Posted 7:12 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Bloch Fountain

To be technical, this is the fountain in the Richard and Annette Block Cancer Survivors Plaza in Houston:

Bloch Fountain
Houston, TX, Oct. 2007

I like this picture because it looks as if I'm trying to sneak up on the fountain, afraid to approach it. That was pretty much the case: there were other people crawling around the park that day, taking pictures inside the gazebo there, and I had to stand in one place to get a shot where they were hidden behind the columns. The large building in the background (Warwick Towers, according to Google Maps) kind of spoils the effect, but I could scarcely have it demolished. Not on such short notice, anyway.

If you're having trouble seeing the fountain, well, so was I. It's in there somewhere.

This is on the corner of Hermann Park, between the Mecom Fountain and the Natural History Museum.

It turns out that this is one of a chain, if you will, of parks dedicated to cancer survivors, set up by Richard Bloch. Read all about it here. Richard would be the R in H&R Bloch. There are 21 such parks (so far) scattered around the U.S., plus one in Canada. Start the virtual tour here. The descriptions each mention a computer -- noting where the computer is within the park -- but the purpose of the computer doesn't seem to be explained anywhere. I didn't see any computer; perhaps I didn't go into the gazebo, what with the plague of tourists. The Houston park surely must be the smallest of them (as suggested here, on what seems to be an earlier version of the park page -- some of the pictures are slightly different).

Check out the New Orleans park! Looks like the Rosicrucians have conquered Las Vegas. The Rancho Mirage park looks like an alien version of Disneyland ("PYRAMID POWER"). OK, now I want to collect the set, go to all those cities and photograph the parks. It would certainly give me something to do, should I ever be stuck in Indianapolis or Omaha.

Labels: Foto Friday, Texas

Posted 7:00 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Conquest of Conquest

Every few days I come across something interesting enough to write about. But I don't have time then. By the time I have time to write, the event has become ancient history (2 days in normal time, 2 millennia in blog years). So that's why no blog.

To make up for the lack of Foto Friday last week, here's a three-fer: the George Rogers Clark Memorial:

George Rogers Clark Memorial
Vincennes, IN, June 2007

I took Niles here last summer, and he was mildly interested in this large memorial park, until he learned that Clark was celebrated for kicking British butt. Doh! Guess I forgot to mention that part.

Check out the inscription at the top:

You can only read part of it. The whole thing reads, "The Conquest of the West - George Rogers Clark and The Frontiersmen of the American Revolution."

You don't often see an uncritical, unabashed reference to conquest these days. The Memorial was dedicated in the benighted days of 1936, by the benighted FDR.

Be sure to check out the park's web site. Enjoy the nice pictures of the redbuds, then look inside the Memorial at the seven murals. I have pictures of them, but they're pretty crummy. My flash was not powerful enough, and I was unable to make the tourists go the hell away.

The murals are by an artist named Ezra Winter. Most of them are very colorful, but mural number 3 is very dull. Questioned about this, Winter explained that, hey, Vincennes is very dull in the winter (depicted in the mural), and he wanted to be accurate.

If you look at the first photo, above, you might see a chunk of stone near the riverfront, just in front of the Memorial. That's this:

Statue of Francis Vigo
Vincennes, IN
June 2007

Francis Vigo, honored in the names of counties and townships and countless businesses around Vincennes. On Memorial Day that year, the city woke to find that someone had broken Vigo's nose. It was still buzzing with indignation weeks later. A park ranger told us with satisfaction that the culprits -- teenagers -- had been identified and would be Dealt With.

I think Vigo looks like he's preparing to get out of his seat and give chase. "You damn kids BRING BACK MY NOSE!"

Visible behind Vigo is the Lincoln Memorial Bridge which carries the business loop of US Hwy 50 into Illinois. Supposedly this was the place where the young Abe Lincoln forded the Wabash to get to Illinois (which he had heard was calling itself the "Land of Lincoln", and he wanted to know what that was about).

Like Lincoln, Niles and I likewise crossed the river on foot, but we were sensible enough to use the bridge, so as not to get wet. I believe that's the only time I have crossed a state line on foot.

So, exciting, eh? Now, wasn't that worth the wait?

Labels: Foto Friday, Indiana

Posted 9:53 PM by Angie Schultz

Noontime in the Garden of White and Dark

If I weren't using the laptop, I'd know what this picture looks like. As it is, it changes every time I move my head. So it might suck. Deal.

Terry Hershey Park
Houston, December 2007

This is just a tree with some moss. I took a bunch of pictures in Hershey Park just before Christmas, using some filters I'd been acquiring over the fall. They didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped. According to my notes, this one was taken with a dark green X1 filter and a Nikon Soft 2. The X1 darkened the sky quite a bit but let the trunk and the leaves at the top shine bright white.

Houston doesn't boast a whole lot of stunning scenery. My present environs are a little different. I've been lugging my camera nearly everywhere recently; maybe in a few weeks I can post some local pictures.

Posted 10:30 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: It's Baaaaack

Hi, I'm back. Didja miss me? No, huh?

Anyhow, here's a Foto Friday. If you didn't see it on Friday, it's because I forgot to remove the stealth pixel paint. Yeah.

Anyhow, here 'tis. I don't have a good idea of how it looks, compared to previous efforts, since I don't have the big Samsung monitor (which I used exclusively before) hooked up, and am using only the laptop screen. So I hope I haven't over-tweaked.

The Blue Mountains, Australia, July 2002

Here's an interactive web cam of the Blue Mountains, although I couldn't get it to work. And here are some more photographs. I am very generous in linking to this site, since his pictures are far better than mine (be sure and check out the other two Blue Mountains galleries there, as well as galleries of other places around Australia).

