The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PICTURES

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are notebook, October, office, pajamas, paper, party, pencil, perfume, phone book, photograph, pictures.

PICTURES

"Bluebirds" by Lynn Baker

I was born into a family of photographers, so there has often been talk about “pictures.” My father loved taking pictures. Thanks to him, we have many, many slides from our life in Saudi Arabia and travels around the world.

by MicaJon Dykes (leaf close-up)

by Ken Dykes, Sr. (flowers at Glacier NP)

While I have only ever used a point-n-shoot automatic camera, two of my siblings are quite accomplished photographers. Several of our family's next generation, including our son Eric, also have mad photography skills. I confess I am quite attached to these images, and pictures in general!

"Birmingham at Night" by Eric Latham

I know that there are many things that cannot be caught in in a photograph, but oh how I value the photographs I have! What secrets they share... I guess it's one way we can stop time, one way to remember everything, which has long been a goal of mine, judging from the thousands of scrapbook pages I've created over the years!

And here's the thing: scrapbooks, pictures – they tell as much about the scrapbooker and photographer as they do about the subject... I love that!