Category Archives: Photographs

Photos from the East Coast

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When I first moved to Robin's house on August 15, Darcy followed me all evening, slept with me that night and the following morning, after I made the bed, she got in and made herself a nest.

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I don't know what she had in mind but being taken to the dog sitter when we left on Saturday was not it. She's hardly paying any attention to me since I returned from New York.

Pictures from Philadelphia, particularly the Magic Garden on South Street are in a new album on the right. Here are people lining up to get in the door of the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts.

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I wrote about it here.

Pictures from Hannah's Bat Mitzvah are in another album to the right.

Here are a few shots from the Henry Moore show at the botanical garden,

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Falun Gong protesting across the street of the Chinese consulate,

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one from Chinatown–I couldn't resist buying the rambutan–

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and finally a little sunshine inside the Metropolitan Museum. 

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Photoshop fun

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The Courbet self portraits I saw in New York inspired me to play with some of my photos. Strictly speaking these aren’t self portraits, just manipulated pictures. I’ll keep working toward more interesting things.

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The backgrounds are from my photos of a scroll painting at the Metropolitan Museum.

I usually don’t bother with screen savers, but recently I set my Mac to show images from my picture archives, chosen at random and severely cropped. Some of them are blurred and awful, others are amazing, sharp and clear even on my 20" monitor. (I like big; something to do with my vision,) I am impressed with what my funny, digital camera can do. I just wish I could control it better.

Spring walk

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I had a great urge to go out walking this weekend, but no one to go with. Finally decided to go over to the Frick Art and History Center to see a new exhibit: Steel, by Craig McPherson. Lovely work, but not enough walking. I continued on into the park. It was OK, Mary. Lots of people were there.

I like walking alone, even though Mary doesn’t want me to do it. I can stop and take pictures as often as I want, and I can maintain a lively internal dialog. Most of the time it was about what was going on in the park and looking for signs of spring. There were lots of early spring flowers in the neatly manicured part of the park, but it was much more difficult to see green in the natural part of the park. I could see evidence of more caretaking than is obvious when all the leaves have come out. Dsc06845
A number of trees had been newly felled. They had either fallen on the trail or were menacing it.

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The cut or fallen logs are left near the trail making fascinating designs on the fallen leaves. The cut surfaces are wonderful, also. Dsc06847
You can see a little bit of green to the left of the tree stump.

I didn’t see any spring flowers, but there was much more green as I got to the bottom of the hill.
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One of the more unpleasant aspects of walking in spring is the clear view you get of this huge house that looms over the park. It’s big enough to be a hotel, but I’m told only two people live there. Pittsburgh obviously needs better zoning laws. Dsc06851
It’s not as noticeable in summer. I tried to find more info about the place, but without some basic data I can’t find anything. Alice does your friend know anything about this one?

After I left the park I was startled to see this tree with tiny red flowers all over it. Dsc06857
Again, my lack of horticultural knowledge comes to the fore. I have no idea what this is. I tried to get a closeup of the flower, but I didn’t focus properly. One of the drawbacks of an autofocus camera and being too blind to do it myself.

Here is the iron fence surrounding the area I live in. Supposedly, Heinz installed it as a wedding gift for his new bride. How would you feel about an iron fence as a wedding gift? Dsc06860
This fence runs all along Penn Avenue. It’s actually the first time I’ve walked down the entire block. I usually just cross Penn Ave and go on to my own street. Too much traffic on Penn to make it a pleasant walk.

Circumnavigating the entire huge block is more than a half mile. The east west streets have this stone wallDsc06861
along them, and my street has stone pillars. All of the stones look like they might have been there for a century, but I have no way to know what is original.

This wonderful bronze emblem is embedded in the sidewalk just as you enter my street. It may also be very old, proudly set into the cement by the paving company. Dsc06864
 

Another exercise meditation

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My Japanese art class has been studying depictions of the many Buddhist hells. (Number varies, depending on who you are reading and what you are talking about.) My own version of hell is exemplified by my fitness center. Of course, I should be there right now, instead of sitting here writing this. I’ve always thought about the weight machines as torture devices, watching some of the men groaning and sweating as they increase weight. Since I haven’t been getting there as often as I should, they torture me with just a minimum of weight. But they are not the only form of torture.

There is a large workout room across from the entrance to the women’s locker room. When class is in session the music is so loud I find it painful to walk past. I couldn’t take one of those classes; the loud sound would be more torturous than the exercise. That’s clearly Hell #1.

The locker room is not hellish, although it does have its moments. I wish I could take pictures in there. The woman who usually takes care of the room (cleans the toilets) is short, fat and always decorated with at least ten pounds of assorted rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces. Her hair is different every time I see her; sometimes short and multicolored; other times covered with an elaborate wig. The variety of nude and semi-nude bodies is amazing. Being fat myself, I am especially fascinated with the really fat women. I am also fascinated with the occasional woman who will walk around nude completely unselfconscious. I couldn’t do that even when I was young and thin.

