Tuesday, 15 September 2020
Of course, I took this picture for the momentary jab the play of light and dark and the mesh grid pattern generated in my not-yet-awake brain.
And, when I selected it for today’s fun photo, I thought: material culture…then: aesthetics…then that aesthetics are a learned value…and, pfft, I was descending into an anthropological abyss.
Recommendation: stick with the first paragraph.
Saturday, 12 September 2020
Here’re some perfectly fine titles I’m not currently making progress reading. I’ve been intending to read “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” (1941) for years…Rebecca West tells of her six weeks in Yugoslavia in 1939. Multiple discriminating writer-readers say it’s among the best travel books ever.
“The Overstory” is Richard Powers’s 2018 novel I’ve started and just stopped like it wasn’t good, yet it’s terrific. And complicated. In the best way.
“Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun” (1997) is Charles Hudson’s most-excellent telling of the cultural clash when Spanish explorers invaded southeastern North America. What a superb scholar and writer he was.
Mr. Salyer’s new-new, thoughtful, timely book…. He’s the reason I don’t call The Guru JC. Mr. Salyer was the JC in my life when I met The Guru, and I couldn’t handle two, although most everyone then knew him as JC.
Yes, another history of the west…pretty much starts with the Lewis/Clark expedition, to discuss the AMERICAN West…there’s plusses and minuses to that; it’s another cultural history, I guess. Picked up HW Brands’s “Dreams of El Dorado” on our way through Austin last year–his hometown, so signed copy.
And all of them essentially collecting dust at the moment. Speaking of which: seems to me there’s extra dust in the house in these Covid times; however, nothing like the nastiness in the air in the western air with those huge wildfires. Yikes!
Thursday, 10 September 2020
I tried some filter fun with some naturally distorted images (through dirty window-glass).
As you can tell, I didn’t spend long at it.
I like parts of both, but neither more than the other, on balance.
Saturday, 5 September 2020
I avoided being afoot in the neighborhood today (left knee cranky), but The Guru flew high. Photo by him. With gigantic thanks
Friday, 4 September 2020
Yeah, look at that hotness. Thank you for your filter, MsTree.
MrSun is arriving later, leaving earlier, yet still bringing high-80s temps. Yet, Summer, we see signs you’re waning.
Thursday, 3 September 2020
This shop space had a restaurant, then another restaurant, and another, just a long series of dining establishments over the last few decades that I’ve been watching. Then, with the January 2020 new year, one moved out, and we began watching that space. Soon, dumpsters showed up and workmen closed the sidewalk and raised dust…for quite some time. Then the dumpsters and workmen disappeared, no restaurant opened, and all has been quiet for months.
I can’t remember if these ornate frames are from the last restaurant, or the almost-restaurant. Now, they’re just waiting…to be wanted?
Wednesday, 2 September 2020
Apologies for turning to commands. But, it’s often a good plan to think 🤔 about what a sign says, and its particular context. 😀
In the first photo, the sign to the left of the door is promoting Impossible Burgers. The sign to the right is advertizing for a leasee. And, indeed it is impossible to get burgers here. 😢
And this: Sotheby’s advertises the FINE homes it sells. This, with the boarded up windows, is not a fine home. It’s a junker. And, IMHO, it’s a poor lot, with an apartment complex uphill to the left, at least a dozen units, students and young professionals…so, not a quiet block. Maybe there’ll be a Sotheby’s fine home here in the near future, but “fine” is degraded a bit, I think. 🙄
Tuesday, 1 September 2020
At least, that’s my explanation for why these two signs are four feet apart in the same cheese-case.
What doesn’t make sense is that not far away is a huge zone of multiple well-stocked buffet tables with at least sixty-seventy bins of food (partly) protected by a sneeze guard that was there pre-Covid.
Another example of logic in 2020.
Monday, 31 August 2020
Remember January of this year? We were not living like we were on the precipice of a descent into a pandemic. We ate out that month, two fancy meals…. “Ate out…”—slow and casual dining, too: sounds radical today!
…and I had a beet salad each time. I do love a beet salad. These are proof.
Today we watched “Freight trains and monsters,” an episode of “Yellowstone.” There was no beet salad, although there were campfire biscuits. Neither beet salad was a freight train or a monster. BTW, that refers to non-preferred horses in the barn….
