Talia and Julia

After a long day of museum combing, Talia was pretty tired. But she perked right up when the opportunity to go see the Julia Child exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History came along.

Infinity

This object changed my life. At age 12, I had a few formative experiences that set my tone, career wise. One was making a sculpture in art class. The teacher had us make clay faces. She told us we’d look back at the face we made in future years and see ourselves. Mine turned out to be me about 10 years in the future.

Another experience was when the NASA astronauts came to our school and did a presentation that included a talk on space age materials. For some reason the lightweight “honeycomb” wall panel material they showed made an impression that stuck. A lifelong interest in raw materials followed, and now I have rooms full of stored materials that I find compelling in their un-fashioned state. Did the NASA people tingle my sculptural nerve, or simply nurture a future hoarder?

Then there was the time I was first allowed to go downtown on a bus by myself and I went to see “Goldfinger” at Loew’s Theater. The scene where James Bond barely avoids castration by laser was impressive. I followed that with my first term paper, on the subject of lasers, and the strong feeling that I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up.

But the trip to the American History Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Möbius strip-like sculpture out front was the most overpowering experience. I knew I wanted to be a sculptor after that.

Floating Fish Market – Washington, D.C.

We visited the Smithsonian natural history and American history museums today and went to the fish market downtown after. This is a great place where all the vendors are on floating barges by the dockside. They have an amazing variety of fish for sale. It strains the imagination to think that such quantities of  fish can be harvested day after day at market after market. How can the bay and the ocean ecosystem possibly hold up to this? Not that I took the high moral ground or anything. Those clams and shrimp were delicious… But I do hope all that food got eaten by someone.

Salon des Refusés

(Almost) Proposed walk-through scale model of the Shenandoah River watershed, above; 3D solid model of the Shenandoah River State Park visitor center, plus sad tale of woe, below:

Sheesh. Here’s a concept that will never get built. This was going to be a very cool walk through scale topo map of the Shenandoah River watershed. ….WAS going to be.

I’ve just returned to this world after a much needed few hours of sleep. I was up for 32 hours straight starting sometime Monday morning, working on a bid proposal for a state park visitor center project that was due today. These bid proposals are really a ton of work, but the projects can be exciting to work on, and sometimes all the work is worth it. In this case, I had assembled a qualified team of subcontractors to handle some of the specialty aspects of the project… video production, thematic diorama construction, specialty fabrication, etc. I traveled to the job site a couple of times to take some detailed surveys, then spent many hours crafting a 3D solid model of the space on the computer and working up some conceptual design studies to go with the proposal. Then comes the writing of the proposal, the snapping to the obsessive  formatting requirements, the completion of all the required forms plus days of writing the text. Of course, you don’t get paid to write proposals, so there’s your regular work that has to be done along the way.

So, eventually, along comes the deadline and I usually find myself cramming to get these things out the door. This one ran to 39 pages of text and pictures and I was still in the layout process the night before the deadline. I knew I needed to start printing, because my printer does a great job, but it’s miserably slow by 21st century standards. So I find myself up at 3 in the morning working away on this thing when the RAM chips in my computer decide to get cranky on me and the computer screen suddenly just goes black right in the middle of me trying to rewrite one of my subcontractors’ text submittals.

Poof. Out of business. …or so I thought as I struggled for the next couple of hours to get the system back online. Pulling the Ram chips out of the motherboard and washing the contacts with alcohol eventually did the trickand I was back in business by about 5AM with 236 pages left to print (six copies of a 39 page proposal)and several minor things, like a detailed schedule and budget, left to compose. Sometime after the sun came up the leg humpers started to call wanting me to buy new software or oil and gas leases or time shares at the beautiful Williamsburg Resorts. Oy Vey.

With the proposal due at 2PM downtown, I was still scrambling at 1:30 to get it out of the printer, bind it, box it and seal it. But I was out the door at a quarter to 2 with just a slight prayer of a chance of getting it downtown on time. After a blast down the highway like I haven’t had since high school and a sprint up Governor Street that had me wondering if I would have a coronary right there on the street, I was actually physically in the state office building just before the deadline. But there I sat on the ground level, waiting for an elevator that looked like it had been installed when I was ducking and covering in grade school.

Long and tedious story short, I got into the procurement office at two minutes past two. My bid was disqualified. It was just me and the procurement officer in the room. No witnesses. I sat in his office for ten more minutes waiting for him to take pity on me. No such luck. Turns out he was just an honest guy playing by the rules.

So, I thought I’d post my nifty watershed model here, since it ‘aint going up at the Shenandoah River State Park.

Arizona – 1995

…really need to go out west again someday!

Bryce Canyon – October 1995

We were at Bryce Canyon 14 years ago this month, when I shot several photos, sweeping the camera around a single axis point from the overlook. I think I may have been thinking of making a a panorama at the time, not realizing that 14 years would pass by before my path would intersect with the development of technology to make this reasonable to do. This is a low resolution, un-retouched proof. I’ll have to go back in and clean up the dust and scratches from the original color slide film later.

Ring of Fire

On October 4th, 1986, I fell in to a burning ring of fire.

I went down, down down, but the flames went higher.

And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring.

Bound by wild desire, I fell in to a ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet, when hearts like our meet.

I fell for you like a child. Oh, but the fire went wild.

And it burns, burns, burns, burns. The ring of fire.

Another pano from Joshua Tree – 2006

On the rare occasions when I travel by air, I do my best to look presentable, so as not to embarrass my dead or living relatives who may be traveling with me. You see a lot of people on airplanes that look like they’re dressed to mow the lawn. That’s not me. So  I was well dressed that day when the plane landed at Ronald Reagan Airport in Orange County, California. On arrival after the long flight,  I fully expected that my traveling companions would want to go straight to the hotel, relax a bit, and maybe change into some comfortable southern California clothes.

I was surprised when we got our rental car and drove right past the hotel, then headed out onto “the ten” for points unknown. One of our party was an avid birdwatcher, and so, much to my surprise, 2 hours later, there we were,  standing in some scrub brush in a regional park discussing the scarlet tanager he had just spotted. From there, we drove about another hour to Joshua Tree National Park, where I found myself out standing in a desert, in my fine black Italian leather dress shoes. I did manage to remove my sport jacket before shooting photos for the panorama pictured here. I did not see my hotel room until late that night, but that’s OK. When will I ever get to see Joshua Tree again?

Joseph Bryan Park – 2005

A work related photo shoot (I needed some pictures of trees for a project) took me to Joseph Bryan Park in late 2005.  Oh, wait a minute. I go to this park twice a day – it’s just two blocks from my house. Parks just a couple of blocks from home are the best.

Shenandoah River State Park

…another image from my visit to the park on September 15th. National parks, state parks; all good.