perched on the handlebars

Very springlike, to be sure.  These birds are on a slightly decrepit bicycle parked outside Taper Hall: an endearingly normal, non-electric bicycle - in other words, one of the vehicles that's marginally less likely to run you over on campus.  The electric bikes, the scooters - not too long ago, there were Campus Safety goons on their own bicycles making people get off and walk in the crucial central parts, but these days there is zero effort made to stop speeding students mowing one down.  To state the obvious, this must be a nightmare for people with mobility or vision issues.

 

not getting excited

I've been passing this hoarding for a week now on my way home (underneath it says that Bill Posters Will Be Prosecuted, but I doubt that Bill will get into all that much trouble).  It's hard to say quite which aspects of the advertising for this new adaptation of Wuthering Heights turn me off the most: the mock Victorian mirror vignettes? The lettering, like the cover for some really bad supernatural drama set in a New England boarding school?  The vague sense that the mirrors are hanging on cheap Victorian boarding house wallpaper?  I will be phenomenally surprised at myself if I go to see this: thank goodness I haven't taught a course on Fiction Into Film in living memory, and so don't feel semi-obliged to go and see whether, in all its awfulness, it would make a good compare-and-contrast with the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, or (quickly glancing at Wikipedia), the Hindi or the Urdu or the Filipino or Japanese or any of the previous English language versions.  Of course, checking all of this out makes me feel fleetingly nostalgic for that course ...

 

full moon and blossom

I haven't had the greatest success, tonight, with taking a picture that captures both moon and the Asian pear's luminous blossom well: I've tried both my iPhone and a camera, and have come to the conclusion I need to spend more time practicing ... in any case, it's a beautiful night out there, apart from the deep roar of motorcycles down on the 5.  Sometimes, from the garden, one hears the traffic so loudly, and at other times one's hardly aware of it at all: it's best when the neighbor has her fountain on, which distracts the ear.  Memo to self: I keep meaning to get a fountain ...

 

sky slices

Why, yes, it was warm enough to go out to brunch today and sit outside, and then later the temperature went up to 85 degrees.  This is, of course, as much a result of global weirding as is all that snow and ice and bomb cyclones, and I'm not the biggest fan of hot - really hot - weather in any case, but I'm not arguing with the pleasures of eating on a patio in January.

 

sidewalk scene

Seen this evening in Mount Washington, and very, very bizarre.  It doesn't seem to have been deliberately posed, but it's a strangely satisfying juxtaposition.

 

roots

 

It was the end of a long dental journey today.  Over the last couple of years I've needed some failed dental implants replaced - technology not being what it is now, well over twenty years ago - but this long, expensive, and at times inordinately painful process came to an end this afternoon.  I'm told that yes, I can now bite into a carrot.  You can't believe how exciting this is as a possibility.  I had plenty of time - as I've had over the years - to contemplate the window sill of my wonderful dentist, but it was only today that, for the first time, I realized that the roots of these orchids bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to tooth roots.

an off-duty mascot

Strapped into a Facilities van on campus: here's the Trojan Warrior who (with a human inside him) makes an appearance at the Galen Center for basketball games. I've never seen him at volleyball, for which I'm thankful: he's lumpy, ugly, and in some way I can't put my finger on, faintly embarrassing.  Aesthetically embarrassing, I guess.  And he's also more or less indistinguishable from a Rutgers Scarlet Knight - just with more "gold."  His slump is doubtless a response to the current underperforming women's basketball team, who keep being Not Quite Good Enough on offense - not at all good enough, for the most part.  It was a sad, surreal sight.

 

time, passing

This blog is fifteen years old today.  I'll leave you a moment to think about that: 6,373 consecutive days of taking a photograph, and writing something - even if only a sentence - and posting it.  

It started, of course, as a teaching-related exercise: I didn't think it right to ask my students in my "Writing and Photography" course to write a blog if I didn't have any experience of doing so myself.  I think I told them they need only write a couple of entries a week: I embarked on it as a daily exercise, and never looked back.  It's a strange way of keeping a public diary, because of course it's highly selective and self-censoring, but it's also very effective as a memory placeholder.  Memory, indeed, featured centrally in the course itself - I think I envisaged myself writing a book on photography and memory (hardly original as an idea ...) which then morphed into one on writing and photography, which then, in turn, morphed into Flash!  

But I'm still drawn back to that theme of memory, even if only at a personal, non-academic level.  I was ruffling around in a box of old photos in my office today and found this - which I don't, indeed, remember.  The fade-away on the right hand side seems the perfect visual analogue for recollections fading away ... and also, as a big-time imperfection, surely was the reason why this wasn't kept alongside the small, familiar collection that lived in a wooden box on the other side of the room from the window you see here.  I guess it's 1961: I'm wearing my new school uniform - I do remember my father posing me, presumably at the same session, on the house's doorstep - and there's Rama, barely visible, turning his big blue Siamese eyes towards me on the sitting room window ledge.

