I always thought it was odd to have a Marconi memorial in DC - but especially in some little park uptown. I don’t know if there is any significance to the spot, but I guess it was simply available.
These pictures are from June 21st. This blog doesn’t say much about what I was doing that day, but the camera never lies: On my way home, I got off the bus to take a walk around unfamiliar neighborhoods. Columbia Heights, mainly. When I was done there, I crossed back to Mt. Pleasant. This was a particularly good time to take pictures of Marconi - and his unexplained ‘nymph of the air’ up on top - with that fresh gilt applied. Getting the background to cooperate was no mean feat. I had to circle around in the park, regard it from many angles, play with my zoom controls and framing. You don’t see the lecherous homeless men who egged me on to capture her golden form.
I just wish - and this is not to say you don’t deserve a statue, Marconi - I just wish I knew where the Tesla memorial was…
StopBlogAndRoll
Let’s have a hand for ‘friendship among blogs’ folks: I was rooting around in my site statistics and found I had a link from Stop, Blog, and Roll, a community blog from Northeast DC. That got me thinking about all the DC photos I haven’t posted yet. Come to think of it, I’ve been wandering around DC on foot any by bicycle for a good 15 years now. I’ll bet I can come up with a lot of stories. So we have a new category, and this is the inaugural post, just so you know after I go back and add the tag to older ones.
Posted in DC-roaming, photos, photography | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:31:00 GMT
This is an early photo on my Nikon - January 15th. It was snowing that day and I went riding around on buses looking for trouble… I mean photographs.
I remember feeling very worried about what people would think of me taking a photograph on the bus. In a way that I never feel on the street. Something about sharing that enclosed space with a bunch of people… It can ratchet up the paranoia. But even more, I was concerned about what people thought I was doing. Because, you know - who would want a photograph of the “Don’t Litter” sign?
And here is a much more recent photograph… Me at the laundromat a week ago today. I’ve often considered the possibilities of the mirrors running along each wall, but that day I was finished with a chapter in my book, and the clothes needed one more go in the dryer.
Perhaps I found the “Don’t Litter” sign on the bus so compelling because I need help to stay clean, too.
Or maybe it was the faux-wood laminate.
Have I managed to find the “situational irony of the subject” yet?
Posted in photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:06:00 GMT
Marina called. She got the 8x10 print I sent her. It was a picture of her grandmother’s house in Texas. It’s on a patch of land between two railroad lines. Nobody lives there now, but several members of her family lived there at one time or another. The house and several outbuildings are suffering from disrepair. If I have my facts straight, the city wants to settle the matter - as in flatten it. There is a big pile of old tires that can’t be safe. I got pictures of a tire on top of a barn roof with a cactus peeking out from the tire - but I warn you that the light was bad, and the angle that worked best for the roof put the tire/cactus in the shadow of a big tree. I took a bunch of interesting pictures around the old house (well, they were interesting to _me_ at least), but none of them seemed particularly good. One day we were previewing them on my laptop screen, and Marina responded well to the photo of the front of the house with flowering trees. “Could you get rid of the old cars and make a print? I want to give it to my Aunt for her birthday.”
Well, I was a few days late, but nobody cared about that. The photo went over well as a present, and suddenly more people covet a copy. So I rounded up some pictures Marina’s been asking me for - a few good ones of her son Greg, some interesting tidbits from the trip, and some barn animals from my Aunt & Uncle’s farm in Ohio. I got crafty in Photoshop with some color balance, saturation, and sharpening filters. I tried not to go overboard - some of them looked a little off when I previewed them on a different screen at work. I might have another look at them today to make sure I didn’t go crazy.
The photo of her Grandmother’s house didn’t strike me, but I understand the sentimental value of an image. I was looking for something and didn’t find it. Maybe you could call it composition, but I look for what I would call “situational irony of the subject”. And, when I show this kind of thing to people, they think I’m more than a little but weird. So, I like the old cars in the driveway. I like the riot of vegetation next to falling down buildings. I like graffiti on trains, and I like industrial ruins.
On the other hand, I hate it when somebody talks about a photo that they don’t offer up for inspection - I just noticed how much I was doing that. I’m going to stick to photos from the same brief interval, and I’ll give the others their due at a more appropriate time. Stay tuned…
Posted in photos, Texas, photography | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:04:00 GMT
Three dollars got me into the Port Isabel Lighthouse on Sunday. I saw it on the way out to South Padre Island, and resolved to visit on the way back. Marina didn’t want to pay the money to climb a bunch of narrow stairs. Greg was oblivious.
