City Dailt Photo Theme Day: Let's Eat

Hedonism simplified. Get your life in order. I suppose it's a matter of taste and priorities, but some people some people might ask for seconds and never make it any further. My father, who was in commercial sugar business, would have approved.

The location is Clare, Michigan's famous Cops & Doughnuts. It's heaven for those with a sweet tooth and a nightmare for endocrinologists and dentists.   

 

When It Rains

Go out and shoot it. It's pouring off and on all weekend here but I need material. If the rain gets too hard you can take pictures from the safety of your car. This photo was taken on the Mississippi riverfront under the Arch. The heavens opened a moment later.

If you look closely you can see that this is a color picture. No desaturation used.            

Never impede a millipede

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Just me and a millipede in my secret cave. 

(Linking to Camera Critters meme.)
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Deja Vu

Desperate for new material so reaching back into the archives (but not too far). This is a familiar image, something seen here many times before. Maybe a bit more dramatic with the cloud pattern and some extra post-production twiddling.

Gotta get out and shoot something new today, rain or shine. The forecast is for the former, and lots of it.               

Happy Trails

There is a wonderful trail system around Clare, just the thing for walking off the effects of the slab of meat seen yesterday. I assume Andy's tee shirt is from some bar and restaurant and is meant to be ironic, if a little obscure.

I really need new local material but it's supposed to start pouring later today and continue for days. There must be something to shoot in that.     

Chef Andy

As you may have guessed from yesterday's post, I am rather hard up for material. Missed some local events last weekend like Earth Day and the March For Science. The forecast is for storms all this weekend so I'm scraping.

My son, Andy, is getting into the small town lifestyle. He has this big electric meat smoker gizmo. There was a visit to the local meat market which resulted in the purchase of an 11 pound  / 5 kg pork shoulder. He brined it for five days, then slow cooked it in the smoker for nine hours, keeping an eye on both the air and meat temperature.

Finally it was done. An artist must carefully check the quality of his work.        

Drakensberg Amphitheater views

South Africa has two iconic "flat" mountains.  Table Mountain in the west and the Drakensberg's Amphitheater in the east.  It is below the Amphitheater in the Royal Natal National Park that we camped at Mahai during December and like with Table Mountain I just could not get enough of looking up at the Amphitheater.  Well truthfully, not just the Amphitheater but all the mountains around us, but that's what you do when you live in a city by the coast.  Today I just want to share four pictures I took of the Amphitheater with you.  The first was taken from the dam next to the Royal Natal National Park reception area.

Take from the road into the park

The Tugela River

The Tugela River again

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

So I'm walking down the driveway at Andy's house in Michigan and see this written in chalk. Something like the following conversation takes place:

Me: What's that?

Andy: Oh, c'mon. You know.

Me: Sorry, never laid eyes on it.

Andy: It's Euler's equation, the most beautiful equation in math.

Me: ????   

So I looked it up, which didn't help very much. See here and here.  

One mathematician said "like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler's equation reaches down into the very depths of existence".

And another stated that the identity "is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth."

I totally don't get it. Nice to know that in some ways my kid is smarter than the old man.

Roz's Diner

The next town south of Clare is the tiny hamlet of Rosebush. It's closer to the big town in the region, Mt. Pleasant (which is as flat as Chicago), population 26,000 and home of Central Michigan State University. Roz's Diner, although very unpretentious from the outside, has a quality of food that is quite remarkable. Mrs. C loved her lamburger with feta, sourced from a local farm. I had chicken shawarma in a pita, complete unexpected in the rural Up North (although, this being America, served with fries).

Sitting in a lounge in Chicago's O'Hare airport as I write this. We'll be back in Clare in August with Emily and Madeleine.     

Yom Hashoah in Meitar

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Yom Hashoah, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, began last night.
In my small town the main commemoration began in the basketball hall.
It was packed; everybody showed up; some had to sit on the stairs or the floor or to stand.
Seven plain white silhouette human figures were evident in the background.
The message written on the wall was our imperative to somehow draw out the lines of their faces, i.e. not to see the victims as "THE six million," but rather as six million individual faces.

And while the presentation went on -- candle lighting by several survivors, prayers, a psalm, songs, a dance, readings -- all the while artistic high school students were indeed sketching in faces and clothing.
See the difference between the first and second photos?  Quite amazing, and very moving.

The talented and serious youth were in charge of the commemoration.
What a blessing they are.

In closing we all stood and sang Hatikva, feeling especially grateful to now be living in our own free and strong country.
Let us remember the lost generations in Europe who went before us.
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Lions Head Sunset

Last week I spent some time in Cape Town attending the annual World Travel Market Africa tourism trade show.  The one afternoon after the show I headed up to Table Mountain Road for a walk just before sunset and could kick myself for leaving my camera at the guesthouse the morning.  My phone had to do and I caught the sun setting between Table Mountain and Lions Head through the wild grasses.

