Red Window

Red Window, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

This is the old West Paseo Christian Church, near downtown Kansas City. It clearly was abandoned for a while, and now is home to a Baptist group. I had driven by it many times and wanted to stop and get a closer look. I found a lot of crumbling mortar, windows that are boarded up or covered with plastic, an abandoned children's swing set... and these red windows, with red curtains inside.

Sarah Palin: Barracuda?

Todd S. Purdum on Sarah Palin: vanityfair.com

This is a very good article, for anyone who is still interested in (or worried about?) Sarah Palin. Here's a short excerpt, which caught my eye because it reminded me of someone I once had the misfortune of working for... it gave me a horrible shiver of remembrance.

[One version of the Sarah Palin narrative] is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. “Remember,” says Lyda Green, a former Republican state senator who once represented Palin’s home district, and who over the years went from being a supporter of Palin’s to a bitter foe, “her nickname in high school was ‘Barracuda.’ I was never called Barracuda. Were you?”

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Window with Black Trim

Another photo excursion into rural MO/KS. It's almost too hot to be doing this... but not quite. Photo above: This old stucco house is abandoned, getting rapidly overgrown. Sad story, but nice subject for a photograph.

And, unavoidably in the news, is Michael Jackson's death. I understand and share the appreciation of his huge talent. Here's what I don't understand: the outpouring of apparently genuine grief, the expressions of apparently strong love and a sort of personal devotion to the man. Does nobody remember, or care, that he was a totally unrepentant pedophile? It's OK, in my book, to excuse the incredible weirdness, the bizarre series of plastic surgeries, the masks and gloves and crotch-grabbing... but pedophilia? Do people really think that's OK?

[Added later:] I don't think I did a good job of expressing what I am thinking or feeling about this Michael Jackson phenomenon. It's not that I think he should be hated, or should have been persecuted, because of his pedophilia. That's really not the point I am trying to make. What is really occurring to me is that I find it hard to understand why people seem to feel a sort of closeness to him, and/or consider him (and many have said this) an "idol." For me, his strangeness, his apparent incapacity to engage in normal relationships (including, but not limited to, his obvious thinking that sex with children is OK), leave me feeling that I would not cross the street to have a cup of coffee with him. I acknowledge his tremendous talent, but do not feel he is a person I could have any meaningful connection with.

City Birds... Are Watching You!

Yesterday I went downtown to get some pictures of grubby, gritty surfaces. This is so I can build my own library of "texture" images. I've been working on using layers and texture in Photoshop Elements, and so far I have mostly used some of the great materials that others have posted on Flickr (and of course I credit them in the published photographs, when I do that); but I'd rather find, create, and use my own images, start to finish.

My very first effort at creating texture images involved taking pictures of some old weathered barnwood I have lying around. The barn wood is beautiful... but it really hasn't worked out for me, so far. Nor does anything involving old peeling paint on brick walls. The patterns of wood grain and brick are just too obvious. Better to have something a bit more abstract. Fabric is good, and some stone or stucco surfaces are good. Rust can be good. Pond scum. That kind of thing.

So I went out in the heat and came back with some potential prizes... and I could not resist a couple of photographs of downtown buildings, and the inhabitants thereof.

Darwinian Blog

Old Florida, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

OK, I guess this is turning into a photo blog... at least, for the time being. Above is a photograph I took a few years ago in Florida; I call it "Old Florida," because that's what it says to me. It sure as hell ain't "Disney"! I have applied some post-processing layering work, using Photoshop Elements, involving a technique I recently learned about (called the "Orton Effect").

Anyhow, as to the blog, maybe it's time to say something about the changes my readers may have noticed. I first started writing a blog several years ago, when I was teaching at Avila University. The idea came up one day, during lunch with some colleagues; somebody mentioned that potential students (we called them "shoppers") considered having a blog to be a positive factor. They apparently liked to see that professors had blogs. So, being a gung-ho team player, and an Avila booster, I said: "I can do that!" And I did. First, at MySpace, which I quickly grew to dislike. Then I moved over here, into Blogger. Originally, my idea was to have a blog with lots of links to, and discussion/analysis of, contemporary science news, especially research in psychology, cognitive science, etc. It would be a resource for students.

As it turned out, I was reminded that college students (both grad and undergrad) won't use these "resources" unless they have strong external incentives to do so... but (and) I found something of an audience outside the university campus, and also realized I was enjoying the discipline of keeping up with, and writing about, science news.

This was never intended to be a personal blog. However, when my mother got very sick (about a year ago), I became even more acutely aware of the difficulty, the frustrations, and the terrible tasks involved in care of elderly parents. I decided to write about it; and I learned a lot from my writing and from my searches for helpful resources, in this world that had suddenly become such a part of of my life. And I found that many people found these "elderly mother" entries in the blog to be helpful, or at least supportive in some way.

My own "elderly mother" situation is somewhat stabilized, now; and I am no longer teaching at Avila University. (I wrote about that, too, here in the blog, but not in gruesome detail. Academic politics can be a savage game. Suffice it to say that there are some very good people at Avila. And there are one or two people who should never, ever be in positions of authority over others...)

These days, I am getting a whole lot of creative satisfaction out of photography, along with the excitement of learning new things. Accordingly, that's what is being reflected in the blog. But that doesn't mean I will not still post post links for, and occasionally write about, science news in psychology and cognitive science.

A final note, for the moment: one of the weirdest things about this whole blog saga has been the "Buffalo Bill's Defunct" phenomenon. I wrote about that ee cummings poem once, and since that time it has become something like the number one Google entry, when people look for the poem. I think that a significant number of people (high school students, probably) click on this blog just because they were searching for something about that poem. And then they follow my link to another resource, and I guess they never come back. Weird.

