Those Lazy Hazy Days of Summer

When I think of summer tunes, it's easy for me to name off several that express the essence of summer.    Some of my favorites include Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer, (Nate King Cole) as well as other summer anthems such as Fun, Fun, Fun (and others by the Beach Boys), Summer in the City, (Lovin' Spoonful), Dancing in the Streets (Martha and the Vandellas), Summer Wind, (Sinatra), Summer Breeze, (Seals and Croft), Summertime (Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald), etc.  My reason for mentioning this music is to inspire me to share photographs capturing the heartbeat of summer during the coming weeks.   I don't want the old man side of me offer any excuses about our Midwest heat and humidity as a cause for not photographing and tasting various summer happenings so I can soak up all the summertime experiences that I need to help me through the grey winter months.

My first installment to a summer series I named, Here Comes Summer was captured about a week ago at the Beloit Art Center's 25th anniversary celebration.  One of the best parts of summer is the street festivals and neighborhood celebrations that bring people together suspending politics, prejudices, and social fears for a brief time to truly embrace our commonality.  

Here Comes Summer Series 1

 About Showing Up 

The scene for this week's blog was taken at a wellness center/ emergency care facility near me. The campus is designed with native prairie plants and water features which are distributed along various walking paths crisscrossing the facility.  For a place whose mission is health and wellness, their design for the exterior aligns well with their work occuring inside the walls.  Just walking from the parking lot to the front doors begins a subtle process of refocusing the mind.

I am starting to write down a set of concepts that I believe are marker buoys for my life. I chose to do this because a guy at my age should be able to articulate their learnings from the good and bad within a lifetime. One of the concepts on my list has to do with showing up. Life is more satisfying and meaningful as I learned to show up and be a particpant.  This means actively showing up to support family and friends as a means of supporting their choices in life.  This can take the form of cheering for the grandkids and other little ones as they run the bases at a baseball game, saying a word encouragement to a teenager experiencing the dumps, or offering congratulations to say "atta boy" when a promotion or milestone is achieved. It can meaning actually showing up to meet with a someone during a time of need not necessarily to commiserate or grieve but just to simply be with them. The point is to be there physically as much as possible.

This week I learned that showing up can also be applied to yourself.  I'm not sure that I understand the trendy terms of mindfulness or meditatation.  I like to think of this experience as finding quiet moments when they occur.  During these moments, I don't think about anything, but I am just there to be still, listen and see.  I just show up.  

This photo was taken at the scene where my quiet moment occurred this week.  At the time, I didn't even consider photographing it.  It was after those quiet moments had passed, I thought about taking the photograph as a way to help me remember this simple part of my very ordinary day. 

Taken with:

13 year old Olympus OMD EM5 and Sigma mft 60mm f2.8.