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Hiking the Abel Tasman Coast Track

With this third visit to New Zealand, I’ve grown more aware of how the country lives in the outside imagination. For many, it’s the middle earth of certain much-loved fantasy films. For me – and clearly many more – it’s probably the single best place on earth to get an amazing range of very well supported and managed backpacking options. Hut-to-hut hikes abound throughout North Island, South Island, and Rakiura/Stewart Island, meaning one can travel a bit lighter without a tent if one chooses, and – particularly important down in Fiordland – have a solid roof and walls around one when the rains fall and/or the temperatures plummet even in high summer. The best known and most popular of these hikes are managed as ‘Great Walks’ by the superb NZ Department of Conservation. When I first learned of them, while planning my very first trip to NZ more than six years ago, I think I read there were eight Great Walks at the time. Now it’s up to nine; and I’ve hiked three of them in their entirety, while touching on a fourth during both my first trip and the most recent one. Some friends have said they’re saving developed-world tourism for later, and focusing on less-developed cultural-adventure type travel now, while they’ve got the physical and mental energy and fitness to handle travel to relatively challenging locations without great tourist infrastructure or support. I fully understand that logic, and I’ve heard it applied also to the US by many European friends.

However, let me through some of these posts suggest that places like NZ, and the great national parks of the Western US, offer outdoor adventures which are more difficult when one’s body has lost the appetite for overnight camping and backpacking…and if you miss out on these places now, you might regret it when you visit them later and are limited to their cities and paved roads, unable to get off the highway and into the wilderness. Herewith a few too many shots of the Abel Tasman Coast Track, as support to my argument. This is an unbelievably beautiful place that I am incredibly happy to have hiked and would very gladly return to many times. By hiking it, and waking up early to cross certain estuaries at low tide with my shoes tied together and strung around my neck, I’ve had the unique opportunity to lay down the first set of footprints on the soft sand of those estuaries, to see the sun brighten the sky and rise above the horizon or the moon sink below it, to greet the sun with a mug of tea from my thermos while reveling in the absence of any sound other than waves or bird song…and generally to experience that mystical oneness with my universe that, sadly, I for one simply cannot quite achieve while behind my computer or the steering wheel of any motorized vehicle. Tasman is neither the most famous, nor the most over-subscribed of the Great Walks…but I’d definitely do this one again. Believe it or not, I really did cut out a TON of photos from this post but there are still a lot, for anyone interested in getting a more thorough feel for what it might mean if you were to lace up your boots, grab your walking stick, and step out onto this lovely trek. To reduce the length of the post, condensed two sets into galleries and one set into a slide show. (The gallery just below this focuses on tidal crossings and other cool visual and experiential effects of the tide’s action along this trail.) I hope you enjoy!

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Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | February 10, 2015 | Categories: Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand | Tags: abel tasman coast track, backpacking, bees & flowers, flowers, nature, new zealand great walks, new zealand hiking, new zealand trekking, spider webs, tidal estuaries | 2 Comments

Nifty Buildings in Napier

Napier, a lovely town situated in the heart of one of NZ’s main wine regions, has become a major tourist center thanks to a general realization that it’s got one of the world’s most concentrated collections of excellent art deco architecture. This is a bit of historical happenstance related to the town’s near-total destruction in a major earthquake in 1931, after which they decided that art deco would be the best combination of both style and cost efficiency, given the need for a lot of rebuilding real fast. One of the only pre-earthquake buildings still standing is the public trust office, on which lives the coat of arms shown at left, and which is depicted in its full glory down below. As you see below, the streets were still full of christmas decorations when we were there for a too-brief stay. I’d happily go back to Napier for a longer stay, and drink lots of wine :-).

