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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…

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | June 30, 2014 | Categories: New England, New Hampshire, Star Island | Tags: daisies, flower photography, irises, islands, isles of shoals, lichen, lighthouses, Moss, star island, tidepools | 6 Comments

California Coastal Reconnection

smw, slt has been in my titular US home of San Francisco for three weeks now. Prior to that, during the post-assignment re-alignment of my sensibilities that I undertake after each international work stint, I spent five weeks living on the coastal side of Los Angeles. During that time, my activities consisted primarily of the following: bike rides up and down the coast and up into Topanga Canyon, concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, concerts and museum visits at both Getty Centre and Getty Villa, and getting together with the various friends I have there. On the theory that it’s good to post the imges from my last location before leaving my current one, I present a selection of shots undertaken during those activities. Each photo has a name which says what it is, and I think I will let them do all the speaking. If you’re in touch with me, you know the process of transition and rearrangement I’m undergoing vis-a-vis preparation for the next phases. If you’re curious but not yet in touch…what’s stopping you? 🙂 Enjoy!

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | June 9, 2014 | Categories: California, Los Angeles | Tags: California poppies, Disney Hall, Los Angeles Beaches, South Bay Beach Bike Trail, Topanga Canyon | 3 Comments

Zurich: Many Churches & The World’s Largest Easter Bunny

A few random facts. In the process of returning from PNG to my US home on the west coast, I had to go the long way around in order to debrief at our HQ’s in Berlin and Amsterdam. That’s why you saw some Amsterdam photos recently – since I was in Berlin less than 24 hours, the camera didn’t come out there. In order to take a break from all the intensely long flights cramped into economy-class seats, I gave myself two weeks visiting friends in a few parts of Europe before returning to North America. These are the last Euro shots from this trip. They’re from Zurich & surroundings, where I was honored to stay with an Oberlin friend her family.

I’ll let the pics speak for themselves, and for those curious what stands out to my still-outsider eyes here in the US, I’ll share just two items noticed in the last 24 hours: on 3rd Street Promenade at a clothing store, the offer of a ‘survival kit’ which was two t-shirts and one pair of shorts for a special price – not quite sure where survival comes into it, but hey, knock yourselves out American consumers. Next: a very large SUV (noticed because it was large enough to squeeze me down in my bike lane on Main Street in Venice) called “Armada.” I sense a theme here, which I admit to my eyes and senses attuned to the neediest zones of the world seems, may I say, rather contrived and consumer-driven. Oh yeah, one more thing: my smart phone (first and only one, so far) is dying a rapid death so I went to T-Mobile where they try to finance all your phones. What’s the advantage to paying for the phone fully rather than financing it? Once you’ve paid at least half the value of your phone, you can ‘upgrade’ – this means, trade it in for a newer model. Planned obsolescence: it’s not just for cars any more! (And we all know how well that car thing has worked out for the world around us…) I really do want to take a full seven months off here, and I thought I wanted to consider working back here…but, sheesh, with such a consumer-driven culture, I really hardly want to settle in any more deeply than necessary to just see my friends and families & then get back to where things are more…well, whatever. You get what I mean, maybe. I’m not sure I do. I’m just sure I don’t feel like this all makes perfect sense yet.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | May 12, 2014 | Categories: Switzerland, Zurich | Tags: alps, lake zurich, lindt easter bunny, zurich churches | 2 Comments

A Morning Walk in Amsterdam

This is definitely one of my gnarlier re-entries from resource-poor work setting back into developed-world life. Not surprising, that fact, since it was a full intense two years in Papua New Guinea, a place which remains unique to me in its vast and complex history and sociocultural variety. Plus the fact it was my longest assignment so far. But the fact it’s not surprising doesn’t make the re-entry any less personally … well, gnarly, which is basically a nice way to say challenging as all get out. I sit in darkened auditoriums – mostly Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, where I’m spending five weeks just now – and when the orchestra goes through its organized tuning-up ritual, tears come to my eyes that humans can organize themselves for the creation and appreciation of beauty and magnificence, not just death and destruction. I sit, finally, at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica and find myself racked by sobs when we sing some of the hopeful, compassion-and-acceptance-filled hymns that are standard UU fare: again, reminded that the world can be full of hope and collective human effort towards generosity, warmth and creation rather than in-group fighting against in-group. It’s also me letting myself, finally, feel some of the pain and grief our patients experience in PNG and which I’ve not let myself feel since it would have impeded my work while I was still on the job…

I know this is all a bit raw, and I apologize – but I do need to move through this process. Remembering beautiful times and places, like the daffodils above which I saw during my too-short two-day sojourn in Amsterdam, helps. As do all the bike rides I’m taking up to Topanga Canyon or down to Hermosa Beach, here in LA. You’ll see those in due course. But I still have a lot of basic sorting and catching up to do, and my basic apartment setup is lacking in many basics such as printer and even reliable steady internet… So I’m still color-correcting and sorting – and yes, I really do delete most of the photos I take and try to put only the ones I think will you give you some window to where I’ve been. My soul and body are still landing back on this side of the world; in some ways these photos help me trail myself back to where I am now. Maybe they’ll give you either a glimpse of places you’ve loved or would like to be, or lacking that maybe a sense, if you know me, of why I seem to confused a lot of the time lately!

