Father and Son — Norman Rockwell-style Image by kenne
Archive for the ‘kenne g. turner’ Tag
Father and Son 4 comments
Self Portrait — Changing The Portrait, But Not The Moment 3 comments
Self Portrait — Image by kenne
You can never change the moment of the picture, but you can change the pixels.
— kenne
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A Man Named Kenne 6 comments
Images Taken by fellow naturalist and hiker, Maribeth Morehart.
A Man Named Kenne
My name is a conversation starter,
Kenne with an “e”, not a “y”.
Why?
I’m not a Kenneth,
named after
my great-grandmother,
Kenne was her maiden name.
You can call me Ken,
some even call me Keene,
(Word spellcheck corrects to Keene)
but I go by Kenne —
fate put a star by my name
by naming me Kenne.
Kenne
(The name continues to be passed on — four generations, now.)
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Capturing the Moment — Texas Bar Leave a comment
Texas Bar
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Sixth Stage of Man — You’ve Got To Be Kidding! Leave a comment
Tom & Kenne
It would not be my birthday if not hearing Tom read from Dylan Thomas’ Poem On His Birthday. “This sandgrain day in the bent bay’s grave He celebrates and spurns His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;”
On this birthday, in addition to Tom’s usual reference to Dylan Thomas, he referenced Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man.” Most people know it from the beginning line, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. . .” But, for Tom the reference was:
“. . . The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. . . ”
Now Tom, I must make exception to my being in Shakespeare’s sixth stage. I haven’t begun to lose my charm and whit. Nor have I begun to shrink in stature and personality. I remain in the fifth stage, still acquiring wisdom, enjoying the finer things in life and remain very attentive of by appearance — so there!
kenne
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MY “ . . .DRIFTWOOD THIRTY-FIFTH WIND TURNED AGE” — PLUS THIRTY-FOUR Leave a comment
. . . with apologies to “Unknown!”
(Thirty more years and Dylan Thomas lived.)
kenne
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The Brother of Distractions Leave a comment
Winter Morning — by kenne
I didn’t get up this Christmas Eve morning thinking about Susan Sontag, that is, not until receiving an email from brother tom.
The book about Eugene Smith reminded me of Susan Sontag and her book: ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Robert Hughes did a splendid review of her book in 1977. You will enjoy how beautifully Hughes captures it. t.
Of course, he knew I would enjoy Hughes’ review of one of my favorite books! Even more so when the title of the review is “Books: A Tourist in Other People’s Reality,” a phase I have used for years to describe my existence. Here’s my reply to tom:
t,
I love this book — it is one that grows with you.
“Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing — which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art,” wrote Sontag — sad but true. For me, it has always been a tool for expressing my vision of existence. The realism of a photograph is superficial since, in truth, it is inherently surreal. As Sontag points out, “Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise.”
I don’t know if I should thank you for sending this or not. I already have so much I want to read — now I feel a need to go back and reread this great book on photography.
ken
On Photography is a must-read for any photographer. Thank you, tom, for the distraction!
— kenne
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The Gifts That Keep On Giving 2 comments
The things that happen to us in life do so because we act. The more we act, the more opportunities we have upon which to act, the more we connect, creating a vessel filled with learning moments. If we don’t act on the moments, each will become an opportunity lost. Even so, it’s important not to think about what may have been left behind.
My vessel is an alchemy of acts from which new opportunities are poured – acts attract acts. Paulo Coelho wrote in his bestseller, The Alchemist, “There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”
It was ten years ago that I first read Coelho’s enchanting fable. It was in preparation for leading a group of four young professionals to the state of Sáo Paulo in Brazil that I learned of Paulo Coelho and his 1988 novel. The book fits well into my own philosophy and set the tone for the trip, and remains instrumental to my life.
Again, one act leads to another when at this past Sunday’s Society of the 5th Cave reading club meeting, The Alchemist was selected for the March reading. Once again, the concept of alchemy is the front stage, this time from a different perspective, which will create many new learning moments.
I’m pleased to be reading this inspiring book ten years out. The Alchemist is the gift that keeps on giving. Just today, I received an email from my brother Tom, reminding me of someone I have also not read in recent years, American poet Conrad Aiken, which my poem “Solstice Night,” reminded him of the first lines from Aiken’s long poem, “The House of Dust.”
The sun goes down in a cold, pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
In turn, he reminded me of Conrad Aiken and the return of The Alchemist, which reminded me of the following from Aiken’s poem, “A Letter from Li Po.”
what’s true in these, or false? which is the ‘I’
of ‘I’s’? Is it the master of the cadence, who
transforms all things to a hoop of flame, where through
tigers of meaning leap? And are these true,
the language never old and never new,
such as the world wears on its wedding day,
the something borrowed with something chicory blue?
