WordPress Problem / Test
I put up a post earlier today titled “Willard Suitcases / Herman G” and it did not appear on my main page, but showed up as a new page on the right side. This is a test to see if the problem repeats itself.
It seems back to normal. I will try to repost it now. Thanks for your patience.
Angles v Tigers
We went to a great baseball game tonight. The Angels beat the Tigers 12-2, and there was more great action in one game than I have seen in a long time. In addition to Chris Iannetta’s 7th inning grand slam (above; love the giant flames in center field), there was a triple (kind of rare), a run scored on a passed ball, a run scored on a walk, a successful suicide squeeze play, and a rundown with two players on third base for a time before the lead runner was thrown out returning to third. Great fun.
Nepal
I rarely do this sort of thing here, but this is pretty important. Below is a letter Cristine sent to friends and family about how to help out with the tragic situation in Nepal. It is self-explanatory, but I want to add a few things. World Education is a fantastic organization that is not affiliated with any religion or government. The key here is that 100% of the money sent will get to Nepal to people who can be trusted to distribute it fairly. If you are looking for a way to help, this would be a great way to do so.
Hello, family and friends. I don’t usually do this, but as you all probably know, Nepal is close to my heart, since I lived there as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1979 and 1980 and have worked on a number of girls’ and women’s education projects there ever since. So I’m feeling uncharacteristically bold in reaching out to people. The earthquake has been devastating in a place so poor; luckily, all of the people with whom I am still in contact seem to be OK and are joining the relief effort. The town I lived in is not so far from the epicenter in Gorkha, and I fear that as the roads are cleared and we start to get a picture of what has happened outside of Kathmandu, the extent of the devastation will be tremendous.
I have a close friend, Chij Shrestha, who I first met in 1979 and with whom I worked for many, many years on World Education’s projects in Nepal. World Education is the non-profit organization I worked with before I came to UMass Amherst, and I still serve on the Board of Directors. Chij lives in Kathmandu, is retired from World Education, but has started a community organization for the area surrounding his home in Bandipur with 22 Dalit families who live in his neighborhood. The Dalits are the “untouchable” caste in Nepal, the poorest of the poor. Chij has set up an early childhood education center for these families, and I have heard from him that he will be working directly with these families in the rescue effort, as almost all of their houses were destroyed during the quake.
I wrote to the president of World Education, Joel Lamstein, a good friend of mine and our family, to see if they could facilitate donations directly to Chij and the work he supports with Dalits. Joel decided the best way to proceed would be to put up a banner on the World Education website so people could donate directly; 100% of all of the contributions will go immediately and directly to Chij and the groups in Nepal that he and World Education work with. I’m going to donate (from Jon and me) through this because I know for a fact that every dollar will go directly into the hands of the Chij and other people I know there, directly to people with whom he works.
So I’m sending you this link: http://www.worlded.org/WEIInternet/donate/index.cfm. If you would like to donate anything, knowing that your money will get directly to people who are hurting, please do. If not, that’s fine, too. Please don’t feel obligated. Just an avenue, if you are interested.
If you do donate, even a little, as you fill out the form, when you get to the box that says “Donate to a specific project”, write in “Chij Shrestha at the Nepal Relief Fund”.
I will keep in contact with Chij and keep you posted about what is happening there, whenever I hear from him and whenever I can.
Thanks for caring. Love, Cris
Tomato
This is the kind of thing that drives Cris a bit crazy. She finally insisted that I photograph this thing today and that I get it off the counter. Otherwise I would have let it go for a few more days. / She has been a vegetarian since college (her first BA at UC Chico) and has always said the one thing she missed was bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. This past summer I spent a great weekend with my college pal Seth Tibbott and bunch of my other Wittenberg friends. Seth was always a bit of a wild man and after he graduated he moved to the Northwest and started Turtle Island Foods, makers of the famous Tofurky. He still runs the company and when we were together he gave me some coupons. They make a tempeh product that resembles bacon and I picked up some to see how it was. Well, it is great, and Cris is thrilled to be able to have tempeh, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. So when I make them, there is usually some left-over tomato. I left this one on the counter overnight and by the next morning it started growing hair!
Well, hair like things with tiny black balls on the ends. I am quite good in keeping a tidy kitchen, but once in a while I do leave things out. I have seen a lot in my cooking life, but never anything like this. It certainly isn’t mold, but what in the wide wide world of sports is it?
Flowering Plant
As you can tell from the title of this post, I am clueless about the names of plants that we have.
And our method for taking care of them is quite simple; inside in the winter with not too much watering, outside in the summer to let nature take its course.