What I admire about my father's photographic skills is how he's used the lighting to make the room seem large and elegant.  We'd only moved in fairly recently (where and when did the curtains get sown?), and didn't have much money, didn't have much by way of furniture apart from what had been bought in junk shops up in Cumberland.  There's no sofa, no rug.  But it looks quiet, settled, idyllic.  It also looks, and was, a long time ago.

 

the deception of peaceful symmetry

When this is one's morning view, walking from the car park to one's office, it's hard to take on board the precarious state of democracy; or the fact that so many of my US friends are badly shivering, rather than enjoying temperatures in the mid 70s; or the fact that this very university is fraying badly at its administrative edges (and, for all I know, at its administrative center, only that center seems hell-bent on replacing itself with AI).  I have spent so much time over the past couple of days doing tasks that would in the past have been done by office staff; and the office staff I've encountered are beyond demoralized.  So yes: nothing could be a less apposite image, in so many ways, for today.

 

a Japanese aesthetic

The Asian Pear in our back yard is just coming into its annual majestic bloom, and set against the back wall of the house, it looks as though it's auditioning for some Victorian wallpaper.

 

fleeing the storm

If we hadn't been able to change our flight to today from tomorrow, we'd have been stuck in NY for - well, who knows how long?  The flight we were due to take is already canceled.  And I have a PhD defense on Monday morning ... So here we are, back in LA - and the cats are very glad to see us early!

 

bits of NYC

For various long and complicated reasons, today didn't take quite the shape that I hoped that it would or that I planned for, but when doesn't one enjoy walking round parts of NYC, even when there's an increasingly chill wind assaulting one round corners?  So meet a sticker supporting human (as oppose to AI, I take it, rather than, say, feline) artists;

a bee friendly manifestation in Madison Square park (the park that has a statue to Chester Alan Arthur in it, one of the most forgotten presidents, but actually a good civil rights supporter in many ways); and some oysters at Grand Central Station.  Where would a trip to NYC be without a visit to to Oyster Bar?

 

a warmer day in NYC

I'm always happy for a walk in Central Park, especially in winter: it was looking as good as ever today.  En route to the Met, to see the Helene Schjerfback show - a Finnish painter I's never heard of until this show was announced - late C19th and first half of the twentieth century, passing through realism to a kind of mysticism - as here - which were the works I liked best, especially when influenced by her time in Italy - to still lifes and endless, increasingly angrily melancholic self-portraits.

Met up briefly with a grad student who's a Fellow in the Met this year, and then on to a show about quilts and ecology at the American Folk Art museum: textiles; dyes; recycling - really, very like my class on quilts in my US art course, but this meant I took lots of useful images;

and then back for one last spectacular sunset from the apartment before taking last night's party host out for a spectacularly good Greek meal.

 

Alice's book launch

... Black Power White Heat is now out in the world , and today Alice gave a wonderful short talk and answered Q and As at a private gathering in a most wonderful apartment on the upper east side.  Indeed, the apartment was not only wonderful in itself, but the art work was extraordinary - with the result that I can't, I feel, show pictures of the interior since, well, it's not mine, and not a public museum, and that, alas, rules out pictures of the gathering as a whole.  But it was a terrific event, and glasses were most definitely raised.

 

another chilly day in NYC

Same apartment; different direction; even more freezing; same kind of work, and lots of it.  BUT - it was Alice's book publication day, and we just went out to celebrate!  And the proper party happens tomorrow!  And the cat sitter tells us that the copies have just arrived in LA!

 

a day's work

Or: from dawn to dusk.  It was horribly cold today - and yes, it's going to get worse (apart from Thursday).  Of course I went out - what are coffee shops for, if not to be visited? - but, given that a lot is closed on MLK day by way of museums, etc, in New York; and given that I had a lot of admin to do (sorting out interviews for potential graduate students - the kind of thing that office staff used to do; letters of rec, and so on), I was extraordinarily grateful that out VRBO apartment has a completely compelling, endlessly changing view.

 

snow in NYC

It's chilly and slushy here in New York!  We're here to ... drum roll ... celebrate Alice's new book (book launch Wednesday!).  We could do without it being quite so ... well, New York in January like.  Something of a nightmare cab ride from JFK through the falling snow to our VRBO in Hell's Kitchen - our apartment is in a very shiny, very tall building on the 52nd floor, overlooking (not in the image below, but if you turn your head to the right) the Hudson, and a whole lot of piers.  

 

Hollywood and Western

I've driven past this building on Western so many times, and idly wondered about it, and then the lights have changed, and I've forgotten quickly about my musings.  But today I was opposite it, in stationary traffic, for what seemed like an age ...

The Hollywood Western, also known as the Mayer Building, opened in late 1928: it's a very Greek version of Art Deco, with the little friezes and the heads at the top of the building.  It had some great tenants!  It was the first home of the Motion Picture Association of America, of Central Casting, and of the Hays Office (who regulated the movie industry, especially around sexually explicit conduct, so the government didn't try and impose codes).  Hollywood Billiards, Hollywood's oldest pool hall, was located in the lower basement - and all kinds of firms have been there over the years, with it clearly heading down a declining path: by the 1970s it was a heavy metal band rehearsal space and was used to produce porn.  And then it was badly damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and then was vacant before slowly, slowly coming back to life as office space (Adam Schiff's office is there) and it's now being converted into apartments, with a fair number of these being low-income senior apartments.  

