array of new things for Life is a Fountain.

So I haven’t really been over to Life is a Fountain for weeks and weeks and weeks. Except in my heart, to listen to the wind run through the trees out in front of the Drawing Room windows.

Oh, and to put in the Dan Room, a room devoted to Dan.

Why have I done this?

I don’t exactly know, but just look at all the little Dans!

So many wee Dans!

You can see the every single piece in the growing, Museum Quality, collection of pictures of Little Dans there.

There’s probably a few essays there too, for when the glee of seeing Little Dans finally exhausts you and you have to sit down and take a rest.

So after weeks and weeks, maybe months! I send you off to complete today’s viewing at Life is a Fountain: 
 
Dan

Mushrooms and getting to know the neighbors.

 

When my lovely wife and I were out for our morning walk we saw some mushrooms. A great wee forest of mushrooms. So when I went out for second walks, alas alone, but with my camera, I thought maybe I’d head back to the million mushrooms and take pictures.

So I lay in the we grass, trying to work my way in to that tiny mushroom jungle, and got about two pictures of them when the crowd started to gather.

“Whatchya doin’?”

“Taking pictures of mushrooms. See the mushrooms?”

“Ooooooooh.” They said. Then they told me not to eat them.

Then we repeated that dialog with each new visitor.
  
 

I probably would have taken more pictures of the mushrooms than I did, but I found myself going pretty quickly to “Well it sure was nice meeting all of you!”

And it sort of was a little, even if it wasn’t super good for the photography.

 
6

A Tree Grows in the Library.

 I’m in the middle of working on these pictures of trees (mostly) in the library. I think I had some kind of silly story worked out about them. Maybe there was going to be a bit about how we replaced our tapeball installation with an installation of trees in the library.

But what really happened was that I was in the library in the early morning, which happens rarely, and it was empty, and the light was streaming in. And I got this picture. And then I found the right tree for it.

And I thought it was pretty.

So I decided to leave all the stories behind. They weren’t that good anyway. And maybe they’ll come back better later. Sometimes that happens.

And so here are a few more trees, just as they are.

 
Oops, sorry, that’s broccoli.
 
 

Ah, yep, there we go.

 
Copyright © 2021 Life is a Fountain, All rights reserved.

What do all these pictures have in common?

 Yes, newsletter subscribers, you are getting two emails today along the theme: What do all these pictures have in common? One is from the Life is a Fountain Newsletter, and one is from the Clerkmanifesto blog posting. Of course here in Life is a Fountain, there is always everything and too much.

It’s a lot of pictures, all of people in the library, mostly at the front desk. It’s a pretty regular day at the library. Except for…

Well, that’s the puzzle.

And it is a very easy puzzle. So easy, in fact, that it’s not really a puzzle.

Let’s maybe call it a tribute.

Or maybe even the puzzle is:

“Why would you spend so much time on this.”

But probably not that, since I think puzzles should have solutions.

In the plain version, which you’ll be getting from clerkmanifesto, you will get the unadorned “Nanu Nanu” pictures. They don’t have any filter effects or editing, beyond the first complicated edits.

Here you will be getting the “Shazbot” version, which has all kinds of filters and edits, and I think it is slightly more fun.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do all these pictures have in common (Version 2)?

 

 

Yes, newsletter subscribers, you are getting two emails today along the theme: What do all these pictures have in common? One is from the Life is a Fountain Newsletter, and one is from here, the Clerkmanifesto blog posting.

It’s a lot of pictures, all of people in the library, mostly at the front desk. It’s of a pretty regular day at the library. Except for…

Well, that’s the puzzle.

And it is a very easy puzzle. So easy, in fact, that it’s not really a puzzle.

Let’s maybe call it a tribute.

Or maybe this is what happens when I don’t have Dan to pose for me. 

This is the plain version, the more unadorned approach that I am calling the “Nanu Nanu” pictures. They don’t have any filter effects or editing, beyond the first complicated edits.

In your Life is a Fountain Newsletter you will be getting the “Shazbot” version, which has all kinds of filters and edits.

If somehow you happened upon all of this without being a subscriber, well, how odd. You are in for a reckoning with the nature of the World.

So lucky you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Life is a Fountain, All rights reserved.

The pictures of water you’ve been thirsty for.

As I suggested yesterday, when I showed you two carefully composed, somewhat abstract portraits of my favorite creek, I have more pictures of the creek, though ones just short of that standard.

