ABOUT today’s photo-of-the-day

I found the brass canister at the bottom of this lamp as shiny as the day it was born on a shelf with my mother-in-law’s daintiest of memorabilia and travel souvenirs, things like glass figurines and hankies. “Huh?” I asked my husband. He explained that when he was …

… 8 years old, he found the canister in his father’s outback junk pile—a common scene in rural America where “spare parts” are necessary for running a farm. Under pressure to come up with a birthday gift for his mother and without a penny to his name, he spent several days polishing it before giving it to her. Now that I’ve made it into a lamp, his precious gift has center status along with some pressure gauges that came off the family tractor, now aging gracefully in that same junk pile.

“In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.” -Aaron Rose