Which reminds me, there was an exhibit at the Pitt Union this week called the Century Project, a chronological series of portraits of nude women with statements from or about them. I spent a lot of time looking at the pictures, reading the statements and I still don’t know what I think about it. The idea, of course, is to make us understand what real women look like, as opposed to the airbrushed, or photoshopped, venuses we get in the media. It works, but I have a feeling it should have been better; I just don’t know what I would do different.

Back to hell in the health club: TV. They used to have 8 or 10 sets around the room. You listened with your own earphones, so there was no sound involved. I read when I’m on the bike, but I will watch when I’m on the treadmill. The sets had closed captioning, so I never bothered with the headphones. Now they’ve upgraded to individual sets on each machine, but no closed captioning. TV is torture, with or without audio. I spend most of my time on the bike.

The final torture is also something new: they’ve added a small cafe with salads, sandwiches and smoothies, advertised all over the place. Now you can expend all that energy while the think about food the whole time. I can’t think of anything worse.

Pictures from Chicago

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This is part of my cell room at International House. Dsc06692_2
The laptop is sitting on a shelf that pulled out from the dresser and I sat on the edge of the bed to use it. On the left is the open door of the armoire. That was about the width of the room. The rest of it was a queen-size bed.
This is a view out my window, looking east, not far from Jackson Park, on the day it snowed. Dsc06691
Somewhere out there is the Museum of Science and Industry and Lake Michigan. On Friday the sun came out. Here you can see the dome of the museum and the lake. The small apartment buildings are fairly typical of Chicago, usually two or three floors. Unlike New York, Chicago never had four or five story walk-ups. More recently, tall apartment buildings are going up all over the city.Dsc06729

The University is located in an older part of the city. There are some new buildings and lots of beautiful, old greystones and brick bungalows.


This one is looking down at the apartment buildings next to iHouse. Dsc06730

Train tracks just beyond the apartment buildings carry both freight and commuter trains. On Thursday, Eli, Romy and I took the train downtown to the Cultural Center and the Art Institute.


Here is Romy eating ice cream in the cold. Dsc06696
There was a time I would eat ice cream regardless of the weather. Those days are gone forever.

After lunch, we went to Millennium Park. Following are pictures from the park: the Frank Geary Bandshell in the dark and snow, which I like better this way than in sunshine; the Kapoor sculpture with snow forming amazing patterns on the polished silvery surface. You can just barely see the usual reflections. For summer pictures of the sculpture look at the Chicago 2007 album on the left.

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This is the Museum of Modern Ice, Chicago’s February tourist attraction. The frozen slabs of color will melt somewhat in the sun, if it ever comes out, and should subtly change from day to day. The whole thing is backed with freezing coils; it should easily last all of February.

Here are the Art Institute lions clothed in snow. Dsc06709

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Finally, Romy and Eli trying to sell hats, handmade in Chile by Romy’s friend. This is part of a school project for her business course.


Wonder of the Internet

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Back in December I wrote a post about a church whose deterioration I’ve been watching from my fitness club parking lot, and asked if anyone had any information about it. Alice, from Wintersong, who currently lives in Salt Lake City, but once lived in Pittsburgh, replied that she would ask a Pittsburgh friend about the church.

Shortly thereafter I received a comment from M L Greene with some information about the church. Two days ago, Mage from San Diego, who posts at Day Tripper, sent me a link to some beautiful photos about the church. Although never identified in these photos, and I never before noticed the large red chimney/incinerator next to it, I couldn’t believe there were two different places with the same damage to their spires.

I drove over to it yesterday. It is the same church. The red chimney (or whatever) is behind it. The windows are boarded up, the damage to the spires continues, but the chain link fence is gone and there is a sign inviting people to come for "The Word" on Sundays at noon. So the church has become useful again, and hopefully will be repaired. Some Sunday at noon I’ll go over and see it.

Amazing, isn’t it, that people from all over the country can join together to give information.

Photos from New York

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View from a window at MOMA

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Bergdorf Goodman windows. I love all the reflections.

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Fifth Avenue street musician, getting wonderful sounds from old household objects.

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Joshua Nelson performing kosher gospel music.

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A member of the choir. There was no way I could do justice to her with a still photo.

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Looking west on Canal Street. Chinese Christmas.

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Origami Christmas tree at the Natural History Museum.

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Rockefeller Center, about 4 pm.

A matter of perception

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SteepleI see this steeple each time I go to the health club to exercise. I
drove past the church once. It’s locked behind a chain link fence with
no indication of what it might have been. I don’t know
anything about it; what happened to it; whether anyone owns it. I took  this picture in October, 2006.

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This one was taken in April, 2007.
I am troubled by the continuing deterioration. I keep wondering how it will look when one of these towers finally falls.

Last week I had lunch with Linda and two of her poet friends, both of whom are long-time Pittsburgh residents. They began to talk about churches and I asked them about this one. Neither knew anything about it, but when I said the steeples had holes in them one of the women said she thought they were patches. I keep thinking about the difference in our perceptions. I’ve been accused of being a pessimist, although I think of myself as a realist. Do you think that’s why I immediately identified those black spots as holes? And I’m not sure what this says about the other woman.

I’m very curious about this church. It’s in East Liberty; you can see it from the Club One parking lot. If any of my Pittsburgh readers knows what happened to it, I’d love to hear from you.
I took this picture today.

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