Showing posts with label On Vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label On Vacation. Show all posts

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

Another beautiful sunrise resulted in this scene that lasted only a few moments. I barely had time to find my camera, shoes, keys, and drive to West Elementary School to take the photo. It was much more spectacular thirty seconds before it was taken, and thirty seconds later, the scene of the colorfully illuminated Deseret Peak had vanished.
Tooele is a pretty awesome place, and is the only one in the world. I am SO thankful that our little town is surrounded by beautiful majestic mountains. The Oquirrs to the East, separate us from the Salt Lake Valley, and all the crime and pollution associated with the big city. At the same time, we're close enough to the city to travel there in little over thirty minutes, and there's always something going on in Salt Lake.
On Tuesday, we left early and drove to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, where we spent the day enjoying the hot, mineral pools located there. The one pictured above in 3d, bubbles up from natural springs at a pleasant, 112 degrees Fahrenheit... my favorite pool at the facility. A day pass costs only $5... something else to be thankful for.

I am thankful for so much today, but I am missing my kids who had to remain in Santa Cruz for the holiday. Looking forward to seeing other family later today though.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
rZ

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

11-1-11 Post

It has been so wonderful to be here in Santa Cruz after being away for nearly four months. Today, I've been thinking about all the things we won't see in Tooele... like whales, dolphins, sharks, lighthouses, bikinis, and etc... Looking forward to being home, though. I can't wait to have a home cooked meal. Meanwhile, here are a couple of 3d photos of the King Crimson* stage at the Regency in San Francisco on October 18, 2011.


*The Stick Men, Adrian Belew Power Trio, then a combined trio/double trio performance of a slough of King Crimson classics.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Everyone Went On Vacation and All I Got Was This Stupid Hurricane

When I saw mighty Mo off at the Amtrak Station at 3:00 AM, I had no idea that a Hurricane named Irene would keep me from seeing her for an extra week.

Strangers have left on longer trains before, but Mighty Mo was no stranger to trains, and took the California Zephyr all the way to Chicago. In the windy city she caught another train to New York City, (the one in New York), where she met up with Mason who was on his first trip to the Big Apple, and en route to spending a week with King Crimson's Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Pat Mastellotto at a music camp in upper New York State.

Mighty Mo was there for a week-long yoga retreat in Rhinebeck, NY which happened to be in close proximity to Mason's music camp, so the timing was perfect... or so it seemed.

Kirsten left her cool and cozy California surf town to fly out to Utah and hang out with me in the hot, dry desert for a spelunking, wilderness hiking, salt flat sunset viewing adventure behind the Zion Curtain.

We all had a wonderful time doing our respective activities, and everything was going as planned until Hurricane Irene scared the knickers off of New York, and they evacuated many areas.

For the first time in history, NY city shut down the MTA - buses, cabs and subways - and the airlines canceled thousands of flights, leaving Mason and Mighty Mo stranded in Manhattan for many more days than planned.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Gilgal Garden in 3D - California Guitar Trio in 3D

Tada! Last month I had the opportunity to stroll through Gilgal Garden, one of my favorite places in Salt Lake. There was still a bit of snow on the ground, therefore the not-so-famous stone garden appeared especially surreal and beautiful. The perfect place for some 3D photography, so here's this month's installment of stereoscopique. N Joy!!!


The Joseph SphinX

I'm stoked to be back to California, because on Wednesday night, some friends and I attended the California Guitar Trio show at Don Quixote's in Felton. The show was awesome, and surprisingly, cost only fifteen dollars. My friend, Brainphreak, drove from San Jose, and shot some video with his new 3D camera. You can watch his You Tube Video by clicking below:

Here's an awesome stereoscopic image created by Brainphreak.