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | January 31, 2015 | Categories: Napier, New Zealand | Tags: archittecture, art deco, art deco architecture, hawke's bay touristm, new zealand north island tourism | 2 Comments

The Many Moods of Mt Ruapehu

…and other views from Tongariro National Park, a place which can truly and safely be described as otherworldly. One factor that makes it a world heritage site is the presence of three volcanoes right next to each other. You will see more than you want of these three, in this post…sorry. The moods and clouds, the light and colors just change so often that when one is there one just can’t stop! I am blessed now to have visited New Zealand three times, and I am going to work my way through the (too) many photos I took there roughly in chronological order: this was the first major place our group visited as part of the big Howard’s-turning-50 tour. What a great start! (Btw if you’d like to see Tongariro in other moods, and more shots from the top part of the Tongariro Crossing day hike, check out the post from my last visit, which is here: https://somuchworldsolittletime.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/tongariro-crossing-the-summit-of-mt-doom/)

I won’t say much here. NZ is so lovely and so endlessly various and fascinating that the photos better speak for themselves or I’m not doing my job right. For those curious, I’m back and settled in the bay area, in great health thanks, and trying to put down some roots here in the this intermezzo before the start of my next assignment…about which more, when the time is right :-). Peace. Oh, and btw: linger on the shots below: it’s a slide show of Ruapehu, which is sort of currently the biggest, though not the oldest, of these three volcanoes – and one that I explored in more detail this time than when I was last there, from up close. (More on that further down.) All the photos have names which pretty well identify them. Pano Ruapehu Ski Area

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Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | January 24, 2015 | Categories: New Zealand, Tongariro National Park | Tags: Hiking, nature, ngauruhoe, ruapehu, tongariro, volcanoes, waterfalls | 2 Comments

Art on Alcatraz

I’ve never been much for prisons. They’re scary, and being someone with an active imagination and a personal identity that leads to punishment or death in many places, I’ve always had a certain “there but for the grace” reaction. During a high-school social-action trip to Washington, DC our youth group visited a local medium-security federal prison and spoke with prisoners. It was an important experience, but I admit I felt far more in my element at the soup kitchen, to which I returned to help cook and serve on our choose-your-assignment day. I’d still make the same choice. So it’s probably not a surprise that – for all the time I spend in SF – I’d never set foot on the island of Alcatraz until a week ago when I was drawn there, in a group organized by my good friend Amy (thanks again!) to see a special installation of art created in absentia by Ai WeiWei specifically for this former prison location…indeed, for this location which is probably one of the most famous and certainly one of the most tourist-friendly former prisons in both the US and the world at large.

Indeed, it’s that very tourism-friendliness which has helped keep me away from Alcatraz: I’ve imagined that many visitors go with a sort of prisoner-theme-park idea in mind. I start out deeply uncomfortable with the basic statistics and facts about race, opportunity and incarceration in the US…then I add my uncomfortable awareness of how the US’s crime and punishment statistics measure up against other peer nations which pride themselves on openness, opportunity, and democracy for all (spoiler alert – do some research, but last I knew we don’t compare any better there than we do on gun violence per capita…), and in the end I’ve just never managed to get out to Alcatraz.

I’m so glad that Ai WeiWei and the creators of this exhibit gave me a good reason and impetus to visit. His work has made me think a great deal about freedom – freedom of mind, of body, of spirit. Freedom from as well as freedom to do, to think. There’s a range of installations – audio clips heard inside a small cell of famous prisoners of conscience from around the world, ranging from Martin Luther King, through the Robben Island Boys, to Pussy Riot. There’s an audio installation in the psychiatric observation cells, with a Hopi ceremony recorded. Through this I learned that among the earliest prisoners at Alcatraz in the 1890s were quite a few Hopi elders, who supported the parents of their tribe in refusing to enroll their children in the schools that were to “modernize” their children. (Translation: rip them from their homes & roots, and leave them confused about their place in this race- and class-driven world.) He’s got beautiful kites — dragon and other kites — with messages from fighters for freedom of conscience and ideas around the world. There’s a huge room whose floor is full of lego portraits of prisoners of politics and conscience around the world, and postcards where you can write you own message to some of these folks in many nations.

All in all it’s a very thought-provoking and educational exhibit. And being on Alcatraz, in the heart of one of the world’s most beautiful bays, it’s also a beautiful outing. Check it out if you’re in the area during the coming months. I believe and hope that posting these images is in line with the artist’s wishes but do hope someone will inform me if I’m wrong in which case I’ll gladly remove any that don’t fit. Peace, health, freedom to be happy sad or thoughtful in the new year to one and all.