I could probably show you dozens of pictures of the creek. Actually, I could probably show you hundreds of my pictures of the creek, but in my experience people’s eyes start to glaze over after a certain number of my pictures of the creek. For instance, most people on the Internet’s eyes start to glaze over after zero of my pictures of the creek.

What your specific number is I don’t know, but I’ll push my luck to a handful, and then we should be done with all the pictures of the creek.

Until I visit the creek again!!!!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!
 
 
 
 
 
 

Two abstracts.

As I mentioned a few newsletters ago, and as you’ve seem some evidence of lately in this venue, I have been out and about with my camera equipment this late Summer, photographing flowers and white squirrels and great birds of prey.

But eventually I end up down at the creek taking millions of careful pictures of bubbles, or of the strange currents.

I could show you a lot of pictures of water churning in the creek, and maybe there will be more some other day, but for today it’s just these two pictures, abstract, maybe one even more than the other.
 
 

Working towards our Dan Page.

Any second now Life is a Fountain will have a dedicated Dan Page. We’re slowly working our way towards it, sharing all our pictures of wee Dans as we go. Think of these as teasers, or like, coming attractions at the movies.

“But why a Dan Page?” You might ask. “Why not, for instance, a Grape page, or a Marcus page, or a Jim page? They have figured in Life is a Fountain at least as much.”

Oh, I have those pages already, they’re just sort of secret.

If you were over at Life is a Fountain as much as me you would come to their locked doors pretty regular like.

And if you asked for their keys?

Who knows.

 
One of the great virtues of Dan is that I can say “Sit here and put your hand like this.” And he does.He has other virtues, but let’s face it, I think this one is my favorite.

If Grape, Marcus, or Jim sent me pictures it would be very useful, but it’s not likely it would rise anywhere near to the top of their virtues.
 
 

So, anyway, look for The Dan Page Coming Soon to Life is a Fountain.

And stay tuned here for all your Dan tips, tricks, and Dan related hijinks.

See you tomorrow!

The Bird

 

I went on my Thursday walk, through a neighborhood of homes more expensive than I imagined they were before the real estate agent told me about it after I photographed a white squirrel on the land he was selling, to a creek even quieter than I hoped. And along this way I came to the River. I walked along its bluffs on a narrow trail. I tripped there once this Spring and I had just remembered that, so I was suddenly being careful, when I spooked a large bird.

It’s funny how you can have a sense for what kind of bird it might be without really even seeing it. There’s the sound and beat of its wings as it lifts into the air, everything from the buzz of the superlight and fast humming bird, to the heaviness of the thrum of a large predator. This was the latter. Leaves were displaced. A half second of hole was formed in the tangled greenery of the woodland. I saw the hole he left more than I ever saw the bird. And though he was not loud, rather he was deep like an acoustic bass, I marked his cessation of his sound.

Though I could not see him, and had not seen him, I hoped to see him.

Unfortunately, being on something of a cliff, I had limited options.

I was on a creek, well, more like a rivulet, and it allowed me to drop to a level below me. From there I had a bit of manageable land that jutted out to where everything dropped off very steeply to the Mississippi below. I edged out to the end of it, trying to slice brave and cautious right down their center. And standing exactly on that line I saw him. Through all the great Summer greenery, the winding branches, and the shadows, in a little pocket of space, the head of the bird.

I levered around for the best view, but there was none, no best view, just my one fractured tunnel of sight through the leaves.

My camera, who has its own mind, wanted everything darker when I tried to take my picture, and it wanted to focus on all the hundreds of interesting things that came before the bird, instead of the bird.

But eventually I got it, as well as I could.

And then the bird flew away without any sound at all.

 

 

The last of the Summer flowers.

 

 I generally make two kinds of pictures, the ones where I combine images, characters, history, and sometimes the world of my library, all full of magic effects and trickery, in my phone, and then the ones where I go wandering my neighborhood with my big boy camera bringing in the natural world, if I can. Lately I have been busy with both kinds of pictures. So in my next few Life is a Fountain Newsletters you’ll be seeing quite a few photographs. Which is what you usually see here anyway.

But I had to say something.
 

Today, in honor of the last bittersweet days of Summer I am showing you four pictures of the last flowers of Summer. I have found that there are a lot of Autumn flowers, but these are still the sun drenched Summer ones. So eat ’em up while you can.

 
I called them “the last bittersweet days of Summer” because late Summer is probably my favorite part of Summer, and Fall is my favorite season of all (so the “sweet”). But it all puts us about six short, strange and dramatic weeks from Winter around here, which is a bit of rough, long business, and so, the “bitter”.

Bittersweet.