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Michael Ubaldi, December 4, 2008.
 


Outside the front doors of La Jolla parish Mary, Star of the Sea, September 2005, I stood in the crowd of witnesses to my cousin Francis' wedding.

The woman had walked up Girard Avenue, and was clasping the right hand of the bronze Incarnation when I turned and saw her. She prayed. I took a photograph. Then the woman left, continuing south on Girard.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 13, 2008.
 

Last October a thin majority of my American Baptist congregation voted to close the church. My mother, as she couldn't but do, suddenly turned and encouraged those seated and awaiting the counting of ballots to sing "Amazing Grace." When the vote was cast, a feckless and callow man of gentle deportment stood up. He confessed that, though he was no longer a member, he needed to say something. When he tried to speak his sentiments were lost in tears. I, through all this, was myself; and from the rear of the sanctuary made a crisp call to order.

Less than a month later a departure led to my elevation to chairman of the church's stewardship commission. With priceless assistance and guidance, I have overseen preparations for what must be our final year. Singularly important have been my thoughts on the closure of the church, dissolution of the congregation and end to an establishment of 84 years. I can't answer the question of how I feel about all of this. Emotion has supported reason and obligation: exhortation to colleagues and indignation to impel the carriage of duty. And impressions hint that even if probed, feelings would not be easily transliterated.

Still — noontime yesterday, I said to myself that I would miss the weekly rounds made, never doubling back, following the path I refined a few years ago, to lock up the convoluted building. This evening's stewardship meeting included a tour of minor repairs effected for the sake of our realtor's tours. When the building was quiet again, I leaned into a few rooms and salvaged what memories I could.











Yet we know rain will pass, forbearance an investment bringing returns upon the storm's recession.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 28, 2008.
 



I asked a pair of geese to pose for a photograph.



They had every right to decline, yes; but I expected a polite, verbal response.



They were very inconsiderate.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 2, 2008.
 



Temperatures have hardly broken from the forties, but in a month we'll have our first choice between spending money and conditioned air.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 4, 2008.
 



It smelled like spring but looked like winter.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 28, 2008.
 


Of all Februaries, this has been the Februariest.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 19, 2008.
 



If the beetle had any sense, it might have appreciated the attention — but also, a few moments later, worried about who and why.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 1, 2008.
 

"I wanted you to see this," said my mother, and handed me a stapled Time magazine cover story nearly as old as I. Written in a style that today's journalists would probably wave off as staid or even aureate, the article reminded me of video gaming's social roots — the arcade and its forebearer, the pinball machine — and relayed several accounts of governmental overreaction to the craze that founded a pastime.




This was one of several keepsakes held, held, held — until my mother reassessed and preferred closet space. She would have thrown out a dozen copies from over twenty years ago but instead offered them to me. I took most of the magazines home with me.









In the pile was also a cover of TV Guide. Of little historical value, its defacing — which, unassisted, I would never have recalled — is a decent record of one of my puckish moments.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 23, 2008.
 



Low light means — for this camera — grain and blur, and low likelihood for a good photograph, but the sight on exiting the building withstood at least an attempt.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 18, 2008.
 



Toward the end of my walk in the Cleveland Metroparks, I noticed a jogger moving down a hill whose slope neared 45 degrees. A number of exposed trees at the hill's crest drew me upward.





I found it exhilarating though, likely not coincidentally, I also managed to keep my footing.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 16, 2008.
 



Here are another four pictures from my walk in the Cleveland Metroparks.







The fastidious naturalist might have thought the narrowness of this part of the reserve — or the electrical wires running along one of the paths — a fault of the conservation. But in Ohio, however tumid the city becomes, it is always surrounded by the forest.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 9, 2008.
 



Yesterday I walked through the trees that I have photographed for five years.







On account of the beauty there was the nagging question, Why hadn't you tried this before? I thought carefully, and considered that with only so many trails, I might have run out of subject matter.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 8, 2008.
 

The irony of my having photographed a nearby building site, three times a week for most of 2007, came when I was laid off in October. Never again to look out at the building site from that fourth-floor window to the southwest, I would miss the end of construction by several months. Nevertheless, the incomplete record spans ten months — so over the next weeks I will here and there present photographs in pairs or trios, less attention given to chronology than the endeavor's remarkable contrasts.





First: January and September.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 3, 2008.
 



The ramshackle house has served as a reference point, and an occasional subject, for nearly five years of photographing the southeast view. A couple of years ago the elderly owner moved or passed on, so the building now belongs to a realtor. For the first time in years, encroaching trees and brush were cleared out — including the evergreens, a solo where a trio once stood. The roof has been reshingled and several windows replaced; all that remains is that faded, butterscotch siding, which nostalgia can keep.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 31, 2007.
 



"Lemons" is to "overturned basket half-filled with laundry," as "lemonade" is to "favorite spot for taking a nap."

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 26, 2007.
 



First, I told him to move from his seat to the right, so I could photograph down the center aisle.




Then, losing track of where and why I had given the order — grinning like the cat who caught the canary — I turned the camera on him.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 25, 2007.
 






 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 24, 2007.
 



The music was pleasant; the company genial; the coffeehouse, as I said while there, "the least pretentious I have ever been to."

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 21, 2007.
 



Mac rediscovered the cursor, which is endearing in some proportion to how important the lower left-hand corner of the screen happens to be.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 19, 2007.
 



She wouldn't budge. As I was calling her for dinner, had I interrupted a "moment"?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 17, 2007.
 



Christmas is a-coming down.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 12, 2007.
 



Those familiar with cats should note that she has, heretofore, mostly left the chair alone.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 10, 2007.
 



"Did you need something else?"

My father was already headed to the other side of the basement and up the stairs. I held in my hand four screws and anchors, that which we came down for. He thought he was done, and now he turned around to face me again, puzzled.




"Your workroom," I said, pointing as I looked. Even after the underground corner of my parent's house had been organized it was still a farrago of tools and projects — half of it useful, all of it memorable. At least four decades could be seen among the rows and piles.




There are, for the diligent and well-intentioned, measures of regret for work left openly undone. Yet in those exposed records are steps, decisions, moments — extant after so many years.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 7, 2007.
 



A cerulescent ground, an aureate sky.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 5, 2007.
 



This sort of weather always brings out the carols.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 3, 2007.
 



Not even an attempt at nonchalance.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 30, 2007.
 



From the first dunk, the water is theirs — if by a concession more fastidious than generous.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 29, 2007.
 