Monday, July 5, 2010

HOMELAND of the Brave New World

The 4th of July is always a fun holiday for most of America, and especially in our family because Mighty Mo celebrates her birthday on the 4th. This year (her 44th) - our agenda was fourfold, 1) To photograph California Central Coast lighthouses; 2) To provide a field test for Mighty Mo's new Canon PowerShot SD 1400 IS - that some really nice guy gave her for her birthday - and compare it to our older model camera, the Canon PowerShot A710 IS; 3) Visit some California State Beaches for the first time, and use some of the passes we purchased to support the financially crippled California State Parks; 4)And maybe most importantly : ) to review Laurie Anderson's latest and timely release, appropriately called HOMELAND. What a perfect theme for our West Coast tour, and the lighthouses that stand as the sentinels to our homeland.

The Lighthouses

Lighthouses are kind of mysterious... almost magical.
Their never-ceasing watchfulness always peering through the darkness and fog directing the mariners upon the black deep.

When I was in sixth grade, our teacher selected a handful of kids in the class to take turns reciting the same poem about a lighthouse. I nervously waited as the other kids presented the poem as best they could. I had to go last, and felt a little self conscious about reading aloud.
I was, however, a confident and talented singer. Therefore, rather than suffering humiliation in front of class, I hid behind my strength, and sang a rousing version (to the tune of the Beatles', "Don't Pass Me By"). When I was done, the class erupted with hoots, hollers and applause. The teacher liked it too, and even called for an encore. The entire class joined in the singing of the lighthouse song. It's been a million years, but even now, whenever I see a lighthouse, I think about that day in sixth grade.

I'd like to be a lighthouse

All scrubbed and painted white
I'd like to be a lighthouse
And stay awake all night

To keep my eye on everything
That sails my patch of sea
Oh, I'd like to be a lighthouse
With the ships all watching me
(author unknown)

First, we stopped at California's newest lighthouse, right here in Santa Cruz. We have a cool hyperbolic million photos of this lighthouse, but not many from this perspective taken from across the mouth of the harbor with the new Canon PowerShot SD 1400 IS.

This photo of the familiar Santa Cruz Lighthouse was taken with the new Canon PowerShot SD 1400 IS, and features the old building in a rarely-photographed perspective.
We then headed north, and inserted the new Laurie Anderson CD. The fog wisped and flowed like smoke as we traveled north. Fields alive with colour surrounded us. Before long, we had arrived at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, a most impressive, and picturesque structure located near the quaint little town of Pescadero, where we had lunch. The Pigeon Point photo was taken with the older camera, the Canon PowerShot A710 IS.

We almost missed this cute little lighthouse at Point Montara. We actually did pass it and had to turn around. I'm glad that we did because it was well worth seeing, and we had the entire place basically to ourselves. I took the photo with the old Canon PowerShot A710 IS.

I spotted this pseudo lighthouse in San Francisco. It looks pretty good considering I got the shot through the dirty windshield while sitting at a red traffic light, and with plenty of overhead power lines in the way.

On HOMELAND's first track, Transitory Life, Ms. Anderson masterfully and tenderly blends the netherworldly sound of Tuvan throat singers with her own unique style to create a surrealistic soundscape that seemed perfectly suited for our beautiful drive along California's spectacular coastline. "It takes a long time for a mouse to realize it's in a trap," says Ms. Anderson. It seems strange to be able to relate to that enlightened mouse. Such awareness seems to make the colours, hues and highlights of the nature all around me even more vibrant, impressive and appreciated. A wonderful distraction from the maze. A beautiful theme for a HOMELAND drive.

I've always thought of Laurie Anderson as being covertly humorous, even subtly hilarious at times. She never fails to make me smile in an "I get it" kind of way. Sometimes, Ms. Anderson's poignancy reminds me of those amusing apocalyptic musings of Isaiah, (another funny guy), whose literary message is layered with meaning. Ms. Anderson is no shallow gal. Her clever choice of words always seem to resonate on many levels, too. Her
words are carefully crafted, with content, timing and inflection... and no one can tell a story like Laurie Anderson.