But I have to say: Yes, it got claustrophobic near the top, but it’s not a particularly tall lighthouse. It was not much more than the climb I make up the fire escape to my apartment every day.
Greg was pretty jazzed up from spending his morning at the beach. Clearly oblivious to the lighthouse. I think he was striking karate poses. Or imitating scary monsters. I rarely understand a word that comes out of his mouth.
Posted in photos, Texas | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:16:00 GMT
This car has been my best friend here in Texas. It is costing me a fabulous sum, but we are meant for each other. The first picture I took in Texas was of the car. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to find it again after lunch. And I got my lunch minutes later: I ate pork tacos across the street at “New Rodeo” in Victoria.
I have obscured the license plate to protect the innocent. Or because I enjoy using Photoshop so much. Either way works.
Although small, Toyota Corolla has provided ample space for my outsized frame. It fits me like a glove. I was comfortable driving it for hours on end, so hours on end it would be. I was worried that the compact option would be a sardine can, so I asked for a mid-size. With Air Conditioning. I couldn’t be happier. Anything bigger was a lot more money and probably a gas guzzler anyway.
Here we are at a Dairy Queen in Refugio. I got a cherry milkshake and loaded some new discs in the CD changer to prepare myself for the loneliest stretch of the journey. It turned out to be a lot less lunar that I expected, and despite repeated warnings that there was nothing between Kingsville and Harlingen, I saw several small towns with gas stations along the expressway. The deserted portion was about half the distance I was led to believe.
You might get the idea that 4-yr-old Greg was my smallest passenger, but you’d be wrong. One day, this stick bug rode around with us. It even spent most of its time on the windshield, where the breeze bent its tail, but it held firm. Several times I returned to the parking lot to find it still there.
Some South Texas Driving Highlights
Expressway Barbecue
Marina’s friend Kate is a librarian at the elementary school where she works. Kate had a trip planned to her ancestral homeland Minnesota, so the three of us only had a couple days to get together. Saturday we ate barbecue at a place in neighboring San Benito. We bought groceries for the house, and then rented some videos at Blockbuster.
Rio Hondo, Arroyo City
Monday morning we drove by the airport - Harlingen actually warrants a fairly large field with a modern terminal. Right next door is the local college and some Marine barracks. They have the original for the Marine Corps memorial in Arlington, Virginia. You can see it from the road. We felt like driving, so off we went in the general direction of the shore.
Of course, shore is a fuzzy concept around here. You have the barrier islands, a lagoon, and some other bodies of water I wasn’t familiar with. I’d heard of Arroyos, but never Resacas. Everywhere you go around here you see canals for irrigation. A resaca is something between a river and an inlet. I might call it a creek. Some of them are navigable. East of town we followed the railroad tracks and encountered the Port of Harlingen. It was a few anonymous multimodal transfer facilities. A bit further up the road we crossed a drawbridge into Rio Hondo. There wasn’t a lot going on in that town. In a minute we were past it, barreling due east into the unknown.
When we finally saw signs for a Wildlife Refuge, the road quickly deteriorated in quality. I didn’t want to subject the car to so much punishment, so I stopped to take pictures and decide my next move. As deserted as it was, there were wildflowers, birds, stubby trees, and an old concrete water tower. Oh, and how can I forget the Mosquitoes? I waded into the grass of the shoulder to get the right camera angles, and I didn’t notice all those bugs. Oddly, they didn’t bite me, but Marina was paranoid, and we had to spend the next few miles flushing them out of the car.
We backtracked, then went north to a town called Arroyo City. It was just a strip of houses with water access. Aside from a few eccentric domiciles, there wasn’t much to see. A general store and two or three restaurants. Everybody owned a boat, otherwise, why bother to live there. The park at the end of the road had an admission fee, and didn’t look inviting, so we turned around and left. On our way out, we spotted a parking lot with a view of the water. It said “No Trespassing”, but it was also deserted with clear lines of sight. I hopped out and snapped some pictures of a pelican on a wooden pile.
Eggs for Breakfast, but Not Very Filling
Tuesday morning we went out to the car hoping to drive around town seeing the local sights. Somebody egged the passenger side of the car. I wasn’t too happy about that. We dropped Greg at daycare, then had the car washed. I took a stand on this issue: “I want to support the local economy. Let’s find some honest workers who deserve the money.” Marina knew just the place. I was making nervous jokes about the situation. “I come to your town as a cultural ambassador, and this is the thanks I get!”
