ambivalent images

I'm Stuck in Debt!

Marker grafitti at a bus stop near Calvert and Connecticut in Woodley Park. Sadly, this is all too true for me, and probably for many other Visa customers, as well.

Harsh!

The remains of a bike locked to a parking meter on Calvert St. NW in front of Open City. The frame is that of a Bianchi Pista, so this was once a pretty nice bike. I wonder how long it was locked there before someone started stripping it. And how long did the stripping take? Also, why didn't the stripper take the pedals? It doesn't look like they're anything special, but worth taking, I would think. I mean, if you're already going to the trouble of taking everything else...

Open City Camel

An animal cracker camel floats through the air (mysteriously!) at Open City in Woodley Park. L. and I went there for dinner a few weeks ago and just tried it for brunch last weekend. It's a lot like The Diner with a more Tryst-esque atmosphere. No surprise there—all three properties are part of the Tryst empire. Open City even uses the same coffee mugs and napkins as Tryst. The food at all three places is fine—nothing special, but you know it will be satisfying—and it's great to see a place like this in the Woodley Park area. I'm sure it's going to make a mint.

Daisy Daisy

Bright orange daisy's newly planted in a neighbor's yard. These were put in the ground in full bloom by a landscaping company just before the neighbor put his house on the market. They look terrific and have lasted a couple of weeks. I don't know if they helped sell the house, but I've definitely enjoyed seeing them.

Owls and Raptors at UW

A short-eared owl at the University of Wyoming. My sister took this last week on her cameraphone when the birds were visiting the university. The little animal at right is called a burrowing owl and she was told it goes into gopher holes; she's not sure if it does this to retrieve food, or to sleep, or what. It is about 8 to 10 inches fully grown.

You know you must be in someplace like Wyoming if my sister could take these pictures last week on a bright, warm, sunny spring day, and then Mackenzie could take these pictures only a few blocks away and only a few days later. Spring in the Rockies!

Footie in the park

Players kick up some soccer dust at Walter Pierce Park. Every time I see this field I can't help but think back to just about a year ago when it was entirely fenced in b/c they'd planted grass or laid down sod (I can't remember which). The grass was green and thick over the entire field. Then they took down the fence and people started using the field and, well, the results are obvious. It's too bad it gets so dusty, but it's also great that a public space like this gets so much use. I walk by there all the time and almost always see people having a great time there. The lack of grass is a pretty small price to pay for that.

Annie

Annie, our landlord's dog, pauses while chasing a squirrel to allow me to take her picture.

Hope Spray

A message on a brick wall in Walter Pierce Park in Adam's Morgan.

Tragic Possibility

Falun Gong protesters at the corner of Connecticut and Calvert last Thursday (April 20). The protest was sparked by the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the U.S. Earlier in the day one protester was arrested and is being charged with “'knowingly and willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening or harassing … a foreign official performing his duties,' a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of $5,000.” I'm glad the potential punishment isn't any larger (and I assume if convicted she'd be more likely to get probation/fine than jail), but I disagree with the charge in the first place. Supposedly her “intimidation” or “threats” were: “Your time is running out,” and “Anything you have done will come back to you in this life.” Does that sound criminal to you?

I just don't know what to make of Falun Gong, but I am convinced that China (whether officially or not) is executing prisoners and selling their organs without their prior permission. Combine that with the fact that China executes more people each year than any other country in the world and you have what looks like a serious problem. (China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. together account for 97% of global executions in 2005. Good company we're in, huh?) I just recently watched “Dirty Pretty Things,” which is about illegal immigrants in London selling their kidneys for fake passports (oh, but it's a love story, too!) so the subject has been much on my mind. The film reminded me that this sort of thing is probably going on today, right now, somewhere in D.C., and probably in many other places around the country and world. How have we come to this?

Eazy Breezy

A spring sky over D.C. a few days ago in the late afternoon. To me it suggests a sense of freedom and ease, which is what I feel today after turning in my last academic papers ever. Law school is so close to over for me it's not even funny. Yay!

Royal Palace

The corner of Connecticut and Florida Aves. Does anyone have any clue what this place is? It seems too huge to just be a bar...