It had been stuck to the wall of the stairwell's fifth-floor landing. Who to whom? I can't say, but will confirm the species.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 27, 2007.
 



"Oh," sighed Danny O'Brien, as we sat down for the screening of Indoctrinate U. "I thought it was going to be a talkie."

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 23, 2007.
 



The season is official.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 20, 2007.
 



What was it? Imitation, dialogue, mockery — what?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 15, 2007.
 



That men of old would have imagined what is before us, these contemporary aspirations.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 13, 2007.
 



What could it mean? Is it a message — "No ladder"?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 8, 2007.
 



But a week old, the hillside forest in the picture isn't the one off to the east.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 6, 2007.
 



Red — the black maples always go red.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 1, 2007.
 

Last night, at the house in which I grew up, the bedroom that was mine accepted me only as a stranger. It has been partially claimed by my mother and father, dozens of minor items lying about where I left them nearly five years ago.

I spent a few minutes looking at two paintings that haven't gotten two thoughts since. And then I peeked in the closet, to find more oils on canvas; some I knew would be there, more I had forgotten. None of them is younger than eight years.

Six works returned home with me.



The Pugilist.



Adrian.



The Idiot.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 30, 2007.
 



Some make it their business to put the oddest tools to quotidian work, and we call it design.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 25, 2007.
 



A strange time, fall. Not only are clouds more frequent but overcast skies, too, fit the occasion, leaves' aureate and cinnamon crowned best with purplish-grey.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 23, 2007.
 



Siblings.



Pals.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 18, 2007.
 



The day is missed when the ceiling, having hung low, breaks just after five o'clock in the evening. But then — at least it showed a bit.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 16, 2007.
 



Opalescent, marble, morning.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 11, 2007.
 



On a humid day lived through these past few weeks, no storm front nearby, clouds are seen from a distance to burgeon, drift and dissipate. Obligations, tasks, errands, deadlines have for years kept my sense of time separate from the aimlessness miles away. For the first time since childhood, I felt as if I were not even moving faster than the clouds, and that I could ruminate on the sky during a hot day in early autumn.

But the muse had only a minute of value, as nobody relies on a child.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 9, 2007.
 



There, a lot from the house in which I grew up — the only one on the street. Designed, perhaps, on the notion that burglars would be as blind as us.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 4, 2007.
 



Headwind; change course.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 3, 2007.
 



If through an interstice, there is still light.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 27, 2007.
 



Foliage is more easily noticed, and appreciated, after it goes aureate. That bright green on silver and blue, eclipsed as it may be by summer sights, is still a deciduous in its prime.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 25, 2007.
 



I was aiming for dawn — and missed.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 20, 2007.
 



The apparent upward pull on the cloud's northerly arm is likely a result of parallax. Still, the sight was enough to draw me to the balcony, camera in hand, so in the open spaces of my memory of snapping yet another picture of the sky is the possibility of that curl being real.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 18, 2007.
 



I knew it was illumination, but I saw fire.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 13, 2007.
 



All right, it's settled: fall sunrises look the best.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 11, 2007.
 



Vexation is a consequence of perspective. Trouble is still trouble but it is simply nearest; one concentrates on what remains farther out. We know this as longanimity, the quiet faith.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 6, 2007.
 



Nature's peroration, with spring long past and the flowers yet in bloom.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 4, 2007.
 



Red, white and two blues.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 30, 2007.
 



Rushing out to the balcony is never a planned item in the morning routine, but rarely a fruitless one, either.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 28, 2007.
 



I was responsible for the slanting angle and short distance between my camera's lens and a honeybee. A wind kept pushing the flower's stalk away in short puffs; the benign, little worker collected nectar without regard for his photographer. In focus and frame, out, back in again. Some credit goes to Providence — or luck, if you insist.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 21, 2007.
 



I couldn't believe the clouds when I saw them, either.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 16, 2007.
 



It is some heavy reliance on technicality, but Yes, the sun did shine today.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 14, 2007.
 



And it was someone else's rain.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 9, 2007.
 



Word must have reached some upstart, Norse thunder-bringer that I was ready to announce the end of a meteorologically benign summer.




In the past, lightning has been an unwilling subject — Tuesday evening, I turned off all lights, sat in front of the window, opened the camera's shutter for four seconds at a time, and left the electricity to its work.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 7, 2007.
 



Cats: in your laundry.




Cats: under your bed.




Cats: occupying the floorspace just inches from the base molding.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 2, 2007.
 



A few thoughts as the Canicule begins and the cicadas stir: it has been a summer like those eight and nine years ago, bright and hot with few interruptions from the cold or wet of thunderstorms. Too bad for the bluegrass, and maybe a presage for a spiritless winter. But if he looks upward, the photographer shouldn't complain.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 31, 2007.
 



However little I may care for daily troughs and entanglements, a sky snarled by rising clouds is as moving as a clear, blue one.

Worlds could hide in there.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 26, 2007.
 



Said the gardener: "Aren't they gorgeous? I can't believe I planted them."




Which I answered, silently: Yes, and No, but I can.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 24, 2007.
 



Next in the series of exceptions: sunsets, daily seen and rarely photographed.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 19, 2007.
 



They were the florets I pass by.




This time, I paused first.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 17, 2007.
 



Sunny skies lift any moment, but the time of day and day of the week that stay auspicious even in January darkness are six o'clock or thereabouts on a Friday evening.

So much to accomplish. Is there something to do? — yes, always.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 12, 2007.
 



Even it weren't to deposit a check, making peripatetic use of the drive-through ATM, the little jaunt from my office to the bank amounts to my favorite quarter-hour on a Thursday evening.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 10, 2007.
 



My maternal grandfather's ninetieth birthday was celebrated in a park at the edge of suburban Kalamazoo.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 5, 2007.
 



This is one of several images with which I broadly associate my memories of summer.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 3, 2007.
 



A thought process: a) this thunderstorm is terrifying, so b) I am going to stand on my balcony and photograph it.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 28, 2007.
 



The year's longest day passed as it always has — modestly, too early.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 26, 2007.
 



These clouds trundled into view just minutes before a downpour — the rainfall was hard but short, and the lakeshore went cool and calm without another thundery protest.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 24, 2007.
 



Set at an awkward angle, or one seat removed, from the nearest window on each of four flights taken last week, I shot only six photographs.



That may have been just as well, since reading to orange evening light pouring into the plane impressed as much as a color print. And, too, the most poignant sights were on terra firma and anthropogenic — very little else tugs at a man's heart like a woman's gossamer shawl.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 18, 2007.
 



