It has been literally (and I’m using the word correctly) years since my last post. Been keeping away because, while ridiculously productive taking pictures, I just can’t seem to work up the desire to write. Well, that’s not true: I keep a journal in which I write almost every day, sometimes pages of notes about the pictures I’m taking, the books I’m reading and assorted crap. Blog writing though… I don’t know… I start out and a sentence or two in (like right now!) I ask myself, ‘who cares?’ and don’t even bother to save the draft. Today I thought I’d ease myself back into it.
I’m preparing for a trip to New York City next week to see an exhibit of about fifty photos by Eugène Atget at the ICP – if my back can stand it, that is – by familiarizing myself with his work.
His photography, usually done on early mornings before there were people out and about, resonate deeply with me because they remind me of the pictures I would take walking around the near empty streets during covid. They are also the sort of photographs I would like to be able to take now but can’t unless I, too, get up very early to hit the streets before 5 O’clock.
[The picture above was taken on 19 December 2020, early afternoon, in DUMBO (Brooklyn, NY)]
2020.12.19 (13:39): the lunchtime crowd in DUMBO, Brooklyn
The blog entry linked below is from Art Blart (‘art and cultural memory archive’) which I only discovered this year, but has become a great resource for me.
Alarm at 5:30, snoozed until 5:48. No real snoozing involved, just lying lazily in bed not wanting to get up.
Always keep a camera by the bedside for those lazy morning pictures
Tightly rolled up my clothes into the duffel last night which gave me a false sense of having made plenty of room in the bag until, this morning, I had to add my toiletries bag, a sweater and a sweatshirt, making it a cramming exercise again. Nothing in the bag that wasn’t there when I came, yet it seemed heavier.
Decided to Uber instead of walking to Union Station because of the aforementioned laziness. Uber ride was nice enough except for the smell of the air ‘freshener’.
Tried purchasing the train ticket to the airport with the company card again, again it was rejected. Bozos!
Turns out almost everyone else had this problem with the train ticket. Get a bunch of developers in the same room discussing something like this and it becomes a conversation bordering on theology as to the hows, whys, and wherefores of credit card processing and company policies. A couple of us spent some time in this before ending with the equivalent of god moving in mysterious ways.
Train to Pearson has plastic partitions between seats. They’re kept pretty clean. Thinking that in New York there would hair grease, skin oil, and clever epithets scratches into them from day one and they wouldn’t have been cleaned since day two.
Were it not for the reflection, and the constant bumping of the elbow, you wouldn’t know the partition was there
With the knowledge gained during my arrival, it was quicker to find my way to terminal 3. Security was easy enough, people here are sure damn friendly. Almost as if they like their jobs or something ridiculous like that.
Border control was a mess. Two lines: one for MCP app holders with nobody in it; the other for those without with the entire population of Toronto in it. I’m pretty sure that the reason is that people don’t know that leaving Toronto, Pearson (YYZ) is the ‘port of entry’ and many airports (like LaGuardia) aren’t listed. It confused me at first and there was none one to ask, but i reasoned it out: if there’s a border control here, then this must be the POE. Sailed right through.
Terrible breakfast at the airport at somethings called ‘Urban Market’ consisting of a container of chocolate milk, a lemon loaf (what nobody seems to call a lemon pound cache anymore), and a bottle of Perrier. Could have gone to the Starbucks all the way in the other side of the A Gates, actually did go, but the line there was almost as bad as the non-MPC line at border control
Illustrating the value of knowing your customer: shoeshine guy offers me a shine. I look down at my canvas shoes and say ‘no.’
Canvas shoes, canvas bag, nylon backpack
Paid an extra 47 bucks for upgrade to business. Wonder how they came up with that amount. Why not 45 or 50? It’s like they prorated some intangible thing
((comfort * distance/ticket cost) * remaining seats). Anyway, worth the money to get in first and the comfy chair (crowd mumbles ‘the comfy chair?’, ‘the comfy chair!’)
