Peta Pixel/Peabody Essex Museum/Farnham’s
There was a very nice mention of the suitcases project on PetaPixel yesterday. Thanks DL Cade!
Cristine, our friend Kate, and I drove to Salem today to see the J M W Turner exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum. It is amazing and worth the trip. No photos allowed in the gallery, but it is a very cool museum. Note the early Airstream trailer (lower right) that is part of the mid century LA exhibit.
We then drove up to Essex to eat some clams at Farnham’s. For those of you who follow this site, I have posted about this place before.
The upcoming 10 days are going to be very hectic for me, so please be patient if I don’t respond directly to email. I’ll do my best.
Willard Suitcases / Agnes M / White Star Britannic
Peggy and I had a very productive day shooting the suitcases yesterday. We are continuing to make great progress, and still have hopes that we can finish all the cases by the end of the year.
I have always been fascinated by the labels that are on some of the cases and this one is particularly interesting. The White Star Line has an interesting history and even though there is a bit of confusion about the name of the ship here, I am quite sure it is the Britannic. (On the label it seems to say Britanica, but when I did an online search only Britannic came up.) The “Sailing from” line is very difficult to read, but it looks to be Qu….town (Queenstown?) and the sailing date is “Sep 28”. The port of landing (such a quaint phrase) is definitely New York. You can see the U.S. Customs sticker in the shot below.
So, as usual, lots of questions come up and I am hoping that anyone who knows about ocean liners and travel might have some suggestions about what route this might have been for Agnes M. If any of you want to do some serious work on this, I can email a high res file of the label.
Karen Miller, my friend who is using the cases and their owners as a basis for writing amazing poems was in Rotterdam with us yesterday, and she and I realized that we were both passengers on the SS United States in 1957. She was on her way to the UK to live there for a year with her family, and I was returning from some months in Europe and the UK with my family. I posted about that trip here.
Cris Loves Hammocks
She is either asleep or reading. It is hard to tell which, but the bugs are out and it is nice to be inside a bit of a cocoon.
Found Earring
Cristine really likes earrings and when I travel, I will often pick up a pair for her if they are unique and not too expensive. On one of my trips somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Erie, I saw a pair made from glass that had been worn smooth by the action of the sand and waves. / About a month ago we went for a long snowshoe walk in the woods above our house. Later that day she realized that one of the earrings was missing. It always bums her out to lose one. I am usually optimistic about finding lost jewelry; it seems to be a Krieghoff family thing that has come down through the generations. My mom definitely had it and I got it from her. Late this morning I was outside just off the deck taking a leak and I looked down and saw this.
With all the freezing and thawing, it was stuck pretty well in ice, but I ran inside and grabbed a butter knife and dug it out. The non-silver metal loop is a bit rusty, but it will clean up nicely.
Travels
It has been a while since I’ve posted. I think it was a combination of having the Kickstarter campaign wrap up and feeling a bit of “Kharma Congestion” as my friend Alex would call it.
Last week Cris and I drove to Toronto. She was presenting at the annual CIES Conference and I was tagging along for fun.
We went out to an amazing South Indian restaurant called Udupi Palace and it was the best. Cristine’s favorite food in the world is a paper masala dosa, and Udupi has the best ones she has ever found outside of India. After we ate, we were waiting for a streetcar to take us back downtown and I saw this window display. Love the hands.
I was very excited to get back to Toronto to be able to see the Thompson Collection of Cornelius Krieghoff paintings at The Art Gallery of Ontario. Here is a previous post about my relation to him. The museum has a ton of his work. I was really jazzed to see so many in one place.
This is a detail from one of his paintings that is a sort of self-portrait of his family (in the sleigh).
I especially liked reading the bottom paragraph here. It helps to explain where I might get my own disregard for authority.
After Toronto, we drove to Pittsburgh for another of Cris’ conferences. On the way we had to stop at Niagara Falls. I hadn’t been on the Canadian side for years, and it was a beautiful day. (Unlike many, I also really like the American side.)
In Toronto we scored some of these great Roots mittens. And I bought this hat in the Soviet Union in 1982, a very long time ago.
Next stop was Eddie’s Footlong Hot Dogs on the Lake Road just outside of Meadville. I grew up eating these and was thrilled to see that they had opened for the season just a few days earlier. I rarely post pictures of food, but oh man are these good. Too cold to eat at the picnic tables, but two with the works hit the spot.