I've always thought the big building looming behind the Royal Palace was pretty cool. I bet you could get some great views from those balconies.

Moon through trees

Last week's full moon hangs low over a string of rowhouses in Adams Morgan. I just don't have the lens to capture stuff like this (and I couln't find a good view where I didn't have to compete w/a streetlight), but this moon was incredibly cool b/c of the lines of clouds surrounding it for the few minutes I was taking pics. By the time I got a clearer shot (no trees, no streetlights), the clouds had evaporated and it wasn't even worth it anymore.

21st & R

A sculpture at the corner of 21st and R St. NW.

Blue Movie Burning

My iBook making a DVD as seen through the bottom of a glass. I've been transferring some mini-DV tapes to DVD for some friends and while I'm impressed w/how easy this is to do w/iMovie and iDVD, I'm very disappointed in how long the process takes. If you have a full mini-DV tape it takes about an hour and a half to copy it onto your hard drive, then you might spend 10-15 minutes making chapters and setting up menus in iDVD. That's all fine. The big wait comes when you actually click “burn” in iDVD—be prepared to wait at least 8 hours while your computer crunches that video.

Now I understand why people have been crying for faster macs. My iBook is a 1.2Ghz G4. I once thought that was more than sufficient.

(Note: These movies I've been burning for my friends aren't the least bit “blue” in the usual sense of that word w/regard to movies. It was just descriptive and a nice alliteration for the title of today's shot.)

Toothy Tulips

A bed of tulips with sharp, spiky petals. I'd never seen a tulip like this before, but here was a whole little garden of them so it must be some special breed.

Exploded Tulip

A tulip in final stages of bloom. There are still many tulips around that look fresh and fine, but there are just about as many that have opened wide in their last gasps before releasing their petals back into the earth.

Museum of Law

The entrance to the ABA's Museum of Law in Chicago. Did you know the ABA had a museum of law? Me neither. I was just wandering around down by the river and saw a little sign for it through the window, so in I went. I found it to be a relatively small space (one big room in the basement) filled with colorful exhibits about all the U.S. Presidents who were also lawyers. Supposedly that's just the current exhibit, but it was all that was there and there was no indication of the kinds of things the museum had exhibited in the past or will exhibit in the future. Anyway, I wouldn't add it to a tourist itinerary, but if you're wandering around and need to kill a half hour (or if you're really interested in Presidential history), it might be worth your while.

The image at right (click to enlarge) is just an example of the kinds of quotations you'll see painted on the walls in the museum.

YHF Building 1

One of the coolest apartment buildings on the river in Chicago. This building was featured w/its next-door twin on the cover of Wilco's “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” CD. I also think I spent Thanksgiving in about 1992 on one of the upper floors of one of these buildings. You'd think I'd know whether I actually did that, but you'd be wrong. I was with my girlfriend at the time and we were living in Missouri. She had a friend who invited us to spend Thanksgiving w/her family in Chicago, so we headed north. We got there late at night and after navigating through the city to downtown we ended up inside a parking garage. From there, we moved through hallways and elevators to the friend's apartment up on a very high floor. That's when I realized that we must be in one of these buildings—looking out the balcony you could see such a view! Plus the balcony was rounded, the room itself seemed rounded, so it all made sense. But now, years later, I wonder. Was I really in one of these buildings, or is it just my imagination making it seem that way? The whole experience seems a little surreal, so who knows....

Stairs and Stacks

Looking up through a tangle of fire escape at a silvery smokestack in downtown Chicago. The photo at right (click to enlarge) shows the silvery smokestack from a bit of distance. There was so little color in these photos to begin with that I decided to convert them to black and white. I think the conversion emphasizes the high contrast and all the intersecting lines that make the image interesting—at least to me.

Self-Portrait in Bean

My reflection beneath the “bean” in Milennium Park. I took this at about 9:30 a.m. on a damp, gray workday, so I was the only person there! It was pretty cool, considering the last time I saw the “bean” it was mobbed with people. If you don't know the “bean,” these pictures should give you a better idea about it, and here is a bit of data about it.

