Highway Memories
Southbound hwy 99 somewhere north of Merced. Telephone poles along the highway.
As far back as when we lived in Fresno and regularly drove to the Bay Area for shows or to visit relatives, I was enamored of the scenery along Hwy 99. How far back is that? Well, it was before the housing boom and bust, before the first tech boom and bomb. Before graduate school in the Great Northwest gave me the opportunity to appreciate scenery vastly different and yet, at times, strangely familiar. What nature wrought was vastly different. What humanity wrought, strangely familiar.
Before Flickr, before I had ever heard of Stephen Shore, and before I realized the importance of acting on the impulse, I intended to do a photo essay of the road between Fresno and Oakland that would consist entirely of old, usually free-standing signs that no longer had buildings or businesses associated with them. I would call it “The Lexicon of Abandonment”. (I suppose I could now work on a series called “The Lexicon of Procrastination”; perhaps I’ll get to that soon.) Among the most memorable abandoned signs we would pass along the highway was a wonderful old sign at the entrance to a drive-in theater in Merced. I believe it was called “The Starlite Drive-In” and it was, of course, a fabulous mid-century specimen. But even 20 years ago, it stood in front of an otherwise empty field of weeds, tall and forlorn along the roadside.
My intention probably suffered a mortal blow during the recent development boom when many old, abandoned buildings, signs, or other things, were finally torn down to make way for the new and shiny. A new development right along old 99 finally brought down the Starlite. I never shot it. That’s not to say there aren’t still many abandoned old signs out there. But just as in the Little Prince, that Starlite was special because it chose me and I chose it.
There is something else along this strange stretch of road that greets me like a tired old friend each time I traverse it. Just north of Merced on the west side of the road and next to the railroad tracks, runs a series of telephone poles. For a long time, years, they seemed to be in use and maintained, if only barely. But now, many are leaning, missing cross pieces, or simply snapped off. Here and there, wood hangs limply from the sagging wires. Sometimes, it is all on the ground. To me, they look like lonely sentinels along a desolate road somewhere in the midwest. They wave to me when we go racing by on our frantic Fresno excursions to visit family. Now, I’m acting on the impulse and waving back, with my camera. Sitting shotgun, I aim through the glass and get what I get: portraits of my old friends looking just as I’ve always known them, flickering by 65 mph.
More nostalgia
Becca turned me on to this site, which I thought was kinda cool, Place and Memory. It is a wiki of places that no longer exist. How awesome is that, and useful too. Well, for those of us who are fixated on recapturing our once glorious past, it is perfectly cathartic. And recorded versions of stories make it onto NPR. In any case, the very first place I thought of when I saw the site was Yosemite Nursery in Fresno, and I wrote the Entry below. Though I would encourage you to read it at the site and make your own entry about a place that no longer exists.
My family moved to the neighborhood when I was about 5 years old. We lived on Griffith Way. At the top of the street was Hwy 41/Blackstone Ave, and there on the corner was this amazing place. It was an amazing nursery with a large variety of plants, trees, soil, mulches and so on. It was owned by a Japanese family and their house was on the Griffith side of the property, with the nursery sprawling behind it. In front of the house was a koi pond, or series of ponds, with connecting streams and Japanese bridges, meticulously pruned black pines and other topiary.
The parking lot was on the Blackstone side. At the back of it stood the business office and covered areas for shade plants, bonsai, and also the fish hatchery! There was a series of troughs with koi, goldfish, etc. I seem to remember that they were segregated by size to some extent. Around the outside of the parking lot, along the street were huge piles of feather rock for sale. Feather rock is volcanic rock that has a sponge-like structure, which makes it very light for its size. It is also essentially glass, which means it is very easy to get cut up when you climb on it, as we often did. I remember that that it came in two different colors, a glossy black, and a more muted gray.
Down the block from the house on the Griffith side was a series of large stalls containing different soils and mulches, and so on. There was tractor that was used for loading material into customers’s trucks. I still remember clearly the sweet, bourbon-y smell of the redwood forest humus.