The woman in seat 4A show you just how comfy the chairs are.
Especially with a full flight, it’s nice to have the extra room for legs and elbows between the seats. (Bonus: fig bars and a seltzer served in an actual glass. Coming up in coach we were offered nothing and told we couldn’t bring beverages on board)
Am in the aisle, so no inflight pictures except for this one
Seats 2 and 3A
The woman in 4A was leaning across the aisle and saying something to me. I couldn’t understand her, her voice was muffled. I leaned closer to hear her and the sound of my book falling woke me up. When I looked across the aisle the woman, a very different woman than the one in my dream, was sitting back in her seat reading. The muffled in my dream was that of the pilot, who was still talking, announcing our descent into turbulent skies above New York. I picked up my book and, packing it into my backpack, started to feel the initial jolts which lasted about fifteen minutes until we reached the ground. The woman in 4A took pictures documenting our approach.
Yesterday I used my lunch hour to go to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore to get the latest issue of i-D Magazine. Turns out they didn’t have it. It’s an import from the UK and they are still one and a half issues behind on the magazine racks here (another issue is due out soon).
I was disappointed that I had wasted my time on the short drive, made long because of the traffic. But was it a complete waste?
As usual, I had one of my cameras with me. I took some meh shots walking through the bookstore …
Looking out the window by the magazine racksDescending the escalator to the lower levelAnother shot looking out the window by the magazine racksA selection of magazines (why is short American Short Fiction on the upper shelf where short people would find it hard to reach?)
… but, going back back outside through an entrance I rarely use, the area looked slightly different than I remembered. I thought I’d try doing one of the ten exercises I started writing about a year or more ago. I would stand in the same spot, moving my feet only to turn a bit, and take a series of pictures.
Here, now, I shall impose the results upon you.
They’re just moving furniture into this restaurant. One of two places that are ‘opening soon’Don’t know what either Plans A or B were, but neither proved to be successful. The sign out front advertises the ‘coming soon’ of a comedy club. The weather’s been dismal and I look forward to a few laughs.This was the something-or-other building on Tresser Boulevard. Now it’s the something-or-other-else building. Companies come and go taking their names with them; buildings stay until they start to crumble and are torn down – hopefully before falling on someone.#1 Those eyes! A mural created by Sen2 (Santo) Figuero [@sen2figueroa on Instagram#2 Same position as #1 – different focus#3 A little bit lower now.#4 And a little bit lower now.#5 A little bit higher now.
All shot with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II on aperture mode with LUMIX II Aspherical 20mm f/1.7 lens
Today I finished this book in the same place where I found it. [Olympus OM-D M-5ii, LUMIX 20mm Lens, f/16.0, 1/30s, ISO 180]
Just finished reading Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried, a coherent collection of short stories about Tim’s time as a soldier in Vietnam. I call it a ‘coherent collection’ because the stories, any one of which could stand its own, flow in either chronological or narrative order.
It’s a book I picked up by chance off a shelf at Third Place, a shared work space in Stamford, CT. Written in 1990, it had only just recently been brought to my attention: my wife, Jane had finished reading it a few months before and told me about it without a lot going into much detail (something like ‘you’d like this. It’s about Vietnam and it’s very moving at times’), but I dismissed it as something that had been written either after the fact by someone who hadn’t been there or by an embedded reporter. But I came across it at Third Place and the coincidence made me pick it up, read the first few pages and become hooked.
I read the last few pages of the book today in the same place where I found it – not by design, it just worked out that way.
The book resonated with me in so many ways (it was real; it recalled the military for me in ways that I hadn’t thought about since I left; it was philosophical; it was instructive) , and I found it moving more than just at times.
In the last story, ‘The Lives of the Dead,’ a childhood girlfriend, Linda, who died from a brain tumor around the age of nine, answer’s his question, ‘What’s it like to be dead?’, in a dream saying, ‘Well, right now [in the dream] I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like… I don’t know, I guess it’s like being instead a book that nobody’s reading… All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick it up and start reading.’ I loved that analogy.