Creative Destruction

The view through a fence around a construction site near Washington and State in downtown Chicago. One of the greatest virtues of Chicago (at least for me) is its architecture. This image shows several different generations of buildings and styles. I don't know my architecture well enough to name what is visible here, but it goes from the older and more ornate to the much newer, more plain boxes of more contemporary construction. The construction site in the foreground covers a full city block—what kind of building will rise there? What kind of building had to be removed to make way for this new one?

Urban Canyon II

The view from an “El” station in Chicago. I believe this was the station in front of the Public Library on the southern end of the loop. I had to fly to Chicago last Friday for an interview, but since that only took 30 minutes I ended up taking quite a few pictures, some of which you'll see here in the next few days.

Views like this are available at every turn in downtown Chicago, but they remain remarkable to a country bumpkin like me. D.C. seems almost like a small town compared to Chicago and the lack of views like this in D.C. are part of the reason for that. Of course, I think I prefer the smaller city feel of D.C. Could I learn to live and thrive in urban canyons like this one? Hmmm......

I want to ride my tricycle

The winning bidder of a shiny new (well, slightly used) racing tryke takes his new ride for a spin near the end of the 2006 GW EJF Public Interest Auction. The auction was again a huge success, raising more than $30,000 (we're still awaiting final totals) to be given as grants to law students working for free this summer to provide legal services to people in underserved communities. As you can see, a good time was had by all! Thanks again to everyone who came and bid so generously, and also to all who donated goods, services and time to make the auction so successful.

Old and New

An old cathedral next to a new office building on 20th St. NW.

Small City Reflections

Building reflections merge into real buildings on 17th St. NW in downtown D.C. That was the goal, anyway; it's a little off.

Model D.C.

Looking NE from the Washington Monument. The dark sky and color saturation of this photo, as well as it's sort of odd scale, make it look less like a photo and more like a model to me. According to this tutorial, I probably should have blurred the edges and maybe tilted the photo a bit to give the full effect.

The Poet at Work

Poet R.J. McCaffery (aka, the Scoplaw) reads from his new book, Ice Sculpture of Mermaid With Cigar, last night at GULC. The reading was excellent; it was sheer joy to just sit back, relax, and let the language of the poems fill the room and your mind. R.J. is a great reader and an excellent poet. I got there a little early and bought a copy of the book to snack on before the reading started. I read three or four random poems, chosen by how loudly their titles called to me from the table of contents, and then had the very pleasant experience of hearing R.J. begin his reading with those very same poems! Favorites for me included, “ Causes of Death in London, 1632,” “How To Move for Love,” “Expedient Mechanics,” “Lahar” and “The Great Molasses Flood” (an odd pair of unusual flood narratives), and “Watching a Former Lover Make Tea.” But my very favorite was one of the poems on poetry called “For Hannah.” I love it because it includes the vivid image off “the persistent unhappiness of the moon,” (the idea of that!), and because of its beautiful and demanding conclusion. “People use so many words they do not know”—indeed! R.J.'s poems demonstrate that he works hard to know the words he uses as well as he can, which is what makes reading them—and even better, hearing them—such a joy.

Overcast Monument

The Washington Monument before a darkening spring sky.

Natural Signs

Dark clouds move in over the White House—obviously a sign that even Mother Nature knows this administration is corrupt and has lost the support of the vast majority of Americans. Obviously.

But seriously, this sky was just crazy. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny, spring day, but in the course of about an hour these clouds moved into half off the sky in a very menacing way. They threw everything into sharp contrast and made for some interesting shots which I'll be posting in the next day or two.

Something was also going on at the White House. If you look closely you can see the lawn is dotted with lines of people—not normally the case. The security thugs weren't allowing people up to the fence as usual; instead, we had to stay one barrier away. Fortress White House now has 4-5 rings of barriers around it so they can keep the perimeter as wide as they want on any given day. Land of free, home of brave.

Overcast Blooms

Cherry trees in bloom beneath a foreboding spring sky. This was this morning when I really thought we were going to get soaked. Not a drop of rain fell; instead, the sky just got really cool!

Please see my Flickr for the rest of the best of the Cherry Blossom views.