The exhibit-installation had many parts. The one called “blossom,” of which there’s an example above, was installed in the hospital ward. It made me think of the hundred-flowers campaign, and also of the buddhist tradition that the lotus flower derives some of its spiritual power from the fact that it represents beauty arising from the muck. In another part of the main prison ward were many audio segments, each playing inside an individual cell and each representing music or speeches from people and groups imprisoned for their ideas or art. That’s hard to capture in film – but the shot to (I hope) the right, showing the three tiers of cells, and the photo of text from one of Martin Luther King’s later speeches are both from that section. The dragon kite is from a segment called “With Wind,” and if you look at some of the photos closely you will see quotes from people imprisoned or threatened with prison for their ideas.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | December 29, 2014 | Categories: California, San Francisco | Tags: ai weiwei, alcatraz, art installations, golden gate bridge, prisoners of consience, prisons | 4 Comments

Green Hills & Smiling Faces in Sierra Leone

Boys & their Toys Moonrise & Sunset

Human resilience, basic human interpersonal warmth and gut-level acknowledgement of our shared humanity and interdependence – these are things I’ve learned to respect, value and appreciate more and more each day, as I both age and accumulate more human working and interpersonal experiences in many varied points around this globe of ours. I’ve spent most of the past few months in Sierra Leone, a place which resonates for many developed-world folks in a sort of “walking wounded” state right now. But I found there, as I found living in NYC during the 1970s when most of the US was too scared to visit it for fear of being robbed (or so at least it seemed), what I’ve found pretty much any place humans seem to congregate. Which is that life goes on, that people care for their loved ones, look for a meal when they can and look for fun and friendship where possible. It’s remarkable, and a gift, to have a chance to get out of my bubble and experience more of the resilience, warmth and kindness of humanity everywhere. I won’t say more here – with all the media attention to what’s happening on the negative side of the register in SL just now, I wanted to just take a moment and tip my hat, as it were, to the colleagues, neighbors and partners who welcomed me and continue to make good work possible, sometimes rather against the odds. Happy holiday season, if you happen to be celebrating a holiday this season…J

Storm Clouds - Bo

…final night dinner at a quite nice Indian restaurant in Freetown: first mixed drink I’d had in a very long time, nice way to relax and thank my colleagues before heading out :-).

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | December 16, 2014 | Categories: Bo, Freetown, Sierra Leone | 3 Comments

Juxtapositions & Transpositions

So like I said in the last entry, I’m in a place now where I will be a bit too busy and too sensitive about anything I see or do to want to post much in this…but I did pull some shots off my camera this morning and realized what an interesting juxtaposition there is between the photos I took while in Brussels for the introductory training about Ebola response, and the photos I took while here in Sierra Leone: and most of these shots were taken within the space of one week. So I’ve alternated shots in this entry – mostly because my friends and family have been curious what it looks like here, and all you find on the general media are shots of boots drying or people dressed in their PPEs. But meantime, of course, in a country of 5 or 6 million where (according to the latest UN figures) there have been 1500 confirmed deaths out of the 5235 total cases they report now), life does continue in the streets and homes of Sierra Leone, with all the warmth and smiles, play and hustle you’d expect, in amongst the reasonable concerns about family health and all the other daily cares and struggles, and of course sadness at the loss of so many in the communities and families already. (Side note: I think everyone acknowledges those numbers are probably lower than reality because of unreported cases etc.)

I also, while in Brussels, fell in love with a little run-down brick building just next to the training site for MSF, and how the rising sun warmed its bricks each morning as I walked into the site for training. (Look closely & you’ll see the MSF flag in the background on the wide-angle shot; you’ll also see my self-shadow-portrait in each.) I’m sorry that I’ve not gotten out more with my camera – I hope before I leave to do so, and perhaps engage in my usual fun pastime of sharing some of the faces of colleagues and people-on-the-street the way I usually do on assignments in (for me, and maybe you) new places. For now, I can only offer a small window to both Brussels and two towns in Sierra Leone: Kailahun, way out east; and Freetown, way out west — Kailhun nestled in its lovely lush green hills, and Freetown graced by dramatic bays and hills on all sides, and especially lovely at night when the town’s lights glitter like jewels strung up the hillsides. OK, yes, Freetown is also a bit too crowded and hustly-bustly, honk-happy and loud for me…and many of the streets are mighty muddy, rocky, bumpy. And maybe we should all pause to consider a world in which two national capitals can look so different, when the countries in question probably have access to a similar set of foundational natural and human resources…just sayin’, don’t ya know… All ye students of the human condition, go consider that juxtaposition and how it squares with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ statement that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Peace, out, and remember this blog be very personal and in no way representative of anyone’s ideas or views but my very own.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | November 2, 2014 | Categories: Brussels, Freetown, Kailahun, Sierra Leone | Tags: Brussels Port area, Freetown bay | 2 Comments

