I've Moved

No not that kind of moving.  I'm still where I've been for years, but at least for the time being, I have moved blogs to: https://mindcamera.wordpress.com/.  I hope to see you there!

On Photographing Crown Fountain

(This is an essay for a class I'm taking).

Sometimes when I first see an urban sculpture I wonder to myself, “But is it art?”  I believe this was my first reaction to Crown Fountain a relatively new installation in Millennium Park in Chicago.  If you haven’t seen it, imagine two giant towers of digital glass block with faces on them.  The faces are animated and real; they blink and smile and evoke a feeling of something out of Gulliver’s Travels.  Water cascades down their sides and, surprise, the faces start to spit a stream of water.  

One night I was wandering downtown with my newish digital camera.  I had recently taken up photography, a long dream of mine, and was practicing.  It was a hot summer night and the fountain was crowded with people.  I was certainly not the only photographer.  I took pictures of the fountain and the people:  other photographers, families, a group of men who asked my to take their photo and told me they were musicians and would, someday, be famous.  It was Chicago at its best, happy, friendly and non-threatening even at night to a woman alone.  

On the first day of Autumn this year, I revisited the fountain.  It was a sunny day; the light sparkled and the sky had been washed clean by an earlier rain.  I sat on a wooden, graffiti-scratched bench and watched the people interact with the fountain.  It is such a public place that it seems reasonable to take photos of people.  The sound of water falling almost masks the traffic noises although a major downtown street is less than a block away.  

The area is relatively uncrowded so it is easy to observe individuals.  A woman in a red shirt and green baseball cap carrying a walking stick.  She has an official looking ID on a lanyard around her neck.  A shirtless man, tattooed over much of his torso, rests his backpack on a bench and wipes dry his armpits.  He sits cross legged by the pool of water beneath the fountain and removes his shoes but not his socks.  Wading into the water stream he proceeds to bathe himself.  I see an Asian man with a selfie-stick; a photographer with a School of the Art Institute backpack taking photos.  Three teen girls walk by and one plays in the water.  “You’re going to get wet,” her friend shrieks, giggling.  Another young woman prances through the water while her boyfriend takes pictures.  

I wait for the images to start spouting water.  I wonder if some of the tourists might be surprised.   A pair of preschool age children wait too.  I chat with a woman from Barcelona who asks me to take her picture on her cell phone.  I hope I give her a good impression of Chicago.  

    I think I just answered my question:  it is art.  In an isolated park, this might just be a strange fountain but in its use by people--women and children, tourists and locals, photography students and homeless men--it becomes art of the best sort.

    I stand up to walk back to my car, satisfied with my outing and discover the seat of my pants is sopping wet.  The wood bench must have absorbed the rainwater earlier and now has afflicted me.  I head home covering my backside with my backpack, perhaps a little less satisfied.  

Edinburgh Day 2

Due to a combination of jet lag and the difficulty of getting two young adults up and moving in the morning we got a late start.  My husband and I walked to a local cheese store to pick up our morning breakfast and also stumbled onto a local open air market next door where we bought French cheese, British cheese, and a rather poor cup of coffee.  We had a pleasant chat with the Frenchman who owned the cheese truck.  These impromptu food shopping moments are one of my favorite parts of traveling in Europe.  Unfortunately traveling with three guys, I never feel like I have enough time to do the shops justice unless there is food involved.


We finally set out for a ramble and went back to the Leith walk to walk to Leith, of all places.  The day began rainy and we immediately took a detour to the Royal Botanic Garden. It is a lovely garden although we didn't spend enough time to do it full justice. We had to get back to our walk and the rain had started in earnest by the time we left. Sadly the lens I carry to travel does not work all that well with plant close ups. The Leith walk was quite green and peaceful with a surprising number of people on it despite the rain which occasionally reached downpour levels. As we neared the coast, the Leith broadened and we could see a number of water birds, mostly ducks, seagulls and a family of swans.