Pro: Having reached one year of age this past May, the cats have become accustomed to habits and patterns that articulate personalities.




Con: Mac responds to dawn's light by calling out. Loudly.




Pro: I no longer worry about sleeping through my alarm.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 15, 2007.
 



For once, once in thirteen years, that damned long traffic light at Lorain and Canterbury was not a second too brief.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 12, 2007.
 



Project completion may have been set back a season — from spring to summer — but the ruggedness of the northeast corner of the nearby construction site is deceptive. Traveling on the road running perpendicularly to my office building (visible in the lower right-hand third of the photograph), I was surprised to see the frontispiece for a new Target store, there at the edge of a broad, marked parking lot. Will business be as swift to return?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 5, 2007.
 



So rare, so familiar.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 28, 2007.
 



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 21, 2007.
 

There they were, sessile, and somehow last year's tulips eluded me.



All right: I mustered a little more stealth, and profitably stalked a herd of spring's heralds two days ago.







This one, I think, marked my approach.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 17, 2007.
 



It was the fog slung across the valley that I meant to photograph when I walked onto my balcony this morning.




Three minutes later, the sun had illuminated the altocumulus and stratus interposing, and I dutifully went back outside.




Shortly afterward, all went grey. Twelve hours later the sky was up to something again. I took to the balcony.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 14, 2007.
 



The evening of my arrival in the Hampton Roads locale was spent at the ancestral home of the event's host. The group was led in and through the house, to a wooden deck out back. A pair of copses were bookends to a bank of water, turquoise at dusk, whose proper name was of some very exacting concern.

"Every time you say 'swamp,'" chuckled our host, "my father's property drops by a hundred dollars." He preferred "wetlands," although my indirect professional experience with that word has been one of regulatory estoppel caused by the sighting of rare and spotted animals. Marsh? Too rough, whatever charm one finds searching for bullfrogs among the cattails. Lagoon? Not after its association with unneighborly webbed creatures that might emerge from beneath. Bayou is a smooth word for sales, if only it didn't invite corrections on finer points of geography and limnology. Whatever the landscape means to science, it was quite a view.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 7, 2007.
 



I haven't watched this year's greening as intently as I might, having witnessed a full bloom — south of the nation's capital, spring was already a few weeks old. That I would pay no subsequent attention to the weather is unlikely, what with the sky so opportunely bumptious.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 1, 2007.
 



With the main event of my trip to southeast Virginia on Saturday, I spent Friday visiting local attractions. My friend Ed and I began with the USS Wisconsin.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 30, 2007.
 



I spent the last five days in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, enjoying the happy company of good people.

Photographs were taken; photographs shall be shared.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 20, 2007.
 



Like the New Yorker who doesn't think to buy tickets for Broadway, I have not gone to the Lake Erie shoreline in about five years. I wouldn't have been there today, either, if not for a visiting Virginian who, learning that Huntington Beach was fifteen minutes away, promised lunch in exchange for his first look at a Great Lake. Halfway to our destination, I thought of cloudless sky, cerulescent water, mahogany buds and the camera inside my satchel.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 18, 2007.
 



As the lengthening of the day pushes sunrise to a point before any reasonable hour, I have a choice between waking earlier or managing the coincidence of light and color fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour later. Variety and rest are thereby served.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 11, 2007.
 



Sitting nearby is, for them, sometimes enough.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 6, 2007.
 



The chaplain of Syracuse University's Newman Association — as my father tells it — used to shake his head when students, anxious to shed heavy coats and slip on jackets, would pronounce spring attendant. "One more big storm left," Father would warn his flock. And the snow would sweep down and in.

Nearly forty years later, here, by the grace of God and the arctic: Easter squalls. Apropos, thunder crashed just now.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 2, 2007.
 



Thermometry balances later this week with the arrival of snow, so summery have the last few days been. Sunlit evenings can encourage any activity, but at the end of winter they are understood as a privilege. After a dinner hour spent reading, and listening to spring sounds through the apartment's narrowly open balcony door, I went for a walk.

April is here, nature having obliged the calendar. Tree frogs are chirping; cardinals are singing; and buds are swelling, the precocious ones already burst. There was only one concern tonight: what to do with the time.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 28, 2007.
 



Monday evening would have been warm no matter which number the little hand of clocks across northern Ohio were pointing to. The hour in question was one later than usual because of daylight saving, and an erubescent cloud formation slid to the east at seven twenty-six instead of six twenty-six, when the photographer might have been elsewhere. From Washington has come a purely discretionary statute that is — just this once? — due thanks.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 26, 2007.
 



And what a good twenty years it was. Partners in your airport.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 22, 2007.
 



Beginning with a colorful sunrise, yesterday ended with a pallor to the sky, which continued through this morning and led to a short squall a few moments ago, one of several likely to pass before tomorrow. Preserved in the photograph, nonetheless, is Wednesday's dawn.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 12, 2007.
 



I hadn't intended to photograph the church, standing across the street from the coffee shop where I worked over six years ago, and now visit for a late-Sunday-evening read. Of course, facing one direction on the way in, I could only notice utility lines and this tree, superimposed like scaffolding, on the way out.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 9, 2007.
 



Yesterday, the birds started to chirp. Today's thaw reached fifty-five degrees. Efflorescence: pending.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 6, 2007.
 



Clocks are to be set forward next week — not for thirty years has daylight saving time begun before the first Sunday of April. For some the hour's shift is a Saturday night nuisance and a languid Sunday, and for a few it is the officious handiwork of Washington bureaucrats conniving to make us sixty minutes late for church.

Me? I prefer light and the impression of warmth to long nights. At the periphery of the Eastern time zone, summer days stretch and blend into the perpetual; sunsets unfold after a gradual evening and an early riser can still catch sunrise, even dawn. Daylight saving brings all that, and it is very welcome.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 27, 2007.
 



Thursday, February 15th: One-hundred eighty degrees of ten degrees.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 21, 2007.
 



The cats have found purpose in the bathtub, if that which was the result of liberal interpretation.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 12, 2007.
 





Even if the stretch of clouds to the east weren't there, dawn was luminous enough to be photographed. It was out of a need for resolution that I waited to record sunrise.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 30, 2007.
 



Proposition.



Contrary.



General.



Particular.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 29, 2007.
 



Saturday's rain sluiced away the week's snowfall, which the balance of an albescent Sunday replaced. Undetermined is whether Cleveland's west side was, in the weather forecast, assured a downright mauve morning.

And, yes: the lot of the little yellow house has one less evergreen.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 24, 2007.
 



