Archive for November, 2009
9 items.
They like to burn trash in the mountains. We drove around some Chattanooga countryside yesterday and saw numerous “back yard” fires, probably leaves, branches and brush. I read there’s a burning ban from May to September and I guess after that one could torch their house if they were so inclined. But not during May through September.
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I’m ever the fan of car window views and their reflections. This is Mr. Bill’s Restaurant up somewhere around a place called Soddy Daisy in Tennessee.
They put this up in 2008 at Atlantic Station, between the Publix and Ikea. $20 million worth of arch. And I’m still struggling to come up with the appropriate words. Must say that I’m glad it’s there. It’s confusing. It looks completely out of place. It strikes one as nothing more than an extreme gateway to Ikea. And yet I’m happy to have it there, maybe because it is so confusing.
Beautiful clouds preceded cooler air by the space of a quick meal. Someone with a view from a skyscraper would have gotten wonderful shots. Down on the street, I tried, but came up empty.
Believe I’ve completed the “At the Museum” MoMA set at the art website.
That’s H.o.p. mesmerized by Rodin’s Balzac.
We went to the Gold Exhibit at Fernbank today, organized by the American Museum of Natural History.
Indeed, there were some lovely things on display, the most impressive being perhaps examples of natural formations of gold and quartz. If you are anxious to see old ingots lost in shipwrecks, purchase pirate hats and pan for gold for about $5 in the gift shop, you’ll not leave disappointed.
What ended up being interesting to me was the history on gold that was omitted. For example, in the section on the Black Hills gold rush, I pointed out to H.o.p. that they made no mention of the Black Hills gold find resulting in the bringing in of troops and theft of land confirmed as Dakota, Lakota, Nakota in the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie. A paragraph was given on the 1874 Custer Expedition but nothing as to meaning, absolutely no historical context. Instead, a yard away there was a little fake bridge with a slab of plexiglass in the middle through which one could look down and see a fake stream bed with a few gold sparkles glimmering.
Yet in the Georgia Gold Room they did have history on the Georgia gold rush and the dispossession of Cherokee land, a long film there flatly speaking of the stealing of the land. This room was put together by Fernbank.
So, I left questioning why Fernbank made this allowance but the American Museum of Natural History didn’t even begin to approach the real history of gold.
During the past couple of months, I’ve occasionally taken some time to work on organizing my photos and art on my art site. It’s slow going–I’m not done and have much to revise. The last I posted (a while back) I believed I had the “Views from the Road, 2005″ set done. Since then I think I’ve also finished the Grand Canyon and its Tourists set.
Painted Desert Inn, Stairway to Old Hotel Room Entrances
Was watching a little of the movie in which Judy Garland plays a Harvey Girl and was reminded of the Painted Desert Inn, which was a Harvey institution during the late 40s through early 60s. I returned to those photos and worked on a few more, including this one of a small external stairway that leads past entrances to a few of the old hotel rooms. Intended to be viewed large. Loads of grain.
Painted Desert Inn, Back Patio
Painted Desert Inn, Dining Area
There’s interesting info elsewhere on the internet about the paintings by Hopi artist, Fred Kabotie, decorating the walls of the inn.
Painted Desert Inn, Stairway to the Lower Floor (where the old soda fountain was located)
Painted Desert Inn, Exterior Shot
Painted Desert, View from the Painted Desert Inn
It really is a beautiful, little inn and I envy those who were able to make use of it as an inn, or just a place to stop and get lunch or a malted at the soda fountain.
H.o.p. drew the face. I carved the pumpkin, which was a tough one. H.o.p. talked about the smell of the pumpkin, how it was the smell of Halloween. “Nostalgia,” he said. I was unable to find the bag that holds our few Halloween decorations but he was determined and finally dug it out of a closet. We spread spider webs around the apartment and hung up fat bats in the doorways. He carefully laid out plastic skeletons in our chairs up front. No one can see them from the street but they are there.
Halloween night the weather was rainy and chilly. We drove to the old Decatur neighborhood, as we always do, as it turned into a great place to trick-or-treat our last year there and has remained so. One of the houses goes all out with gargantuan decorations, some mechanized, and that’s the house H.o.p. always hits first.
H.o.p.’s costume this year wasn’t one really for photographing. The costume last year was for photographing. This year his was rather simple and it was the performance aspect that he made the most of. He had it all planned out. A plain black hood mask with a torn shirt. “Trick or treat!” He gets his candy. And then the twist! For as he bowed and solemnly said, “Happy Halloween!”, he would take off his mask revealing a skull mask underneath.
He had a grand time. His interest, as ever, is not the candy but the performance and people hopefully enjoying it and then chatting them up afterward, because he always likes to talk to people afterward, for which reason he takes three times as long trick-or-treating as others. Most kids hit the door, get the candy and run. H.o.p. has never done this. H.o.p. instead wants to chat. Performance gives him an opportunity to chat. People generally start to talk when he does his thing and conversation is struck up.
In the car, on the way home, H.o.p. enjoyed running his hands through his candy. “Mmmm,” he said, “the smell of Halloween.”