It’s one of those books I’m sorry I finished: it made good company and I’d like to have kept on reading it.
Here I will admit to having a kind ofphotographic Tourette’s Syndrome in that, when out by myself, I cannot sit more than a few minutes without pulling out either my phone or my camera and taking a picture. The impulse is still there when I’m with others but, unless there is something truly compelling, their presence tempers my impulse to snap anything that catches my attention.
So, to illustrate, let me take you through the hour I spent at coffee this morning at a cafe on Grigg Street, Greenwich [CFCF Coffee – if you’re ever in town, I highly recommend any of its three locations] while trying to read through the magazine I brought with me.
There are fifteen pictures below out of roughly sixty taken and several different edits – so, for the sake of argument, let’s average it at one picture per minute.
Grigg is a short (one-block) street close to the bottom of what would be our ‘High Street,’ Greenwich Avenue. There are only a few shops there, notably CFCF, Diane’s Books, and Grigg Street Pizza. Not a lot to take pictures of. However, there are…
9:14: Blue Skies/Blue Umbrellas; White Skies/Black Umbrellas (Color: iPhone XR/B&W: Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II)9:16: The corner of Grigg Street and Greenwich Avenue – this is a window into Meli-Melo, a very popular restaurant (which I have yet to go to, since it’s jam-packed every time I try). I love the bottom of the window frame that gives the original name building and year it was erected. (Olympus)9:17: A woman sitting across at a table Greenwich Avenue – I didn’t even know there were tables there (Olympus)9:18: I don’t know why this woman’s feet caught my attention, but I kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye while looking down at my magazine. Finally, I gave in and took a photo (iPhone)9.19: Then, looking down at my own feet, wishing I had better taste in socks (grey carhart socks with brown pants? Please, someone rescue me from my lack of fashion sense!) (iPhone)9:19: within seconds of my last picture, this man and his prodigious beard catches my attention. That’s the beard I want to grow, but I just don’t have the patience to maintain it (iPhone)9:23: Three minutes and, perhaps, ten pictures later… the woman who was with the beard, sitting at the table in front of me. I thought shooting her through the empty chair in front of me would make a nice picture. It’s the lack of someone in that chair opposite me that has made all these pictures possible (iPhone)9:27: The leaves in the planter next to me catch my attention. Upon inspection, they appear to need a shave . This is actually a composite of two pictures to mimic depth of field: one with the front leaves in focus and the other with the inner leaves in focus (iPhone)9:40 & 9:41: Whenever possible, I try not to post pictures of people where their faces are fully visible, but I couldn’t help it here: this couple is just too good looking. Before this shot I think they were taking a selfie (iPhone)9:42: Sink in the restroom. Good to see that whoever was there last used soap (iPhone)9:52: Effortless elegance (iPhone)10:05: Suddenly, there’s a crack in the sidewalk that needs photographing (iPhone)
My first post in a while. Consider this a warm up for getting back into the writing habit. Consider yourself warned: you may be bored.
I’m booked on the 11:29 Amtrak Northeast Regional from Stamford to Charlottesville. I had asked my friend, Emil, for a ride to the station. He said yes, but first he needed to take his wife, Sarah, to work at eleven. I was initially okay with this, but when 10:30 came around I became anxious about the potential that he might not get me there on time and, as I didn’t want to chance missing the only train to Charlottesville from Stamford today, I arranged for an Uber, texted Emil that I was getting a ride to the station.
I thoroughly enjoyed my driver, a woman named Joy who moved to Stamford from Port Chester two years ago with her husband and two children – for the schools and a safer neighbourhood. We talked about the advantages of living in Connecticut as opposed to New York State. Her one complaint was the property taxes on vehicles. Between their two cars they pay something in the neighbourhood of One Thousand Dollars annually. She’s glad that gas prices are going down; at their peak they were cutting into about half of what she would make on average. Uber, she said, was giving a Fifty Cent per trip gas ‘help.’ We both had a good laugh at that. I liked her so much I gave her a Ten Dollar tip, just Two Dollars less than the fare.