In every part we play, we play ourselves;
even the secret doubt to which we come
beneath the changing shapes of self and thing,
yes, even this, at last, if we should call
and dare to name it, we would find
the only voice that answers is our own.
We are once more defrauded by the mind.
Defrauded? No. It is the alchemy by which we grow.
It is the self-becoming word, the word
becoming world. And with each part we play
we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum.
Who knows but one day we shall find,
hidden in the prism at the rainbow’s foot,
the square root of the eccentric absolute,
and the concentric absolute to come.”
So many gifts that keep on giving.
— kenne
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An Open Letter To Rotary 2 comments
In the fall of 1993, PDG John Germany sponsored me into the Rotary Club of Conroe, and what an experience these last sixteen years have been. Today, I am an immensely better person because of Rotary.
But like all experiences, events offer occasions to move on. Sometimes we recognize them, but choose to ignore them. For some time now, I have been trying to look the other way as I move into another phase of life. However, the reality is I must move on without Rotary. I do so with regret, knowing that I have not given Rotary as much as I have received.
To those in the Rotary Club of Conroe, the district and Rotarians I have met around the globe, especially those with which I have worked closely, I resign from Rotary knowing I have helped transition people into the tasks in which I have participated over the years and in doing so help raise the bar — as a result reducing the regret I feel.
To the close friends I have made though mutually cooperative and supportive deeds, I hope this decision will not change the rapport and feelings we share. I feel we have shared what for me is an experience of a lifetime.
It is therefore with immeasurable appreciation and thanks that I make this decision to resign from the Rotary Club of Conroe, effective September 21, 2009.
— kenne
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Nature’s Monument Leave a comment
Let It Shine
Morning awakens the light
Slowly stirring the heart
Revived from the sleeping night
By a singing meadowlark.
Accounting for the moment
Can we ever know
How age built a monument
From what it doesn’t show?
I don’t mind
As long as you know
I will make it shine
By allowing time to slow.
kenne
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Wedding, Patio Table and Basketball Backboard 2 comments
Micheal & Lisa
As we prepare to attend Lisa and Michael’s wedding on Lummi Island this Saturday. Lummi Island is part of the San Juan archipelago, twenty minutes from Bellingham, WA., and ten minutes by the Whatcom Chief ferry. Lisa is my brother Tom’s youngest daughter and her wedding will probably generate several blog entries over the next week.
Tom has written on himself, usually in the third person, as someone who felt and thought like a certain kind of person that Samuel Beckett was interested in; “… someone having nothing to express, nothing with which to express, but a desperate need to express.”
There was a time when Tom would write rambling stories on James Talbott, his pseudonym. In June of 1988 we received thirteen typed pages on his annual struggles with the patio picnic table. With Tom and Lisa on my mind, I thought I would share a little segment of Talbott’s thoughts.
“It was one of those late June days when the clarity of light and the greens of the foliage in the yard combined with the azure blue of the Pacific Northwest sky to mesmerize, if not invite a momentary reverie. Talbott sit down at the table. Light has a way of swaying our imaginations, our emotions. He had always known the effect of the absence, the dulling or the clarity of light on his sensibilities. On cloudy dull summer days, he never gave a thought to that table, but now in this mesmerizing light of a beautiful late June day.
“Dad,” the voice of his oldest daughter, Vanessa, rang out from the house. A few years ago, he couldn’t distinguish his two daughters apart from the sound of their voices on the telephone. But, she was now seventeen and her voice carried her unique identity.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
He was about to respond, but another quick question displace it; “Where’s Lisa?” she was his youngest daughter. “I thought she was going to have dinner with you tonight.”
Lisa had just recently left the house and home she had lived in since before first grade to live with her mom. She was now entering her sophomore year in high school. Talbott had taken on the duties of caring for her cat and goldfish, which she did not take with her. He felt ambiguously sadden and confused that she had not taken them.
“Oh, she is,” he said. “She is across the street at Jenny’s.”
How many times had he said that Lisa was over at Jenny’s? The echo of his words reverberated through his mind.
Events and circumstances, which appeared to be so simple were so damn ineffable. He thought of the laughs and good natured sneers of derision that he and his daughters would delight in the years from now as they looked at all the old photographs from those years when the picnic table was holding forth its position on the patio. But he knew that neither of the girls ever consciously connected any significance to that table, he realized that as we experience our lives we are often unable to distinguish what should be cherished and what should not.
