The Best Laid Plans . . .

 

As Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men gang aft agley” (often go awry),¹ and last week’s blog post reminded us that we can’t predict the future. Put those two together, and you have a roadmap for our latest international travel adventure.

The plan was to spend six days traveling on our own in Iceland and then fly to Ireland for a two-week tour. After doing our sightseeing in Iceland, we headed for the airport hotel for our next-day flight to Ireland. The tour company wanted a COVID test before joining the group, so we took that when we got to the hotel. Unfortunately, Roland tested positive. (I never did.) We ended up cancelling the tour (which we have since rescheduled) and spending six days living in the airport hotel before coming home.

Fortunately, while life calls for constant adjustments to our plans, the changes don’t always have to be devastating. The hotel was relatively comfortable, the food was decent, we had plenty of reading material, and both the airline and the tour company rolled over our payments so that all we were out was the hotel bill and meals while living at the airport. More importantly for me, I had several manuscripts in the cloud and managed to get quite of bit of work done.

And we did get Iceland in. Here are a few photos. The one at the top of this post is the Northern Lights from Hotel Anna in the countryside. The next one was taken flying over Greenland, and the following two are Hallgrims Church in Reykjavik and a view of Reykjavik from the tower of Hallgrims Church.

These photos were taken at the Arbaejarsafn Open Air Museum. The first is a church, and the second shows Roland standing in front of a separate vestry building.

The next two are scenic pictures taken while traveling through the countryside following a route called “The Golden Circle.”

These three were taken at Thingvellir National Park. (Actually, the Th is a funny-looking P.) The first shows the Almannagja, where North America and Europe meet, the second is Oxararfoss (foss means waterfall), and the third is the foot of Oxararfoss, which you can’t see from the top.

Our second day on The Golden Circle was a water day. Not water sports, but natural water features. The first is Stokkur Geysir, which was across the street from our hotel. The others are all waterfalls: Gullfoss, Seljalandsfoss, and two of Skogafoss. You can see the long walk to the top of Skogafoss, which neither Roland nor I took.

We saw the sunset and the Northern Lights from the grounds of the Hotel Anna on The Golden Circle near those last two waterfalls.

The next two photos show buildings at the Skogar Folk Museum and a nearby cave house, which does extend back under the mountain. It was probably used for storage rather than living in, but the early Icelanders took advantage of the caves and built entrances on them.

Finally, I must close with a photo from our airport home. This art is called “The Nest” and shows a jet being born from an egg.

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¹ From “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns.

Predicting the Future

 

Several things have happened lately to remind me how hard it is to predict the future.

I recently watched a 2013 rerun of Shark Tank where an entrepreneur pitched a cell phone app that interacted with bar codes and QR codes. Mark Cuban passed on it partly because, as he put it, “QR codes are on their way out.” Fast forward nine years, and he was so wrong.

This past September I received an assignment to write the February 2025 devotions for a devotional magazine called Portals of Prayer. Yes, you read the date correctly. I submitted an outline earlier this year, and the devotions themselves are due in January 2023—two years before they will be published. Scripture doesn’t change and a good devotion should be timeless, so that part is okay.

Unfortunately, writers are not as timeless. I was asked to submit a short biography with the devotions, and who knows how much will change before the publication date. I could even be dead by then. So I assume they ask for an update shortly before the devotions are published.

Knowing how far in advance the devotions are normally assigned, I was surprised in July to notice references to COVID-19 and its aftermath. My best guess is that the person who was originally assigned those devotions didn’t meet his or her deadline for some reason so the publishers had to look elsewhere—either by making a rush assignment or by moving up devotions that had already been submitted. Regardless, it appears that something happened that the publishers hadn’t predicted.

In this world, there is very little we can count on. Even death and taxes have their uncertainties.

But one thing is predictable. This world will end and then the judgment. Those who know God will go to heaven, and everyone else will go to hell.

I’m glad I’ll be in the first group.

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The image at the top of this post is Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment.”  I took the photo on a 2018 trip to Rome. The original is in the Sistine Chapel, and no photography is allowed inside. I didn’t have to violate the rules to get this picture, however. The Vatican had placed a reproduction in the courtyard for visitors to photograph, instead.