Stamford Station wasn’t particularly busy. At the newsstand I picked up copies of the Financial Times and The New York Times, a tin of Altoids and a bottle of Canada Dry seltzer. Both papers were thin: I’m already done with the FT and am saving the NYT for the leg from DC to Charlottesville.
Took some pictures at Stamford before the train arrived (late).
I am enjoying my seat in the Business Car. Five-F, a window seat on the West side of the train (if you consider that we’re traveling South). So far, no one sitting next to me.
Just outside of Manhattan, about fifteen minutes from Penn, the train comes to a slow and squeaky stop. We sit there for perhaps ten minutes with no word from the crew. When we start moving again, the conductor announces: ladies and gentlemen, as you can see we have no power in the cars, but the good news is that we’re moving. We apologize for the problems which we’ll address with the maintenance crew when we arrive at Penn Station.
The worst part about the lack of power, it being daytime, is no air conditioning. In ten minutes or so that we’ve been traveling, the air has become thick and uncomfortable. No problem for the remaining five or so minutes to Penn, but I wouldn’t want to finish off the trip to Charlottesville this way.
The train came to another stop, high above some part of Queens (interesting that instead of going through the Bronx as other trains I’ve taken to Washington do, we’re traveling across Queens and Brooklyn – sort of along the BQE). There we stayed for a good fifteen minutes before moving again. Power has been restored to the cars, so the AC is back on, but the ride is going slow. We were told that it would be another ten minutes to Penn about ten minutes ago and Manhattan is still across the river.
Power substation in the Bronx near the Randall’s Island Connector
The passage from New York to Washington, DC was fairly uneventful. At one point I walked two cars up to the Bar Car (through the Quiet Car and one of the Coach Class cars). For lunch I had the Angus Burger (a cheese burger microwaved to a shoe-leather consitency), a bag of Miss Vicky’s chips (sea salt), and a slim can of Stella Artois. These I ate at a table I shared with a young woman in possession of a stack of word search and crossword magazines, a bag of peanut M&Ms accompanied me back to my seat. They’re gone now.
Riding through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland
It was raining hard as we pulled into DC. We sat there for a good long time as they changed the engine, the crew, cleaned the train and took in new passengers – might have been an hour, might have been longer; thank God for the distraction of a good book (still deep into Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still). At some point the rain stopped and I didn’t notice. Looking out the window at 17:43 I found it to be darker than I expected (because of the clouds? because we’re that much more south from Connecticut? because of the approaching Autumn?) As I asked this last question, the train started moving.
Union Station, Washington, DC
Hopeful that we would get to Charleston at a time approximating our scheduled arrival, I was disappointed when the conductor informed us that we were an hour behind schedule in a scolding tone, as though we were responsible for the delays. ‘Whatever time you expected to arrive at, just add an hour to that!’ she said out loud while, silently, I heard her add ‘you bastards!’
Texting my wife this last update (and by the way: we’re stopped again in the middle of nowhere, so maybe the hour delay was an optimistic estimate), she hopes that I’m comfortable at least. Must say that, in spite of it all, I’m doing pretty well. Getting in some reading, writing, photography (out the train window) and music reading. I said I was contemplating walking back up to the bar car for a stiff gin and tonic after we pass Alexandria. We’ve been stopped just outside Alexandria for the past fifteen minutes, so I’m getting up now.
Thirty minutes later, still sitting outside of Alexandria, double gin and tonic in hand. On the train, they don’t actually make a gin and tonic. Sort of like the pubs in England, they give you a do-it-yourself kit. The main difference is that rather than pouring the gin in your glass and handing you a bottle of tonic, here you get the gin in airplane bottles. The only thing they put in the glass is the ice – and thankfully, they give you a lot of that because the gin is warm and the tonic is warm so you lose the ice quickly.