Leith itself is a quaint harbor town within the big city. Hunger and wet feet drove us to seek shelter and we wound up stopping at a large shopping mall for a quick meal and in my case, a purchase of dry socks. Fatigue took over and we gave up on the sightseeing and caught an early movie before dinner. The movie was the latest Star Trek. It definitely caught my sense of irony to be watching a movie with a character named Scotty in the capital of Scotland. I wonder what the locals thought of the accent and the stereotype of a Scotsman. Unfortunately, I didn't get to ask anyone. I did ask Google and the Straight Dope has an amusing series of comments on the Scotty character's accent. James Doohan the original Scotty was Canadian. Simon Pegg, the Scotty in the new movies, is English which to an American ear is more or less the same thing but likely not at all so to a Scotsman. Anyway, enough Star Trek trivia.

Dinner was at a local restaurant. I was struck by the whisky menu (see photo) but I was certainly not up for any drinking. We ended the day late and made it home feeling well done.

Trip to Scotland

I'm going back in time here to my first day in Scotland two weeks ago.  Internet access is generally too cumbersome and I'd rather see than write so I'm working retrospectively.  As always with one of these trips, some details have already faded.
We were fortunate to be able to gather the whole family for a trip.  Since my oldest has moved out of state and my youngest started college last year, that has become difficult but so glad we managed it.  We met #1 son at the airport in Chicago and all flew together to Edinburgh.  This we barely managed as we left home late and encountered the predictable Chicago traffic arriving at bag check with quite literally two minutes to spare.  I managed to maintain composure throughout which is uncharacteristic but had planned that if we were not allowed to check our bags, three of us would fly on and one would try to take the next flight out, bags in tow.  I'm not sure how that would have worked out and very glad it didn't come to that.  Google Maps got quite a work out from the cab as we tried to estimate our arrival time at the airport.
The flight itself was uneventful with time to catch up.  It has been a while since the whole family was in one place.  We booked a flat in Edinburgh's New Town via Airbnb and check in was seamless.  We had a great apartment--three bedrooms in a fantastic location.  It was quite the luxury.

After resting a bit, food was in order.  Obtaining food seems to be a central theme of our joint travels. At times it interferes with seeing the sites but we all love to eat and traveling with two young adult guys has its requirements.  After a pub dinner that was actually quite good, fish and chips and soup among other things, one of my sons and I took a stroll while the other two went back "home" to rest.  The very long summer days are a delight while traveling.  We were out until after 10 and it was still light.  We walked along the Water of Leith, a creek that runs through town until we could walk no more.  Here are a few shots:

I was excited to see a grey heron and a fox during our ramble.  It was a pleasant ending to a long day.

Citizen M Hotel in Glasgow

I now am trying blogging from my cell phone.  It is of course even smaller than my tablet.  This will limit my literary endeavors.   My photos may possibly be artful but will in the end be taken from  a  cell phone which is limiting.  
I love the common rooms of this hotel.  They are literally stacked with books:  books with the covers removed, French pocket books arranged spines in, art books, old leather bound books.  There is also a miscellany of old electronics: typewriters, telephones, clocks, etc. 

I ran into trouble posting from my phone so I think I'll have to go back to the old fashioned way and use a computer.  

Blogging in Glasgow

I am doing the experiment of using my new little tablet to blog by.  I can tell this will not be a favorite due to very slow typing!

Busy!

I got bogged down in the usual things--work, television, too many Solitaire games on-line and haven't finished up my backpacking tale.  What is new is that I am taking an on-line creative writing class which is giving me a fair bit of homework.  I haven't had to do homework in quite a few years although I do have to do continuing education, take occasional exams for licensure and bring work home.  Somehow homework feels different.  I may get around to sharing some of the assignments here, or maybe not.



This week's highlight had to have been the eclipse of the moon on Sunday night so I am digressing from backpacking to post a few pictures.  I didn't expect it to me much of an event and thought I'd be one of the eccentric few going to the lake to view it, and was surprised by the feel of community out there.  The numbers were nearly comparable to the local crowd out viewing the (fairly distant) Fourth of July fireworks.



We were fortunate to catch a break in the clouds for the first half of the show and the clouds closed on us around the time the moon should have been peeking out again which made a good excuse to go home and not stay out too late.  It was a wonderful experience, sadly not soon to be experienced.   As far as celestial events go, next August 9-13 should be the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.  I should make a plan to find a dark mountain somewhere to watch that one.