Office cleaning resulted in this backup tape drive's place of retirement being moved from mothballs to a landfill. Before the unit was sent out in a garbage bag, I took a photograph. Quick successions of modern electronics give us the opportunity to chuckle at ourselves and the way we once worked — the further back, the funnier — but the actual utility of old machinery can't be overlooked. Forty megabytes once amounted to a lot, and this beige box was worth the price paid, or near enough. Apposite to this as to history: context, context, context.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 19, 2007.
 





Though a little incongruent, sunshine and snow make for a paired characteristic of winter's that elevates the season.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 16, 2007.
 



Construction proceeds. I have deliberately avoided showing pictures out of sequential context, but this horizon's appeal was stronger than any discipline.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 10, 2007.
 



The steeple is presently unlit, but, for now, the bell tower will do.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 3, 2007.
 



For a few months I have been taking semiweekly photographs of the rugged construction site occupying the place where an indoor shopping complex, Westgate Mall, once stood. Work at the site through autumn was peripheral when it wasn't imperceptible, the west view from my office commanded by a great hill of earth, as if a motte for a wooden keep.

Yesterday, the hill had been drawn flat and today, construction crews are swarming about newly arrived steel building frames. I haven't taken photographs as regularly as I might have hoped, but at the current pace, differences between photographs — in the record I hope to complete — will be less a consequence of time than determination of the contractor.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 1, 2007.
 



Loss. That I am returning here: I know the darkness, Churchill's "black dog," well.

That I am returning here: I know that I can surmount.


UP THE ESCARPMENT: One must climb but friends may help with a belay. My thanks — you know who you are.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 24, 2006.
 



And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

— Luke 2:8-14

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 23, 2006.
 



Two days till, the heavens oblige.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 15, 2006.
 



If two Olympus digital cameras are the wisest, successive leisure investments I have ever made, a tiny bag in my satchel, which I carry nearly everywhere, was the most practical place to put the one I currently own.








Some sights are worth more than memory, and I wish to be prepared.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 13, 2006.
 



El Nino ascendant, winds have been blowing across the United States more strictly west to east than a familiar winter would require — so December, with just one exception early on, has been mild. Fifteen-day forecasts show a few signs of arctic air by Christmas. If that doesn't turn out, we look to a pair of truths: there is still much to see, and, even if there weren't, the twenty-fifth of the month is about more than traditions of northern climes.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 5, 2006.
 



Day: Monday, December 4, 2006. Conditions: Partly to mostly cloudy, snow flurries, trace accumulation. Comment: Almost.




Day: Tuesday, December 5, 2006. Conditions: Mostly cloudy to overcast, light to moderate snow showers, accumulation up to three inches. Comment: There we are.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 29, 2006.
 



Are the sunsets these days attendant or tangential to warmth ahead of a plunge into wintry weather?



If the latter, I still vouch for their beauty.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 21, 2006.
 



I can't say I have seen many icy eastern skies at daybreak, but then I scraped the year's first earnest frost off of my car windows this morning.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 19, 2006.
 



The sun hasn't been seen since it peeked through this interstice yesterday morning.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 16, 2006.
 



Yesterday the weatherman told us that snow would follow rain on Friday. By day's end that forecast had been corrected, frozen precipitation stayed by wind and temperature until Sunday. This morning, snow is back on the calendar — early Saturday morning, assures the weatherman. I will try not to hold him to his word.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 6, 2006.
 

On the first syllable of the word "camera" was where my father stopped. Thursday evening dinner with my mother and father had ended and I was leaving for home, and when I opened the front door and turned back to say goodbye to my parents the conversation was arrested by the unnatural half-sentence. I met my father's expression, seconds passing in slow motion as I contemplated what could be seen over my shoulder and through the storm door's glass panel.



Snow.




The east side of Cleveland had a forecast for an inch or two, but cold winds sweeping across a warm Lake Erie must have shifted a bit towards the south and west.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 31, 2006.
 



I saw this, the western sky aflame, from a facing office window — and ran down four flights of stairs to catch it.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 26, 2006.
 



Mac's mane is conspicuous, now.



Lutescent intrusions on Mitsubishi's coat have subsided.





Fortunately for the sakes of endearment, photography and the specialty cat food industry, my kittens have several more formative months.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 16, 2006.
 



Is there any condition for a lustrous sunrise almost every morning? Just one, and that is the retention of a sense of wonder.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 12, 2006.
 



But for a total of three or four minutes, tiny snowflakes fell on the west side of Cleveland.



This just days after an examination of the electrostatically diffusive properties of feline fur took place.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 3, 2006.
 







Moments later the sky turned a dark purple, thunder followed the bursts of static over the AM station playing on my kitchen radio; and a light, autumn morning rain fell.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 1, 2006.
 



I've got a home on the other side.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 26, 2006.
 



Having taken photographs, over the last two years, of two aging cats I was left unprepared for the elusive restlessness of Mac and Mitsubishi.




For every picture worth presenting there are about three blurry examples of a failure to catch the pair on camera.




The lucky moments can be found, but only through patience.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 14, 2006.
 



A day of rain in exchange for a magnificent evening? Yes, please.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 11, 2006.
 



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 6, 2006.
 





Two mornings, two skies: while autumn clouds may lack the columnal dramatics of July's thunderstorms they draw the eye and the photographer, just after sunrise, through acts of evanescence.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 30, 2006.
 

My kittens have spent the last few days adding the apartment's many nooks and crannies to their realm with an ineluctable persistence. After the pair discovered the bathtub, the sink and my sock drawer, Mac spied a tiny, white arrow flitting from one end of a dark box's glassy face to another.



He gave chase.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 22, 2006.
 



Three months ago I told a friend that I would kneel among the yellow daylilies, camera in hand, and take pictures up close enough to see "fly spittle." It wasn't exactly a promise but I did indeed take photographs, an elocutionary flourish like that one begging to be fulfilled.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 14, 2006.
 



To how many was this, a canopy best shattered, just the sky under which we began our Monday morning?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 6, 2006.
 



I made a double adoption on Friday: introducing Mitsubishi and Mac.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 31, 2006.
 



After skipping 2005, I visited my friend Ed in Albany this past weekend.



Late Friday and early Saturday, Ed confirmed that he was coming down with something. Apart from a pair of dinners — one Italian and the other Indian — the two of us made a single photography trip. Determined to spend at least an hour outdoors, we walked around Historic Albany.



