Some old photos from a brief stop at Font's Point in the Borrego Badlands, part of California's huge Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego. If I were to go back there at some point, that would be the thing that would finally make me break down and learn to do HDR photography. I've never been a huge HDR fan, but the place seems ideally suited to it.
A few more old photos from Death Valley, this time from Salt Creek, a small, salty stream that eventually empties into the Death Valley salt flats. The creek merits a boardwalk nature trail because it's the sole home of the endangered Salt Creek pupfish, a tiny fish that's adapted to live in the creek's salty and often hot water. I did see a few of the fish but somehow ended up without any photos of them, just a few of the nature trail and plants along it. The existence of the plants here is kind of remarkable too, but I've got to say they're no desert pupfish. So if you want to see more pupfish, there are a few decent photos here. There are also a number of YouTube videos of the fish, like this for example, if you're interested.
Old photos from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Ok, the lowest point that isn't underwater, if you really want to split hairs.
Given the name, you might be curious about what the water's like. You're in luck, because I went ahead and tried a drop or two of the stuff. It tastes the way you'd expect desert salt flats water would taste: Salty, kind of alkaline, probably with other goop dissolved in it. I wouldn't have willingly drunk more of it, I'll put it that way.
Some old, scanned photos of Mono Lake, in the California desert east of Yosemite. These were taken in the early 1990s during the height of the court battle over the lake's water. The short version of the story: Since the 1940s, water had been diverted from flowing into the lake, and ended up in swimming pools in L.A. instead. As you might expect, this caused the lake to start drying up. Not everyone was thrilled about that, and -- this being California -- there were ugly, expensive, lawsuits, which went on and on for years as the lake level continued to drop. A couple of years after I was there, the city of Los Angeles lost the case and was forced to put water back into the lake. Wikipedia insists the lake's almost back up to its pre-diversion lake level. In which case some of the the scenery in these photos is now back underwater where it belongs.
A few hurried Blackberry photos from Chicago Midway Airport, taken on my way to Cleveland back in March. I'll be the first to say these aren't quality photos, but I should point out that the greasy fingerprint over the lens was caused by a genuine Chicago Italian beef sandwich. So, you know, local flavor. I'm going to argue that, thanks to the aforementioned fingerprint, the photos count as a "found object" piece, or possibly a collage, and are therefore an expression of Art with a capital A, and anyone who says they suck in a traditional photographic sense is an ignorant philistine. That's my argument, and I'm sticking to it.
I get bored quickly in airports, and I have this ongoing idea that I really ought to go seek out whatever local color there happens to exist within the airport's confines. In the case of the Midway airport, that involved the sandwich I mentioned earlier, plus tracking down a historical exhibit about the Battle of Midway, for which the airport was renamed in 1949. So in case you were wondering, the name doesn't refer to the airport being the midway point in your trip, despite what flying Southwest might lead you to believe. Although that does happen to be the reason Midway Island (at the far northern end of the Hawaiian Islands) is named what it is.
On a more obscure historical note, the airport also has a small plaque commemorating a 1933 trans-Atlantic flight. Chicago pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas, in their plane named the "Lituanica" attempted to fly nonstop from New York to Kaunas, Lithuania, only to crash in Germany, just short of their destination. Both pilots were killed in the accident. I had never heard of this flight before, possibly for that reason, but apparently the men are considered national heroes in Lithuania, and the main soccer stadium in Kaunas was renamed in their honor after the USSR broke up.
Photos from a late Friday afternoon in July, in Boston. It was warm with a bit of mild wind, and the Charles River was packed with sailboats. I haven't been on a sailboat in a long, long time, but I can see the appeal. At least when the weather's nice, and the other sailors aren't dangerously incompetent, and you aren't stuck in drydock pouring money into endless maintenance and repairs. In other words, I'd been at a stressful tech conference out in the suburbs all week, and watching other people sail under fairly ideal conditions was relaxing, and a nice way to decompress.
Ok, one more piece of transit mall public art for the evening. This is "Daddy Long Legs" by local sculptor Mel Katz, who also happens to be the ex-husband of a former mayor. I actually don't think that's that weird, as he's been a prominent local artist since slightly before the beginning of time. It's merely a sign that in many ways Portland is still a very small town, or at least the creative and political parts both are.
TriMet's description tells a bit more about the thing:
In Daddy Long Legs, Mel Katz combines elements of sculpture and painting to create a counterpoint and contrast that add to the complexity of the work. The artist's father was a tailor, and growing up he was influenced by watching him work with templates to cut pattern pieces.
In any case, the clean, mid-20th-century abstract look is a nice change from the contemporary "Lumpy Little Dudes On Posts" look I've been going on about. It still may, however, have a role in the "Public art come to life" horror movie I keep talking about. It has legs, and some sharp, stabby-looking corners, so it has potential. As a formally abstract being we should probably assume its true motives are unknowable, and furthermore we probably ought to have it attack its victims offscreen, since I have no idea how it would eat, and adding a recognizable mouth to an abstract piece probably counts as a crime against Art, and we certainly can't have that. These complications aside, I feel it would add a touch of class to the film, which I suspect it will desperately need.
The transit mall art tour continues with another example of the "Lumpy Little Dudes On Posts" movement so beloved by some unnamed art buyer at TriMet or RACC. This one, "Lodge Grass", is at least less annoying than the others we've covered so far. TriMet's official public art tour (which is less fun than mine) describes it thusly:
The title of John Buck's Lodge Grass refers to a Montana town originally settled by Native Americans and to the name for a range of plants used by indigenous peoples to make shelters. The artist has used related symbols and imagery for the figure's head and shoulders.
RACC describes it quite similarly:
The title of John Buck's sculpture, Lodge Grass, refers to a town in Big Horn County, Montana, that was originally settled by Native Americans. Lodge grass is also the name for a range of plants used by indigenous peoples to make shelters. As the environment has evolved and useful plants such as lodge grass have disappeared, the thistle and other noxious weeds have replaced them, in the same way that wilderness areas have been replaced by suburban developments.
So, in part, the piece serves to mutely reproach the commuting suburbanites who pass by it every day on the way to and from their cubicles, and they don't even know they're being reproached. Or maybe I'm reading too much into the siting decision, I'm not entirely sure. I note that neither description bothers to mention the nude female figure without a head that holds up the various symbolic bits. It's a curious omission, that's all I'm saying.
In any case, it's easy to imagine "Lodge Grass" in the Portland public-art-come-to-life horror movie I brainstormed in the last post. Magic power: Horrible woody tentacles sprouting from its head, seizing and devouring everything in its path. Key weakness: Lack of eyes and ears; complete inability to communicate with fellow monsters; tentacles are right-handed, leaving the left side vulnerable.