California Scrapbook

So smw, slt has again left the continent and headed off to work. This time our work really won’t be anything we document on here, so both to clear my own to-do list, and to leave my friends with a sense of how well-rested I’ve become from these past two months in my spiritual and now literal home of California (well, literal in the sense I actually have a home there waiting for my return, not in the sense I’m there at the moment or expect to be for the next few months…), I’m giving a you a scrapbook of shots that piled up since my return from the ABQ wedding in mid-August. The bay, the golden gate bridge and Marin headlands as seen from Fort Mason; various scenes of Napa and Sonoma counties as seen from hikes & bikes around new new home base; some shots from a couple days last week (!) in Los Angeles – back to Topanga Canyon & the fountain in Grand Park on a nearly-full-moon night (the next night, we stood out on my balcony up north to watch the lunar eclipse at 3AM, how cool was that?!)…and scenes of the bay’s wetlands around Palo Alto as seen when I had the privilege of riding along for some training with my friend Amy who’s getting herself trained to fly a small plane.

If you’re curious about the work, there was a PBS frontline documentary filmed in early August at that project where I’ll very soon be working; from Europe I’m unable to launch the link but I’m fairly sure if you’re in the US you can find it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/

As the man says, be well, do good work, and keep in touch. It’s certainly what I plan to do! Cheers.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | October 16, 2014 | Categories: California, Los Angeles, San Francisco, SF Bay Area, Sonoma & Napa | Tags: alcatraz, california hiking, golden gate bridge, los angeles grand park, marin coastline, muir beach, napa palisades trail, sf bay bridge, sf bay wetlands, sf ferry building, sonoma vineyards, Topanga Canyon | 5 Comments

August in Albuquerque

The grand road trip ended in Albuquerque, capital of the state of New Mexico. For those readers who aren’t from the U.S., this was the 47th state to join the union, in 1912. This happened, of course, several decades after the upstart revolutionary nation of the US declared war on Mexico, so far as I can tell essentially in order to take over most of what’s now our Southwest as well as my own adopted home state, California. Naturally, long before the Spanish-colonial creation Mexico declared governance and “ownership” of this parcel of beautiful desert, mountain and high plains, the area had been home to many native America tribes, both more nomadic and herder types, and more city-based agriculturalist-types. I believe one might think for example of the great difference in cultural habits and practices between the Apache, the Navajo, and the many different pueblo cultures such as Taos, Zuni, and the famous Hopi from what’s now Arizona (the 48th state to join the union, a month after New Mexico). Anyhoo, that’s enough about the past – in the present, New Mexico remains for me a place of beauty, cultural interest (its long history of human habitation and current highly visible and important presence of many Native-American tribes, but also of Hispanos whose ancestors were here long before the territory fell under US control), and … well, once simply can’t speak of New Mexico without pointing out its extraordinarily fine food! Inches were added to my waistline, which I’ve been working off by biking the hills of northern California. Enjoy these photos!

We were in New Mexico for my niece’s delightful wedding, which was on my own birthday. The best birthday present I’ve been given in years – a day surrounded by my family and getting to know the adult versions of my niece and nephew, and meeting her husband. Wonderful and pleasurable reason and occasion to get back to New Mexico for the first time since 2006. One thing (above) that I discovered is the city’s become more bike-commuter friendly than I recall from earlier decades. Yay! If you’re coming from an abundant-water region, the Rio Grande may not seem so very grande to you. But remember this is the Chihuahuan Desert so any river that carries water year-round is vital to all life nearby. Down below you’ll see one of many canals that channel water from the river to the fields nearby; this river’s water has been irrigating crops since the ancient native cultures, and northern New Mexico still abounds in centuries-old acequias, collectively-managed irrigation canals established under Spanish-colonial rule whose water rights have passed down through the generations and changes of government to support small-farmer descendants of the early colonial-era settlers today.