Several parts of which were indeed aged, if not exactly vintage. By Sunday morning Ed was running a fever, so we stayed inside. He apologized repeatedly for the sedentary and uneventful weekend that had shaped up.



But it was in the mundane that we found the otherworldly.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 25, 2006.
 







This has been a typical Ohio summer, thunderstorms passing in reliable succession. Serenity, din, serenity, din, serenity; in that order.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 16, 2006.
 



"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

— Philippians 2:5-8

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 12, 2006.
 


For the last ten years — since the day circumstances forced me to cast off childhood — I have enjoyed seasons with more immediacy when they are a half-year away. By that I mean Yuletide, the first snow, spring's bloom, autumn's turn or torrid summer days can be savored without the distractions and worries of daily living. Caught in the moment, I have only my camera and the best discipline of my will to commit to print and memory the beauty around me as I attend to this or that matter.

This year has delivered quite a yield of trials and passions.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 15, 2006.
 


Winter has traded places with spring and, for at least the next fortnight, shall stay here. My money is on spring.

 
 
 
Part II of III: Arrival.
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 13, 2006.
 


En route to San Diego, the elemental landscape below my jet yielded briefly to specks of cities and towns; checkerboard patterns of discreet attempts to work the soil.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 11, 2006.
 


This evening was the first of the year I spent half an hour walking; beauty was seen and peace of mind attained. Would that it all stay that way.

Will the reader who a) lives in San Francisco, b) faithfully visiting my website through c) Firefox on a d) Macintosh computer please identify himself or herself? You may e-mail me here. I am simply curious. As an incentive, your loyalty shall be rewarded tomorrow with new content (yes, I have been occupied and have rather gotten behind).

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 9, 2006.
 


Thunder in the distance? It was quiescence, not etiolation, that had left flora and fauna in arrest. Birds chirped and earth cracked open green. Winter took one step back, then another, and another.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 20, 2006.
 



 
 
 
Part I of III: Cleveland to Parts Unseen.
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 12, 2006.
 


September 24, 2005, was the wedding date chosen by my cousin Francis and his bride-to-be. The location: Mary, Star of the Sea, a modest parish in La Jolla, California. Any point west of Chicago is an unlikely place to find me — the other side of the country, you say? This was to be the longest jet flight I had ever taken, soaring above terrain of which I could conceive as depicted in a book — but not before my own eyes.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 8, 2006.
 


"Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.

"When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God."

Ecclesiastes 5

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 1, 2006.
 


Bluster led the first days of an albescent December. By Christmas, an Alaskan shunt of wind and air helped lead warm, not cold, air into the Eastern United States. January was inordinately warm, resembling March more than the middle of winter. As if following the Gregorian calendar, temperatures have fallen with the arrival of February — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted the possibility for a cooling trend along the Eastern Seaboard. I will admit, for a man who prefers cold, wet and white, that these mild five weeks were as sparing of things manmade as those sired in creation — like the heart. Now winter may return in full, and we shall adjust, but as someone dear recently reminded me, often what shifts in regards to normalcy are our expectations of it.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 7, 2006.
 


Perfectly arranged for Saturday morning. Snow, J.S. Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium and coffee with cream — sent, respectively, from the heavens; Eisenach, Thuringia; and Indonesia.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 29, 2005.
 

It was a blessed Christmas.



It was a photogenic Christmas.



The one surely begot the other.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 18, 2005.
 


But one star and one earth, and the face of tomorrow is yet unknowable; muse, at first light, begun anew.



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 15, 2005.
 


Old friends. Dear, old friends.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 4, 2005.
 


Snow began falling just after eleven o'clock last night.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 2, 2005.
 


Any guesses?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 29, 2005.
 


When warm southerly air drove through here on Sunday the low, grey panoply delivering snow last week shattered into a jumble of clouds thrust at every angle. The front gave us two days' reprieve from bundling up, some wind and some rain; its balmy remainder fodder for the chilly mass rolling in from behind.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 21, 2005.
 


There are two weeks on the calendar when travail is welcome, when bustle and burden are taken with good cheer. One week begins today and the other follows nearly thirty days hence.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 15, 2005.
 


Meteorologists know the North Atlantic Oscillation as a large-scale pattern of climate variability, an arctic mass of pressure rising and falling to drive winter weather with the repercussive mandate of a fulcrum. Those of us laymen unmindful of the cause are familiar with the consequences: when the phenomenon is in a high-pressure negative phase, one of which it now appears to be entering, it delivers to the eastern United States a wintery melange.

Snow will fall, they say, before the week is out.

ON A FINE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: Flurries arrived. I gasped. I giggled. I reveled.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 8, 2005.
 


Is there any doubt as to the verity of the Great Seal of Ohio?





Or the arrival of the season? It is rumored — it was yesterday, is not today but may again be tomorrow — that snow will mix with this Thursday's rain.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 2, 2005.
 


The sun rose — and I was there.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 1, 2005.
 




At a proper height we can observe one sky and one landscape as it conjures artistry without sophistication or pretense, treasure from which there is never surfeit.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 18, 2005.
 


Fifteen years young.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 17, 2005.
 


Though a yearly regret at summer's end is the gradual approach of winter's sovereign night, the shortening of the day returns sunrise to a reasonable hour.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 10, 2005.
 

autumn_october_10.jpg

The leaves are swirling, the rain is cold and the air is brisker by the day. It is only a matter of weeks, now, before the first snow.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 5, 2005.
 


These balmy days of Indian Summer are a delightful coda — and the last steps on a precipice. Welcome, Autumn.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 26, 2005.
 


I have just returned from a trip to San Diego, California for attendance at my cousin Francis' wedding. Yes, those are real palm trees below the Pacific horizon and no, I had never before seen them in their proper estate.

More to follow.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 18, 2005.
 

The divine wishes to speak.

THE ROCK, STRUCK TWICE: Providential origin or not, I decided to push the color later in the day. Must I now hire a lawyer to appeal my debarment from the Promised Land?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 14, 2005.
 


The leaves have begun to fall. And what has my city forecast for it this evening? Thunderstorms.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 9, 2005.
 


Yesterday, I took the above photograph with the camera I owned — an Olympus C-5060.



This morning, I took the above photograph with an Olympus C-7070, the camera for which I sold my C-5060. My parents have been without a reliable, semi-professional camera since their aging Canon thirty-five millimeter became too costly to repair without considering a digital replacement. A paralyzing breadth of available models and other financial priorities delayed their purchase — indefinitely, perhaps, had I not decided to browse the B&H website while chatting about photography to my friend, Ed, and found the C-7070 at an extraordinarily attractive price. Would my parents be willing to take a C-5060 at the going used-item rate? They would, and wrote a check for the agreed sum.

