Some Pictures are Perfect As They Are

Old Photos

The advantage of being a small press author-publisher is being able to select the project and to create the book in the image most desired, from the picture lay-out to storytelling. Next, how will that image be recreated? A book. An image print. A single picture or a grouping. A story told by words or through pictures that somehow when assembled and connected recreate or even create a moment in time.

I'm not an artist by paint or chalk. A single line I can't place on paper so it appears to be a line, least not straight nor of value or recognizable as object or subject. My penmanship...most laugh, those that is not struggling to read, for it flows for me when I create it, not much more can be said than that.

To take a picture, poor exposure or best of the time and create from that something new or improved...

A group shot gathering of kids with Grandpa/Grandma could become an improved photo with wear marks to be removed

or cropped to become just a special couple...










With color/lighting, somehow the characters come to life...




A family-friends photo becomes just family...





















Or maybe an old scrapbook photo could pull into a closer view...










Hey, That's me!!!!















Many hours I could and do spend on a single photo just to see what is hidden there, you know telling a story, or at least one I love to tell... of some story I remember and others...only the picture could tell...

These are examples of what I am currently working on...

What was...

Becomes...

What is now this...

Author: Jane Marla VerDow, Dear Daisy copyright ©2004; Independent Publishing: Rising Sparrow Press, est. 2003.
Visit Author Website http://www.risingsparrowpress.com/ to learn more about author’s upcoming titles or for writing and self-publishing resources. Also find Hard to Find Resources on history, travel, rare/old book finds, and arts/literature. Enjoy following Blogs: http://www.storytellersandwriters.blogspot.com/ and http://lakeontarioshoreline.blogspot.com/
And the latest addition, http://www.recordfootsteps.typepad.com/ to explore Writer-Publishing topics including Publishing Green/Environment Aware.

Winter Nights Waiting For Spring

So what does one do in a place like Pultneyville?

After one has done the Spring ahead an hour?
Before Spring flowers and buds pop?

On a night after work?
Or after all the seed books have been looked through in Winter?
At a time when all the fruit trees have been ordered?

Well...dream about play I suppose.

May is coming once we get passed the rains of April.
It will soon be time for the Apple Blossom Festival,
Williamson, NY
and the Lilac Festival in nearby Rochester, NY

So what else can we do for fun this year?

Here's a great find. Enjoy.

http://www.festivals.com/



Visit Author Website http://www.risingsparrowpress.com/ to learn more about author’s upcoming titles or for writing and self-publishing resources. Also find Hard to Find Resources on history, travel, rare/old book finds, and arts/literature. The latest addition, http://www.recordfootsteps.typepad.com/ to explore Writer-Publishing topics. Features leading to Spring: What's Green in Publishing?

Appleboom Point

Pettiness in Paradise
and
Other Tales of Appleboom Point

author: John E. Connors

Backcover:

What appears to be nothing more than a sleepy side note on the Seaway Trail along the south shore of Lake Ontario comes to life in these vivid tales. They are written by a beloved teacher and a keen observer of human nature who adopted the tiny town of Pultneyville, New York as his home. Originally known as Appleboom Point, the community is shown in its heydey as a bustling harbor town filled with lively characters busily making history. The author, using accounts from local newspapers, diaries, and other historical sources, builds a richly imagined world of days gone by. The stories, while fictional, paint a vibrant picture of a town's history. They are complete with accounts of local militiamen resisting the British assault during the War of 1812 and conductors guiding others to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Then, too, there are patrons carousing in the Pig's Ear Saloon, returning heroes haunted by the Civil War, and ghostly entities inhabiting elegant homes fully equipped with witch bottles in the ceiling. Spanning the decades when sleek and majestic schooners plied the treacherous waters of the Great Lakes, the stories tell how it must have been when the high and mighty were brought to this crossroad of commerce. Pettiness in Paradise: And Other Tales of Appleboom Point takes the reader on a fascinating journey back to upstate New York as it was when the captain was king, and the way of life was the way of adventure.