Behind all this lay the vast (to a kid) interior of rows and rows of trees and plants, hiding places, and mysterious objects. I loved going there with my parents and running off to throw pennies, or just pebbles, into the koi pond, to look at all the curious, colorful figurines and statues for sale, to get lost in the backwoods, and to feel the cool, damp soil between my toes on a scorching Fresno summer day.
Fresno continued to grow northward, and what was once a north gate on Hwy 41 heading to Yosemite, became a rural holdout in the middle of the city. Eventually, I don’t remember exactly when, the place closed and the property was developed into an L-shaped strip mall.
By: Neocles
Blog to Remember: A Recipe for Pasta
As a new means of annoying readers–ahem, remembering things I’ve cooked so I can do it again–I will start posting kitchen exploits. This one, involves last night’s dinner. As usual, dinner last evening was a last minute affair. Searching through the fridge I found a couple packages of grocery store ravioli, like maybe Buitoni, with cheese and chicken. There was not much with which to make a sauce, particularly one that Theo would eat, but I dug around the pantry and fridge to see what I could find. While hunting around the freezer, I saw some frozen peas. That caused me to flash on a dish I remember eating at an Italian place in Fresno about 2o years ago. Unfortunately, I can’t quite remember the name of the place. It was out on Shaw Ave near West. It was owned by one of the kids or something of the Fresno Italian Restaurant dynasty, the DiCicco’s. Wait! Lido’s is what it was called, I think. The place was pretty cuisine-y for Fresno in those days, different feel than the old school chain places the family ran, and apparently still runs. It was a pasta course with a creamy tomato sauce with peas. It was good, and the memory wouldn’t let me go. I thought, “What the hell, I’ll play with that idea and see what happens.”
I found a small onion, chopped it fine and threw it in a hot saute pan with a couple Tbls. olive oil. After the onions started to wilt, I turned the heat down and added a couple cloves minced garlic. I started adding some chicken broth, about 2/3 of a cup, but in about 3 or 4 increments, waiting for each to reduce down before adding the next. I learned this from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s first book, “The Splendid Table”. I used to love to listen to her show on KUOW in Seattle, and still can’t really believe there is not a single freaking station in the SF Bay Area, self-annointed foodie capital of America, that carries the program. At least there’s a Website and podcasts.
I finely diced a couple smallish carrots, and threw those in with the last of the broth. While that was simmering, I measured up a cup of the frozen peas, and found a large can (24 oz?) of chopped tomatoes in the pantry. Chopped would not do, so I got out my aged Cuisinart food processor and zinged them up really well. I still have the first Cuisinart I ever bought, a DLC-10 plus, which was in about 1985 or so. The model was later renamed The Classic, or something like that. I can’t believe it still runs. Maybe it will outlast me. I wonder if the new ones are still built like this. I’d be happy to endorse their products. At least their food processors. At least the ones they sold in the mid-80’s.
Anyway, I threw the pureed tomatoes in to the pan and let that all simmer for awhile. I’m not sure how long. Perhaps long enough to boil 4 quarts of water for the pasta. Then I added the peas and salt and pepper. After a few minutes of cleaning up, I put the pasta on. Then I had to face facts. I had no cream. And I have NEVER had luck adding milk, or even half-and-half to a sauce. It always curdles. And I was not going to the store now. I stood there staring into the refrigerator and finally saw the Greek yogurt–you know that brand no one can really pronounce, FAH-yeh. Damn that shit is good. Anyway, I got brave and finished the sauce with a couple-three big spoons of that full-fat Fage. I added until it looked the right color.
There was almost enough vegetable matter in it to justify going with it as a one dish meal. So we did. And you know, it wasn’t half bad. Sorry I didn’t get picture. You’ll just have to make it yourself to see it.
Fingado Art Gallery Opening
This is the final set of images I will have in a group photography show that opens Friday at Fingado Art Gallery. Nine is quite a few but the prints are not very big, just 12 inches square. I printed them at Dickerman Prints and had them mounted on aluminum at General Graphics, both in San Francisco. They came out very nice, and I’m pretty excited about it.