The C-7070 arrived yesterday. It is identical in form; the plating is dark grey and smooth to the C-5060's mottled black. The C-7070's mode dial is completely redesigned, thankfully, given the C-5060's notorious difficulties — an electronic failure that, earlier in the year, disappeared as suddenly as it appeared during the operation of my model, though I am prepared to help should my parents encounter a relapse. Each camera uses an electronic menu very similar to the other's; the C-7070's graphic user interface slightly more solid, if more intrusive.

Performance? Yesterday's horizon did not, I will admit, offer the best light, try as I did to meter from the hills and not the sky. But the C-7070 metered both ground and clouds similarly, its response to the yet-disparate amounts of light much more subtle. And with 30 percent more pixels, the C-7070's exposure — even when reduced to a size appropriate for posting — appears to be slightly finer than that of the C-5060.

I have the same camera with a few improvements, and two of my closest associates are now free to take their own snapshots. That's good fortune.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 2, 2005.
 


An open-air market: walking through neighborhood yards during today's lunch hour, I caught two American Goldfinches at their own work. My camera has been bundled in my satchel nearly every day of the summer, so I quickly pulled it out; and for the next two minutes I crept, a foot forward at a time, lens up, stalking the birds.



Nearly ten feet away, I snapped a couple reasonably well-defined exposures before I took the step that finally frightened the two creatures and sent them flying off, a startled peep each.

I grinned, watching the finches' progress upward through florid yellow, green and blue before losing sight of them; and began walking at a regular pace again, cutting through yards to where I had parked my car. Like everyone else I had Hurricane Katrina's wake on my mind, and that moment with the birds tugged at a memory. I was readying myself for the day on the morning of July 14, 2001 when my father picked up the phone to receive the anticipated message from my uncle that my grandfather had died. Over the murmur of the brief conversation between brothers, I heard an exuberant twittering of birds outside an open window in my parents' bedroom and considered the birth up a tree in the yard; and out in the city, the state, the country and the world, as one man's life came to an end, after nine decades, in Astoria, New York. Creation having made — through youth — tomorrow possible, I thought, none of what came before will be in vain.

My thoughts turned to New Orleans, then back to the memory, and I took great consolation.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 19, 2005.
 


Every so often, the world shows its age.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 16, 2005.
 


With the early-week cold front came a scene change.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 15, 2005.
 


Seen coming or not, it's still a thunderstorm.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 11, 2005.
 


Where else but the Creation does one find mystery a constituent of daily routine?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 8, 2005.
 


To remember at the greatest depth of impediment: He will neither fail you nor forsake you.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 2, 2005.
 



Two weeks ago, splendor rumbled through.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 26, 2005.
 


Eastbound.



Westerly.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 4, 2005.
 

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 1, 2005.
 


Fourth of July weekend is bittersweet for summer's romantics — a celebratory inflorescence with family and for country at the height of the season, while the birds are nesting and the days run long, but a hinge on which two months quickly swing before Labor Day and summer's close.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 17, 2005.
 

A cool morning, a forest, some sunlight; a masterpiece of nature.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 15, 2005.
 

Yesterday's forecast was correct — to a point. I took my evening walk near sunset and as I made my strides a small storm crept along north and west of North Olmsted on a steady northeast course.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 14, 2005.
 

"Where are the thunderstorms we heard forecast last night and this morning?" I heard called for question as I returned to the office from lunch. The weatherman had, indeed, predicted bad and even severe weather; blue sky and tiny cumulus vaults told us otherwise.

Twenty minutes later, with hardly a trace on radar, science was vindicated.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 10, 2005.
 

Discrete thunderstorms rolled through the Great Lakes yesterday and while none of them hit my locality they dominated the sky from early afternoon.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 31, 2005.
 

Saturday's weather was unsettled but purposeful and magnificent, expressions changing several times an hour as rain clouds moved past in succession.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 21, 2005.
 

Like nearly everyone else, I prefer to sleep through dawn but this morning left me no choice — so I decided not to miss an opportunity.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 19, 2005.
 


I enjoy winter but I don't long for it on the other side of the year as I do for spring and summer. Yet when confronted with each season's virtues — the cold, stillness of one and the warm, colorful bounty of the other — I'm tempted into wishing for the moment to stretch, the day to last forever. I wouldn't be the first man, of course, because those before me invented the photograph.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 17, 2005.
 

The green is generous, now.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 13, 2005.
 

Wednesday afternoon, a light thundershower followed Tuesday's rumblers; behind it, a very cool Thursday.


Today, warmer temperatures and another round of rain and lightning above an ever-greener world. We've met spring.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 11, 2005.
 

The Centurion Crabapples are in bloom.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 10, 2005.
 

Northeast Ohio's stubborn cold weather has ended and spring is finally, vigorously, establishing itself. On Saturday morning I noticed that the trees had made more progress in the last two days than the last two weeks. Knowing the bloom will be quick, now — it's eighty degrees at the moment, towering cumulus clouds rolling by — I caught my favorite balcony sight in a sequence, snapping photographs on Sunday, Monday and today.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, May 3, 2005.
 

This year's spring was briefly, if pleasurably, unseasonable in warmth before stopping short and stepping back, caught — as one year ago — in winter's stubborn pinch. After nature's weekend practical joke, we Greater Clevelanders took yesterday's bitter winds and moments of icy rain and sleet with something of a charitable consent. While cooking dinner, however, I glanced out my window and realized that this was no winter gale — it was a strange, cold summer storm. February's precipitation came down from June's cloud banks.

An hour later, a rainbow appeared for a minute or two before it was enveloped by a wide, white sheath of humor gliding along like a tornadic column.



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 28, 2005.
 

I don't know what sun, star, cloud and sky said to one another this morning but it was quite a conversation.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 24, 2005.
 

Yes, I concede: it's beautiful. It's also either one month late or six months early. Sunshine and seventy, please.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 20, 2005.
 

Sunrise as gratuity. Thunderstorms have been forecast — though given the youth of the season, "alleged" is more fitting. A line is quickly approaching, some cloudtops rising above 35,000 feet. Earnest cumulonimbus may arrive this afternoon; if the sky doesn't consolidate into a featureless grey, plumes should be visible. My camera remains at my side.

FEATURELESS GREY: And we've some snow in store for us. Can't win them all.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 18, 2005.
 

Sunday's sky was beautiful. Today, Monday, was gorgeous and warm. Tomorrow's temperatures should climb into the low eighties.



