If you travel West from the Midwest dawn comes easy.
And if the small but promising Sutter Creek(where California gold was first discovered) is running low and gently ambient over exposed rocks just a stone's throw from your open bedroom window then that too will wake you gently, along with the bird song, to the morning which you'll sip in all alone, having pulled your heavy Chicago winter coat from the boot of the rental (because now you need it), perched on the deck surrounded by the rich oxygen of forested places, your mother sleeping heavily somewhere inside, and probably for quite a little while longer now.
Breathing in the morning.
Posting by cameraphone from my mom's place in Sutter Creek, CA
Showing posts with label low res. Show all posts
Showing posts with label low res. Show all posts
Friday, April 04, 2008
obligatory oak
Old Sacramento Highway
Attempting to post by cameraphone on the road between Folsom and Sutter Creek, CA.
But no signal, so I expect it won't post until tomorrow.
Attempting to post by cameraphone on the road between Folsom and Sutter Creek, CA.
But no signal, so I expect it won't post until tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
fulsome folsom
Thursday, March 13, 2008
dinner in midtown
Happiness is this: Finding yourself suddenly in the early Spring chill of a New York evening, via Long Beach via downtown L.A. via a warm bed in Pasadena that you didn't want to leave (and certainly not at that ungodly early hour, the sun only just scratching the sleep from its eyes); missing the sunset entirely because you were snoozing stiff (and certainly snoring) in the middle seat on a five hour flight -- the kid to your right completely clueless as to the etiquette of the elbow (dude: you had the aisle. that armrest should have been mine.) and knowing that all you had to do on arriving on this only semi-familiar block in midtown is walk to the end of the street with your eyes wide open and you'd find it: the perfect place for dinner. And even though it's nearly 10PM it's not even close to closing time.
Just polished off a majestic and nourishing avocado salad. Moving on to the best piece of hamachi I've had since Santa Cruz some time back.
New York: I wasn't sure I wanted to see you today, but this I'll take, and be glad for it.
Meeting tomorrow. Then home late to a wide open weekend.
Posting by cameraphone from Midtown Manhattan.
Just polished off a majestic and nourishing avocado salad. Moving on to the best piece of hamachi I've had since Santa Cruz some time back.
New York: I wasn't sure I wanted to see you today, but this I'll take, and be glad for it.
Meeting tomorrow. Then home late to a wide open weekend.
Posting by cameraphone from Midtown Manhattan.
Toyama Sushi
11 West 36 Street
New York, NY 10018
the rialto
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
maravilla
The Getty wasn't around when I lived here last (sure the Villa was, but not the new hilltop masterpiece by the architect Richard Meier), so it was of course the thing I was most bratty about, bugging my stepmom to pay it a short visit even though the doors closed at 6 and it was after 2 when we got there, my laptop having crashed on me en route and more or less insisting that I take a little PTO time since I had accomplished almost everything (*almost* everything) that I'm capable of accomplishing on my handheld from the time that my plane touched down until she was able to pull herself away from work.
And the next part of this story is: WOW. Holy frickin' WOW. What a place. And it's all about place.
The exhibits that we caught -- a brief and tidy handful -- were more than worth the price of admission (which was free, outside the $8 fee to park): A commissioned work by Bill Viola (I'm a fan, so I'll take what I can get of Viola, even though this piece -- Emergence -- is low on my list of stuff of his that I like); some lovely illuminated manuscript leaves (yes, of course, pilfered -- sometime many hundreds of
years back before they finally arrived here. this is the Getty after all.); and the smattering of Impressionists were nice (highly recommended by the matronly museum guard, so we felt obliged).
The knock your socks off portion resided in the photography wing and included a show featuring the whole spectrum of the work of André Kertész -- including the still life from Mondrian's home and a whole series that he executed on postcard stock -- in itself enough to make me giddy happy, but then I was pushed beyond the tolerance of all that is seemly by a showing of Graciela Iturbide's work.
Holy Sh*t.
She undid me.
But it was the Getty itself, of course, that outshined all that -- the alternating rough and finished travertine surfaces, the extraordinary gardens orchestrated by Robert Irwin; the quiet spaces and grand pavilions and jawdropping vistas that make you want to linger and learn and luxuriate.
