The Big Three: Schools Open

The world can be a crazy place. Sometimes it helps to step back and list a few of the things you’re grateful for. I’m making it a habit each week to list three blessings. Here’s what I’m grateful for this week, August 10-16.

What I’m grateful for:

—Teacher, teacher. My wife goes back to school starting on Monday. She has a few days of in service and then she’ll get her students back for the start of the year. And my son goes back to college too. His senior year. Here’s to all the students and teachers heading back to the classroom.

—It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Oh I don’t have young school kids in my house anymore, but for an organizational geek like myself this is the best time of year. I love back to school supplies: Mechanical Pencils, Pens, Highlighters, Note Cards, Folders, Notebooks. Oh yes, I can’t get enough of them. I’m grateful for new supplies. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Staples Commercial 1996 – It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

—Let’s try that again. Oh yes, I’m grateful for erasers. (Remember when Paper Mate or Bic or one of the pen companies promoted erasable pens in the 80s. Yea, they never worked all that well.)

“No one is perfect. That’s why pencils have erasers.” –Wolfgang Riebe.

What gave me a smile?

When I think about famous photographs in history, I think of photographs of Earth from outer space; the 1932 shot of workers eating lunch atop a NYC skyscraper; the raising of the U.S. flag over Iowa Jima; the Hindenburg Disaster; a migrant farm worker mother during the Great Depression; and many others.

I love the written word. I love how great writers play with words. But I love too how photographers have the ability to convey deep emotion just with pixels on a page. They use composition, brightness, light, aperture, and shutter speed to do their talking for them.

World Photography Day is celebrated this week on Tuesday, August 19. The day is an annual, worldwide celebration of the art, craft, science and history of photography. It marks the date the French government released the daguerreotype patent making that photographic process “free to the world.”

I’m not much of a photographer. There are any number of better photographers on WP, but I still like to play. Here’s a few of my favorite shots from from the past year.

A Delaware Beach morning

A Pennsylvania Autumn

Pennsylvania Amish farmland.

Joshua Tree California