I guess at some point this is going to get old.

I guess at some point this is going to get old.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Just. Not. Yet.

Sunday morning, hiking Chautauqua.
Posting by cameraphone.

cairn

cairn
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Posting by cameraphone from just under the Flatirons, Boulder, CO

Vignette for Android

the view from here

the view from here
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Moved in over the weekend. Start the job today. Only part that blows was putting mr. hoo on a plane for Chicago so that he can get the house sold.

Patience.

And good morning.

Posting by cameraphone from Boulder, Colorado.
My new home.

did you know...

did you know...
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

... that Powell's name is spelled "Wesley" not "Westley", dear U-Haul?

Loading the moving van. Heading West soon, into Wesley's territory.

Posting by cameraphone.

steelroots

steelroots
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Took a break from packing and uprooting all that is with a brief walk through the Morton Arboretum this afternoon.

Came across Steve Tobin's Steelroots installation -- the best thing the Morton has installed in an awfully long while. Actual and abstracted root structures executed in steel anchor into the landscape.

Soothing somehow, and strong. Deep roots surfaced; reminders of why they matter anyway.

Recommend it. Both the rooting and the walk.

Now: Back to packing.


Originally posted by cameraphone, then updated.

singular distinction

Those Who Understand - Explored
Originally uploaded by inneri

According to Unicef, only two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than 15: the United States and Somalia.

From Children Carry Guns for a U.S. Ally, Somalia in today's New York Times

hoops

holga.

colorama

The Eastman Kodak Company has donated its archive of Colorama images — the huge panoramic photographs that were displayed as advertisements in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Terminal for four decades beginning in 1950 — to the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, the museum announced on Friday. Coloramas, towering backlighted transparencies that were 18 feet high and 60 feet wide, were promoted by Kodak as “the world’s largest photographs.” More than 500 were publicly displayed, for runs of three weeks each.

They often contained idealized depictions of American daily life, usually showing a Kodak camera being used to photograph a family, activity or beautiful scene. The archive gift includes display images of all Coloramas, including those that were never displayed, along with research documents, negatives and other prints and files. An exhibition of 36 Coloramas, focusing on the 1960s, will be on view at the Eastman House from Saturday through Oct. 17.

From Kodak Gives ‘World’s Largest Photographs’ to Museum in today's New York Times

Viewing the Kodak Coloramas one might conclude that America is white, heterosexual, well-dressed, and travels a pristine world where there is no squalor or company other than our own white, heterosexual, well-dressed selves.

Rather than the diverse colorama that we really are.

Still: Stunning.

lone rider, ii

lone rider, ii
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Just outside Chicago

Posting by cameraphone

get lit

get lit
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Posting by cameraphone from the Printer's Row Lit Fest née Book Fair.

Charlie Pierce up next »

ad majorem dei gloriam

Took a brief walk across the Seattle University campus when I was in town last month, waiting for baby Haven to be fully baked at Swedish Hospital across the street (Haven's here now: she’s a beautiful beautiful beautiful baby girl, and her mother, who is also a beautiful girl, is doing well).

I wanted to see the St. Ignatius Chapel, a spare modern building celebrated for its glorious contemplative interior.

Unfortunately it was locked. Which is, I suppose, the problem with having a celebrated chapel: everybody wants in, and you’re forced to keep them out, which entirely undermines the purpose of a building like that.






So I took some shots of the exterior, unhappy that I neglected to bring my wide lens, peered through the window a bit and then pulled up some shots on Flickr sometime later to see what I missed.

Much, it seems.

ruby shoes, take two

Tomorrow I hang up my wings and leave the road I've been traveling for the last four years, if you count the time I've been working this gig; or ten years, if you count the time I've spent in this place.

Within a week I'll be schlepping a U-Haul to Boulder, Colorado to start something entirely new in a place that's utterly familiar, and yet wholly changed.

Or maybe that's me.

Either way: I'm going home.



Related: ruby shoes, the first »

Come on-a my house.

turn on, tune in, drop out

Goddess of TXT, OMG, It's Art
Originally uploaded by JR from Brooklyn

When I told them, my 12-year-old, Maxwell, was like, ‘Yes!’

Meredith Sinclair, blogger and mother of Maxwell, recounting her kid's reaction when she told him she was imposing a household Internet ban from 4 to 8 PM daily. As recounted in The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In in today's new York Times.

lone rider

lone rider
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Red Line, State Street Station
Chicago, IL

Early yet & a Saturday.
Posting by cameraphone

somewhere between where I was and halfway home

somewhere between where I was and halfway home
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Stopped for Ritter's Frozen Custard.
Glad I did. Highway 30, Indiana.
That's all I know.

Posting by cameraphone.

soba gone

We went to Nara during the New Year, which everyone told us not to do. It would be too crowded, they predicted, with people attending to the last rites of the dying year, and it was.

Which is not to say we were sorry we went.

Nara is a great Shinto center, and we fell directly in with the crowds as they worked their way up the mountain, passing shrines and countless lanterns, pushing through people who were pressing against others. Near the top we broke away and wandered the trails, pausing to peer at the faithful in their administrations before the colorful Kagami Mochi -- rice cake and tangerine treats offered up to the gods in exchange for divine favor.

The farther we pressed into the forest the thinner the crowds became until at last we were walking alone -- and feared we might we lost.

As we debated whether we should double back the trees thinned and the trail descended to a public road. There was nothing to the left or to the right, but directly before us there was a small restaurant, with a sign scratched out in English, for lost English speaking tourists like ourselves.

We stepped out of the January chill and into the warmth. I sat on a cushion before the low tea table and ordered cold soba, which I suspect I had had before and knew to be delicious, or else I wouldn’t have ordered cold food on a cold day after a long walk.



The buckwheat noodles were served on a bamboo matt suspended over a plate. The boiled soba had been shocked in a cold water bath just prior to serving, and the design was meant to allow the last of the water to drain off. I dunked the noodles bite by bite into the fish-rich sauce, and knew to wait once the soba was gone for the waitress to come with the cooking water, which she poured into the remnants of the sauce and expected me to drink.

I can’t recall if I did, but I do remember that chocolate cake and the coffee came next. Incongruous, all of it, and absolutely perfect.

speaking of Kansas (before the Twister hit)

This really would have been a lovely shot if I had had color film loaded.

Austin, TX
holga.

a real truly live place

There’s so much that is not quite right about the Wizard of Oz.

The farm girl whose aunt chides her to stay out of the way because she’s worthless on the farm and yet knows instinctively how to vamp when the Twister hits or the camera strays to her sparkly heels.

The middle-aged men who cozy up to our 12 year old heroine and accompany her on her travels in a way that the creep factor would prohibit in any film made today.

And finally this: the idea that a girl who longs to be anywhere besides Kansas, and then finds herself at last over the rainbow in a “real truly live place” where “most of it was beautiful” would spend the whole of her marvelous adventure wanting only to be home, like some ugly American, and to decide after all that wonder, once she returns again to Kansas, that “I’m not going to leave here ever ever again.”

Really? That’s our moral lesson? Not: Travel has opened my eyes and expanded my mind to make room for new people and new experiences entirely foreign to my own?

(Maybe my bafflement is especially keen because of the unhappy hours I spent in Kansas this last week.)

And yet: It’s a magnificent film, which I was reminded of on Friday when I saw it on the big screen, digitally remastered with the full orchestration of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra behind it and cried -- yes cried -- when Dorothy sang of melting lemon drops away above the chimney tops.

That’s where you’ll find me.


Bonus material, aka "Only bad witches are ugly." -- Glinda the Good Witch

contained.

Port of Seattle.
holga.