Rainier Hike, Day 3

Backpacking is hard work but life on the trail is, in some other ways, so simple.  You get up at dawn, go to sleep at dark.  You walk all day, then do a few chores, set up camp, filter water, cook dinner (which basically involves boiling water and stirring) and go to sleep.  Some nights sleep feels optional.  No matter how good the mat, the ground is always hard and the tent is always small.  Every time you turn, your mat crinkles, like sleeping on the waterproof mattress and pillow in a hospital. Each night spent in bear territory seems to involve some listening to the nightly noises outside.  Yes, the food might be hanging on a pole a few yards from the tent but who knows what a curious or hungry bear might decide to investigate?  The chapstick I forgot to hang?  Bits of dinner I spilled on my jacket?  My first night I found a cough drop in a pocket after I had crawled into my sleeping bag. Lazy me, I unzipped my tent and threw it as far as I could away from the me hoping a cute squirrel would dine on it.  Are there backpackers who don't develop a bit of a bear phobia?

Day three dawned chilly but sunny with a beautiful view of the Yellowstone Cliffs.  The night before I hadn't noticed the cave on the cliff side.  Maybe that was where the bears sleep when they aren't raiding camp sites.  Breakfast includes coffee thanks to Starbucks which makes a pretty good instant coffee and also an instant mocha that means I don't have to carry powdered milk.  After some oatmeal, we packed up and hit the trail, going in opposite directions. My son takes the high road, hiking further up the trail to see a few sights;  I head back down the hill again toward our next campground.  I don't move nearly as fast as he does and I was worried about my knees.
Some 30 years ago I backpacked on Isle Royale, my last major hike until a few years ago, and developed some significant knee pain.  I wound up using a stick to lean on for the duration of that hike.  Unfortunately the same phenomenon reappeared a few years ago while day hiking.  The trigger seems to be downhill stretches and with some internet research I concluded that I have iliotibial band syndrome which is merely an inflamed tendon.  I had worried that I was looking at knee surgery but fortunately this seems less serious.  Less happily, it hurts a lot.  After two episodes of the problem in the past 5 years I decided that I will try to train a bit harder and see if that does the trick.  So I've been working on it with Pilates, stretching, walking up and down stairs with my backpack on, using hiking poles and wearing a funny looking knee stabilizer, and this past trip it seems to have worked.  Over 2000 feet of downhill walking with backpack and my knee was fine!

For quite a while it was trees and more trees.  The forest passed by with no view of a beginning or end.  To mark time there were those 21 or so switchbacks and not much else.  At least I knew the hill had a bottom as I had been there the day before.  They were only slightly less tedious on the way down than on the way up.  It was hard not to feel a slight sens of mourning losing all the elevation I had gained with so much effort just the day before.

Well, this post is getting long and I need to get moving.  Stay tuned for day 3-1/2.

Hiking Mount Rainier Day 2

 Our next day's hiking was determined primarily by available camp sites. Instead of a reasonable, read easy, route we took a detour up part of the trail named the Northern Loop. The total mileage wasn't all that bad but there was a small matter of a hill to go up. After departing camp, we crossed the Carbon River on a suspension bridge. How they ever got this built in the wilderness I don't know--I guessed dropping metal parts from a helicopter--but maybe it was better than having to build a new bridge after every spring flood. In fact, farther downstream, the trail had to take a detour after it was washed out in a flood a few years ago. The bridge doesn't look too intimidating until you get on it. Looking down at rock and glacier-fed river from a swaying platform that was missing a few wooden slats is scarier than it looked. There is a warning for only one person to be on the bridge at a time. I wasn't off yet when the next person started across and I can tell you the bridge started jumping and swaying a bit.

