Frames a-changing
Friday, 24 August 2018
The Guru took Droney up. Look at that gleaming gold dome!
In a closer frame of reference, see the stalking insect! They enjoy flowers, too.
Am I writing for five-year-olds?
Musings
On the move
Friday, 13 July 2018
Toyota model skipper trapper killer. Sorry guys/ladies.
Bridge crossing was murky with the Great Lakes version of the marine layer.
By several miles south of the bridge, we were in the heat that blankets the southern/lower peninsula. Barn of northern LP.
Barn of southern LP; more active agriculture here.
We did the mosque turn differently than the highway version. Pretty light this time of day.
We stayed in the mid-summer Golden Hour in the next state south. This is a northern Ohio barn. Plenty of agricultural evidence here.
We’re holed up in AC and boring architecture. Works for us tonight!
Excursion SW day
Thursday, 28 June 2018
We headed out early, down the Garden Peninsula to the ghost town of Fayette. Here’s the business part of town, where workers made charcoal pig iron for 24 years. The market began to decline and the hardwoods they made the charcoal from were no longer nearby…and, pfft, an industrial town went out of business.
I always take harbor-pilings photos. The water seemed higher than the last few years.
We made our return via Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring. Love the raft ride, powered by park visitors’ arms.
More trout(?) that I ever remember seeing swam in the depths as we made our slow crossing and return.
Hot day; good day to avoid outdoor chores by going sight-seeing!
Expanding my horizons
Thursday, 7 June 2018
I was out early as temps were predicted to reach 90°F, and the low-angle sunlight was stunning on this lily.
Indoors, I did some reading about khirigsuurs, Bronze and Early Iron Age civic-ceremonial monumental stone constructions in Mongolia I’d not “heard” of before. I did not find out how the word is pronounced, although GooTranslate indicates it includes Mongolian, but the software/database doesn’t “recognize” the word khirigsuur.
Off season chores
Sunday, 3 June 2018
Without planning to, one of our Paris wanders last March took us by Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros. Lots of construction going on on the lanes between the courts. Of course, no tennis players in sight, only construction workers and perhaps engineers(?), also wearing boots and hard hats…but their clothes were clean…and they tended to carry rolls of charts/maps(?).
Urban picnic
Thursday, 31 May 2018
We picnicked tonight—the kind of picnic where we go to the neighborhood deli and get goodies, then take them to…tahdah!…our niece’s new place,* her first with her fiancé. Yay.
And the rich desserts did me in. The happy kind….
* Interesting window patterns in the new place, a duplex in a nice old neighborhood not far from our own. Humid out tonight, drippy humid, so it was good to eat inside in the AC….
Eastbound
Sunday, 22 April 2018
We met long-time, rarely seen friends at the restaurant of a Pueblo center honoring the nineteen pueblos of New Mexico for a languid brunch. I found the architectural details quite interesting. This lighting inset with mural: fun.
And in the courtyard, a dance circle. No one was dancing when we checked, but I liked seeing the linear footstep patterns that gave clues to the patterns of the dancers’ movements.
And, while the ladies retired to the restroom, the gentlemen chatted carefully holding the leftovers. Great guys!
Then it was time to begin the eastward trek. Over the first pass, we were in rangeland again.
However, we had a few miles of colorful, rugged landscape to go.
Rugged, colorful, and stratigraphic.
And, sometimes, complete with train.
Then, by Tucumcari, we found row crops in irrigated fields. Grain?
Somehow, when westbound we did not notice how large this wind farm is in the TX panhandle. Gigantic. Operated by a division of Southern Company. [Goo-ing indicates this is the Cactus Flats facility, with 43 wind turbines.]
Very Texas to have cattle and wind plants coexisting. Jessayin: we went through TX twice on this trip, and never set foot in the state. [You can only manage that if you pick the section of TX you cross VERY carefully; we picked the panhandle.]
OK sunset.
I was going to title this “Don Dinero,” but it didn’t fit. We saw a pawnshop with that name in ABQ; “Don Dinero” means Mr Money.
Adobe-city
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
The other day I learned that the city of Santa Fé’s architecture overseers permit forty-four shades of adobe, whether of clay, or of the far more common cement stuccoing (if I have it right).