Track five - Only and Expert, is a snappy and catchy little ditty about how Americans have become addicted to experts and how the experts use their authoritative expertise to fleece the actively complying public. In the second to last verse, Ms. Anderson seems to take a shaky expert-trusting stance when she says, "But when an expert says it's a problem, and makes a movie about the problem, and gets the Nobel Prize about the problem, then all the other experts have to agree, it is most... likely... a problem." (No doubt a reference to Al Gore and the so called, global warming problem.) Unfortunately the experts who make the official global warming claims have been exposed for committing fraud for discouraging and disallowing any scientific data that hasn't complied with their "sky is falling" agenda. They've threatened and even destroyed the careers of experts who present alternatives. I'm no expert, but I'm amazed that people are still trusting global warming models based on incomplete and hand-picked data... but it seems there's nothing I can do from inside this maze anyway, especially when everyone believes that 2+2=5. Amazing! Masterful marketing though.

Many years ago, Ms. Anderson created a character through whom she could view the world differently. A clone of herself... a stature-challenged, chain-smoking male clone. Lou Reed, (Ms. Anderson's hubby of nearly two decades), recently gave the clone a name, Fenway Bergamot. Today, Fenway has grown older and wiser and shares some of his perspectives on HOMELAND. One of Bergamot's observations concerns his admiration of the stars in the sky. He said that what he loves most about the stars, is that we can't hurt them. Their distance ensures that we'll never damage them.
His attitude is a bit reminescent of the wide-eyed naive nature of Don Van Vliet, a boy who never had to grow up. I'm curious about Bergamot's query about his mother and father, "Are those people over there really my parents?" he asks. An interesting question for a clone to ask.

HOMELAND is Ms. Anderson's first studio recording to be released in a decade. It was a blast to listen to over and over again as we toured this region of California. HOMELAND sounds like a Laurie Anderson album. There are no big surprises, or new revelations here. It's kind of like "fun meets melancholy" and have a great time hanging out together for an afternoon at Rocket Park. At the end of the day, they part, knowing that they may never enjoy another such occasion. I give HOMELAND ***** five stars, and will probably listen to it a hundred more times before 2012.

I hope there will be many more Laurie Anderson performances and new music. She's done so much already, we may never see all of it. Bravo


We stopped at Ano Nuevo State Park to hang out with the Elephant Seals who live there. The cute little guys are good eatin' too.
This one looked just like Scratch!
A Bumble Bee carrying a huge bulky payload of collected pollen bounces from flower to flower in search of more pollen at Pigeon Point. I shot this photo with my Canon PowerShot A710 IS.


Pillar Point Radar Station near Half Moon bay was difficult to photograph because I was in motion and had to hold the Canon SD1400 IS out the window.
The fog was nearly as thick as the traffic when we arrived at the Golden Gate Bridge. I took this photo through the dirty front windshield with the Canon SD1400 IS. We spent the afternoon at China Camp State Park, where there was no traffic. We had a wonderful time driving around the peninsula. Passing the Stanford Satellite Dish means that we'll be home within the hour. Also, as we passed the Lark Avenue Exit on Highway 17, we heard Laurie Anderson's Story of the Lark again (for the seventh time).

Twas a fun trip. The new camera fared rather well. The old camera has a view finder, is easy to hold, manage and operate with one hand, and takes rechargeable AA batteries. The batteries make the old Canon a bit heavier and larger than the new SD1400 IS. The rechargeable battery on the new
SD1400 IS makes the new camera much lighter and smaller, but limits the time it can spend in operation. We'll have to get a spare battery to have on hand. I purchased two nickel cadmium AA batteries with a charger for the old Canon for $12, but will likely pay more for an extra rechargeable for the new camera. The mount on the new camera is more centrally positioned which means that it will work better on my bicycle attachment. . . but just pry it from Heidi Mighty Mo's hands. : )

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Gilgal Revisited

Last winter, I found myself in mysterious Gilgal Garden in Salt Lake City. As usual, the park was empty so I took the liberty of shooting some video of the artsy-monoliths that make Gilgal their quiet home.

