Musings

We made an airport run this morning…well after the standard weekday traffic blockages had dissipated. Nice rays for a church-view, no?

Posted at 8:35 PM | Comments Off on Backlit church

We took the fast road getting out of BigTown, then hit the back roads for some scenic, on our afternoon jaunt to LittleTown aka Athens.

After the cotton field of red clay, we visited this covered bridge, notable for not having steel reinforcement beams underneath it, yet still carrying traffic. It does, however, have a steel (aka “tin”) roof.

This is the Town lattice truss style of construction, and the pegs holding the beams/planks together are formally called trunnels. [Auto-correct wants that to be tunnels…which is #NOTright.] The bridge was moved here from another location in 1924, and I don’t know if the planks were numbered then or later….

In LittleTown, we saw family and had some good laughs, ate pizza, and commiserated about this #growinOLDstuff, creak-ouch.

Posted at 10:38 PM | 1 Comment »

May this year.

This Great Southern and Western Railway bridge is on the northwestern arc of the Ring of Kerry, west of Dooks (not Doors, auto-correct). Love the contrasting wedges of shadow and light on the uprights.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Arc on arc

I browsed the Ireland photos from this spring looking for a nice image for this space…and, in near-thumbnail, I thought this shield highlighted binoculars. I zoomed in. Nope, castle towers.

This decoration is high on the wall of a building facing Grafton Street in Dublin, between the second and third stories (by USA count).

Posted at 9:16 PM | Comments Off on Peering closely

This painting is by the English painter Joseph Gandy (1771–1843), and is called Jupiter Pluvius, and is dated 1819. We saw it at the Tate Britain last spring, on loan from Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013), a legendary stop-motion animator. Harryhausen took “a huge inspiration” from this painting.

You can tell by the image that Gandy and his brothers were architects, no? The setting is an ancient Greek town named Lebadeia, and now called Livadeia. I can’t tell why this place appealed to Gandy as a setting for this imaginary architectural complex, as there are no heights next to the real river. Maybe the name was what appealed to him? Given how many figures are on the bridge, it’s interesting how many areas there are basically empty of humans.

This is an appeal to the imagination and being calm, as we hear about real-world destruction by earthquake and hurricanes, as Jupiter Pluvius is the rain-giver version/aspect/epithet of this god of sky-weather-thunder.

Posted at 7:02 PM | Comments Off on Cross-cultural comment

When I’m doing one of my exercises, I’m on my back and this is my view. I like to peer up at the flange at the ceiling, in which I can see all the very rectangular windows and doors distorted into flaring shapes.

As I concentrate on rocking my hips up and down, left and right, and then circle through all those positions “like a compass,” my instructor said. Does that make this somewhat spidery chandelier-view a kind of compass rose?

Posted at 4:56 PM | Comments Off on Encompassing?

Yesterday I was thinking about the Gulf Coast of Florida…today, it’s the Atlantic Coast, a pier at Jacksonville Beach last January. Pretty placid then…Irma’s gonna be stirring things up in this area by Saturday…time to prepare! Traffic is solid coming out of the Keys already….

Posted at 5:04 PM | Comments Off on Pier peering

The Guru made a run with Droney last evening…downtown looks pretty darned picturesque in this light, no?

Posted at 7:54 PM | Comments Off on Elevated perspective

Bench on slope below east façade, St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland (last May).

For me, the feet seem heavy compared to the seating surface of this bench.

And the form/materials are nothing like the gothic-revival style of the cathedral, which was built in the mid-1800s to mimic/echo the much earlier original gothic style.

I like the bench, and would be happier with it in a modern setting.

Sorry, no celestial adventure today.

Posted at 9:24 PM | 1 Comment »

Yes, it was a gloomy day (in late May) when we took the Thames ferry past the Millennium Bridge, which points north at St. Paul’s.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Alignments (London)