SERENDIPITY

Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Tag Archives: Arizona

Arizona Memories Redux

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Bridge over the little Colorado.

I was looking back at the weeks we spent in Arizona and remembering the sky … that huge blue dome of a sky, like no sky I’ve ever seen and wishing we could go back again to the west. There are few places I’ve been that I really want to revisit, but this is one. So, in lieu of plane fare and all that stuff that we cannot afford, here is Arizona again … our western adventure.

Big sky over Navajo country.

There are good things and not-so-good things about digital cameras.

Navajo … the sky really does seem bigger.

Among the great things about it are auto-focus (how did I live without it?) and not being limited by the amount of film you have and how much it will cost you to process it.

Door in Tombstone … Welcome dogs, people not so sure

Among the bad things? Not being limited by the amount of film you have and how much it will cost you to process it.

Tombstone, where the stagecoach runs on time.

Good grief, you ask, how can the same thing be the good and the bad? I didn’t really understand it myself until the day I came home from our vacation in Arizona and realized that I had taken thousands of pictures. Not hundreds. Thousands.

The Dusty main (only) street of Tombstone.

I love the names of places in the west … just like the movies I’ve been watching since I was a kid.

The Superstition Mountains.

It was almost a year before I felt able to even do an initial sorting through of the downloaded images and now, 4 years later, I realize that most of those images had never been processed.

There was a great deal of lightning … but I never managed to catch any … but I sure tried hard!

It isn’t because they were all perfect: it’s because the idea of having to sort through and edit so many photographs, many of them very similar to one another, is so daunting a task that I did nothing at all. Procrastination … sometimes it’s the better choice.

The ghost town by Apache Junction.

Today, I gave in and began to approach the project and so … better late than never … I present to you Arizona through my lens.

I should mention that it never fell below 100 degrees the entire time we were there and it got up to 124 — and stayed there — for the entire time we were in Phoenix, so if the current heat wave is bothering you, I share your pain.

You can’t really capture how grand it is.

Among the places to which we roamed were the Grand Canyon, locally known as “The Big Hole,” Tombstone, Flagstaff, Navajo, Apache, Apache Junction (a ghost town), the Painted Desert … we did some serious travelling.

I think I could fall in love with the southwest. I think maybe I did.


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Ten useful things I’ve learned about blogging

I started this blog in February 2012, but it wasn’t until the end of May that I started to write regularly. Before that, I posted erratically and rarely.

Criminal Minds Season 7 Promo

In September, I tossed off a very short post about Criminal Minds (the TV show, not politicians) that somehow wound up the first result in a Google search. It has stayed in the top 5 search results (out of 4,100,000 possible results) for more than a month. I have no idea how that happened. That single post has gotten more than 3,500 hits and keeps going. It took me 5 minutes to write and was a response to something that bothered me about the show. Who knew that so many people cared about a television series about profilers and serial killers?

The ups and downs of popularity remain a mystery. Immediately after that post, my numbers went way up, then as I expected, began to drop, then level out. Even so, I tripled the hits I get each day. Folks came for that post and stayed for others. I also have an unknown number of  followers on Bloggers, Twitter, ScoopIt, Pinterest and StumbleUpon.

I am, as my blog title suggests, eclectic. By profession, I’m a writer. By inclination an historian. My hobby is photography. I have distinct audiences for writing and photography. I haven’t figured out how much these groups overlap. Even within my writing, subject matter varies quite a lot. Amongst philosophical ramblings, discussions of whatever current events are on my mind, and so on, I write a lot of stuff about movies and TV. There is a specific audience for the media posts.

Posts I labor over may be barely noticed; others that I just drop on the page get lots of hits. I have learned, through trial and error, a few things worth mentioning. I’m sure I’ll learn more. I need and want to learn more. Meanwhile, here are 10 things I’ve learned that seem to be true:

  1. Less really is more. More than 1000 words is too long. 500 words is plenty, especially if you include pictures. Sometimes, just a caption is enough.
  2. Use more pictures, fewer words. Everyone likes pictures especially nature, pretty girls, children, dogs, and for some peculiar reason, Arizona.
  3. Funny gets more hits than depressing. Being serious is appropriate for serious subjects, but you can use a light touch even with heavy material.
  4. Popularity is nice, but it’s your blog. Do your own thing. That’s the point, isn’t it?
  5. Digress but remember to come back. When I tell stories, I ramble. It’s my style. I wander before I get to my destination, but there’s a limit to how far and how often you can roam without losing your reader.
  6. Be economical in how much material you use per day and per post. If you set yourself an unsustainable pace, you’ll burn out.
  7. Have fun. Have a lot of fun. Enjoyment is contagious.
  8.  Do what you love. Blog about the things you find beautiful, important, amusing, or interesting.
  9. If you aren’t having fun, give it up.
  10. On the graphics side, leave white space. At least 50% of the screen should be empty. This percentage includes the space between pictures and text, between paragraphs, margins at the top and both sides, space between columns. Clutter is hard on the eyes and gives your site a “rummage sale” look. Do you really need every widget?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Big – The Big Hole

The Grand Canyon will forever be my personal BIG. It is the biggest, most awe-inspiring vista I’ve ever seen.

Even the sky above it seems too big for my little human brain to absorb. No camera lens will capture it. The best I could do is suggest the massive vista. My eyes could barely see it.  It is also hugely and overwhelming beautiful and utterly unique from all other places.

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