The soundtrack is provided by Mason and Trevor from the Vox Jaguars who recently formed a band with friends Lizzy and Duncan. Their new song, Little People, is featured in this video.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

DI Joe


The Deseret Industries (DI) in Tooele, Utah has yielded many of my favorite items. I always find something unique when I have the rare opportunity to shop there. Last July, I found my latest favorite shirt that features an image of Godzilla wearing three-D glasses while thrashing buildings as military aircraft fly overhead. I think I've had more compliments on this shirt than every other shirt combined.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Aerial Photographique: Southern Utah and Grand Canyon

I'm not one of those people who watches TV when I fly. I like to gaze out the window in an attempt to figure out where I am, and find familiar landmarks. Mankind has only enjoyed this perspective for less than a century, and I plan to make the most of it.

On December 6th I flew out of Salt Lake International Aeropuerto and headed south en route to Phoenix, my one stop on the way to San Jose. It seemed crazy to go all the way to Arizona on my way to California, but in rhetrospect, it afforded me the opportunity to take some pictures of familiar places I've never seen from the air.

Below, the sands of Little Sahara Recreation Area appear small, but from ground level, they appear to go on and on forever.


The Bear Valley Cutoff, (as mom always called it), is clearly visible cutting through the rugged Southern Utah landscape. I remember when Aunt Grace and Grandma would be waiting for us at the I-15 exit. These were always good reunions. We would then go from there over the mountains to US Highway 89, then travel south to Panguitch.
Panguitch is a pretty little town, or so the birds there sing. Here, it is easy to see Hwy. 89 make a hard left (or right depending direction of travel) in the middle of Pang Town, then head east for a few miles before returning to a more southerly direction.
Panguitch Lake, nestled amidst the snow and lava flows, appears small from thousands of feet above.
Zion National Park can be viewed in its entirety from this altitude.

On the edge of the Colorado Plateau, the pink sand dunes are clearly visible to the west of Kanab, Utah where lots of old-time westerns have been filmed. Kanab is best enjoyed from this altitude. I've had to spend many a day surveying in that miserable berg where it's either too cold or too hot.
The Colorado Plateau signals the beginnings of the Grand Canyon.

The canyon was spectacular to view from the aeroplane.


Sunday, December 14, 2008

Tooele Mystique

What is this?
I spotted this mysterious object North of Grantsville Utah.
Click on the image to reveal the mystery.

No one knows for sure where the word, Tooele, comes from. One suggestion is that
tooele is a kind of Native American mystical gateway to other dimensions, where alternative worlds may be transcended and explored. In Tooele County, a person doesn't have to travel far to find places where worlds come together. Magickal!

In November, Dad, Ferrel and I drove the long washboard-ridden road all the way to Stansbury Island on the Great Salt Lake. My butt was sore when we finally arrived at the northernmost point. In the above photo, I am looking West from the furthermost northern tip of Stansbury Island, where land, salten sea and sky optically infuse; to shroud the point where one feature ends, and the other begins.


What would anyone be doing on an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake?
Stansbury Island is usually a pretty desolate place, but strangely, there was someone else taking photographs off in the distance. I wonder if he got any pictures of us??? Cheese!
Looking west from Black Rock Beach, Stansbury Island appears to be a world away.

From Black Rock Beach, (above), to White Rocks, (below), Tooele County is sure to surprise anyone who has his or her eyes open. Even though White Rocks elevation is much higher than that of Black Rock Beach, thousands of years ago, the waves of Lake Bonneville, the ancient predecessor of the Great Salt Lake, worked relentlessly to erode and expose the stone there. Today, White Rocks is a long long way from the Great Salt Lake, but evidence of the ancient lake is easy to see all around.There are also places where a more definite line exists. Physical boundaries established by man.

A tall, cable reinforced chain-link fence with barbed wire contains one of Uncle Sam's high-level, top secret research facilities where hundreds of biological and chemical weapons tests have taken place. A few hundred employees and military personnel still keep the vast facility operating.

Outside the forboding fence, antelope run free, with no concern for what happens beyond the very real-life barrier in the desert.


Any unlucky antelope that happened to be in the wrong place (below) at the wrong time (in 1968) found itself dead among 6000 sheep who mysteriously died from what was determined to be a chemical warfare agent called VX. I wonder where that came from? Unfortunately, aerosolized chemical weapons don't always respect physical boundaries.

