Meri's Play Place

Red, magenta, and purple for Ruby Tuesday. For more lovely reds, click the Ruby Tuesday button on the right.

As the saying goes, God is in the details. For more Mosaic Monday fun, click here .

For more Shadow Shots, click here .           "Liquid Sunshine, Liquid Shadows" © 2010 Meri Arnett-Kremian. All rights reserved. Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens.   The sleeper must awaken.  - Frank Herbert

Wheel. Of life. Don't reinvent them.  On the bus go round and round.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease.  Wheels up. Touch and go.  Rutted tracks along the Oregon Trail.  Wheelbarrows. Tricycles. Skateboards.  Wheel of Fortune. Why are you buying a vowel?  Losing control.  Steer out of a skid.  Fishtailing. Fish tales.  The wheel keeps turning. . . . .   Theme Thursday . Imperfect Prose . 

The Lens Day challenge this week is dessert. The question is do I photograph it or eat it? A no brainer. Grab a fork!

A little white cottage with a thatch roof, a stone fence, a red gate,  red window trim and a red door. What could be more quintessentially Ireland? It's Ruby Tuesday .

Tacoma is home to the internationally-known Museum of Glass and its glass bridge is an homage to Dale Chihuly, featuring a large glass installation. Dale Chihuly is a  Tacoma favorite son  and many of his creative conceptions  grace museums and other buildings in the area. The Tacoma Art Museum is the proud owner of  a significant collection of Chihuly glass, for example. You even can do a walking tour of Chihuly glass  in downtown Tacoma using your cell phone to hear information about the pieces on display  in various public and private sites. So I thought I'd treat you to a blog tour of my own, featuring the works of Dale Chihuly on public display at the outdoor bridge of glass. All you have to do is look up. I'll give you fair warning: if you're there up close and personal you can get a stiff neck in no time flat. For more Mosaic Monday, click here .

When I'm browsing antiques stores and find loose post-card photos of men, women and children, I always wonder how they got separated from their families. (This photo was marked "Grandfather Nelson" and is obviously a vintage photo  from a professional studio in Engelholm , Sweden.) Were there no tenders of the family flame? When I found a slightly tattered red velvet photo album, full of vintage photos taken in Sweden or Minnesota or in Tacoma in the late 1800s or early 1900s, I couldn't stand to see a whole family's history for sale, with no one to appreciate the stories. (Taken in a studio in Helsingborg , Sweden.)  Being 1/4 Swedish myself (my maternal grandfather was the first-born son of two Swedish immigrants who met in Walla Walla, Washington in the late 1890s), I decided to adopt them. (Jacoby Studio, St. Peter, Minnesota) Because there are few clues to identity -- other than that the album belonged to a family on the "Peninsula" (wh...

Wordless Wednesday .

It's Ruby Tuesday again. Tomorrow, at least. But here's a flash of red from Rome. Vroom - vroom!

Last week I posted a montage of Times Square Photos. This week I thought I'd share a bit of upstate New York where life is a bit slower and guys don't run around in cowboy hats and briefs that say "Naked Cowboy." For more Shadow Shot Sunday, click right here and for more Mosaic Monday, click here.

The incarceration of people of Japanese heritage  in prison camps  during World War II,  the plundering of their property, and shunning of them as  possibly traitorous "others"   was a shameful event in American history.  Ansel Adams took photographs memorializing life at one of the "relocation centers," Manzanar. It was, like other incarceration sites, remote from people's homes and inhospitable in many respects.  Winters could be harsh; summer heat could be brutal. This summer view of the site was taken from the guard tower.   I suspect most of the photos of people were staged  to  show life in the camps as tolerable and   even beneficial, not because it was true but rather to assuage the guilt of government officials.   This photo shows Mrs. Ryie Yoshizawa  teaching a class in dressmaking and tailoring  at Manzanar. A young woman stands  at a dressmaker's form in the foreground,  pretending to...

Nothing like a two or three-guy game of football or soccer, depending on your nationality. For other Theme Thursday interpretations click HERE . 

The challenge is monochrome. A really odd way for me to see the world. Lens Day Wednesday .

Had trouble making a selection of just one ruby red thing. The solution was obvious. For more Ruby Tuesdays,  click on the icon to the right.

This time last year, give or take a few days I spent a few days in upstate New York photographing goddess women, autumn color, kite festivals and antique shops. Then I headed to the Big Apple for a bite or two. I love its energy!

With narrow passages and the Sun high in the sky, Venice is a shadow factory.

During World War I, 65 million men and women were called to service on both sides of the conflict. More than half of them were killed, wounded, captured, or declared missing in action.  It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. In securing that objective, it was a complete failure. The human fodder for the war machine was solicited partly by compulsory draft registration and mandatory service and partly through appeals to patriotism. Conscription wasn't a huge political issue in World War One because the U.S. sat on the sidelines for the first three years of the war. When it finally officially entered the fray, most men had barely finished training and gotten to the front before the Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918. Nevertheless, American soldiers cheered (AP photo) when peace was announced. I thought you might enjoyed seeing some of the propaganda art that fueled the war from the American side.