Oh nothing, just some flowers
I know, the gallery display is still screwy. Just click the little images to see the big ones. I know, flowers. Very pedestrian. But damn, it was a beautiful morning. I loved that sun today. Even us goth industrialists like a flower every now and again.
Poppy
Poppy
Poppies in downtown Oakland
Gallery Games
I had every intention of meeting my obligation to put up my daily post last night. But as we all know, there is a famous paved road…
I really wanted to put up some photos, but do it in a gallery format with bigger images. So, since I had already gone searching for a WordPress photoblog theme and didn’t find anything I liked that much, I thought I’d just quickly find a gallery/lightbox plugin to get started on revamping the blog.
This too, turned out to be much harder than I expected. The main problem seemed to be that most of the gallery plugins don’t work with WP 3.1 yet, including the one I was particularly interested in based on the look of the front end. I finally ended up with something called “Fancy Gallery” that is acceptable in terms of the look of the lightbox, but nowthe thumbnail presentation looks all wacked. Very annoying. Example with semi-random photos follows.
By the time I got even this far, I was sleeping with the laptop on my belly and drooling into the keyboard. If anyone knows of a cool plugin, or how to fix this thumbnail display with the images all shoved together, please wack me upside the head with it. Or just leave a comment.
Schnoor Bros, 1927 (#1)
W.P.A. 1939
Sidewalk Stamp, Chucks and Cat
Weensor 1929 😉
Three Days
Downtown Oakland
I suppose it is time for a countdown. I have but three days left of working in downtown. I have to say, I’m going to miss it. There is so much interesting stuff to photograph and I really did not take advantage of the situation. Coming across stuff like the face above the doorway is just a nice little serendipitous treat. I may have to get off a stop early at 19th St the rest of the week, just so I have some morning walking to do, and a chance to get in a few more shots.
Of course, there will be new things to see in my new neighborhood. If I can re-establish the habit of biking to work, then it will simply be whole new chapter of commute photography. The weather is finally looking up, so perhaps I’ll be able to start that soon.
A Confluence of Musical Memories
Audience member plays the off-center wheel of death after the final performance of Schick Machine. San Francisco, CA. march 2011.
Way back in the mid-1980’s, when we lived in Fresno, Sarah and I came to be friends with Steve Schick. At the time, Steve was percussionist and young professor in the music department there. And for awhile we shared a circle of friends, local music events, reading and listening groups, and generally hung out.
Meanwhile, Sarah and I were in the habit of coming up to San Francisco to see music and performance works at what was then Theater Artaud, a fantastic space devoted to avant performance works of all kinds. And it was there that on one occasion we saw Paul Dresher Ensemble with Rinde Eckert perform Slow Fire. I’ll save the life-changing details for another post. Let’s just say we were blown away and a lot of things were fixed in our young minds about what was what in contemporary performance.
Eventually, Steve took a job at UC San Diego, and his career and reputation grew as a solo percussionist and champion of contemporary composition. And the rest is history. We moved to Seattle where I stuck my nose in the philosophy books for the better part of a decade. We generally lost touch with Steve, but did connect once or twice after we moved to the Bay Area in 2000.
Today, we experienced an interesting and joyous alignment. We went to see Steve perform Schick Machine, a percussion/theater work written for Steve by Mr. Dresher and Mr. Eckert, at the former Theater Artaud, resurrected a year ago as Z Space. The piece was a fabulous, sprawling cacophony of rhythms, looping textures, words, and visual delights issuing from a stage full of homemade percussion instruments and self-propelled noisemakers. There was a homemade pipe organ, a hurdy-gurdy, sheets of metal, spinning disks, steel hula hoops, slit drums, bottles, cans, alarm bells, and more, all mic’d and looped. We had seen the piece performed almost two years ago at Stanford. Since then, it has changed quite a bit, getting better and more focused. And seeing it in this space somehow made it all the more compelling. Maybe that’s just me and the history it has for me.
We went with friends and all brought our kids to this, the last matinee performance. The kids loved it. As it turns out, there were a total of 19 performances, with many matinees just for school classes that came over the last two weeks. And today, just like as with the school classes that attended, everyone was invited up after the performance to play with all the crazy instruments. Kids and adults alike had a blast.
Reconnecting with an old friend, a former fave venue, and the performance world all in one day. That feels good.
Audience members play the hurdy-gurdy after the final performance of Schick Machine. San Francisco, CA. march 2011.