On the way back from the bar car I stopped between cars and called Jane. Not a lot going on. Some continuing drama over the thefts of personal property at work which I’ve written about elsewhere. Basically, more victims and an ineffectual response from management that probably emboldened the ‘barracks thief’ in their pursuit.
19:08: after more than an hour, the train moved thirty feet. We’re getting there! I’m afraid that earlier statement of a one hour delay was highly optimistic (since, as I say, that was over an hour ago). I’m sure this is also our fault and I hope the conductor doesn’t come down the aisle flogging us for it.
19:17: we have just inched into a station that is not Alexandria. We’ve stopped yet again.
Train stopped for no apparent reason just outside Burke Center, VA
19:46: Still outside of Alexandria and we were ‘reminded’ that we are stopped because of a tree on the tracks. REMINDED? This is the first time anyone is hearing of it. This is becoming an epic adventure of Homereque proportions.
20:22: Announcement: ladies and gentlemen, the maintenance away crew has arrived and are at work removing the tree in front of us
21:45: Woman lost control of her car and ended up on the tracks. They moved the car and we’re on the move again
22:54: One Virginia woman describing to another Virginia woman where her daughter lives in New York City: ‘I don’t know if you know it: West Village? It’s right next to Greenwich Village.’ I roll my eyes so far back they actually face forward again.
The never ending journey
22:51: Well…. I don’t know how to say this without slamming my head against the seat in front of me, but there is a ‘defect’ on the track and we’re stuck in Manassas for a while. WTF?
22:55: Oh! Either we’re moving or I just passed gas. Too slow to tell
22:55 and a half: No, we’re moving. Verrrrrrrrrry slowwwwly
00:42: Arrived in Charlottesville. There are many ways to look at a bad situation. I’m going to look at this as having gotten an extra five hours on the train for free.
I’ve taken a bit of a break from writing – mostly to do some reading, but also because I didn’t have anything interesting to write about. I still don’t but, as that has never stopped me before and I’m done reading for a bit …
I spent some time last week packing things up at my mother’s apartment. They’re putting in new flooring (the old flooring having been ruined during Ida’s flooding) and needed the cabinets and various drawers emptied to keep the breakables from breaking and make the furniture easier to move around. I discovered two things:
First, forty-nine years of accumulated stuff is not easy to pack up in a week! A little easier in two, but not much more.
Second, and I don’t know why this interested me so much more than many other assorted photos and memorabilia: an ‘Air Mail Writing Tablet’.
Airmail, I’ve read, was discontinued in 1977, so you kind of get an idea how old this tablet is.
It is from a time where tablets didn’t run out of power, they just ran out of paper; you replaced the ink by buying a new Bic (or, perhaps, sharpening a pencil), and you sent a message by licking a stamp and placing an envelope in a box on the corner.
[Digression: You can still do all these things, except, maybe, licking the stamp since they all seem to be self-adhesive these days – I’ve tried licking one… didn’t like it.]
Unlike other writing paper, air mail paper was thinner, therefore lighter, and semi-transparent , but not quite as light and transparent as tracing paper. It was used because the cost of mailing a letter overseas, priced by the ounce, could quickly add up, especially if you had a lot to say. All our relatives were – still are – in Brasil and my mother, who didn’t write well, would dictate letters to me that sometimes took up four double-sided pages.
[Another Digression: My mother was a champion of TMI before TMI was a thing. Sometimes what she had to say could be quite embarrassing for a young me to put down on paper.]
To keep your lines straight, these tablets came with a sheet of ruled paper that you would place under the writing sheet. If you didn’t use it, you would likely start writing diagonally rather than horizontally – being left-handed, this was a big problem for me.
The internet still has a lot of airmail pads and envelopes to sell…
‘Go back in time with our Airmail Stationery Sets!’
