I don’t usually go to Chicago two months in a row, but that’s how it happened in 2019. Just two weeks after the last trip, I was back in town. And I wasn’t surprised when a lot of my friends couldn’t hang out with me that soon again. So in December it was just me and diehard Michelle Dakuras who spent a day out with our cameras. And, oh, did we cover some ground! From my hotel in The Loop, we went to Lincoln Park Zoo. The flamingoes were out and after a bit of fun with them, we headed…

November 23, 2019. It’s official name is “Cloud Gate.” Everyone calls it “The Bean.” It has become the iconic Chicago experience. I go to Chicago several times a year. It began with opera, but now I go as much to hang out with my Chicago photographer friends, all of whom I met through the now defunct social media platform Google+ and its several spin off organizations. Unless the weather is truly nasty, my trips to Chicago produce lots of photographic raw material to work with. Without doing the count, I would guess that of the photographs I submit to juried…

September 21, 2019. A new thing! I was the featured speaker at a 2-day retreat for Episcopal women at Camp Hardtner in central Louisiana. My 2-part presentation: Creation Considered: Encountering Creatures as a Spiritual Practice. Before breakfast the second day, a handful of the women joined me to venture out for a short walk. We didn’t go far, but we didn’t need to. This universe is filled with ordinary wonders: a mama wolf spider carrying a boatload of tiny babies clinging to her abdomen, a caterpillar of the gulf fritillary butterfly feeding on a passionflower vine, a late-blooming purple aster,…