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | May 5, 2014 | Categories: Netherlands, North Holland & Amsterdam | Tags: amstel river, amsterdam churches, daffodils | 3 Comments

Ahhhh, Springtime in Northern Europe

So at this moment, smw slt has actually been in one region (the NYC area) for eight nights! That means, as I sat in a lovely NY Philhmarmonic Ensembles chamber recital yesterday and let the music soothe out the kinks of my scattered psyche, that I could count back the Sundays and realized I’d actually gone to bed the prior Sunday in the same rough location as where I’d be going to bed last night. And that’s a big deal since I’d woken up each of the prior several Sundays in at least different countries and more often than not on different continents. And that, my friends, does get old fast. 🙂 That said, there are clearly joys to travel and they include both seeing old friends and meeting new ones, as well of course as having one’s sense of the possible expanded. After two years in the tropics of PNG, I found myself utterly captivated by northern Europe in spring. I also found myself captivated by the grand buildings, the flat fields, the old brickwork and lovely metal and stonework adorning so many buildings. And I was delighted by the freedom and safety to walk or bike at will, at sunrise or sunset and all hours of the day, through the fields and along the streets. In this entry you’re seeing a bunch of shots from the fields and streets around where I was visiting friends in East Frisia & Schlewsig-Holstein in Germany, plus a few urban scenes from Hamburg where I also spent a wee period. It does all look rather different from, say, Port Moresby or the highlands around Tari? Hard to really believe that phase of my life is now wrapped up…
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Hamburg Church…Petrikirche perhaps??

Hamburg Public Library

Hamburg Canal and Buildings

Hamburg Rathaus

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | April 14, 2014 | Categories: East Frisia, Hamburg, Netherlands, North Holland & Amsterdam, Schleswig-Holstein | Tags: daffodils, easter-egg trees, Hamburg Public Library, Hamburg Rathaus, spring, spring flowers, windmills | 1 Comment

Ambling Around Canberra

Canberra is one of those cities oft-mentioned but never visited, thus far. Especially in the past two years, based as I was in the next nation north of Australia, the city came up. Like capital cities everywhere, folks love to hate it and hate to love it. On the way out of PNG, I was fortunate enough to be welcome for some meetings with various folks who work with Australian Aid, as well as various politicians in the capital about what we’ve been accomplishing in PNG and what the unmet needs are, etc. If you’re interested in that work aspect of the visit, I say most of what I’d write in the following radio interview, taped while I was there: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacific/radio/program/pacific-beat/png-family-violence-needs-local-and-overseas-attention/1281294

For those interested in a few of the sights and landscapes of this grand national capital created as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne (which have always argued over who’s #1 in Australia…), these shots give an impression. I walked a lot. It’s a very suburban city, reminding me of the old saying “there’s no there, there.” I suspect if you’re raising kids, it’s great; I think for a single person looking for the urban life, it would tire rapidly. As an exit-ramp from two years of hard work in PNG, it was a nice in-between station. Here you’ll see mostly the public spaces – lots of parliament house, sculpture garden at the national gallery of art, lots of the lake and the national museum building, which is that unusual multi-colored construction by the lakeside. All the shots have names which say what they are. Enjoy.

Posted by somuchworldsolittletime | April 1, 2014 | Categories: Australia, Canberra | Tags: Australian National Art Gallery, Australian national museum, Australian parliament house, Canberra Monuments | 3 Comments

Bidding Adieu, Closing a Chapter

Like this butterfly which kept me company on my last afternoon in POM after I’d left the office & gone home to pack, I’ve spread my wings and flown away. (Ah, soooo many flights: pom->cairns->sydney->canberra where I pressed the pause button for three nights; then canberra->sydney->beijing->frankfurt->berlin where I pressed pause for one night then berlin -> amsterdam where I sit in the jetlagged early AM as I post this…) Farewells are not my strength, at least the social part of them: I tend to just get up and go, since for me belaboring the departure simply makes it more painful. I prefer, as it were, to pull the band-aid off in one painful pull rather than try to gently remove it – those staying on have the rest of their lives to get on with, and I…well, I had about a dozen flights awaiting me! And the rest of my own life, I guess. So yeah: the PNG chapter has come to a close, and as of last night when I wrapped up the debriefings I’m again a free agent in the world, unemployed and homeless but at least stranded for now on the shores of Europe where I’ll get to see lots o’ good friends and such in the coming two weeks. Yippee!

It’s become a habit for me to try to photograph, as I leave a project, as many of the faces of the colleagues I’ve been working with as possible. It helps me remember the generous, kind and hard-working people who will carry on the work after I’ve left. There’s a gallery here full of those shots, and otherwise mostly the farwell pizza-party & cake lunch that I threw for the office on my last day, last week on Friday. Otherwise this entry contains only the butterfly who visited me, and one shot of the coast near Cairns…at least I’m fairly sure that’s what it is. I suppose it might be the coast near Sydney airport but I don’t think so. This is also, after all, a farewell to that entire region including Australia which I flew into and out of, or visited long or short, many times while there. The next entry should show some views of Canberra during that three-day intermezzo. Ciao, thanks, peace.