What a stunner of a place.
And then there was dinner and too much salmon (so good. so right on the coast.) and too much chocolate and catching up with my stepmom, who raised me and whom I haven't seen in *forever*, about heartbreaks and expectations and finding your feet again.
All good.
And now to bed.
Tomorrow we work.
And the next part of this story is: WOW. Holy frickin' WOW. What a place. And it's all about place.
The exhibits that we caught -- a brief and tidy handful -- were more than worth the price of admission (which was free, outside the $8 fee to park): A commissioned work by Bill Viola (I'm a fan, so I'll take what I can get of Viola, even though this piece -- Emergence -- is low on my list of stuff of his that I like); some lovely illuminated manuscript leaves (yes, of course, pilfered -- sometime many hundreds of
years back before they finally arrived here. this is the Getty after all.); and the smattering of Impressionists were nice (highly recommended by the matronly museum guard, so we felt obliged).
The knock your socks off portion resided in the photography wing and included a show featuring the whole spectrum of the work of André Kertész -- including the still life from Mondrian's home and a whole series that he executed on postcard stock -- in itself enough to make me giddy happy, but then I was pushed beyond the tolerance of all that is seemly by a showing of Graciela Iturbide's work.
Holy Sh*t.
She undid me.
But it was the Getty itself, of course, that outshined all that -- the alternating rough and finished travertine surfaces, the extraordinary gardens orchestrated by Robert Irwin; the quiet spaces and grand pavilions and jawdropping vistas that make you want to linger and learn and luxuriate.
What a stunner of a place.
And then there was dinner and too much salmon (so good. so right on the coast.) and too much chocolate and catching up with my stepmom, who raised me and whom I haven't seen in *forever*, about heartbreaks and expectations and finding your feet again.
All good.
And now to bed.
Tomorrow we work.
I photographed real life -- not the way it was but the way I felt it. This is the most important thing: not analyzing, but feeling.
—André Kertész
some palms.
I expect there will be more.
In LA for the next couple of days. And some trivia: people don't wear *coats* here.
Shot at the Long Beach Airport.
Posting by cameraphone.
In LA for the next couple of days. And some trivia: people don't wear *coats* here.
Shot at the Long Beach Airport.
Posting by cameraphone.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
somewhere in here, there is a...
Thursday, March 06, 2008
crossing the contra costa county line
Heading back to the City.
Posting by cameraphone from just the other side of the Contra Costa county line.
Posting by cameraphone from just the other side of the Contra Costa county line.
vines.
Drove to Sonoma for breakfast.
A *good* breakfast: eggs. bacon. buttermilk biscuit as big as my head.
Headed back to Napa for a meeting.
(Did I mention that I love my job? Love that *this* is what occupies the margins?)
Posting by cameraphone from Napa, CA
A *good* breakfast: eggs. bacon. buttermilk biscuit as big as my head.
Headed back to Napa for a meeting.
(Did I mention that I love my job? Love that *this* is what occupies the margins?)
Posting by cameraphone from Napa, CA
the rip roaring read-o-rama OR why I love my cousins
'Cause who else can you close down a restaurant with on a Wednesday night in Napa (keeping in mind this is Napa, so the restaurants close early. WAY too early.) while trying to puzzle out the riddle that is your mothers, each other's sisters, if not with a couple of gorgeous cousins and a cousin-in-commonlaw who tells the sweet story of their meeting and subsequent re-meeting on the following day on which he "had already arranged to meet with this really pretty bald girl".
And laughing. And eating too much. And drinking way too much wine.
And learning about how your cousin, an elementary school teacher, arranged a classroom event that has evolved now three years later into a school wide thing in which the kids spend the whole day READING. ANYTHING they want. In their PAJAMAS.
And guest readers come in -- writers who read their stuff and make writing real for kids; who make earning a living at writing real.
In their pajamas. Did I mention the pajamas?
Your cousin. Lighting fires in kids in the schoolwide Rip Roaring Read-O-Rama, your cousin the little girl you remember chasing down those bubbles and popping them in the sunshine.
Laughing like we're not nearly as old as we're all growing, too fast, and knowing that, if growing old means having more stories to share like these, tonight, with this good kin, then old is going to be a good place to be.