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 12, 2005.
 

On Friday, I managed to catch the vanguard of the front garden at my folks' house unfurl. Three mild days later, the daffodils and hyacinths came into a fuller bloom.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 11, 2005.
 



A new week, a new day.

Those contrails are so relentless, there's often as much man as God in the sky. But the jetliner script never seems to take hold as well.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 8, 2005.
 


Last year's daffodils and hyacinths sprouted before I'd purchased my camera — I wouldn't miss them this year.

Spring's raised her colors: the light at noon was perfect, the subjects beautiful.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 3, 2005.
 

Its arrival was a bit of an imposition but yesterday's brisk snowstorm was discreet, with everything left as it was on Friday.



The thermometer passed fifty by mid-afternoon today, melting most of the slush and ice flung around by twenty-five miles-per-hour wind gusts, and the beginning of daylight savings time has made for a bright, long evening pleasant enough to content nearly anyone.



The weatherman's talking of one more cold spell; then on to spring.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 2, 2005.
 


Two days ago we were basking in a sunny, sixty-seven degrees. Old Man Winter's such a card.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, April 1, 2005.
 


I've simply been lucky for the last three days. But from one vantage point of the countless across the world, the sun, sky and earth must paint this picture every morning.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 31, 2005.
 



And this is what I saw.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 30, 2005.
 

Grey has been so prevalent for the past two months I've kept my camera switched off, uninterested in the sameness. When I wake these days I peek out the window to get a sense of the sky.


I wouldn't want to miss a sunrise like this one.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 27, 2005.
 


Why fum’th in fight the Gentiles spite
In fury raging stout?
Why tak’th in hand the people fond,
Vain things to bring about?
The kings arise, the lords devise,
In counsels met thereto,
Against the Lord, with false accord,
Against His Christ they go

— Thomas Tallis, Third Tune for Archbishop Parker's Psalter

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 23, 2005.
 


(Albany Excursion Parts I, II and III.)

After an early morning rise and long day's adventure on Saturday, Paul, Ed and I took Sunday more slowly. In early afternoon Ed drove us past streets of beautiful, 19th-Century townhouses to Albany's Washington Park. Uphill and downhill, we passed small groups, families, sunbathers and an enormous "Pride" event smack in the middle of the park. Respectfully circumventing the thumping beat of at least one rendition of "We Are Family," our straight trio was hit on only once, if by a seedy-looking fellow with a handlebar mustache who sounded distinctly like Sonny Bono.



 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 21, 2005.
 


That's exactly what I and my friends Ed and Paul were doing on a Sunday last June. Albany Excursion 2004, Part IV, comes tomorrow evening.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, March 20, 2005.
 


The bottom quarter of that horizon will only grow greener with time.

I spent some time last night compiling the last of my photographs from the Albany Excursion 2004; they'll be on the uBlog before week's end. (For those unfamiliar: Parts I, II and III.)

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, February 21, 2005.
 


Friday was unseasonably warm, the apex in what this winter has proved to be a robust cycle of freezes and thaws, and no less beautiful in late afternoon and twilight.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 8, 2005.
 

Most of my Christmas morning at the tree was spent having a ball with my folks as we opened presents and enjoyed a succession of coffee, cinammon rolls, orange juice and chocolates. Naturally, catblogging took place.





Rascal and Buddy got what they wanted for Christmas: paper to play with and a few winks.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, January 8, 2005.
 


1. Where in the world did all this snow come from?

2. What difference does it make?


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 25, 2004.
 

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 24, 2004.
 




Merry Christmas.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 23, 2004.
 


Twelve inches and counting. During the night, precipitation changed to freezing rain and then back to snow, just in time for rush hour. Work, which ended up a half-day yesterday due to the weather, was called off today. The storm is being called "historic." My family remembers heavy Northeast Ohio snowfall of the early 1980s, and we agree.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 18, 2004.
 

Catblogging has been brought into vogue, so with a camera and two adorably photogenic cats within five miles of me, I'm happy to join the bandwagon.

In April of 1990, my family drove a few streets over to the home of a former teacher of my sister's; the woman's cat had recently become a mother and a brood of six kittens needed loving homes. This was new for us, as the Ubaldi household was one of few pets. My father has suffered from considerable allergies all his life: ragweed, mold, pollen, trees, and dander from most animals. He hardly enjoyed a day of clear breathing when the family kept a guinea pig for a few years in the mid-1980s, and as his allergist put it, he benefited enormously from the fact that the animal was stuck in one place at all times. Dad's reaction to dogs was legendary — they were out of the question. We assumed every other animal with fur was, too, until my father asked his allergist to try him for cats.

No reaction. After certain family members could finally be convinced that cats were not agents of the devil, it was decided that two cats be purchased, one ostensibly for me and the other for my sister.

The dam had made good: three black kittens, two grey and a tiny, black-and-russet thing who was, we were told, the runt of the litter. We visited once, when the mewling little cherubs could fit three times over in a washtub; and again, some weeks later, when they were nearly weaned and my sister and I were to select our kittens. The brood had been moved to a shed where they could run, jump and tumble under lock and key — they'd learned those skills quickly, no longer the immoble puffy balls in a washtub, and had a mind to dart away from us the moment my sister's teacher opened the shed door to let us inside. All except two: the brown runt and one of the two greys. The runt moved towards my sister, who squatted, then picked up the kitten to place it on her knee, where it stayed. The grey cat, as my mother tells it, wanted to follow his brothers and sisters but, startled by the shed's new entrants, froze in confusion. I scooped it up.

More visitors, invited by the teacher to adopt the rest of the brood, stepped into the shed as my sister and I each petted our catch. "I think they've found their kittens," smiled one.

We took the cats home on the third and final visit. As luck would have it, mine was a boy; my sister's was a girl.

They say that dogs are the best companions. The last fourteen years have led me to disagree.

The russet cat is Rascal. Rascal is strange. She is a cat but occasionally acts as if she were a dog or a rat — or even a slug. Last Sunday, at my folks' house, Rascal played groundhog. (Note the Garfield book in the first photograph; serendipitous symbolism.)


This is dear, old Buddy. He — means well.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 12, 2004.
 


The weather outside is delightful, and if your opinion is less flattering you're probably thinking about this year's trip to Florida. So be it. This photograph was taken three hours ago, and snow has been falling since. Even in tiny flakes, white, icy walls whirled as I drove to church on the appropriately rural Mastick Road. Cleveland classical music station WCLV was playing a choir's performance of Gloria in Excelsis Deo. It was...glorious.