“Dad, what are we having for dinner?” Immediately he was back from an emotional time warp to the quotidian and the necessary.
“Oh, let me see,” he said. As he was leaving the table to return to the kitchen, which faced the patio, he heard Lisa’s voice as she entered the house through the front door. In some inexplicable way, he associated Lisa with the patio picnic table. This association was not made on a conscious level. No. The table had often been a pain; Lisa had always been a joy.
“Can you guys remember any occasion that took place around this picnic table that stands out in your memory?”
His contrived, rather forced question was a bit like a researcher groping for necessary impersonal background, and he felt it was asked with an intonation that was definitely phony. But nevertheless, there it was. Then he really began rambling:
“Years ago, when I was in college, I wrote a paper on backyard basketball backboards. They always reminded me of a special barometer that measured the life of a family. The care and repair and use of the backboard would suggest the age of the family or history of that family. Do you guys think that a picnic table can be seen as the kind of same barometer of age or change?”
He suddenly, humiliatingly, realized in the hesitation before their response how pretentious the question sounded. He knew that his longing for passionate Shakespearian speech had launched this dud. This had to be resisted. He wanted to cry aloud for an intimate familial communion that he so needed. He wanted to be eloquent and moving. But what if he were to burst out like Lear to his daughters? It would get him nowhere to utter burning words. His daughter’s wouldn’t understand. Suppose he were to exclaim about morality, about flesh and blood and justice and evil and what it felt like to be him, James Talbott, facing the transitions and rites of passage that were exploding before him? Hadn’t he tried in his own confused way to bring some good for them into the world? Having pursued a “higher” purpose, although without getting close, he was now ageing, weakening, and doubting his own endurance and even his ability to cope. Where the hell was equity and conscience?
“Dad, are you alright?” His oldest, Vanessa, asked.
He realized the frustration and impatience he was experiencing and he backed off.
“Yeah, I’ve just been reading a lot of nostalgic, haunting vignettes today. You know I’m such a sentimentalist.”
He fumbled for whatever he was looking for and realized that he had lost it. The table and its symbolic significance were truly personal. Its importance lay in the need for continuity and connections in his life. That was easy. But there was an importance that seemed to transcend the personal. At least he thought that. He began thinking that the philosophical idea of Solipsism was not just a romantic concept for anti-utopians.”
— Thomas R. Turner, June, 1998
kenne
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Recent Facebook Entries Leave a comment
Because of my own Facebook activity, some of the things I might normally post on this blog have been on Facebook. Knowing that all who may visit this site, I provide the following links:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111971414&sc=nl&cc=mn-20090822
. . for my stock market friends. –
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/08/rally-time-items-to-watch/
. . . take plenty of tissues if you’re going to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu8lYr0kf7g
. . . we all have those light-bulb moments, as well as having observed the behavior of others when the light comes on. Now there is evidence that our brain has decided (solves the problem) before we experience the moment — Eureka! So, you may say, &…quot;So what?! We tend to think it is our conscious state that processes and solves a problem, when in fact, it may actually take place in the unconscious.
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13489722
. . . Health-care reform — another source.
. . . no more lies!
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/settingtherecord/
. . . brewing the American dream. A businessman with an attitude of of adding value by giving.
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ellen-mcgirt/strike-indicator/my-life-beer-day-sam-adams-came-call
. . . cellphone service and health-care service in America have a lot in common — costs more and less service than other western nations . Is anyone surprised?
http://consumerist.com/5335809/congratulations-americans-we-pay-the-most-for-cellphone-service
. . . everybody is for health care reform, right?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/32469091#32469091
. . . Woodstock — 40 years Out
http://30daysout.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/woodstock-40-years-out-and-still-tie-dyed/
. . . we finally have the time to watch this award winning movie of a happening stopped in time for ever.
http://www.film.com/features/story/dvd-blu-ray-woodstock-directors/28599888
“. . . it’s not how many notes you play, it’s playing the right note.”
http://www.nj.com/morristown/index.ssf/2009/08/remembering_les_paul_the_wizar.html
. . . another example why Whole Foods has a lot going and why I have stock in it.
. . . several friends have already conveyed this sad news. Here’s information from NPR. A lot of us grew up listening to the music of Les Paul & Mary Ford. Yes, the world is waiting for the sunrise!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111845182
In the November 15, 1993 U.S. News & World Report cover story contained — “When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kenned…y’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential.” No doubt about it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12shriver.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
. . . the geek in me says, “check out the new Science Channel show, Future of…” A real cool show!
http://science.discovery.com/tv/pop-sci/pop-sci.html
kenne
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Outside the Window of Now Leave a comment
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