And then, of course, there are both the myriad native cultures, as well as the desert and its storms. Following are some sequences of photos of dancers at the Pueblo Cultural Center, a wonderful cultural and history center with an excellent restaurant in the heart of Albuquerque which celebrates and documents the many Puebloan cultures native to New Mexico; I think and hope these photos are permissable under their policy and will certainly remove them if they’re not. Then there’s a desert storm which rolled in one morning while I was in my hotel room. I do encourage visitors to the US to consider time in New Mexico – it’s slightly off the usual touristic beaten path, and well worth the trip in my view. What I show here is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | October 5, 2014 | Categories: New Mexico | Tags: aerial photography, albuquerque, desert thunderstorm, hot-air balloons, lightning photography, native american art, native american dances, pueblo cultural center, rio grande | 5 Comments

From the River to the Plains

The photographic record of Mom & Paul’s excellent road trip continues with some images from the Minnesota-South Dakota-Nebraska leg of the journey. (And btw, for anyone growing weary of these rambles through the vast heartland of my homeland, fear not, there’s only one more entry due about the road trip, which wrapped up just two states south of where this entry concludes.) In Minnesota, we got to spend a few days being shown various lovely corners of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul) by my oldest friend, someone I’ve known as long as I can remember going back to elementary-school days. So what you’ll see here include shots taken on and around the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi river, in the heart of downtown Minneapolis (including the cool panoramic shot below in which the nature of the camera’s panoramic-image compilation means that the cyclist who was biking past as I took the shot appears in a cool little stop-action sequence…), followed by the only photo I kept from our journey across most of South Dakota, taken at our lunch & rest stop just west of the Missouri River. From there, we kept driving onward toward Nebraska, where Mom had been looking forward to visiting Carhenge, an unusual outdoor sculpture park just north of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. This puts it also close to Chadron, where I’ve learned my grandfather attended college back in the day…hence the photo of Mom on the campus. Enjoy.

Having grown up in the US, I’ve always known a lot of our wheat seems to come from North Dakota. What never occurred to me was that, a hundred and more years ago as our Euro-immigrant ancestors spread across the continent and dispossessed the prior inhabitants, their wheat would need to be milled and their other farm products marketed. The twin cities, it appears, gained much of their early prosperity by dint of turning wheat kernels into flour…witness the many descendants of flour and milling companies still headquartered there.

…look closely above, and any water you see in the distance is the Missouri River which we’ve just crossed in central South Dakota. Below, a fish-eye view of the main Carhenge scultpure, with other items also on display at the Carhenge Sculpture Park. 🙂

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | September 30, 2014 | Categories: Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Twin Cities | Tags: carhenge, minneapolis, mississippi river, missouri river, sculpture park, st anthony falls, st. paul, stone arch bridge | 1 Comment

Cruising Northern Shores

The road trip continued….although it takes me far longer than I’d wish to get these photos sorted and up here for you to enjoy! After leaving upstate New York, Mom and I decided that we simply couldn’t bear another trip along the usual I-80/I-90 corridor the follows the U.S. southern shore of Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Michigan — our goal was Wisconsin, where we were able to spend a few lovely days visiting my aunt and uncle; and we were departing from Rochester which – by U.S. standards – is quite a piece north…and this led to my crazy idea to explore the northern shore of Lake Huron through Ontario. What a lovely outing it was!

This enabled us to spend a night in the lakeside town of Blind River, ON and to explore portions of that enormous province that I’d never been anywhere near, previously – gaining a more visceral sense of the beautiful, rich rivers and waterways which the Ojibwe and Cree have traveled since long before my ancestors arrived near these shores. I really wish we’d had more time to stay, explore and enjoy high summer along the Canadian shores of North America’s Great Lakes — but the wedding date loomed ever nearer and we had many other people and places on the list before we intended to arrive in Albuquerque. So here, and without much further comment, you can enjoy shots from Blind River, some not-so-great but they are what they are shots taken by Mom as we drove across the international bridge from Canada back into the US where three lakes are all coming very close to one another, along the channel directly connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron and quite close to where the Edumund Fitzgerald went down in stormy waters back in the 1970s as commemorated in that wonderful song by Gordon Lightfoot…and then some shots from the Lake Michigan shoreline along Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and one beautiful farm-field sunset shot in Wisconsin. Didn’t get the camera out much more in Wisconsin and this shot doesn’t do justice to the huge midsummer sun sinking below corn fields in real time, but trust me – the upper great lakes region in high summer is pretty wonderful to spend time in.