Hillside House

For some reason, I have always been attracted to that which is fallen down, falling apart, and in a state of decay. It's not that I necessarily want these things surrounding me in my daily life; it's the imagery that I find compelling. Driving on a country road, my eye will always turn to an old barn, an abandoned house. Maybe this is somehow related to my fascination with human psychopathology; in my professional life, I have always worked with people who are in disarray, at the extremes of human emotional, cognitive, and behavioral functioning.

Since I have begun getting re-involved more intensely in photography, I sometimes drive out into the rural areas, looking for interesting houses, barns, and sheds. Here (above) is one I found not long ago, near Tracy, Missouri.

Fishing in the Evening

Fishing in the Evening, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

Last night, after dinner, I grabbed the camera and headed down the sea wall towards town, because the sunset was turning spectacular, and I knew the light would be wonderful. There are almost always people fishing off the seawall in Sanford; it's easy, just bring a chair or a bucket, and your fishing stuff. Pull up the car, get out, start fishing. In a sense, I was fishing, too: I caught these two, just as they pulled up their truck and got ready to throw out their lines.

Thousands of years ago, of course, other people were fishing in this lake; many of their old shell mounds were destroyed by invading and colonizing Europeans over the past several hundred years, and turned into roadways. There are a few left, one of them right smack beside Sanford Boat Works, the marina where my grandparents kept their boat, when I was a little girl. Back then, none of us paid any attention to it, nor did we even notice it. Even now, it doesn't have a fence around it. It's just a small hill with big trees growing out of it, and houses nearby. There's a sign explaining what it is, and forbidding anyone to dig.

About 5 blocks from my house, right where a broad riverfront sidewalk begins, is the place where Fort Mellon once sat. The Fort was the very first European settlement here, where Sanford later became a town. Later on, there were steamboats up and down the St. Johns, a large resort on the other side of Lake Monroe, and Civil War naval skirmishes in the river, up north of Sanford.

There's something very beguiling, for me, about living beside a river/lake on which I can sense such a strong feeling of the human history that has played out here.

Osprey 3

Osprey 3, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

Took a boat ride on the St. Johns with my neighbor Crockett this morning. There are a lot of ospreys out there; in fact, there are a lot of ospreys everywhere, down here. Crowds of them hang around the marina right in the middle of Sanford. Quite obviously, they are no longer rare (for some reason I think that they once were), but they certainly are beautiful, fierce-looking birds. I often see one flying low past the house here in Sanford, either carrying a fish in talons, or on the way to snatching one out of the lake. One day I found half of a large fish out in the back yard, apparently accidently dropped (?).

I still have no air conditioning, of course; I guess I am acclimating to the heat. It no longer seems very oppressive... and I think it truly has cooled off, a bit.

Hanging Out Back in Sanford

white bird 2.jpg, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

I'm back down in Sanford working on the old house. The primary goals were to get the curtains (and all their hardware) hung, get blinds for the other windows picked out and ordered (and all measuring done), and to finish up the bathrooms.

But... unexpected stuff arises. Such as, no air conditioning in the house. Turns out the condenser is shot, and nothing can be done till next week. Accordingly, it now becomes significant that most of the windows in this house are without screens... so "opening up the house" just means opening 4 windows, plus the two little ones in the bathrooms. None of the windows in the bedrooms have screens...

Fortunately it is not yet as hot as it sometimes gets, down here. If I stay still, and in front of a fan, it's really not too bad.

And, on another cheerier note, tonight there's something downtown called "Blues and Barbecue," and I will definitely be riding my bicycle down there for that... hot, or not.

Up above is one of the Common Egrets; they hang out here in the yard with me.

Church, Left Behind.

Church Left Behind 2, originally uploaded by Delany Dean.

Yesterday when I was going to the jail in Pattonsburg, MO to do an evaluation, I took a back road, and used the Google Maps application on my phone. It told me to turn off on a little road, and then... it told me I was there. But nobody else was there... it was incredibly spooky... I was in a deserted town. It turns out that Pattonsburg was flooded (twice!) in 1993, and after that they simply moved the town 3 miles up the road. What is left is something of a ghost town.

After I finished up at the jail, I drove back to take some pictures. Above is the old Methodist Church, almost entirely engulfed in trees and brush (and poison ivy! I hope I didn't get any of it on my skin!).

Do you love animals?

International Journal Round Robin, originally uploaded by zeektroy.

Do you care about what happens to wildlife when there's a fire? Of course you do, even if the fires were far away, and (seemingly) not so very recent, any more. Let's not forget the horrific bushfires that raged in Australia, in February of 2009; over a hundred million animals were killed, and many more were injured. Enormous swaths of animal habitat were destroyed.

Recently I came across a group in the artistic website, RedBubble. This website displays and sells all kinds of art work; I have begun posting some of my better photographs there. I doubt that I will sell a whole lot of my own pictures, but if I do, I will send any profits to WRAP (Wildlife Rescue and Protection).

Here is the Wildlife Appeal group's home page on RedBubble. There are some truly fantastic works of art there! Please consider buying something, for the animals. And for all beings.


Thanks to zeektroy, at Flickr, for this image. Click the picture to see more of this artist's work.

Out in the Country

This was a spectacularly lovely day. I got the camera and some iced tea, got in the car, and drove south from Kansas City, out into Cass County, looking for something that needed to be photographed. Ran across an old barn (I'm always on the lookout for old barns). Very nice! I discovered that State Line Road (a significant north-south street in the city) becomes a gravel road, out in the countryside south of KC, and I followed it back to town.