A Tribute to My Grandparents

 

My calendar says that yesterday was Grandparents’ Day.

Both of my paternal grandparents died before I turned seven, so I didn’t know them well. I mostly remember the cookies in Grandma Page’s cookie jar. Even so, I loved to hear my father’s stories about growing up with his parents, and I cherish this photograph of my older brother and me with them in the front room of their Fruitport, Michigan home.

I have more memories of my maternal grandparents. They lived on the Iowa farm where my mother had grown up and, although it was several hours away, we visited as often as we could. No matter how late we arrived, Grandma Wagner always had food on the table. She had long hair that I loved to comb, but she criticized the length of my bangs and claimed that I would lose my eyesight because of it. Grandpa was the stereotypical farmer and spent much of his time outside long after he had “retired” and turned most of the farming operations over to my Uncle Wyman. Grandpa also enjoyed photography, and we spent many pleasant hours looking through his pictures.

Grandma Wagner died when I was in college. Then Grandpa moved to Arkansas to live with my Aunt Phyllis and I didn’t see him as often.

I was fortunate in both sets of grandparents, but I appreciate them most for modeling their Christian faith to my parents, who in turn modeled it to me.

And I will be forever grateful.

Labor Day Origins

 

As mentioned in my last post, one of my as yet unpublished stories takes place during the Pullman Strike of 1894. My research for it uncovered some history about Labor Day, so this is a good time to share that information with you.

The first known celebration of Labor Day in the U.S. was organized by labor unions and occurred in New York City on September 5, in 1882. In 1887, Oregon was the first to make it an official state holiday, and other states soon followed. But it took the Pullman Strike to turn it into a national holiday.

In July 1894, President Cleveland ordered federal troops in to break up the strike, which was disrupting the U.S. mails. People still argue about his motives and whether it was the right response, but that isn’t the subject of this post and I won’t accept any comments on that issue. In any event, President Cleveland felt the need to smooth things over with the labor unions. He apologized by making the first Monday of September a federal holiday.

And we have been celebrating it as Labor Day ever since.

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The photo at the top of this post shows an early Labor Day parade. I couldn’t find an exact year or location for the photo, but it is in the public domain because of its age.

When to Make Changes to a "Finished" Manuscript

 

As I’ve mentioned before, perfection can’t be achieved, so I don’t wait for it before sending out a manuscript. I try to write the best book I can at the time, get it edited, and make a few final changes before moving from the production to the submission stage. But once I start submitting, my practice had been to keep my hands off the text and concentrate my writing skills on the next book. If a publisher or agent accepts the manuscript and wants changes, I’ll do that, but the initial writing process is done. At that point, second-guessing myself takes up valuable time without making the manuscript noticeably better.

But there are rare occasions when I have revised a manuscript after sending it out. The most recent came a few days ago. My latest story takes place during the Pullman Strike of 1894, and one of my protagonists and his friends watch the Labor Day parade in Chicago. As I was looking for a good photo to go with my Labor Day post for next week, I came across a historical article stating that it was raining in Chicago that year. My description hadn’t mentioned the weather so it wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete. Since I like to be as historically accurate as is possible without losing my reader, I revised that chapter to include rain. A few small changes were all I needed.

My changes to Desert Jewels were more extensive. My first middle-grade historical novel was about a Japanese-American girl interred during World War II. Wonder of wonders, I got one of those rare rejection letters that was actually personalized. Although the publisher passed, the letter stated, “we felt that the delivery of historical information was a little too didactic, and that the story itself was a little too spare.” The letter confirmed my own unease about the story, and I ended up making significant changes. That was the first of only two times I broke my rule and revised a story after submitting it.

I needed some photos for the top of this post, so I decided to use photo-editing to show the difference between good and (maybe) better, although that characterization depends on the observer. If you look closely at the first phot, you will see some natural imperfections—a metal appendage on each side of the tower and a few thin branches (primarily in the upper right-hand corner) that appear to be scratches but aren’t. I could leave it natural or I could clone those “imperfections” out, as I did in the second photo. I’ll let you decide which is better.