Moments later as the sun disappeared past the mountain towards the horizon

Small Town Cinema

The Ideal Theater on McEwan Avenue, the main drag of Clare, Michigan. The place has small town peace with a certain degree of sophistication. It has a couple of art galleries and quite a few good restaurants. Walmart considered building here and later decided against it, much to the benefit of the local quality of life. And, of course, the renown Cops & Doughnuts, which may find its way back here on theme day.       

The Michigan Division

Hello again from Clare, Michigan, where son Andy, his wife Claire and little granddaughter Audrey live. Claire grew up here and her parents still live in town. Audrey is 20 months old. (Andy can speak for himself.) It's a big change from their former home in Chicago. Blood pressure tends to run lower here.

This Clare - Claire thing is confusing. Clalre was born elsewhere in Michigan and her family moved to Clare when she was young. Clare is named for County Clare in Ireland, where my father's family comes from. Lots of knots.

After dinner at their home we took a dessert walk to renowned Cops & Doughnuts, where this picture was taken against a black linoleum floor.

Namaste

I do some volunteer event shooting for the Mitrata Nepal Foundation, which you may have noticed on the lower right of these pages. Mrs. C and I helped to support a young woman from a rural village through high school. Now we contribute to a fund for Nepalese medical students. It's one of life's oddities that I've never been to, say, Cincinnati, Milwaukee or Houston, I've visited Kathmandu three times. We know out money is well spent. 

They had one of those trivia nights recently. I'm hopeless at popular culture so, instead of playing, I wander around sticking my lens in things. The top pic shows scarves made by Nepalese craftspeople. The bottom one represents a domestic product, but that's what ypu say to people over there morning, noon and night.     

Clare, Michigan, by late afternoon today.

A young olive tree in a roundabout

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Meitar has many roundabouts and each one has its own beauty and character.
One single olive tree.
It will grow.

Shabbat shalom and happy Earth Day.
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Turning To The Right

Turning about 90 degrees to the right from yesterday's photo. The new Arch park extension has a long, curved ramp from the bottom of Eads Bridge, where you can walk in from Laclede's Landing, up to the higher level at the base of the monument. I like it. It reflects the many arches in the bridge and winds up to the main curve to the south.

May or may not be a post tomorrow. I'm pretty hard up for material and Saturday is a travel day. Might find something in the archives, or maybe stumble on an image in the airports of St. Louis, Chicago or Lansing, on my way to see little granddaughter Audrey in Clare. Michigan. There's always something to shoot.           

A Downtown Park

Another view of the extension of the Arch park where the garage used to be. Right now it looks a bit barren but the grass and trees have a way to go.  

The river was behind me and the view is back into downtown. I work in the gray rectilinear slab just above and to the right of center. My window, on the right corner, overlooking this scene and down to the Mississippi.

The sign in the bottom picture is stenciled on the sidewalk. They are all over downtown, leading visitors to the entrances that remain open during the construction. 

Duck Boat on the Charles

The Longfellow Bridge, connecting Boston to Cambridge, is undergoing repairs and is expected to be completed by December 2018, two years behind schedule.

A Larger Instrument

A National Park ranger plays the trombone on the Arch grounds. The whole area is a national park, technically the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It's about the 1803 purchase of a huge tract of land west of the Mississippi River from France (including here)  by President Thomas Jefferson, nearly doubling the side of the U.S. Napoleon needed money for his passtimes.

A trombone is rather less subtle than an blues harmonica but has more power. The ranger did a pretty good job.        

Swan Boats

Swan Boats returned to the Public Garden this weekend.

Watch the wind

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Walk four minutes down my street and you will abruptly be in the wilderness. 
Here's a little video I made on a windy afternoon, just because the golden grass was rippling in waves so gracefully.
What was all green during the winter rains now becomes golden and soon, in the long dry summer everything will be brown. 

When I walk alone in the desert at this season I can't help but sing an appropriate song from my youth:

Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plainAnd the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweetWhen the wind comes right behind the rainOklahoma ev'ry night my honey lamb and ISit alone and talk, and watch a hawkMakin lazy circles in the sky 

We know we belong to the landAnd the land we belong to is grand . . . 

 -- from the musical Oklahoma! by Oscar Hammerstein 

You can hear it on YouTube. 

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 (As you may have guessed, I'm linking to ABC Wednesday's O Day.)
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The Blues

No, nothing to do with the hockey team, which has been quite successful in the first round of the playoffs.

There was a blues band playing in the new extension of the Arch grounds. This man was easily the most visually interesting. He is playing a harmonica, a blues harp in musical terms. The sounds he could make were quite amazing.