In the photo gallery and below, the three shots taken by Mom from the Sault Sainte Marie Bridge, which connects the nations of Canada and the U.S. across the locks and waterway which link Lake Superior with Lake Huron, you are looking west over Whitefish Bay and it’s maybe conceivable (what do I know?!) the camera sees as far as the water above the spot where the Edmund Fitzgerald was found.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | September 17, 2014 | Categories: Canada, Families, Michigan, Ontario, Wisconsin | Tags: Blind River, Edmund Fitzgerald Wreck Location, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Michigan Upper Peninsula, Sault Sainte Marie | 1 Comment

Legacy of Leadership in Upstate NY

Much of the world uses “New York” as shorthand for the city of New York. Those who grew up or spent chunks of time in or around the city remember that New York is also a fairly large state (by east-coast standards) which stretches from the Atlantic beaches of Long Island to the shores of lakes Ontario and Erie. NYCity folks tend to call the rest of this vast area, once out of the 5 Boros, “upstate.” And it’s through “upstate” that my Mom and I travelled on the first leg of our cross-country adventure last month.

High on her list was Seneca Falls, seen in the disused riverside-factory shot above & site of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. In my school days little or no mention was made of the fact that women were not permitted to vote until the 19th amendment finally passed in 1920. In upstate New York of the 19th century were the leaders who stood early and proud for women’s rights, and finally pushed that amendment through after many decades of trying. (And oh by the way, the state legislature in good old Mississippi, ever the thought-leader here in the US, didn’t get around to ratifying that 19th amendment until…wait for it….1984. But, hey, even Switzerland didn’t get around to agreeeing women deserve the same full citizenship rights as men until 1971, and the last cantons didn’t get with the program until 1990. And I need to fact check whether women are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia yet or not…but Wikipedia does tell me that they’ll be permitted to vote there in 2015…)

Here on the home front, Susan B Anthony got arrested & convicted for voting in 1872, in her home town of Rochester not far from the statue of Anthony & Frederick Douglass (good friends and intellectual sparring partners) with which my Mom is posed, two photos up. So anyhoo, we wandered through Seneca Falls, spent time in Syracuse exploring the history of the Erie Canal – which propelled NYC to the dominance it achieved in the 1800s, driven by a state government visionary & capable enough to establish a well-maintained and regulated system to bring boats, people and goods from the Hudson river (and, by extension, the Atlantic Ocean) all the way over to Lake Erie. We continued our exploration of the leadership tradition in Rochester, where we visited both Susan B Anthony’s house (and the statue!), and spent time at the Eastman House learning more about George Eastman’s impact on the popularization of photography. Enjoy the shots – and do consider a visit to upstate New York. Each time I’ve been anywhere from the Catskills north, I’ve wished I could linger longer and explore more. There’s a ton of natural beauty throughout, plus much interesting history scattered just about everywhere.

The study in Eastman House has lovely windows featuring all the modes of travel George Eastman had personally experienced – and flight is missing, since the house was built right around the time of the Wright Brothers’ first flight. This is my little “windows” section, with a detail also from the lovely Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Rochester, which Mom and I drove past in Rochester. It’s privately owned but you can still drive by and look.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | August 28, 2014 | Categories: Finger Lakes Region, New York | Tags: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Erie Canal, Finger Lakes Region, Frank Lloyd Wright House Rochester, Frederick Douglass, Rochester, Seneca Falls, Susan B Anthony, Syracuse, Women's Suffrage Movement | Leave a comment