After we got that settled, we went to the old downtown of Harlingen. A series of streets are named after presidents of the United States. Actually it starts with some heroes of Texas history - I’ve driven some distance on Austin Street. The library is next to Jefferson, and the main drag consists of Tyler and Harrison, one way streets running east and west. They meet the expressway at the big intersection with those tall Texan flyovers.
While not quite a ghost town, the center of Harlingen is largely forgotten. In all this time, I’ve seen about three buildings taller than two stories. One building stands above them all. I counted nine stories. It is stands empty. Nothing in particular to commemorate what once was there.
The main attraction was antique stores. The two we went into were not much more than junk dealers. The first one had a lot of LP records and books in poor condition. The second one had a much nicer collection of furniture. I say ‘Junk’ and now I remember why I say it: A lot of the so-called antiques were not particularly old. In a throwaway society, not only are people less interested in things that managed to survive a long time, but the things are less likely to. Real antiques keep getting older and more precious because there is a great wave of products that weren’t intended to ever last that long. Cheaper materials, cheaper construction.
4th of July
Not a memorable Wednesday. We were out and about for a little while, then hunkered down at home for most of the day.
Laundry Thursday
Marina got roped into doing a bunch of laundry for her parents - you know, since we were going anyway. I just had my measly two little loads. I reached in to the trunk to stuff a bag of laundry in there and cut my finger on something. Running back into the house to tend to it, I must have scraped my knuckle on the screen door. Washing my finger in the kitchen sink, I looked over to see my other hand mysteriously bleeding. Later I figured out I cut my finger on a car stereo speaker. Now all I need to do is smear a little engine grease on my cheek, and Toyota Corolla and I will be blood brothers forever. We can drive all over the valley playing loud music and having more bonding experiences.
The Laundromat looks a lot like the one I go to back in DC, except it’s over by the railroad tracks (actually, the library I’m sitting in is also next to the railroad tracks - how come there’s not train station). Some locomotives were parked there next to us idling the whole time. Not only did the place look familiar, some of the washers and dryers were exact replicas of the ones I use at home.
Catholic Mass in McAllen
Saturday we woke up early to drive up the valley to McAllen. We thought we convinced Marina’s parents to come to the beach with us on Sunday, when it would be less crowded. That meant getting them to mass on Saturday (also less crowded) and an opportunity to see the Basilica of our Lady of San Juan del Valle National Shrine. They’re in San Juan, which is right next to McAllen proper.
Marina thought her parents would ride with us. But as you habitual drivers out there know, as every lonesome vaquiero out on the range knows, and as Toyota Corolla has taught me, no man is comfortable out of his saddle. The women and children were happy to get a ride. But Marina must have hoped that her mom would help manage Greg and allow for some car-ride napping all around. It was not to be. We took separate cars.
The church is modern. I was confused - I thought it would be one of the oldest buildings around. Well, it was, until some guy from a smaller church went crazy with jealousy and crashed his plane into it(!) There was a display case by the bathrooms with newspaper clippings about the fire and the eventual rebuilding and rededication in 1980. I ran around on the fringes taking pictures, then when the mass started, I took a break on a bench inside.
After church, we were still early for lunch, so we all drove to Barnes & Noble to kill some time drinking coffee and shopping. I tried to write in my notebook, but after a few minutes, I started browsing the art/design magazines.
When the time was right, we drove up to Edinburgh for some authentic Mexican food. Am I remembering correctly that the place was called “Casa de Tacos”? The food there was just like the food at the taco shop below my apartment in DC. I guess they are right to claim hey have authentic Mexican food.
After lunch we drove the back roads home. I saw fields of sugar cane and citrus trees. There might also have been corn.
The Beach
Sunday we drove to the beach. South Padre Island. We avoided the populated center of town and headed to the deserted dunes area. Three bucks per vehicle for beach access. We parked very close to the water, which alarmed me a little. The tide must have been high, or maybe the tidal variations are not as large as I imagined. Marina and Greg played in the surf the whole time, but I prefer to stay relatively dry, so I wandered the dunes taking pictures. Eventually I waded in to join them… And take more pictures.
It doesn’t look so far on a map, but it took longer than I had hoped. There is a shortcut from Harlingen. Back roads, but more direct. Not so far from the earlier trip to Rio Hondo and Arroyo City. So much of the land look the same. Big farm tracts and little towns that announce their presence with signs that say “Reduced Speed Ahead” and “Speed Limit Strictly Enforced by Radar”
Posted in photos, Texas | 2 comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:21:00 GMT