LATER:

Here's the King, nearly complete; bows, icicles and family ornaments will finish the trimming. The sheer convenience of my Olympus made documentation of our decades-old trimming tradition possible. I'll put it up between now and Christmas. In the meantime, watch for some new sights on the masthead.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, December 11, 2004.
 

Outside, the snow is falling and I just finished calling my folks, "Yoo-hoo." After a hearty Bob Evans breakfast, we'll drive an hour south to chop down our Christmas tree. As my father explained at a party last night, the last pre-cut tree he bought was in 1974, a season spent hearing the dulcet chime of needles falling to the floor by the dozen. The Ubaldis have taken their tree directly from the ground ever since. Dad prefers Douglas Fir; I love the smell and sharpness of Blue Spruce. Either way, our find will be beautiful and uBlog photographs will follow. Enjoy the day!

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, November 12, 2004.
 


I don't need to explain the relief and gratification I feel now that the election is over and the holidays are the only planned events between us and year's end. Nearly every leaf in Northeast Ohio is on the ground, and that the trees retain their beauty tells us something about the majesty of nature.



As the adage goes, twilight is so to save the best for last.



The same goes for winter and the Christmas season. This year is no exception, and I look forward to it.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 23, 2004.
 

Whenever I think "park," my mind conjures up dog-walkers, frisbee-flingers and sunbathers — none of which excite me or offer reason enough to enjoy a beautiful day at the mercy of crowds when work can be done and fun be had in a suitably sunny room indoors.

Congress Park was different, probably because Americade's crowds mixed with the usual denizens from Empire State College. But there was more; from the semi-circular sign at the park's gate, the archways beyond it, to the extraordinary efforts obviously made to preserve over the years the park's original stylings, Congress Park was downright classy.



As was the day.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 22, 2004.
 


I sleep well virtually anywhere: in cars, on the floor, on benches, on couches. When I visited my friend Paul in Athens for his senior photography show in the spring of 2002, he gave me his bedroom couch — what could otherwise be described as a faithfully rectangular, plaid mass of cushion. For one lying down, it functioned like an adjustable bed, which couches aren't supposed to do, but for three nights it was the best roughing-it sleep I've ever had.

The couch in Ed's entertainment room is a close second; every night during the three visits made over the past two years, I've closed my eyes, shifted a bit and awakened six to eight hours later. (Then run down the apartment's thirty foot hallway to the bathroom before I burst.) Wonderful.

The morning after Friday's grand adventure was no different. I was up by eight-twenty; Paul had already gone running and within fifteen minutes, the two of us walked a hundred feet down the road to a corner Stewart's store, purchased a coffee each and unholstered our respective cameras, shooting every inch of Ed's front lawn and porch.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, October 9, 2004.
 


Autumn's here. Pass it on.

SCIENCE CLASS: Refresher course here.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 25, 2004.
 

Last night's sky was busily working something through and, naturally, did it with grace.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 1, 2004.
 

Because two breathtaking rises are better than one.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 31, 2004.
 

This photograph I took this morning. The Valley forest's fog is a gift of spring and summer — my two favored seasons — but with the Olympus, this autumn will be for me the most anticipated in a long time.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 28, 2004.
 

Homecoming continues. I spied this trailer Wednesday night: what are carnival rides without power? And what's power when it doesn't come directly from the Hammer of Thor?

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, August 14, 2004.
 

This August has been the mildest (read: comfortable) I can remember, and possibly the coolest on record. What began as a sultry, vivacious summer (yes, "summer" and not "woman") has gone benign, with not more than five thundershowers (no, not even storms) over the past sixty days or so. But you can't argue with pleasant weather, especially when you have Saturday afternoons that look like this:


Care of the greatest investment I ever made. Much more beautiful than Colorado. But then we don't have zombies.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 5, 2004.
 

A wonderful Fourth weekend — with weather to match. Here's to hoping yours was as delightful.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, July 2, 2004.
 

The morning of June 11th was one all-too-typical of Cleveland in summer: cloudy, a bit muggy, soggy. Dagobah. I oblige nature to help the grass along. I like a rainy day. But travel isn't travel when it's not under a blue canopy. The low pressure front was an east-to-west affair, fortunately, and weather radar showed it breaking off abruptly over Erie, Pennsylvania. That meant Paul and I would cross into sunny skies during the first third of our trip. Taking a picture of the Albany Excursion Vehicle — my darling PT Cruiser with aftermarket, mullioned wood grain, affectionately known as Dolly — I noted that beauty made some use of the wetness before I wished it to go the hell away, pronto.


 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 30, 2004.
 

The flight to Kelleys Island Airport was quick, beautiful and painless. Haze made nearly all attempts at photography fruitless, but I managed to catch a few above the Lake Erie shoreline that managed at least to look like a colorful evening.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 17, 2004.
 

In Cleveland, weather goes from curious to downright ugly and dangerous in moments. Speaking of photographs, the Albany Excursion will be online this weekend. Right now, I'm battening down the hatches.

 
 
 
 
Michael Ubaldi, June 3, 2004.
 

A few times over the course of last year I made promises to start a photography weblog. I certainly had the material, snapping shot after shot of the view outside my window and footage from some field trips. On the craftsman's side of things, however, a separate weblog just wasn't coming; I tried and failed to satisfactorily finish a creative design, experimenting with side-scrolling, letterbox inset and frames. Not interested in duplicating this weblog's common vertical scroll, I've resolved at this point to do as I've done for several months and place photographs on the uBlog — so tonight inaugurates category Fotografi. Unless they specifically pertain to a more appropriate topic, all my photography can be found here.

In keeping with practice, captions will be the picture alternate text tag; exceptions where appropriate. A final note of tradition is that I expect most pictures to be meteorological in subject and, of course, from my balcony — but as I noted two weeks ago, the view is bursting with variety, not least the ever-changing weather up above. On that, a woman at my company's favorite printer told me yesterday of a pair of brothers she knows who share my love of the sky, setting up lawn chairs to watch the approach of any shapely clouds — from puffs of cumulus to musclebound thunderstorms. Especially thunderstorms. The two will stay outside while the rain, wind and lightning strikes; neighbors, she laughed, stopped listening or watching for weather reports when they realized they had observers just a door down.

I applaud their courage as I'll make sure to place a roof between me and the rumbling leviathans, I told her. "There's always a little voice in my head," I laughed, "saying, 'You know, it's just going to be one heck of a silly obituary. Get inside.'"