Organ Wheel
Can’t Fail
Can't
Fail
It really is true. Parenting takes time. We’ve had a lot on our parenting plate lately, and that’s another reason, perhaps, why I’ve missed some days posting. But today was the culmination of much of that effort with the execution of the dreaded piano recital. I say “dreaded” because we all came to dread what might happen. Theo was not practicing as much as a tiger mother would have him. The pieces were not there. We would put our foot down. He would pout. We would yell. He would frown. Then he’d play for a few minutes.  Then jump up to reenact a Clone Wars battle scene. Occasionally, a real practice session would ensue.
And so it went until the day was upon us. Boy was he nervous. Frankly, I was nervous too, like I was the one going on stage. In the end, he did reasonably fine (Crappy compressed video here.) Better than he thought he would. Indeed, all the kids did really well, so much so that the whole thing was thoroughly enjoyable. Theo’s reward was going out to dinner to his favorite restaurant, Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe in Emeryville for a cheeseburger and a root beer float. And of course, along the way I found the opportunity to get my daily photo and even daily post out of it.
Can’t Fail. It all seemed fitting somehow.
Ocean
Ocean
Two things happened to coincide: I was preparing to back up the next folder on my hard drive and it happened to contain photographs from last summers trip to Hawaii. Then I looked at the daily email from WordPress for the postaday project and it was the weekly photo challenge: Ocean. So, what could I do? I had to post a photo of an ocean. But I suppose to be my usual solf-subverting self, I ended up selecting this blurry one instead of one of the more conventionally pretty ones. Who knows why?… not me, that’s for sure.
Retrograde Commute part 2
Part 2 of Retrograde Commute has some of the different square approaches I’ve been exploring.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #1
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #2
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #3
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA Retrograde Square #4
Retrograde Commute part 1
El Cerrito Plaza Station, El Cerrito CA.
I catch the BART in El Cerrito. Often, but completely accidentally, I find myself on the Fremont train to downtown Oakland. I say accidentally because it could just as easily be the San Francisco/Milbrae train. When it is the Fremont train, it waits at Macarthur Station for the SF train on the other line, so that people can transfer. And it waits to allow that train to pull out first. That leaves me with the views pictured below, which I am intrigued by. I’ve playing around with some different processing approaches. These are the full frame versions. The next post will present the square crop versions.
El Cerrito Plaza Station, El Cerrito CA.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA.
Macarthur Station, Oakland CA.
World Events Undermine Recreational Productivity
On the topic of why I have not been keeping up with my commitment to a blog post a day, I have already expounded on Vegas and computer problems. I did in fact write another post detailing the 24 hours of delirium wherein “someone” went to the ER a couple times. But that entry has been rejected by the censors, and so nothing more shall be mentioned regarding said event, other than to say it’s impact on my blogging momentum was not insignificant. And, of course, one can’t lean on the crutch of a past excuse forever, so let me move on to another one.
As some may already have guessed, I tend to be obsessive and compulsive at times, and I’m also very sensitive. And paranoid. And sometimes pessimistic. And defeatist. So when the news of the earthquake in Japan first arrived, I felt tremendous sympathy and began following the news intently. Then, as the enormity of the tsunami became clear, empathy and profound sadness welled up within me. Finally, when the nuclear reactor catastrophe started to unfold, I was simply stunned and transfixed. Close proximity to any sort of information device and I was glued to it trying to stay informed about latest developments, palpably hoping for the best, and fearing the worst. And as it got worse, I envisioned it swirling around me, borne on winds from Japan, or simply from our own Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor after the next shake of the ring of fire. I was sure this was the beginning of something very bad for a much wider area.
So, there went another couple of days of without a post. But I eventually came to my senses, and sympathetic though I am, I started worrying about more real and proximate things, like the storm patterns on the west coast of the US–that is, like my flooded basement, which I’ve had to pump out every couple days when the water level overtakes the burner on the water heater. Or maybe the news switched to other topics, like dealing with the situation in Libya. Whatever it was, it didn’t help with getting back to the daily practice of writing. But today is a new day, and though we’ve lost Elizabeth Taylor, I’m finding the strength to renew my commitment. I might even try to catch up and crank out an extra couple posts over the next few days. In this wacky world, anything is possible.
Lunch Rush
City Center
Right now, the lunch rush is to shoot as much as possible in downtown in the time I have left. I’m gettin’ everything I can from big to small, and close to far. The downside is forgetting to eat, and then getting low blood sugar and then wandering around looking for the perfect thing that I want to eat right now that I’m fixated on and that only exists in my addled mind. And then I end up back in the cafeteria on the fifth floor of the Federal Building. At least I get some photos out of it.
Stand-off
Ghost Sign
14th St Window Display