5 Views of the Statue, 3 of the Tower, and other odd angles on NYC & Environs

OK, so I figure if off-angle shots of SF seem to have appealed to enough of my viewers a few weeks ago, I’d finally put up the grab-bag of odd shots from NYC and its region which couldn’t be made to fit in that last entry from Storm King. What you’ll see here are shots from a flat, gray day in Red Hook, which used to be a rather gnarly neighborhood when I lived in Brooklyn. It now seems to be hipster central, and has a few big box stores (most of these were shot in and around the Ikea parking lot), which were not yet permitted inside the 5 boroughs by the time I went west in the late 90s. These shots include some odd views of Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the lovely new One World Trade Center building. Some people are calling it, in classic American let’s-use-terms-without-considering-what-we-mean-by-them manner, freedom tower. I never quite get which freedoms that kind of folks mean, since they’re always wanting to take away my own freedom to disagree with the foreign wars they like to start start (or to take away my friends’ freedom of choice in matters of reproduction or of life & love partner) – but hey, who ever expected words to actually mean something?!

OK, off that soap box for now. Other things in this entry: the impressive Great Falls at Paterson, NJ; a couple shots from the reservoir in central park; and pond scum at a wonderful bird haven in northern NJ. Paterson began its life as an important and powerful mill town, driven by the force of these waterfalls and the river that creates them. Its manufacturing glory days are long since past, but these falls, like the history of the Erie Canal which I’ve been visiting & will document later here on the blog, remind me of how the country was built and grew and prospered in our formative years.

I’ve noticed a lot more views and viewers on the blog recently, and I want to thank viewers both new and old for your interest. I hope you’ll come back, and I hope you’ll leave comments and let me know what you’d like more (or less!) of. Ciao.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | August 7, 2014 | Categories: Great Falls, New Jersey, New York, New York City | Tags: central park reservoir, great falls of paterson, new york city skyline, red hook, statue of liberty, verrazano narrows bridge, world trade center site | 2 Comments

High Summer – Storm King

Perhaps my single favorite place to visit in the NY Metropolitan area is Storm King sculpture park, which is something like two hours or so north of the city itself. My mother, who dearly loves grand sculpture of the Calder, Nevelson and Noguchi style, first introduced me to it back in the 1980s, or perhaps even earlier though I believe my first visits would have been early-mid 80s. I have fond memories (and photos) of visits there with a dear friend now long-dead of HIV; such is the nature of places one’s visited again over decades – and I also appreciate the new large works or temporary displays that appear every time I visit, about which there’ll be a caption or two scattered throughout.

In season, no visit to my mother feels complete unless we also head up to Storm King for a day. And you do need to allocate a full day for this trip, especially if you are coming from NYC…and please do try to get here , even if it feels like one thing too much – if you love nature and abstract sculpture, you won’t go wrong. So in early July we headed up with my brother for an afternoon of enjoying the art, the flowers, the nature. They’re not open during winter months, and my recent visits have been in the shoulder seasons, so this was my first chance to appreciate the glory of the wildflower beds at their summer peak. Hope you enjoy these views – and do visit, or support your nearest arts institution instead. 🙂

The mirrored fence was newly refurbished for this season so truly stands out at one edge of the lower lawn area (far center in the panorama above) – they have a more formal name for it, but I think of it as the route I I typically take toward Andy Goldsworthy’s wonderful wonderful two stone walls at Storm King, both additions of relatively recent decades…you can see shots of those in an entry I made in December 2011), and so I had fun with some arty selfies with it, though this is a piece you really do need to experience in person.

And since it was high summer, we saw a good bit of floral and natural beauty. Some time a decade or two back, they started letting large areas of the lawn flourish with higher wildflower patches rather than always mowing it all down, and the results are wonderful. I also did my usual up-close-and-personal study of a few little vegetal items that grabbed my imagination.

The piece above is isn’t my favorite – tends to give me the willies a bit too much – but I do love the wildflowers. The lawn full of Mark di Suvero scultpures, shown below with a foreground of black-eyed Susans, certainly is one of my favorite spots here…though that could be said of nearly all corners at this truly wonderful place…

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | August 4, 2014 | Categories: Hudson Valley - Storm King, Hudson Valley - Storm King, New York | Tags: Hudson Valley, sculpture, sculpture park, storm king, Wildflowers | 1 Comment