We got to Pittsburgh in time for a nice walk along the River. It is a fantastic city that somehow remains largely intact. The downtown is full of beautiful buildings that are mostly in good shape, and it seems, just waiting for a revival of sorts. It is hard to imagine why young artists aren’t flocking here and making it home. It is such a cheap place to live, with amazing loft spaces right in town, and tons of culture. And the rivers!
So many beautiful steel bridges. This one leads to PNC Park, just across the river from downtown.
Here’s a view looking back across the water.
Our hotel was very near to Penn Station and on Sunday morning I took a walk over to check it out. As a kid I had traveled through it on the train, and the upper floors are now converted to “luxury” apartments. This is a section of the dome which used to be the main entryway from the street.
It was sad to see the “modern” waiting room like this.
With only two trains a day, and nothing running North/South there isn’t much activity. And the times aren’t particularly convenient.
Thanks for checking in. I’ll try to get on a more regular schedule of posting. Tomorrow Peggy Ross is coming over and we are meeting with my friends at Small Batch Books to start work on the Suitcases book reward. I’ll keep updating progress on the project, and plan to be back shooting next week.
Paperwhite Update #2 / And They’re Off!
This is the tallest of the paperwhite stalks that I posted in Update #1. At about 4.30 I looked at the bulbs, and they were almost completely dry and there were no flowers. I added some water to the bowl, and at about 6.00 Cris noticed that two of the bulbs had started to open. And they smell amazing.
Peter Crispin
As I mentioned in an earlier post today, Peter is now 25 years old. It seems amazing to me. All of you who know him are aware of what a remarkable person he is, and to those of you who have never met him, this photograph just about says it all. Cris and I are so proud.
I-95
I was meant to be driving to DC as I am writing this, but due to the winter storm nailing the I-95 corridor, I ended up leaving last night. I stopped just North of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, got a room for a few hours and was on the road again by 6.30 this morning. It started snowing just after I parked in Peter’s apartment building in DC, and now at 2.15 it is really coming down. And cold to boot. I really wanted to make it here today as it is his 25th birthday. We’ll get to spend the whole day together and then go out to dinner somewhere in the neighborhood this evening.
Tomorrow I am off to Tilghman to shoot Chesapeake Bay related artifacts for the Watermen’s Museum. Originally Peter Carroll was going to be shooting video as well, but he basically had no safe way of getting here from Ithaca due to the weather. He and I have been working on the island on and off for over 5 years now and it is such an interesting place. / The second of his films about the watermen and their families will be shown on Maryland Public Television Tuesday, 23rd April at 8.30 PM. Here is a teaser. And here is a link to an earlier post of mine about one aspect of the project.
Paperwhites
A few years ago my sister Karen gave us some paperwhite bulbs and told us how to get them to flower. The process seemed to mysterious to me; put some dried up bulbs on some stones, add just enough water to cover the bottom of the bulbs and in a short amount of time…voila, you have the most amazing smelling flowers in your house. In winter! So we do it every year now. Give it a shot. It is a great way to brighten up a household.
Recently
Sometimes I get a bit frustrated when I don’t post here as soon as I have some interesting (to me) photographs. / We were up in Maine for Thanksgiving at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. They live near to Higgins Beach in Scarborough, ME and on Thursday the ocean was really kickin’. I went for three separate walks to the beach the next day and each one was interesting in its own way. The surf was up (especially by East Coast standards) and at one point there were at least 40 surfers out.
On the morning walk I noticed that tons of sea creatures were washed way up on the beach, including this guy. Very alive and, I hope, happy to be put back into the ocean. Would have made a nice little lunch though.
On our way home on Saturday, I finally stopped to take a shot of this structure on Route 1 in Scarborough. I liked the light, and it is nice to see how helpful the owners are in identifying just what this thing is.
Further (farther?) down Route 1 is Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery and since Peter was with us it seemed a nice time to stop in for a bite. As usual, amazing fried clams.
Next stop was in Boston for our annual walk around the outside of Fenway Park. So sweet to have the 2013 World Series banner hanging.
And I have always liked this statue, especially Dom DiMaggio’s specs. / We ended the Boston leg of the trip with a stop at the Blue Ribbon. For Peter, this day was a triple play; clams, Fenway, and Blue Ribbon. He was a very happy boy.
And finally, there is this. Image-wise it is kind of an orphan here, but I love the floating cone in the middle. I spotted this on a walk with Pete yesterday afternoon. / I take him to the train in New Haven tomorrow, and as usual, it will be difficult to say goodbye. Cris and I have had so much fun being with him for the past few weeks.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
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