And laughing. And eating too much. And drinking way too much wine.
And learning about how your cousin, an elementary school teacher, arranged a classroom event that has evolved now three years later into a school wide thing in which the kids spend the whole day READING. ANYTHING they want. In their PAJAMAS.
And guest readers come in -- writers who read their stuff and make writing real for kids; who make earning a living at writing real.
In their pajamas. Did I mention the pajamas?
Your cousin. Lighting fires in kids in the schoolwide Rip Roaring Read-O-Rama, your cousin the little girl you remember chasing down those bubbles and popping them in the sunshine.
Laughing like we're not nearly as old as we're all growing, too fast, and knowing that, if growing old means having more stories to share like these, tonight, with this good kin, then old is going to be a good place to be.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
clearing the storm
Through some kind of miracle my connecting flight was delayed an hour at O'Hare at the very same gate where my inbound flight deplaned. Which meant I managed to make it somehow. Even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't.
But not without first running a lap on the moving pedway, looking for Gate C9, only to realize that that was where I had arrived.
Big dork.
Posting by cameraphone, just about to be outbound to San Francisco.
(Oh. Wait. Mechanical problem. We'll see how this goes.)
But not without first running a lap on the moving pedway, looking for Gate C9, only to realize that that was where I had arrived.
Big dork.
Posting by cameraphone, just about to be outbound to San Francisco.
(Oh. Wait. Mechanical problem. We'll see how this goes.)
hi, sky.
Outbound to Detroit. Meetings in Ann Arbor. Zingerman's for lunch. (Yes!)
Late afternoon flight to SFO by way of ORD.
Then to bed.
Posting by cameraphone from the road.
Late afternoon flight to SFO by way of ORD.
Then to bed.
Posting by cameraphone from the road.
Friday, February 29, 2008
my rake: let me show you it.
Just before the curtain went up (so to speak) on Buster Keaton's silent film classic "The General" in which the Mechanical Engineer gets the girl.
Never mind that he's a Confederate.
Accompanied by some remnant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, working from the original 1927 cue sheet by Dennis James and Eric Beheim. Conducted by Richard Kaufman.
Bargain seats: Two rows from the back at the tippy tippy top.
Posting by cameraphone from Symphony Hall, Chicago, IL.
Never mind that he's a Confederate.
Accompanied by some remnant of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, working from the original 1927 cue sheet by Dennis James and Eric Beheim. Conducted by Richard Kaufman.
Bargain seats: Two rows from the back at the tippy tippy top.
Posting by cameraphone from Symphony Hall, Chicago, IL.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Exhibit B: Modern Pastry
More pink & green Boston neon
shot along Hanover Street.
Posting by cameraphone.
shot along Hanover Street.
Posting by cameraphone.
Exhibit A: Ida's
It's early yet, and I'm working with a limited dataset, but my suspicion is: Of the neon that populates this fair city of Boston, pink & green predominate.
At least in the North End.
Posting by cameraphone. Shot these along Hanover Street (Exhibits B & C to follow shortly).
At least in the North End.
Posting by cameraphone. Shot these along Hanover Street (Exhibits B & C to follow shortly).
yer out.
Blizzard. Flight home canceled. Poking around Boston in the snow. Trying to follow the Freedom Trail -- marked, so they say, by a steady red line that snakes past Revolutionary War sites.
But snow is working to obscure that line some, so I'm pulling a J Alfred Prufrock, making my way through certain half-deserted streets, (Eliot wrote that here, right? or Cambridge maybe, next door.) sometimes finding an historical marker, sometimes finding a coffee shop -- like this one, the Boston Beanstock, where I'm fortifying with a tender tomato basil tart and a steamy joe before heading out again.
Happy.
Posting by cameraphone.
But snow is working to obscure that line some, so I'm pulling a J Alfred Prufrock, making my way through certain half-deserted streets, (Eliot wrote that here, right? or Cambridge maybe, next door.) sometimes finding an historical marker, sometimes finding a coffee shop -- like this one, the Boston Beanstock, where I'm fortifying with a tender tomato basil tart and a steamy joe before heading out again.
Happy.
Posting by cameraphone.
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