‘Lovely white vintage onion skin paper! Totally a rare fine!’
‘We have a stash of this amazing paper and would love to share it with you. Available in two sizes’
… I’m thinking of using part of the remainder of this fifty sheets in this tablet to write a friend or two.
There were a couple of strawberry calyces (caps) in the sink this morning and I got the idea that they might make for some good pictures. It’s a sunny day, so I took one of them out to the stoop where I photographed it using a macro attachment.
A bit of strawberry ‘meat’ attached to the calyx, I thought, made it look weirdly interesting.
Unbeknownst to me, an ant had come to check the cap out and popped out from behind as I was shooting.
To show some perspective, I placed a dime in a couple of the shots.
I’ll say nothing else and let the pictures speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy.
Most of the pictures were taken with the attachment on a 40-100mm zoom lens at different focal lengths, a couple with a 40mm prime. The camera set to Aperture Priority at f/22, and an ISO of 400
Every Friday I update my profile picture on facebook and usually add an ‘interesting’ story about it. I thought I’d share today’s update here (with some minor edits and additional pics).
2021.09.03: Profile Update Fridays – While tidying up the office, which used to be my daughter’s bedroom (and still is when she visits), the light coming in through the window was just too good to waste so…
…out comes the tripod and the remote shutter app for the Olympus and a series of selfies were taken for this update. The one here, with Brownie, was my favourite of the bunch.
Brownie has been in the family since Elyse’s age was measured in months. He has a speech impediment, but don’t call it that because it makes him angry (we just say he has an ‘accent.’)
He’s had an interesting life: he’s a computer nerd and can fix almost any problem – which works out well for his brother, Teddy, who is forever spilling chocolate milk on his keyboard; for a while he dated Cheerie, a Build-a-Bear cheerleader who moved to Florida about fifteen years ago (they’re still in touch); he’s good natured and puts up with a lot of the pranks his brother and the other stuffies pull; he – and the other stuffies – regularly goes to a summer camp run by Mister Peabody (a stuffed version of the cartoon character).
Mr Peabody is an unscrupulous dog. He uses these camps to make money off of the free labor provided by the unwitting stuffies, convincing them they’re doing crafts. He gets away with it because these camps are always on different islands outside of the United States. A few years ago he had them rolling cigars in Cuba saying they were making ‘leaf rolls’ for a made-up holiday.
My Daughter’s stuffed animals have had a much more interesting life than I ever had.
The Brownie Photo Session. A good time was had by all!
There is a drain in our driveway that I step over every morning. I’ve never paid any attention to it until one recent morning when, as I walked over it, I heard the ‘plop’ of something falling into the water.
I thought I had dropped something into the drain. I looked in but didn’t see anything other than a mess of leaves, twigs and some water, so I walked away hoping it wasn’t anything important.
The following morning and almost every morning afterwards I would hear that ‘plop’ every time I walked over the drain and, so, of course I knew that there was something – likely a frog – living in there.
I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to sneak up on it. No matter how stealthily I approached, trying not to cast any shadows, whenever I got near enough to look in: Plop!
Today I decided to give something different a try.
Using my phone as a remote shutter release for my Olympus, I rested the camera face-down on the grate, covering it with a plastic bag because of the light rain falling
Then I walked a few feet away and waited, using the phone as a view-finder.
I waited a good fifteen minutes without any guarantee that the frog – or whatever it was – would be so obliging as to place himself where my lens was pointing. But I was rewarded for my patience with two halfway decent shots of my new neighbour.
Crop #1 of Mister PlopperCrop #2 of Mister Plopper
The photos of the drain and setup were all taken with my iPhone X-R
The photos of the frog and interior of the drain were taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M5III using a 14-42mm lens (set on auto at 14mm)
Plastic bag courtesy The Greenwich Time. Probably the most useful thing I’ve gotten out of our local paper in some time.
Joearf’s Thoughts 