This was taken on my last full day in Australia. Due to incredible stupidity on my part, I didn't get around to seeing this particular sight until then. It was winter; I should've gone in spring and summer and fall, to see the changes. But I was more interested in sitting around and moping. (In my defense, I didn't have a car then.)

Now I live in a photo-rich environment, and I must guard against the inclination to mope.

The Blue Mountains are just west of Sydney. There's a bit of history here. The Blue Mountains supposedly get their name from the haze of eucalyptus oil droplets. However, some note that mountains (or anything else) at a distance tend to look blue and hazy (cf. the Blue Ridge Mountains, which contain negligible amounts of eucalyptus oil).

When I was a child I read this fairytale, in which a man goes to great lengths to find the Blue Mountains. The "Blue Mountains" sounded so beautiful and romantic, I wanted to find them too.

Posted 11:32 AM by Angie Schultz

Not Dead Yet

In case any of my largely-imaginary readers were worried, I am not yet dead. I may be soon, however, since I will be without internet (except at work), for more than a week. GASP! AIR! GASP!

Photos of the new home will have to wait until I a) am no longer broke, and b) can get them developed and scanned. Oh, and taken. Stay tuned (after a week or so) to read (maybe) of the gripping tale of the home search, with exciting chapters such as "Is the Pig Included in the Rent?" and "Apartment Manager by Day, Fire Dancer by Night".

Late update direct quote: "Awesome!"

Posted 3:38 PM by Angie Schultz

The Classics Are Evergreen

Hopefully there'll be a Foto Friday up a little later, but for now, an appetizer.

I read this over at InstaPundit:

Two men obviously thought James Pickett, 80, was an easy target when they showed up at his home on Saturday with a knife...

What the men didn't know is Picket had taken a pistol and put it in his pocket before opening the door.
"He jumped and turned and I shot him," Picket said.

The two brothers, Paul and Holden Perry, ran but didn't get far before calling an ambulance.

"The only problem was I run out of bullets," Picket said.

And was reminded of this:

He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage…

--- Bored of the Rings

Posted 9:43 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Dawn Patrol

Sunrise at Lick Observatory, June 1995

This photo may look a little crooked, as if the camera was not being held straight. That's just an optical illusion created by the slope of the ridge line in the background. Yes.

This was taken from Mt. Hamilton Rd. just east of the 3m telescope (above me on my right, out of the picture). The main building is visible on the peak in the background.

The large white dome on the left side of the main building holds the historic 36" refractor. That link says that it's the second-largest refractor in the world, second only to the 40" refractor at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. That's what I always thought, too, but Wikipedia (WARNING! WIKIPEDIA!) says that the second largest is the 1m (39") Swedish Solar Telescope in the Canaries. Its design is not a traditional refractor design, although it does have a 1m lens. So we'll give it an asterisk.

BUT MY POINT, before I got bogged down in minutiae, was that the tiny white dome on the right side of the main building holds a 40" reflector. Yes, the tiny dome holds a bigger telescope than the huge dome. Bigger in diameter, that is, which is the important parameter. The refractor is of course much longer than the reflector, which is why it needs all that dome.

Through the miracle of Blogger, this post has gone back in time. It was posted on Friday, though it is in fact Sunday as I write. Do not attempt to adjust your browser. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. And we control time. So don't piss us off.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 10:08 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever

My favorite picture of my favorite view:

Pu'u Kukui from Wailea, Maui
Sep. 2003

I posted a similar picture last summer.

Are you tired of Hawaii, hmmm? Are you sick of Maui yet?

YOU.
WILL.
BE.

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

Posted 10:02 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Eye on the Sky

200 in. Hale Telescope
Mt. Palomar, CA, July 1995

In my prints of this, the telescope glows with an unearthly light. It took a lot of fiddling to even begin to reproduce it in this image. I think it had something to do with the polarization and reflection off the white paint.

This was the largest telescope in the world for something like 50 years. There's a Russian telescope that's a meter larger. According to Wikipedia its first light was in 1975, but even in the late '80s it was having grave difficulties, and was not really working.

Nowadays, of course, 5m is not considered any great shakes. The largest single mirrors are the (twin!) 8.4m mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. (See here for a gripping 2003 tale of how the first mirror was moved up the mountain.)

If you use many small mirrors you can make telescopes much larger, of course. The proposed names for these telescopes are getting larger and sillier too, with the European Extremely Large Telescope (42m), the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (100m), and the Jaw-Droppingly Mind-Crushingly Huge Telescope (1 gagjillion m). I might've made that last one up. (I think the OWLT has in favor of the more modest EELT.)

Speaking of gripping tales, the story of the building of the Hale Telescope is told in The Perfect Machine, by Ronald Florence. This great book turns glass pouring into high drama.

Oh, yeah: Palomar linky.

Posted 9:36 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Sunday Edition

Was at a conference all last week, got home Friday but was too beat to find something decent to post. I'm writing this on Sunday, but I've back-dated the post to Friday, because I can. This still isn't decent, but it's what you get. Behold the glory and wonder of the view from the Honolulu airport:

Honolulu Sunset, Dec. 2006

...but it's what you get.

For certain values of "you" -- values which are, apparently, purely imaginary. I've been doing this every Friday for 18 months. I miss one Friday, and the roar of apathy is deafening. So when I apologize for tardiness or the poor quality of an image, I'm apologizing to thin air.

Harrumph.

This would discourage a lesser woman, but fortunately I am made of harder stuff.

Unfortunately, however, I am entering a period of great upheaval and change, and I don't know when I'll find the time to scan, or breathe. Therefore Foto Friday may well be intermittent for several months.

Just thought you air molecules should know.