John Connors was a graduate of Alfred University with a Master's Degree in English. He taught English at Williamson Central School in Williamson, New York and at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He loved poetry and wrote many poems, some of which have been published in various poetry collections. He also wrote a collection of his own titled Conjure Man. This book is his only published prose and is his last. John died in June of 2005.

(John E. Connors lived)
In a Place called Pultneyville...Appleboom Point

ISBN #: 978-1-4251-1448-0
Trafford Publishing
Printed in Victoria, BC, Canada

Thank you Mr Connors for believing in me and my writings. Love Always.

One student,

WCS, Class of '77

Jane Marla VerDow

Clam Bakes

Family Clambake Photo; 1952.
Grandpa in shaded area of photo, 3rd from left. Mom and Dad Center. Little Nancy, child standing in front row. Janie?...not thought of yet.


Cherry Picking Group Photo; 1954.
Left to right: Uncle Johnnie, Mom and little Nancy. Grandpa second from right with Wolf.

My best guess, the "last day of picking for the year", some day around August 10th, and Dad more than likely not in the picture because he had "gone with the load" (translation: the last cherries picked that day for the season delivered to the canning factory).

What would come next day or at least within a couple? Nancy and Grandpa would take a drive to the ice cream store and eat "pig's dinners".

Ah yes, Grandpa and his clambakes. Every year. Family reunion. Steamed clams, salt potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, and about a hundred pies, sure as day that at least some of them (notice I didn't write one of them) would be sour cherry and apple. The only rule; had to be a month with a "r" in it...'cause of the quality of the clam, of course. "Don't want to eat all that sand!"


"Uncle Johnnie"
The "professional" fisherman. "Fished every mile of that Lake, from here to Canada and back."

I'd hear stories told down mostly by my Dad about the size of the fish Uncle Johnnie would catch. His favorites to tell though were always about the size of the waves in the middle and how those storms could come up outta' nowhere.

Dad would throw his shoulders back proud, "Uncle Johnnie had sailed and fished the Ocean and always said Lake Ontario had more dangerous waters. It's the way the waves break on that Lake. They roll on the Ocean. On that Lake they can come from all directions at once in a storm; rolling, and crashing, and breaking. Uncle Johnnie he knew how to handle a boat out there. But I'd never try it. Not in a storm. Not in the middle. Too far to swim to shore when you are stuck out there in the middle. I'd want a pretty good size boat to try it. Then, not sure I would."

In answer to your question: yes, my Dad has crossed Lake Ontario on a boat, The Colberg when it travelled back and forth from the Port at Charlotte (Rochester) to Canada as a young man... and yes, that was a pretty large boat, indeed.

Roots;Land and Water

Maternal Grandfather came from London ("Home" Kent, England) on The Saint Louis, (1910) as a young man of 20. Plans were to come to America to be a barber and to send money back home to his Mother. He was sponsored by a family (farmers) in the town of Ontario and worked for them until he purchased a farm, settled in the Town of Ontario, became a Father, and played coronet in the Ontario Fireman's band.

He never returned to England. Two of his brothers traveled England to America then back, then returned to America from 1909 to 1920. His brother purchased a ticket for the Titantic voyage but at the last minute "missed the boat" by a "change in plans".

Grandma Sarah (paternal line) came from Holland (farmers) with her family; Mother and Father ages 24 and 25, with three young children (born to that date) all under the age of five. Sarah, age 1, became ill on the voyage (The Veendam) and years later it was summized by the nature and lengthly period of time of her liver illness that she had contracted hepatitis on the journey. Her passing left 6 children ranging in ages from 2 to 16 to be raised by my Grandfather, the oldest children, and extended family.

2006, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. To mark the occasion and for the gathering of family and extensive list of their friends of all ages I put together a scrapbook. I honored the fact that Mom's Dad (age 52) had passed the year prior to their marriage and Dad's Mom (age 40) had passed when he was 14 years old; neither of them living to be a part of that day in 1946.

I wrote this in loving memory to "the Grandparents I never met" and to include them on this day, 60 years later, in celebration of their children:

God, watch over me and mine I pray

Your Ocean to cross so vast.

