tanner springs, october 2012 (iv)

tanner springs, october 2012 (iii)

tanner springs, october 2012 (ii)

tanner springs, october 2012 (i)

waterfront flowers (red)

waterfront flowers (purple)

More photos with that late 50s vintage lens I picked up the other day. As usual, the color in the title is an artsy way of saying I have no idea what sort of flowers these are.

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach

From the archives, a few circa-2007 photos of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, OR. Not to be confused with the other Haystack Rock further south at Pacific City. Or, according to Wikipedia, a third Haystack Rock far to the south in Coos County. Curiously, Wikipedia mentions zero Haystack Rocks outside of Oregon, so apparently we're alone in using agricultural metaphors to describe large-scale seaside geology. I have no explanation for why that might be, so feel free to grab that hypothesis and run with it for your dissertation, assuming you can prove it and you think it'll help.

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uncooperative cat photos

I haven't posted cat photos here in a while. These photos may give some idea of why his modeling career hasn't really taken off. Something about not sitting still for the camera, I think. Anyway, these are mostly test shots for a new lens I got in the mail today, a Fujita/Juplen 35mm f/2.5, made circa 1957 or so. It's an early example of a retrofocus design, and one of the earliest Japanese M42 lenses I've come across. Plus it just looks cool, and has a handy push-button lock thingy on the preset ring. You'll probably see more photos taken with this lens here in the near future. Maybe more cat photos, or maybe something that knows how to sit still for half a second, like a leaf or a statue or whatever, even if they're nowhere near as adorable as he is. D'awwwww....

Paula Jean Powerline Park, Aloha

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us out to distant suburbia, to Aloha's Paula Jean Powerline Park. As the name suggests, it's a chunk of right-of-way under some Bonneville Power Administration transmission lines; the land wasn't buildable, so it became a long, skinny park instead. Years ago, before I started this humble blog, I used to live a few blocks away from this place. I drove past it all the time, but only walked through it once or twice. So I figured it might be interesting to revisit a place I ignored previously, take a few photos, and try to apply this humble blog's tired tried and true formula to it.

As for why I ignored the place, I absolutely don't buy into any of the various conspiracy theories about powerlines, but they do make a rather disconcerting humming noise if you're walking under them. That wasn't really my cup of tea, I have to say. I'm sure there are interesting things to take photos of, if you have time and are willing to stop and ignore the buzzing -- wildflowers, the few remnant orchard trees, moody shots of the powerlines, possibly -- but I wasn't really into photography back when I lived out there, so I didn't pick up on any of that at the time.

All of that said, the powerline right of way does create a long stretch of unbroken greenspace, so the city of Hillsboro's parks plan envisions a regional trail through here at some point. It may be some time before this happens, as the surrounding area hasn't even been officially annexed to Hillsboro yet; parks in the area previously belonged to the Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation District but were handed over to Hillsboro in 2002 in anticipation of the city annexing the area in the near future. Ten years later that still hasn't happened, and I'm not sure why not. So right now this and several other nearby parks no longer appear on the THPRD website (understandably), but also aren't listed with the other city parks on the Hillsboro Parks website. So they're in a sort of internet limbo until the city limit issue gets sorted out.

On a related note, another proposed powerline trail a bit further east has run into some local opposition. The Bonneville Power Administration (an agency of the federal government) owns the land under the powerlines in question, but the association's been acting as if it owned the land for many years and has even posted "Private Property" signs on the land, warning all outsiders to keep away, or else. They probably don't have a leg to stand on, legally, considering that it's not their land. But as far as I know that's never stopped a homeowners' association before. Not even once, in the entire history of forever. So we'll see how that turns out, I guess.

sunflowers, colonel summers park

spiderweb, washington park

water + leaf + water

San Rocco Procession, Boston

While wandering around Boston's North End back in July, I happened to stumble across the annual San Rocco procession. This is a Sicilian Catholic event in which a statue of San Rocco (or St. Roch, if you prefer) is carried through the streets, accompanied by two brass bands, and dancers in traditional Portuguese dress. The procession stops every so often, the bands alternate playing a few tunes, and spectators step forward to pin dollars on the statue. Eventually the parade arrives at a local fraternal hall and everyone goes inside, including San Rocco. I'm not sure what happens then, but I assume food and wine are involved somehow.

As a nonbeliever (and non-Sicilian), I was initially unclear on what the event was all about, but I ran across a couple of posts at NorthEndWaterfront.com that helped clear this up. This post explains what the festival is and includes a bunch of photos, while the second post includes an entertaining short video with some of the music and dancing.