The point is that some changes improve the manuscript or the photo but others don’t. The writer or photographer has to make that call. But even when changes are made, the result will never be perfect.

So don’t overdo it.

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I took the photo of Sabylund Lutheran Church during a trip to Wisconsin in 2010.

Dealing with Ambiguity

 

As I said in my last post, I enjoy choosing photographs for the Lake County Fair. The rules say they have to have been taken in the last three years, and that limits my options. As a result, there are many categories that I simply don’t enter.

Then there are those times when I have several photos I like for a particular category. Since I can only enter one, I have to make a choice. Color and black and white are separate, so sometimes the discarded photo can be used in the other category. But not always. Just because something looks good in color doesn’t mean it works in monochrome. And after I make my choice, I often second-guess myself and wonder if the other photo would have done better.

But the worst part is the ambiguity in several of the categories. Here is the list:

Domestic/Farm Animal

Artistic Effect/Collaging

Floral

Human Interest

Nature – Scenic

Portrait

Lake County Fair

Insect

Architecture

Wildlife

Sports

Weather  

Most are self-explanatory, but three involve some ambiguity.

First, the very words “Artistic Effect” are subjective. Do they include the everyday art that we see around us, or must those objects be manipulated into something else? Fortunately, past winners indicate that what the eye sees can qualify, so I entered these snaking benches in the black and white category. It didn’t win anything, but I love the artistic effect created by the subject.

Second, I have no idea what “Human Interest” means. I didn’t enter in that category this year, but my past entries have always included people who were not looking at the camera, such as the sand artist from 2018. Looking at past winners, however, people don’t appear to be a necessary element. In fact, Human Interest appears to be more of a catch-all for those photos that either don’t fit anywhere else or would double-up in a category where the photographer already has an entry.

The final category that confuses me is the Nature – Scenic one. I can tell from past winners that it can include manmade structures, such as bridges, but how much must the nature element predominate? This year I tried it both ways, as you can see from the photos at the top of the page (neither of which earned a ribbon). The first is Boukes Luck Potholes from South Africa, and the second is Portland Head Light in Maine. Even the Portland Head Light is mostly setting, however. Would it have qualified if I had used a close-up? I don’t know.

The subject categories aren’t the only source of ambiguity. Photographers are separated into two classes: beginner and advanced. The definition of a beginner is “less than 5 years of experience and/or 5 juried showings.” A juried showing is one that the photographer has to apply, and often compete, to participate in, so that is an objective measure. But how do you define 5 years of experience? Some members of my photo club define it by adding the words “at the Lake County Fair” after “experience” and entering in the beginning group even when they have competed at the club level for many more than five years. Since I am in the advanced group, that is to my advantage since it means I don’t have to compete against them, but it doesn’t seem fair to true beginning photographers. But without more clarity in the definition, it is hard to argue with their interpretation.

I get it that the Fair’s Family Arts and Crafts Department (which runs the photography exhibit) has very little room to explain the rules and the categories, and I’m not sure how they could make it clearer without using more space. Sometimes you just have to live with ambiguity.

But it’s still frustrating.

Winning Isn't Everything

 

Another Lake County Fair has come and gone. This was the second time in seven years that I haven’t won anything, but that’s okay. I was up against stiff competition, and many of my competitors spend hours using post-processing software. I don’t have that kind of time. I usually spend 15-30 minutes to bring out the highlights and eliminate the worst flaws, but I prefer my photos to look natural.

Of course I like to win, but that’s not the primary reason I enter. I enjoy sorting through my photos looking for decent pictures that fit the categories, and although I may not think a photo will win, I’m happy to enter anything that doesn’t embarrass me. In other words, if I like it, that’s good enough.

Photography is art, not science, and judging it is subjective. It’s good to understand the traditional wisdom because there are many times when following technical “rules” improve a picture. But not always. It’s all in how the photographer sees his or her subject. Since the photographer is the only person who knows what he or she is trying to say with a particular photo, ultimately the artist is the only judge who matters.

And I’m fine with that.