At the end of last winter this plant was showing no signs of life. We put it outside anyway and it came back with a vengeance. It is now flowering like a champ.
A Lovely Sunday
I thought it might be a nice day today as this happened this morning when I threw a handful of things from my pocket on the bed.
John, Flora, Violet, and I drove to Broadway in the Cotswolds to walk from there to Snowshill and back.
We started on the outskirts of Broadway and we were immediately in fields.
Blackberries were plentiful.
Quite quickly we climbed up to the ridge where the view was spectacular.
As we were walking next to this pasture, we were passed by a horse carrier that contained one of this fellow’s mates. They were both whinnying and it was obvious that they weren’t happy about being split up. Horses are really interesting animals.
The footpath at times was on public roads, and at times just a narrow trail through the woods.
This is the view of Snowshill when we were about 10 minutes walk away.
Here’s another example of when the public footpath shares a country lane.
I have always liked these convex mirrors.
St. Barnabas is directly arcross the road from our halfway stop.
The Snowshill Arms is a great place for a couple of pints and the Sunday Roast. It was excellent.
After lunch, I stuck my head inside the church. It is very simple and not old (in relative terms), and the windows are beautiful.
This sweet little cat followed us for a bit and mewed the whole way.
Once outside the village, we were pretty quickly back into the woods.
It is such a peaceful walk, and we rarely saw others on the path.
Violet gave me this stone with moss growing on it.
This property is called Middle Hill House. It is pretty easy to fantasize about living in a place like this.
This sort of day is so exotic to me; for my friends who live less than an hour away it is a regular trip to make at the weekend.
It is so interesting to me that the public footpath goes right through the middle of farms and fields. We shared our walk with horses, cows, dogs, cats, and of course, lots of sheep.
This particular horse was very friendly though he could be a bit nippy.
A farm just on the outskirts of Broadway breeds dogs for the hunt, and these very friendly pups loved the attention.
A great day. Thanks to John, Flora, and Violet. Wonderful.
Willard Suitcases / 2 October
Peg and I had a very productive day yesterday. We made it through an entire storage box of suitcases; we must have shot at least 14. Most were close to being empty. This safety pin was (barely) holding one of the ribbons that secures items on the bottom of the case. It is a lovely shade of green. This case belonged to Mary E. B.
I am sitting in terminal 3 at Heathrow waiting to be picked up by John Wilson. Nice to be back in England.
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.
Willard Suitcase #22
This appears to be the oldest case in the collection.
Josephine S. was 25 years old when she was admitted to Willard in 1898.
There weren’t a whole lot of her possessions in this case, but what was there was pretty amazing.
A few photographs, 3 books, and not much more.
The hairbrush is quite lovely as is the small piece of fabric with her name and some numbers written on it (by I presume the staff at Willard). The plate is hand painted.
What was most interesting and touching was this wedding invitation postmarked “1906”. Since she was from Canandaigua, it is possible that the Lapham family thought she could attend.
I was also interested in this copy of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I looked and it is a first edition (at least of this printing). Dust jacket and all.
Josephine died at Willard in 1973 at the age of 100.
I will be back shooting tomorrow and will post something later in the week. Thanks for following.
California Coast
This will be a picture heavy post without too many words.
We stopped in Pismo Beach, which is a sweet little town with a nice pier. I like being able to shoot from above, which is a great angle to document guys with metal detectors.
Morro Bay is another pleasant town. We were blown away to see these sea otters rafting at the end of the day so near to the town. The wide angle lens doesn’t make them seem so close, but they were right there.
Next stop was the amazing elephant seal beach just near to San Simeon. These seals have been coming to this location since the early ’90s. Noisy and smelly (but in a very nice way). Remarkable to be so close to these creatures.
They are molting at this time of the year and aren’t particularly active.
Next up, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park near Big Sur. Well worth a visit.
It is Spring out here and wild flowers are everywhere. This looks to be some sort of iris.
This spectacular field is just off Highway 1. We came around a corner and this scene took our breath away.
California poppys. Cris says they are the state flower.
Point Lobos State Park is a wonderful place to hike and get close to the ocean. The trails are extensive; it would be easy to spend a whole day here.
I had never been in the redwoods before. This same photo has probably been taken a million times, but who could resist. Big Basin State Park is just north of Santa Cruz.
Since I’m in California, I can get away with the word awesome. Truly amazing.
Had a nice walk yesterday from the Exploratorium up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Finally saw “The Changing Face of What is Normal” exhibit and will post some shots and my reaction soon.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
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