Other Angles on SF

Between assignments, I’ve been a wanderer since I first filled up the storage space in January, 2005. People viewing my life from outside often express envy of how much I ‘get’ to travel: comments along the lines of “oh, it’s so exciting that you get to go to all these places and travel so much.” People who know me a bit better, or people for whom, like me, going to work = packing a bag with (one hopes) sufficient saline solution & undergarments for a year’s assignment in a remote location of which one has, so far, only indirect knowledge, understand that the travel is the part I hate the most. And that the rootedness that comes from identifying one solid piece of earth as one’s spiritual and physical home is what I envy everyone else the most. Be that as it may…the participant observer is an identified role in sociology and anthropology, and as someone who increasingly feels reasonably comfortable many places, but at home nearly nowhere (aside from a few places like SF Bay area and LA’s west side), I do have a certain distance from what I observe in most places. And what I observe in the US is always most fascinating and too often disturbing, since it’s the place o’ my birth and so on and so forth.

Some recent observations, for those outside the US who’ve missed it:

Our supreme court’s decided that companies (on whom most of us rely for our health insurance, crazy though that seems to anyone from a sane nation) have the same right to religious freedom that individuals do – and they get to express that right by dictating what forms of family-planning and possibly other health care choices their employees (and their employees’ family dependants) may make within the insurance plan. To illustrate the broader socio-political insanity this ruling might unleash unless the country gets to single-payer soon, I’ll take a short quote from Justice Bader Ginsburg’s strong dissent from the narrow majority’s decision: Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.)

This follows by a few years the same court’s decision that companies have the same right to freedom of expression that individuals do – meaning they can buy all the elections they want now, pretty much, as in campaign donations and campaign advertising are pretty open game for whatever rich & greedy corporation wants to drive “public” policy its way.

So, to review: companies can (and do) buy as many politicians as they want; and companies can (and do, now) ensure that their employees receive only the health-care services that the companies’ owners approve of. (And oh btw, for those believing this is a ‘narrow’ ruling – check out the definition of closely held, and what % of Americans work for such a company. Not so narrow, eh?) Ah, ‘democracy.’ And lots of my American friends ask how I can stand to live & work in so many other countries where corruption and greed are so rife…

But at least there’s always SF to go home to. Indeed, I guess the fact it’s such a successful, happy & healthy city because of its openness to heterogeneity and its willingness to embrace the importance of good, common-interest governance to the health & welfare of society & individual citizens (i.e. not just big companies & their majority owners) is precisely what’s always made it so very scary and threatening to the Koch-funded tea-party types. Oh well, their loss, unless they succeed in dragging the rest of us down with them. Enjoy the views, folks – I realized I’ve actually shown very little of SF in these pages over the years – not quite sure why, but here’s a bit finally.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | July 19, 2014 | Categories: California, San Francisco | Tags: bay bridge, golden gate bridge, health insurance, heron's head park, Justice Bader Ginsburg, marin headlands, presidio of san francisco | 1 Comment

Beauty in the Details

Eight miles into the Atlantic from the mainland coast at the border between New Hampshire and Maine lie the Isles of Shoals, a small cluster of windswept rocky bumps in the ocean which housed some of the earliest long-term European settlements in North America. Ample cod fishing fueled the economy, a legacy you’ll see reflected in the weathervane on top of the old stone church which now serves as non- or multi-denominational chapel for the many conference-goers who enjoy week-long conferences and other retreats at Star Island, which has served as a base for Unitarian-Universalist retreats and conferences for more than 100 years. I’ve just been out there for a week of meditation, my third such outing since 2009. I’ve deeply relished and valued all of these meditation weeks, the intensity with which they permit to settle into the moment and clear my mind and emotions of plans, of worries, of day-to-day “reality” and just be for a bit. In essence, meditation – especially when I’m on Star to do it – takes me to a mental and spiritual place which evades intellectual and verbal description. That said, this time more than my two past such retreats, I was intensely drawn all week to attempting to photograph & record the magnificence of that which is small, the perfect beauty and reality of this physical world, its tides and seasons and flowers. And though I’m working with a very basic pocket-sized field-appropriate camera, I think my results were reasonable. Hopefully you’ll find at least some of these images as lovely as I do and maybe they’ll take you into a quieter place for at least a breath or three. Peace, enjoy.

At first I thought crab, now I think maybe mouse. I get comfortable with impermanence through meditation…a good thing, in my current life plan/lifestyle…