It has been an interesting project to try to print and prepare for presentation a small set of photographs. In a way, it seems easier than simply showing things on the web. I think the reason for this is that a physical show has, by its very nature, physical limitations and boundaries. A small set of images allows one to focus on them and the process of getting them where you want them to be. By contrast, putting things up on flickr or another such site is pretty much wide open in terms of numbers and organization. One can drown in a sea of possibilities.
This was my thought about what’s going on with this series of photos. The starting point is an exploration of color. Not color simpliciter, but as it relates to memory, history and the fictional narratives they constitute. The combination of color shifts and vintage subjects recall a generic past and, paradoxically, place the viewer within a fictitious historical narrative by playing upon her memories and nostalgic sensibilities. The deportation is paradoxical since taken literally, these narratives describe a logical impossibility. The images waver between recalling a past as it was, and a decayed, dissolving past as it comes to us. On one hand we are presented with something recalling a snapshot from the family drawer, a snapshot whose color as shifted over time, but whose referent we can conjure through memory as pristine. On the other hand, the subject is captured and presented not as it was in the past, but as it is now, in the present. It is the color, as it were, of the subject itself which has shifted over time rather than the photograph.
Community=trust, or is it the other way around?
So, I roll into my new favorite wi-fi enabled coffee office, and as I am about to order I see that they don’t take credit cards yet, and I know I have no cash, and the nearest cash machine will charge me more than the cost of a cup a joe to give me my own money. And the nearest Wamu-Chase joint is a 15-minute bike ride away.
So, as I am thinking about all this, the woman at the counter, who turns out to be one of the owners, sees the look on my face and says, “no cash, eh?” And then she asks me if I wanna do an IOU? She says, “you look familiar”.
So, I am kind of blown away, because you definitely don’t get this anymore. I’ll be honest, i really liked this place anyway. It doesn’t hurt that the coffee is really good, as are the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies and shortbread squares, the vibe is cool, the wi-fi is provided without an attitude, minimum purchase requirement, or sideways glance like you’re stealing something.
But now, they have a totally loyal customer for life. This is a down economy, and the restaurant business is tough in the best of times. This place is still new and could probably stand to see more cash flow. So, it is really gratifying to see people expressing trust and building community. One might argue that this is just smart business, and I would not disagree. I just think it is not all that common these days. So, you know, come get some coffee and a pastry. Bring cash.
Apricot Jam 2009
Apricots and some Strawberries by neocles, on Flickr
All Jammed Up by neocles, on Flickr
The apricot canning project this year was small but reasonably successful. I lost very few apricots due to my branch supports, and we ate lots of fresh ones. Finally the day came when they had to be picked, and I brought them all in. I kept them in the fridge to try to have fresh fruit on hand for as long as possible. But last night the time came to preserve the rest.
I couldn’t find the online recipe I used last year that included orange zest. But I had lots of lemons and so just went with the easiest thing I could find that called for some lemon juice. It also called for about 3/4 cup sugar to each cup fruit. I ran out of regular sugar a cup shy and so substituted brown sugar for the last cup. I like the slightly darker flavor it adds, but in retrospect, I probably should have just cut the sugar by a cup anyway. This batch is a bit sweeter than I remember the batch from last year being.
But it’s fun just the same and I’ve got jam to get me through the fall anyway. I guess canning is catching on. I heard this NPR story the other day on how canning classes are in demand as people try to revive this ancient alchemical skill in order to beat the bad economy. I can’t help thinking that there are all these things we as a society are doing totally wrong because we have been bamboozled into thinking that we can’t do anything ourselves, and that real happiness comes from buying everything and making nothing. We only get a glimpse of the truth when pushed by a crisis to rethink what we’re doing. Well, more on this in a future rant. Right now, I’m going to eat some some toast and jam.
First of the 2009 harvest
Dried Oregano from the Garden by neocles, on Flickr
We’ve had a few things from the garden so far this year, although it has been rather a disappointing one so far. A couple other people I talked to reported the same thing: things just didn’t seem to grow much through the spring. In my case, peppers, eggplant, basil and even some radishes, just didn’t really do anything. My guess is that we had too much fog this spring. (Never mind that today begins a little NorCal heatwave.)
