when i thought about the right image to cap this first five-year incarnation of STILL blog, the answer came immediately. this is wild teasel, known in french as cabaret des oiseaux. I’ve told the story before, but STILL blog was born, or at least felt its first labor pains, the day i placed this very thistle head onto a sheet of white paper, and took a photo of it. the white background allowed every detail of the elegant but slightly threatening teasel to be studied at leisure. “i can do this,” i said to myself, and suddenly a creative practice, and a step toward joining the online creative community i had admired for years, both seemed possible. this will be the last post, for now, of a STILL blog image against a white background. after 1800-plus photos, without ever missing a single day, it’s time to try something new, which you will find on this same blog, when you click the “night” button, and enter that new gallery, which represents a new path for me, and a new world for STILL blog. we’ll see if we can make it another five years. if not, there will be something else. but i’m not going anywhere. you’re stuck with me. see you on the dark side.

wild teasel (cabaret des oiseaux)

autignac, france

i don’t anticipate seeing any snow before we leave here. so i’m posting some mediterranean snowflakes. they littered the beach last weekend between sète and marseillan-plage. all looking a little bit the same. each one a little bit different.

palourdes clam shells

the beach at sète, france

unfortunately the vulgar and potentially hilarious connotations of the word “schist” do not translate from english into french. so although the faugères wine region prides itself on the local substrate of “<em>schiste</em>” that geology has endowed it with, and that gives the local wines their particular charred stone undertones, the expression “schist happens” will never be adopted by the local chamber of commerce. nor will the “pile of schist” at the corner of the plowed field cause nearly the laughter that it should. nor will the guy digging a hole who is in “deep schist.” nor the hiker who has just climbed up along the bank of “schist creek.” the poor french have no idea what they are missing. please excuse my schist-eating grin.

schist

autignac, france

perhaps it’s the recent spell of cold weather here in the languedoc (cold, understand, meaning below zero celsius, not below zero fahrenheit as in minnesota) that has me seeing this somewhat random arrangement of sea glass as a tropical atoll. i could use a little bit of piercing equatorial sun right now, and some suffocating tropical humidity, and some waves lapping a coral beach gently.

sea glass

la plage à sète, languedoc, france

i have always been interested in fonts and typography. this is another casual foray into making fonts out of natural objects. i did it after finishing six collages this afternoon, and before photographing it for STILL blog. i started to explain to steve that i think i might like to do some more of this font-making, when i remembered that i have just committed to another year of STILL and possibly a collage-a-day project for 2017, and i decided that maybe two artistic hats are enough for me to wear just now.

broom twigs

autignac, france