That safely past, we took a short detour toward Carbon River Glacier. Wikipedia tells me the glacier ends at 3500 feet of elevation and is the lowest glacier in the 48 states. It is also the largest outside of Alaska by most methods of counting. Like most glaciers the world over, it too is receding faster than a middle-aged man's hairline. I didn't hike to the glacier itself--there was a sign warning us not to since no one needs to be beaned by falling rocks or fall in a river. More honestly, I was saving my energy for the rest of the day's hiking. My son and I parted for a couple of hours so he could hike up the trail a bit and I could plod along toward camp. By the way, the gray stuff below the mountain is the glacier. No pearly whites at the tail end of a living glacier.
One advantage to hiking alone is that I could stop a bit more often, as often as my energy would allow, for photos. My enthusiasm for photography certainly waned as I encountered the one and only hill of the day. After going nearly entirely downhill for a few miles, we hit the turn off to our campsite. To get from the Carbon River to Yellowstone Cliffs was a mere couple of miles. All those miles were uphill. I didn't count on the way up, but on the way back down the next day (an exercise in frustration--who wants to hike up a mountain merely to hike down it again the next day?) I counted 21 switchbacks. Ugh. Trails like these made me grateful for the three meals we had already eaten since starting out.
Most of the trail was heavily wooded. No views, a few pretty wildflowers and some interesting mushrooms and a small snake were the highlights of the trek until I finally could shed my pack.
We were the second party in a two site campground when a large party of older men moved in. No, they didn't have a reservation but they were tapped out and could go no farther. They were nice guys and some of them were significantly older than me (and I felt ancient at times on the trail). We weren't the campground police so we were happy to share our patch of trees and swap tales for a moment. I was amused when several of them set up camp right underneath the bear pole (used to suspend all our communal food to keep the bears out).  It was some small consolation that if bears visited our camp, they'd know it first and alert us. The other campers where a father-daughter pair (she was in her 30's) which mirrored our mother-son pair nicely.   
 Stats for the day: 23,380 steps, 9.60 miles, 184 floor-equivalents. Hike beginning and end points are approximations.

Empty nesting--the first month

When the going gets tough, the tough go. . . backpacking. To begin the story, in late August we dropped my younger son off at college somewhere in Washington State (that is his story to tell, not mine ). As I was in dire fear of returning to an empty house, no offense to my husband, two cats, uncounted fish and two turtles (but they live outside in the summer), I immediately took off backpacking with my older son. Washington state was seemingly at risk of burning down due to some major forest fires and we had to dig a little deep to find a place to go that actually wasn't burning, wasn't lost in lung-crippling haze and made sense for a three night hike. We came up with Mount Rainier National Park which is an amazing place by any standard. It was, however, a choice with complications, since backcountry permits are hard to come by and require advance reservation or showing up at a ranger station first come-first served. The latter plan worked for us although getting to the station by 8:30 AM was challenging for my son who likes to sleep in. Finding available camp sites was a bit hit or miss. In fact after we picked our itinerary, with me stating over and over--I can't hike 10 miles in one day--we lost a site as the ranger was filling in our information. The itinerary we picked was challenging, in fact a bit more challenging than I realized as there was far more elevation loss and gain each day than I anticipated. I don't hike quickly and at 54 my knees aren't great but I try hard. Our first day we hiked from Mowich Lake through Spray Park to Cataract Campground. When planning this trip we didn't realize we were hiking over a relatively high pass. Mowich Lake is at a reasonable 4929 feet and our first campground was at a similar elevation. The bad news is that we had to gain 2500 feet in elevation and then lose about the same. So much for my knees! In hindsight, I also carried too much water, and of course all our food that first day. Certainly, at times fatigue hampered my enjoyment of the view and there were moments I worried we wouldn't make camp before dark. Seeing Spray Park again was a memory-laden milestone. We hiked there when I was a child and it is a place I will always love. However, back in the day, the wilderness was less populated and the rules were laxer or non-existent. We were able to camp in Spray Park and wander at will, checking out the flowers and small ponds that are everywhere early in the season. Now you are prohibited from leaving the trail due to risk of damage to the fragile meadows and there is no camping in the meadow area. So we raced through, scoped out the views (which are amazing), huffed and puffed our way up a ridge and then down again to Cataract Campground. After Spray Park there were very few hikers on the trail and we largely had the place to ourselves. I lumbered or stumbled in to Cataract at around 7 PM with plenty of light to spare and we set up camp. There was only one other party there, a group of women around my age who seemed to have some sort of backpacking reunion going. We commiserated about the toilets (nastiest I have ever seen and an advertisement for holding it for a few days), they shared some excess food with us and we got camp set up, ate and slept. The camp was heavily wooded, no views to be had but quiet except for a snoring neighbor--sigh, isn't that why you go to the woods, to get away from all that?--but it was home for a night. I sure miss campfires! Getting up in the morning and boiling water over a camp stove is not as nice a way to beat off the morning chill.

