petalridge.com

I am a pack rat, and this is a pack rat's website. All my life I've dreamed of living in a ramshackle Gothic folly of a mansion, maybe with 40 rooms, the number barely mattered; what did matter was that there be hidden staircases, up to secret rooms, with a secret library and lounging room and study, where I might store my secret stash and sigh over it. Well, a website will have to do. And once I persuaded my web designer (thank you, Steve) that it was time to turn the keys over to me, I began truly to move in,

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I'm not sure what will end up on this section of the site. For now, I mostly just wished for it to be here. But in its LIBRARY (coming soonish), I intend to catalog a few things: my vinyl/CD/tapes collection; my reading room; my lists of faves.

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I'm at a stage in my life when I need to downscale (let's not insult the materials I've so lovingly packratted by calling it "decluttering.") I need to unload that vinyl. Even a lot of the CDs. Even the books. If I don't, what I've spent my life loving will surely end up on some trash heap—oh, no doubt most of it will anyway, but let me at least first try to find a temporary home for some of it. Hey, you! You've tracked me down to here, and you want this stuff? Let me know. I'm pretty sure you'll be looking to drive a harder bargain than I will.

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In the meantime, since this space is all about my reluctance to curate, I'll toss in a rejected photography gallery.

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I take thousands of pics in an ordinary year. I've made a couple of dozen photography books in the last half dozen. Hardly any of it gets seen anywhere, and the vast majority of it doesn't deserve to be. But but but. Kill your darlings? Who are you brutes? I tried to put together a 2023 birdwatching gallery for the PHOTOGRAPHY section of this site. I found hundred and hundreds of images to consider. I wound up slinging four of them into the "Edits, Erasures, & Amalgams" gallery, compositing a few more into duos and quartets and so on, and throwing up my hands in frustration.

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Here is that abandoned gallery. Plus a bees composite rejected from the "Edits, Erasures, & Amalgams" gallery. Because of how the birds go with the bees.

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And following it, check out a Forest Hill Park Lake waterfowl slideshow, compiled in early 2021.

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