I realized by the end of today, that I had a bunch of shots with different adobe(like) walls in them.
So, here’s a chance for you to compare shades/hues/tints/colors.
What names would you use for the various, um, terra cotta shades?
It seems I also managed to get a bunch of flower pictures today.
The flower colors—and organic shadow shapes—do highlight the natural light brown shades of the walls.
I also like the weathered wood matched with the adobe.
This building is not unusual in having different parts/wings/walls in different shades, and in having the normally shadowed porch the lightest shade of all.
That large tree-trunk shadow is from a cottonwood, álamo in Spanish.
This is probably some kind of ornamental apple.
Here are shade-variations on commercial buildings downtown.
Upon reflection, photographing the adobe walls was easier than naming the shades, and far more interesting.
Santa Fé potpourri
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
Closed alley(?) gate, New Mexico History Museum.
Façade/roofline copying Acoma church/mission/convento, New Mexico Museum of Art.
Obelisk, center of plaza. All Spanish land grants legal descriptions near Santa Fé are measured from this point. The plaza used to continue two blocks east and two west from the remaining portion.
St. Francis Hotel, holy water in lobby. With lapdogs. The beeswax candles are only lighted at night. The name dates to 2008; prior to that, it was the De Vargas Hotel, and it relocated here in 1924.
During the 2008 renovations, this old fireplace surround was discovered intact behind later materials. It was a surprise find. Note that to the left is the doorway to the Gruet tasting room; sadly, we skipped it.
Art in capitol walkway. The mandate to acquire/buy art dates to 1992.
Rotunda ceiling. This 1966 building is round, the only state capitol building to be so. There is no dome.
Capitol exterior, state seal sculpture above main entrance.
Historic building that is not adobe, and has not been adobe-ized.
The followign are all modern pots. Deer or elk?
Taos pottery is known for the mica flakes in the clay.
Channel 4 is an Albuquerque station.
Big bird. But what species?
Hummingbird.
Threatening lizards. Additionally creepy that the faces aren’t depicted.
Airbrush style. If this is in the clay pre-firing, I hypothesize that the technique is very complex/difficult.
Empty birdfeeders
Monday, 16 April 2018
Last night’s sunset. This landscape is dominated by light and shadow and shape. No wonder artists flock here. That is the visual dominance; living here you also notice the wind, dust, and temperature. Also sounds of birds (here), perhaps cattle elsewhere.
We cross a dry wash to our casita. In the solar lights along the path, the footprints in the sand looked like a lunar landscape with the treads of sports shoes not those of space suit boots.
Here’s a still life from the counter and wall left of the range in the main house.
This is the handle of the cupboard in the left edge of the photo above. The rest of the knobs are normal.
That’s Green Chili Bread on the left, quite spicy for bread. From the ovens of the restaurant/store we ate at last night. Paired with a normal, simple omelette. Superb breakfast.
After breakfast, I went out to the pool, took my shoes and socks off, and stood in the shallows. The Foot in the wild!
Our main focused activity today was to visit the historic plaza of Santa Fé, eat lunch, then head for the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. Stunning paintings, of course. Loved the photos of her, as a window into the person through her choice of garments, shoes, accessories, etc. This is a crop of O’Keefe’s 1939 painting Bella Donna.
Here are titles from her library. The display included a few sentences from a 1963 letter in which she observed that she’d taken three-and-a-half months to go around the world, then went across the Pacific to Bangkok and back with island stops. She went on to note that twice she’d been to Egypt and the place that stood out to her always was Peru. I assume the mountains….
Of course, there are few Stieglitz photos. And there were soundless moving images of them together, interesting—he seems to be putting up with being filmed while she seems to be somewhat cajoling him to participate (my hypothesis).
These are considered by some the first abstract photos. These two are from 1930 and 1929. Others in the sextet dated back to 1926. They are lovely dark, ghostly smudges, and not the kind of image I think of when I think of AS photos.
Off to cocktail hour chatting and laughing.
The title refers to my viewscape out the picture window in front of me at the casita, and what I noticed as I tried to formulate a title for this post. Very stream of unconsciousness.