The National Tree

I could not resist posting this photo of the National Tree in front of the White House with the Washington Monument in the background.  The star on top of the tree is being backlit by the winter morning sun.  It was somewhat breathtaking in the cold morning air.  The workers were around on all sides busily taking down fences, collapsing cold metal chairs and removing about an acre of snap-together flooring that had been installed for the tree lighting ceremony just a few days before.  The state trees standing in a circle around the big tree, which were fenced off at the time I was there, seemed smaller then when I saw them years ago.  They were only 3 feet high!  Such is recession I am guessing or maybe it is because we are trying to be green?  I know it is not because I have grown taller!  The National Tree greenery is almost hidden and weighted down by the strings of decorations and lighting.  It is sort of an instant decoration kind of thing.

There is a sad postscript to this photo above.  I had just lost all the photos I took in December.  None of my photos are publishable or worth turning into artwork, but they are mine and hold all my December memories and I am sick about this.  This photo and about 500 others are gone, gone, gone.  I did not delete them.  Something very similar to this happened last September when I was working with about 1,000 photos from my Canada trip and tagging them in my software and 100 from the first file disappeared.  A file recovery did not work.

I use PhotoShop Elements 8 which allows me to index photos by adding subject tags, people tags and even GEO/place tags.  I spent several hours going through bird photos tagging them by species and when I was all done, I checked my email and when I came back the entire December folder and most of the Bird folder were missing their files! Nothing was in my recycle bin and I couldn't find them using Windows Explorer.  Therefore, they were not just disconnected from the photo catalog in PSE8...they were gone!  I have tried to find the solution on the web but mostly Adobe just tells people they must have done something wrong because the software does not delete files by itself...!

I have been reasonably good about backing up photos either on CDs or another hard drive I have...but I only do that once a month, so missed that opportunity by a few days as I was still reviewing and weeding files.  I will get over this.  It is not someone's wedding or birthday photos...just my crap...my precious crap!