Some other things, however, are doing fine. I have already dried about a quart and a half of Greek oregano. Many, many years ago my mom managed to bring back some oregano shoots from Greece and planted them at the house in Fresno. I had forgotten all about that, But when we were moving her up to the bay area, one of the things I noticed was a scraggly clump of oregano way in the back of the yard, past the grapevines. I was pretty sure this was the stuff from Greece, so I dug it up and planted it in my garden here. It is definitely different from the leafy stuff you get that the nurseries here. The leaves are very small, usually sparse, on long leggy stems. I understand that the Greeks don’t use the leaves much. They cut the stems when they are loaded with unopened flower buds and dry the buds. It is intensely aromatic. Maybe commercial oregano here is done the same way. I don’t really know.
Apricot Stilts by neocles, on Flickr
The fruit trees are all happy this year, and of course the first crop to come in is the apricots. The tree got pretty loaded with fruit again this year, and again I couldn’t bring myself to thin it. But I was determined to avoid broken branches this year, so, I made some supports. It looks kinda greek hillbilly but it gets the job done. I think I’ll have enough for a few pints of jam.
Maker Faire 2009
Fire-breathing Snail at Maker Faire
I attended Maker Faire 2009 this last weekend with Sarah and Theo. I was not quite sure what all to really expect other than “burners”, art cars, and other alt-artists. It is definitely a scene for Bay Area hipsters.The fire-breathing snail truck, motorized one-person cupcakes, tesla coils, fire-arts displays from The Crucible, body art, etc. set that vibe for sure.
If it were just this, it would have been fine, but it was so much more than this. We went as a family, and the number of activities and other things geared toward kids and families was really great. Theo was totally into it. Of course, for a six-year-old boy, the main buzz was word of a large Legoland display and activity area. Theo wouldn’t settle down until we found it, and then wouldn’t leave it once we did. (We could hardly escape to do the things WE wanted to do.) There were many other building, science and educational activities and presentations going on from groups like NASA and Exploratorium. Sarah and I both came to the conclusion that the Weekend Pass is a good idea; the Faire really demands a two-day visit, and next year we thought we’d spend one day largely devoted to kid stuff, and one day to explore all the stuff we really want to see. I was disappointed to entirely miss Survival Research Labs among other things.
Among the things I checked out was the experimental and computer music section, which was definitely cool. There were individuals there with their own creations, like computer controlled prepared piano, home-built electronic zither things, guitars with sound-sensitive color displays built into the body, and more. I also discovered organizations like Sound Arts, which work to support the sound arts community in a variety of ways. I was actually inspired to try to participate next year. I’m eager to start composing electronic music again, and perhaps put it together with photographic imagery. There were several multi-media tools on exhibit, and the possibilities for interactive mash-ups appear to be very extensive. So, we’ll see..
Beyond the fun of electronic noise-toys, it seems to me that the notion of making your own fill-in-the-blank, instead of relying only on mass-produced consumables for furnishing one’s life, is more important than ever. A quick review of the story of stuff should convince you of that. In fact, among the most interesting and yet slightly disturbing activities we did at Maker Faire involved making things out of discarded stuff, mostly computer stuff. There were gigantic piles of computer gear that were available for dismantling and use as raw material. (I’m not really sure which Theo enjoyed more, destroying a computer keyboard, or assembling its pieces into a robot ship.) The fun aside, the sheer volume of discarded material present here gives one pause as to what must be going into the world’s landfills. Thank goodness for groups like the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which was a participating organization and probably the source of the “art supplies”, for what they do to stem the tide of electronics discards.
Not that everyone is going to build their own computers. But there were exhibits and activities on everything from sewing, to gardening, to “slow food”, to green energy technology, to bicycling, and how to make your own robot. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Extracting the Root
I forgot to post earlier about the latest piece I added to the Sound page:
It was a collaboration between myself and Mike Mogan in the late 80’s. I am not sure of the year. It actually made it onto a cassette release of a compilation of Fresno indie music. I’m not sure what kind of music to call it, but it was influenced by early, so-called world music, Peter Gabriel, and ECM jazz stuff. I can’t remember what the title is a reference to. It was actually quite a challenge to record as it was done on a Tascam “Portastudio 244” 4-track cassette recorder. There were quite a few parts and stereo imaging of things, so there was a lot of careful bouncing tracks down. It is hard to believe we managed to do it with somewhat decent mix levels and minimal tape noise.
