A Hint of Spring



The new outhouse-au naturel.



Kerry and the ice.

Mt. Spokane

An old stairway

LACMA-redux

I just can't get enough of this place. Of course, living in Spokane leaves one easily impressed.

Some sort of really cool lamp I guess.

King Bad-Ass with his man purse.

Say what you will, the Greeks did naked , armless, etc, young men like nobody's busness-wonderful and truly impressive.

Before FB...long, long ago, there was the Woman's Page

Toujours la pluie

Always the rain…it just didn’t stop this year. It’s like being on the bayou without the bayou. Everything is so lush and green and fresh and green. When the rain is heavy all other sounds just disappear and you can imagine yourself just about anywhere...verdant and very wet. What else to do but crank up the zydeco and laissez les bons temps rouler!

Wetness out the back door at Newman last Friday night.

Don't look at that!

And don't forget Lil' Nathan either. Bonjour mes amis.

Newman Lake Wild things



Bambi and his brother are hungry enough to eat a 'boat'! Incredbile how tame the local deer have become over the years. P.S. Bambi and 'bro' later showed up with twins-who knew!



Still hungry and getting a bit pushy.

The girls caught a snake! I believe this type is called a Yellow Bellied Racer.



A large moth frozen to a screen-it flew away the next day.

Same with the bat.



Snoqualmie Summit

Lots of snow at Snoqualmie this year and it's May!

Ten Canoes

Great movie about an ancient aboriginal tale that even little ones will enjoy, if only for the mesmerizing visual beauty of this film.

Floors and Ceiling (and Walls) of LA

As I was walking about the public buildings of LA with Paulette last May, my first thought was to take photos of the fabulous floors and celings and then create a coffe table materpeice showing off these same floors and ceilings. In the meantime, life intervened and I ended up spending a lot of time fixing a water pump and all I have left are the photos.

LA Public Library

Griffin Observatory Rotunda

Union Station, Lobby

The Bonaventure, Lobby Ceiling

LA Public Library, Childrens Reading Room Ceiling

LA Public Library, Teen Reading Room

LA Public Library, Lobby

Union Station, Lobby Ceiling

Newman Lake Cabin Porch

Another photo by Tom that captures the essence of a place.

If I made movies...

...I would make exactly the same movies as the (sort of) famous Kevin Booth. With a name like that and talent, he must be soooo cool.

Guess where...

the coolest public library (that I've been to lately) is. The Moorish themed art deco tower is a hint.

Scenes from last winter

Thank you, Paulette…

…you are so sweet. The light in your eyes compels you to rent the veil and uncover meaning in the most unlikely places.

Too much snow...

...it hasn’t snowed this much for about 10 years. On the way out to shovel cabin roofs had to navigate through the deer and moose (can’t see the moose) milling about on the road. The snow is so deep these animals have nowhere else to go…

Got up on the roof and shoveled & shoveled till I was all tuckered out…and never even saw the roof. At some the point the shovel ‘slipped’ out off my hands and fell to the ground-a Freudian slip, as it were.

I was able to dig my way in to one of the cabins and find some snow gear-yea!

...doo, doo, doo looking out my back door.

A walk in the desert

Back to southern Arizona for an enviromental conference during the week, a nice change from the 3-4' of snowfall in Spokane. This years environmental buzz word is additionality-you heard it here first (all two of you). Anyway, got a chance to take a walk in the desert-here are a few pics.

Cactus, cacti?

A copper based mineral-I forgot the name.

A skookum view from a nice hotel. Typically though, all the food groups available here start with beef. I met some helpful Indian guys who provided tips on how to navigate an overly carnivorous world. My conceit it that I'm reducing my carbon footprint by eating in a third-worldish fashion...uh yea and okie dokie.

World's largest asparagus shoot or a flowering spike from an agave (the tequila plant)? The agave waits for the right time to create this lone 20' spike, produces fruit, and then dies.

C’est formidable!

One of the latest in a series by Tom the Artist. He's working on some new stuff for a showing at the Cafe Artisan in Tekoa WA (Tekoa?) in mid February. Seems like he must have read 'Moby Dick' or something recently since the whale motif is prevalent.

When I walk through what passes for a gallery in downtown Spokane, most of the items on display are merely decorative, mostly crap, and overpriced. Compared to that dreck, Tom prices his work very reasonably (too reasonably if you ask me). I'm not much of a critic, but spend time in every gallery I happen upon and so have some feel for the whole affair. My gut reaction-his stuff is quite good. So, if you want some original art, come to Tekoa around the 15th and check it out.

Artic sea ice gone in 5 years!

Credit: NASA image created by Jesse Allen

Incredible-the data keep rolling in and it all points in the same direction-we're ******! It turns out that reality is much worse than climate model predictions. Just two years ago the projection for an ice-free artic was 2040. At the current rate, all ice could be gone by 2012. Chicken Little is finally right-with a vengeance, the sky apparently is falling. I’ll say it here-anyone who (still) doesn’t get that something momentous is happening is an idiot (and a dupe and watches Fox News)--read about it here.

Montana

Montana: an apt name and really skookum, eh. I visit a power plant (carbon neutral, so there) in Montana occaisionally and so have a chance to see the sights. Here are pics from the last trip.

Along state Hwy. 200, Bambi and his brother- no quarter.

A line of slash piles.

They have guns in Montana, lots of guns.

LACMA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art-Probably my favorite, most likely since my brother lives at Redondo Beach and I’m in the area periodically, so get to experience this top flight museum on a repeated basis. A really good museum is a continuing source of amusement and illumination. For example, I’d never been into the Americana style much, until I saw a full size Thomas Hart Benton and immediately...false distinctions disappeared and a sense of wonder filtered through.

I think it is that type of experience that helps us to maintain an open-eyed, child-like view of the world and keeps things interesting. I'm reminded of the first time my kids saw a work (in the LACMA again) that really shocked and impressed them. After being herded through every museum I could find on our travels and them more or less trying to appreciate (in a slack-jawed , glassy eyed kind of way) what they were seeing, their reaction to Bill Viola’s ‘Slowly Turning Narrative’ was deeply satisfying as I could see that all the time and effort had not been wasted. They spoke about the piece for days afterwards and have gladly gone without complaint on every museum jaunt since.

Slowly Turing Narrative, description from the web site: A large screen mounted on a floor-to-ceiling shaft is constantly rotating at the center of the room. An image of the artist's face in black-and-white is projected from one side, accompanied by a voice reciting a long list of individual states of being and actions in a repetitive, rhythmic chant. Color images of childhood memories, accidents, and medical operations are projected from the other side, with accompanying sounds. One side of the screen is mirrored, and it reflects the viewer's own image as well as the projected images which travel across the walls of the room as the screen turns, creating a swirling vortex of images in the space

Brendan and Kerry: in the garden on the way to the Japanese pavilion. On this visit they were showing Japanese ‘imaginings’ of the tiger. This collection of yamato-e (scroll style) paintings were done in the mid 1800s. What made this showing remarkable was that at the time, the Japanese had never seen one of these creatures live, they only knew them through their skins. They knew tigers were large, ferocious creatures but had to fill in the rest. So, all of the depictions are unique, capturing on the one hand an essence of the tiger and on the other this mythic imagining of what the tiger is…fascinating.