A powerful ascension motif, the mountains rise from the flat valley and extend up to meet the heavens. I shot this photo one afternoon in late November as the sun peeked beneath the clouds to illuminate the west-facing slopes of the Oquihr Mountains east of Lincoln (Pine Canyon). The ancient shore lines of Lake Bonneville are permanently etched into the mountainside, a reminder of how drastically things can change in our world.
I created the following image on Google Earth by zooming in on the spot where I took the above photo, then turned the image to a horizontal position and panned to the east until I found the proper direction. Wow! Virtual world looks so much like real world these days, it's hard to know what is real and what isn't.
Nothing to get hung about!

Friday, December 12, 2008

Ritz a la Tooele: le Rhetro Futuristique

You've never seen a theater like Tooele's Ritz. These days the theater experience is dominated by the mega-plex, where customers are herded and processed like dumb animals. With so much of the same old same old, it's good to know that a place like the Ritz Theater in Tooele, Utah, still exists in spite of the Borg-like mega-plexes that seem to be taking over the projected entertainment realm.

The Ritz has a long and colorful history. Tooele's third* theater, the Ritz was built by SL Gillette, and opened in 1939. It was a good time to open a movie house in Tooele. Dugway Proving Grounds opened in 1941, and Tooele Ordinance Depot** opened the following year. Both brought well paid contractors, scientists, officers and enlisted personnel who were happy to get away from the desolate restricted areas of the depots, and enjoy modern movies in a ritzy theater with their dates or families. Tooele prospered.

In 1962, the Ritz was purchased by Ralph W. Bradshaw, and has remained a family-run operation since. Ralph's son, Alan, is the current owner/operator of the Ritz. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Alan at the Ritz, and talk to him about his unique and historic theater.
The Ritz has a fully-functional cry room where bawling babies and unruly children can be taken, away from other patrons.
Don't you wish every theater had a cry room? Once inside the cry room, a nursing mother can enjoy the movie through a large window and in-room speakers. My own mother tells me that when I was a baby, she took me to the Ritz to see Mary Poppins. My first movie. I'm told that I didn't like it at all, and had to spend a bit of time in the cry room. I still don't like Mary Poppins, but have learned to control myself a bit better when I see her.

Although the cry room is unique, what is most interesting about the Ritz, to me, is the rhetro-futuristique mural that spans the inside walls of the theater.

I asked Alan about the mural, and he told me that he remembers being thirteen years old in 1964 when his father hired the artist who drove from Salt Lake to paint it. Alan remembers watching with interest how the artist air-brushed the space scenes on the theater walls, but unfortunately didn't know the name of the artist. I suggested that the artist may have left his signature somewhere on the mural, but Alan was pretty sure that there wasn't one. As I enlarged the following image of the planet Jupiter, I noticed what may be the initials of the mysterious artist.
Even though we can't identify the artist, evidence of the mural's age can be found in the image of the Mercury era capsule plunging through Earth's atmosphere upon re-entry. The space program's project Mercury ended in 1963. Project Gemini began in 1965, so it makes sense that the mural was painted sometime in 1964 as Mr. Bradshaw recalls.
The assassination of President Kennedy was still an event of recent memory when the artist did his part to keep the dead president's dream of landing a man on the moon alive. When the unknown artist painted this depiction of a lunar landing, the now familiar Lunar Module hadn't been designed, therefore he was left to his own imagination to create a landing vehicle.
I noticed that Florida, home of Cape Kennedy, is featured prominently in the images of both the re-entry and the Lunar landing scenes.
Alan told me that the artist didn't work with any source materials for his ideas, and that the process looked pretty spontaneous. His ideas came from out of thin air so to speak, and they're still there, on the walls of the Ritz. The future isn't what it used to be.Since my most impressionable times, I've gazed at the mysterious mural with wonder and speculation. I hadn't seen the familiar myriad of crafts, planets and stars for many years, and it was a bit like seeing an old friend.

For unruly children who don't appreciate the space mural, and need a reason to cry, the Ritz still displays these incredible Mexican velvet clowns.
Have a nice cry!

* Preceded by the Nick and the Strand, respectively.

** Later became Tooele Army Depot