Mike played rhythm guitar, the cool double-tracked guitar solo, and synthesizer. I played rhythm guitar (the part with the dubious timing), acoustic 12-string guitar, and did the drum machine programming. It was my first drum machine, the E-mu Drumulator. This thing came with a stock set of sounds that was a basic drum kit. Eventually, you could add, I should say change, sounds by swapping out the computer chips onto which he sounds were recorded. Here I have the ethnic percussion chip set going. It sounds a bit dry and forward in this mix. I think we actually recorded a sync track for the drumulator on the tape and printed the stereo percussion part straight to the mixdown.
Memory Dresser
My dresser for my entire childhood.
This was my dresser for my entire childhood — from day one until the day I moved out as a young adult. It contained many memories. I remember digging in the bottom drawer for shorts to wear on the first hot days of summer; and the top left drawer with socks, folded in the special, partial inside-out way my mother used to fold them that made it easier to put them on. I remember hiding cigarettes in the bottom back corner as a teenager. And some other stuff, too.
One particular memory I have is of the time when I was about 13 that my friend Les Wood damaged the dresser. Les was a strange sort of friend. He was in 9th grade when I was in 7th grade. Les was a little scary. He had a streak that was half thrill-seeking and half sadistic. So, periodically I would have to endure some harrowing experience like being being burned on the forearm with a red-hot butter knife while cooking together, or being hiked on the back of a paper bike and plowing through a row of rose bushes.
On the occasion of the damage, which was around the Fourth of July, Les showed up at my house one day with some fireworks. While I was not looking he dumped out an entire box of snakes on to the top of the dresser and lit them. Within moments the room was filled with a choking sulfurous smoke. The snakes curled out into a monstrous heap of twisted ash and burned through the top layer of the dresser, leaving a shallow crater and wide burned area on the top. I was pretty damn mad; even as a teenager, I had a sense of propriety and pride of ownership. My parents, needless to say, were furious. Les just laughed his little sadistic laugh, his small teeth peeking through a thin-lipped grin.
Les’s attitude and behavior never really improved. Two or three years later, when I was about 16 years old, Les had been kicked out of the house and was living around with different friends, or just in the Chevy Vega he drove, and selling drugs for money. During this time, he gave away or sold almost everything he owned. He sold me his once beloved stereo system for about $20. That was my first real stereo, and I set it up on the top of my dresser. One night, I saw Les and Greg Baker, who had been hanging out together, at Geno’s Pinball Palace. Geno’s was a stoner kids’ hangout in Fresno in the mid-70’s. I saw Les outside in the parking lot drinking an Old English 800 Malt Liquor and extremely high on LCD. At one point he was sitting on the curb holding is head in his hands like a vice, his face red and sweating, trying to not freak out.
A few minutes later he was fine, walking around and laughing. Not many people tended to laugh with him. He asked if anybody wanted to go for a drive, go out to the fig orchards that were once plentiful in northwest Fresno and “go figgin'”. That meant driving out into the powdery soft dirt in the orchard and spinning the car around in circles, raising plumes of dust in a whirl of teenage entertainment. The only taker was Greg, who was probably equally high.
They next day we found out that the Vega had hit a giant fig tree at a high rate of speed and exploded on impact. Les and Greg died nearly instantly, we were told. We never really knew whether this was a drug-fueled accident, or Les’s intentional, final act of defiance against a world he didn’t like and that didn’t much like him back.
In any case, we had a yard sale last weekend, and while the dresser was not for sale, it was out because we used it to display other things that were for sale. I had started to refinish it over a year ago, and simply never got the momentum up to finish.The knobs were off, and only the drawers were really done. Three people asked me if it was for sale and offered to buy it, and by the third, I was starting to think that it probably made sense let it go, and do what we were out there to do: lighten our load. The other furniture had not even gotten a second look. I sold it to a woman for $50.
I guess I’ll have to find something else to keep my childhood memories in.