I end day 1 with my Fitbit stats: 25141 steps, 10.33 miles and the equivalent of 200 floors of stairs (which is equal to 2000 feet elevation gain)--I would quibble with the stats in that, by the map, I did a bit more elevation and a bit less in total miles--I'd bet my stride length goes down with a backpack and difficult terrain. Nonetheless, my good intentions of walking less than 10 miles on relatively easy terrain didn't quite make it. Fortunately, I did, make it that is. Day two to follow or check out more photos on Flickr.

Foray into Bloglovin

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In a Cat's Eye

My cat kindly agreed to let me try out my new camera on her. If you look closely I'm reflected in there. For Photo Sunday: Cat.

Gees, Geez!

ABC Wednesday is doing the letter G.

G is for Geese.


G is for Graphics Card.


G is for Ginger Growing.

White for Winter

Thematic photograph #326 is White for Winter. No shortage of whitish photos this winter but compared to last year this has been relatively manageable. Some schools(not my son's school) were closed one day last week for cold as wind chills were 20 below zero but honestly, just north of the border it is cold like this half the winter and they make it to school. I think our tolerance for adverse conditions has diminished the past few years. I wonder if we can blame the news media for turning every storm into an apocalypse or Armageddon. Admittedly, I can whine with the best of them, but then I was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Seattle which has a much more temperate climate. I am not phased much by earthquakes but I don't do well with cold. Since for now I am staying in Chicago, I'll just have to take advantage of the photo ops.

Feet for Photo Sunday

This is a detail of an outdoor installation called Agora by Polish sculptor, Magdalena Abakanowicz.  The piece is a  series of legs of rusty iron which I find reminiscent of Dr. Seuss's story of the pants with nobody inside them. To quote Seuss:
     Then I was deep within the woods
     When, suddenly, I spied them.
     I saw a pair of pale green pants
     With nobody inside them!
OK, so the legs are rust colored not green but take a look at a less detailed view. For Photo Sunday: Feet

F is for...

Fire Escape



Falling Ice


Three foxes reading?

For ABC Wednesday and brought to you by the letter F.

Eye Spy

E is for Eye Chart seen in Optometrist's office in Mont-de-Marsan, France. This summer I took a solo road trip through France and one night I got a bit lost returning to my hotel after dinner. This office caught my eye (pun intended). For ABC Wednesday, the letter E.

Faces on a Wall

Photo Friday for this week is "faces". These mail slots are from a central post office in San Sebastian, Spain. I went there in search of interesting stamps to put on my mail and found, as seems all too common in Europe that most stamps are sold out of vending machines. I fear the collecting of interesting stamps will be lost far too soon. Mail slots like these will become as obsolete as working phone booths.

Just another wintry day in Chicago

Slush, ice falling from buildings and fog--what more could one ask for?  Sometimes it seems Chicagoans' favorite team sport is discussing the weather. For Photo Friday, Weather.

Clashing Colors

The theme for Photo Sunday is: Pink. I believe these flowers are even called pinks. I used to try to color coordinate my garden but I found that the colors never seemed to stand out much. I feel more comfortable with the clashing colors more recently. These are from my garden this past summer. We have had a thaw this weekend which has meant that we can amuse ourselves listening to our house drop large chunks of snow. Fortunately we are set back from the street so they are no risk to anyone. Despite the thaw, I crave some summer sunshine of which the above photo is a cruel reminder. Many of our busier streets are posted with caution signs due to falling snow. Yesterday I overheard a pedestrian say she had a near miss with a chunk of ice.