I thought I’d switch things up this month by posting my 12 of 12 in video form.
(And I confirmed with myself that I should stick to photography from here on in.)
So without further ado (since none was warranted in the first place), here they are:
Twelve
Twelve-second videos
of the
Twelfth of May.
7:18am: Passing Meredith Bay on the morning commute
While I’m not one to ramble on about my bodily functions on a regular basis, a couple of recent annoying and highly inconvenient incidents have left me perplexed, pondering, and philosophical.
On the evening of January 6th of this year, I was happily devouring my wife’s photo-worthy pork and pomegranate 
dish below, when, at a particularly lively moment in the conversation, and not having yet swallowed my most recent bite, I believe I laughed.
Or perhaps gasped.
Whatever I did, it involved a deep inhale.
And it was immediately obvious that at least one of those scrumptious morsels had gone down the proverbial wrong way.
I’ll cut to the (first) chase, and spare the details of the coughing, spluttering, googling, and speculating that ensued that night, save to provide this illustration:
Speculative Googling
Scary googling notwithstanding, I was sleepless and still wheezing 10 hours later when I attempted to ignore my predicament and head off to work, where the school nurse muttered the phrase aspiration pneumonia and told me to go straight to the ER.
So I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my ancient WordPress to where it should be able to comfortably exist in the 21st century clouds. And it was no small feat.
And I’m not finished. But I think I’ll save all that for another post.
It’s finally time to take my new back end out for a test drive. And what better way to begin than with my highly delayed (and anticlimactic) April 12 of 12?
When I tried to retrofit a theme onto this set, I decided to call it, for want of anything better,
1. A clean car. (Speaking of back ends.) I thoroughly cleaned out and vacuumed my car on the 11th (another amazing feat of a lower caliber), which made my day on the morning of the 12th.
This 12 of 12 is a celebration of a life lived.
On Sunday March 6th, around 3:15am, Patti-Ann Johnson, my mother-in-law, passed away peacefully at Speare Memorial Hospital as we sat by her side. She was 79.
My 12 of 12s are always taken on the twelfth of the month. And on the 12th of March, a Saturday, we were in the midst of the long—and still ongoing—process of going through the stuff in Patti’s home.
I loved Patti-Ann Johnson, and I hope this series of pictures I took that day helps to show what a fun-loving, vibrant person she was.
Patti’s past was always a part of her present.
Whenever a singer appeared on TV, she’d be taken right back to her own radio recording days… Read on…
It’s been a hectic month both at work and at home, and for the first non-purposeful time in over three years I’ve allowed a twelfth to go by before posting the previous one. Panic not however, o vast readership: I do have material from both twelfths past. And here below is February’s.
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So, upon reading my pensive, introspective 12 of 12 from January, my wife’s daughter came up with this interesting suggestion:
I found the idea both insightful and intriguing, but frankly couldn’t see it happening. So imagine my surprise when on Saturday morning the 12th of February, my wife told me that she’d be taking the pictures.
I have to admit that after documenting 37 consecutive 12ths of the month, it was a very odd feeling giving over the perspective to someone else. But it was also somehow liberating. Anyway, evidently I spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen.
I had a little existential dilemma this 12th, so this 12 of 12 is going to be a little different. Mouse over the pictures for their captions.
There is a phenomenon in particle physics known as the Observer Effect. You can’t observe an electron without changing its path.
And whether it’s an actual extrapolation or just a useful metaphor, I’ve always found it fascinating to contemplate that the actual essence of something can never be truly seen without being changed by the person doing the seeing.
My spiritual upbringing was in the First Parish Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts—the very same church whose minister, Edmund Hamilton Sears, in 1849 penned the Christmas carol It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. So this December’s 12 of 12 is set to its tune.
I tried making a karaoke version from an instrumental rendition, but it was way too hokey… so I just decided to do a single-take quiet a cappella one that gives the gist. Apologies to anyone who’s not tone deaf. Or anyone with any sense of rhythm or meter for that matter.
It came upon a weekend drear
The next of my twelve of twelves
And ‘neath Santa mug and glasses cloth
The dogs were my Christmas elves.
Second-to-last 12 of 12 of my third year of doing it… it’s nice to know I’m capable of some measure of self-discipline.
November 12th was a very busy day of work for me, after a very enjoyable beautiful Veterans Day off.
Having misplaced my camera battery charger, I had to borrow T2′s point-and-shoot for the day. She warned me of the camera’s limitations, and she was right. I ended up with a chronicle of the day, but a lot of the shots I’d hoped to include ended up unusable. So, without further ado, a disjointed depiction of my November 12th.
Former student Jessa, now an intern at NRHS, was a life saver this morning as I really didn’t have time to photocopy and alphabetize the couple of hundred NWEA reports I’d printed to accompany report cards.
Note: the date shown at the beginning of this video is mistakenly a year ahead of itself. It was shot and edited today.
Fibre de verre
Fibre de verre, je ne sais vibrer
Qu’en paratonnerre, je suis condamnée
A l’éclair, la foudre éphémère
Car si l’on m’aime
L’on doit me consumerMais demain, oui, demain
J’en fait le serment
J’ouvrirai les yeux
Mes deux yeux,
Tout en grand
Sur un bel homme
Un bel amant
Qui laissera ma vie sauve
Tout en m’aimant
Fibre de verre, je me suis cassée
Les dents, le nez, sur bien des affaires
De coeur trop pincé
De moeurs trop epicées
Car pour me plaire
Il faut me consumer
Mais demain, oui, demain
J’en fait le serment
J’ouvrirai les yeux, mes deux yeux,
Tout en grand
Sur toi, en somme
Mon bel amant
Toi qui assis, m’attend
Tout en m’aimant
Fibre de verre, je me suis allumée
Sans un éclair
Sans meme un brasier
Juste une lueur
En mon intérieur
Ta chaleur
A su trouver mon coeur
Mais demain, oui, demain…
I’ve vowed to get this posted in under half an hour.
My car’s in the shop an hour and a half away in Manchester, and in that car is the battery charger for my camera. So I shot the totality of my 34th 12 of 12 with my Samsung Acclaim Android phone.
I’m proud to say that I’ve been working out at the gym consistently all month. I forgot to get a shot inside, but here’s the building as I was leaving.