Dream You planted in my heart just as deep

Your Promise be true, what I sow may I reap.

Set my sail to horizon -America, there may

Mother Liberty open her arms.

Captain my ship as she sails on the Sea

Me a lad or babe, Mother praying over me.

Farmland rich for Your Hands did make.

My gifts all I bring, from Thee.

My hands able to labor and music I play

Send Your Love and Guide my way. Amen.

Maternal family line; Great-Grandma and Grandpa. His family came from Holland sometime before the Civil War...stories were recorded by newspaper that he remembered the day President Lincoln was shot (about 5 years old at the time).

My Grandma had a green thumb for vegetable gardens and flowers. Memories of her many; spading dirt by shovel in the Spring and tending her gardens each Summer through Fall, a gift she inherited and learned from her father and then passed on to my Mom.

Photos taken near the Water, down on her Lakeshore; Ontario, the Great Lake. This place where families settled and they chose to be the caretakers of the land deposited there, a place to root children, and then to raise them near. She, this Great Lake and they, each generation, each family, each one...took a moment to be recorded as having been there...in this place, settled, together.

Good Friends

Grandpa, closest to water pictured above with a friend, was a farmer by trade, and an avid fisherman by hobby and at heart. His older brother, John was the "professional" fisherman on Lake Ontario waters. Stories told down of family back home in Holland, "farmers and fisherman on the Sea, they were."

Names of "Home Towns" In Holland (Providence) I saw printed, though letters switched or left off or added on through speech translation handscripted now in print or handwriting versions of the storycarriers. Here I will write them as Zeelandic Flander; Zuidzande; but most common I saw Cadzand. Speech we often heard Zuid-er-zee. I assume that meant land Zuidzande next to or on the zee (Noordzee/North Sea). Funny how sound and letters get lost over time.

Then, the waves and Sea...Now, still fighting the elements to work the land and to preserve home...that remains like Homeland, northwest Netherlands. The draw towards living near water remained in the hearts and Souls of next generations and there they settled along The Great Lake; Ontario. Farmland, rich and higher elevation this new place called, home.

Dad carried on the tradition...early morning fisherman with fish tales to tell, taking a break from farming.

Mom never learned to swim, was more fond of viewing or sitting near than being in the water. Still...the story has been told and retold how she jumped into the water (a pool, not the Lake or Bay) and saved me from drowning when I was 2.

"A day at Pultneyville Beach"

Mom sitting the closest to the Lake.

Roots of Faith

My Paternal Grandmother attended the Pultneyville Dutch Reformed Church as a child and became the organist. (photo; 1946)

My Maternal Grandmother was a member of the Ontario Baptist Church.

My faith was born under the cherry or apple tree. As a child, Daisy was my teacher. She could teach about God by a smile, the way she held out her hand, how she listened to my stories, by her patience, and by the strength of her character and Spirit.

As a child, I understood nature, sensed how life should be, accepted what it wasn't on most days, placed hope in tomorrow by living today, and trusted my instinct to know right from wrong and direction.

She taught by her compassion and gentleness to judge fairly or not at all, by her tolerance I learned to look for the good in people, and that the best way to teach was by being or reaching for the best within myself. Daisy as my friend, I sensed early on that we are all God's children; that more makes us the same than different and the contents of a person's heart measures Soul and worth.

Give us this day,

our daily bread

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. Amen
Earth as it is in Heaven

Ons Vader,

Gi-j die in de hemel bunt,

Gi-j mot heileg genuump worde,

ow heerschappi-j mot ruumte kriege.

Wat Gi-j wilt mot gebeurein

de wereld aevegoed as in de hemel.

Geef ons vandaag en iedere dag

't brood da wi-j nodeg hemme.

En scheld ons kwiet onze schuldenkrek

as wi-j doen aan andere

die bi-j ons in de schuld staon.

En breng ons niet in de verleiding,

maor maak ons vri-j van kwaod.

Want van Ow is de heerschappi-j

en de krach en de glorie.Amen.

(Dutch; dialect by the North Sea)