I didn't find all of this out while waiting at the lights, of course,  but I now have a much better idea what I've been looking at all these years.

 

the strangeness of Los Angeles seasons

After the excitement of yesterday, it was business as usual.  Or rather ... business in the New Usual, which as Director of Graduate Studies meant heading in to the department to proctor an 8.45 a.m. 3 hour language exam, and then xeroxing the translations and sending them to the examiners, and and and.  And talking to students, too, but that's the good bit of normal.  But as one of our former office staff said, moreover, one of the things that The New System doesn't allow for is anyone being out sick, or for family issues, or - well, anything.  There simply is no slack.  So there were some other things - answers that I needed to, say, complex grad financing questions - that were just unretrievable.  And that, of course, makes me feel as though I can't deliver in my particular role what I should be able to deliver.  The end of this semester can't come quickly enough - and yes, it's only Week One.

A picture of autumnal leaves?  I got home when the light was waning, and I was visually uninspired - but very struck by the pathetic fallacy of the autumnal suiting well the mood of the day. Only it's January.  The Asian Pear, however, is always the last tree whose leaves turn golden - in a perverse way, it's a sure sign of spring.

 

in celebratory mode

... at least, I felt celebratory, until the Internet told me that my version of Chrome didn't support this blog (it did, yesterday), and shifting to Safari, it didn't want to upload a photograph ... eventually I dragged this image of my passionfruit margarita onto this page, but who knows if it will stick, or if you'll be able to see this, or or or.  

But, out at dinner, glasses were raised: most improbably, and with much gratitude, I've landed an NEH Fellowship for next year (I heard two days ago: was told I could tell people today) - which is all rather unbelievable.  Unbelievable, not out of false modesty, but because I put in the application last March, and I thought that the chances of anyone being successful who wasn't writing about the birth of the Constitution were slim.  This is to work on my wayward, chromatic, Oxford History of English Literature 1880-1910: a deliberately unorthodox volume in its conception (and it's been a long, slow time in that conception).  I think, though, that it must have sounded like a suitably safe topic ...I'm certainly looking forward to having the time to write it, and if anyone out there was a reader for the proposal, thank you, thank you, thank you.
 

leaving campus

This is not a bad view to have when waiting at a red light to exit a campus parking structure - although it's slightly improbable - improbable, that is, almost anywhere in the US other than Southern California.  It was such a long and grueling day that I'm frankly amazed that it was still more or less daylight.  The new administrative arrangements have left our (rearranged) office staff completely overworked and thoroughly demoralized (with basically 15 of them doing tasks that last semester were covered by 32 people), and those of us in administrative roles within our departments newly burdened with both unfamiliar tasks and considerable confusion.  What's going to happen first?  Collapse, or mutiny?

 

today's office

I had to work from home today - various work people, deliveries, etc. - and also had to retreat outside because of said work people, and grapple with the intricacies of writing letters of recommendation, graduate admissions, room allocations and the rest of it from afar.  But really, who could complain? - this is mid-January ...

 

drooping forms

There has been, indeed, so much rain in our absence that some of the plants haven't liked it at all.  I'm hoping the ground will dry out this week - and/or the pots will - it is, indeed, due to get improbable warm.  But still.  I'm going to have to design little pot rain-covers for the next time there's so much precipitation.

These things, as George Eliot would have said, are a parable.  To be sure, she mightn't have had in mind the correspondence between over-watered foliage and my state at the end of the first day of the semester, which was far, far more grueling than the ordinary (and indeed often exciting) exhausting buzz.  There was ... a great deal of administrative confusion about who, under our new hub system, is responsible for what - and what's worse, people who designed the outline of the system seem not to have considered so many things - so many things that people now don't know who's responsible for them.  How do I reserve the Art History seminar room? ... to take a very basic example.  I'm exhausted.

 

LA re-entry

We're back!  Exhausted (a poor night's sleep - thank you, Moth, and La Quinta's overheated room ...) and the usual assortment of crazed drivers coming back into LA - but we're here.  And gosh - it's noisy - that always strikes me, after New Mexico.

And the garage didn't flood, even if a few of the plants look decidedly the worse for wear from rain.  Now staring at the undeniable reality of The Semester Starting tomorrow - but rest assured, if you're waiting/hoping for an email from me, I'll be playing catch-up then!  

 

on our way back

It was very cold this morning - with icicles.  Horribly cold, when it came to packing up the car, with a thin wind blowing sideways.  And we were late getting off, and that meant driving for eternity into a low, blinding sun.  

We decided that, for once, we'd try staying a bit further along, a bit closer to LA - so we're in the pet friendly La Quinta, in Flagstaff.  Let's just say that it would be fine in an emergency, which this isn't.  It has the advantage of a fridge, and a microwave (take-out eggplant parmigiana bucatoni, from Fable - very welcome) and the advantages seem to stop there.  Gramsci jumped onto my shoulders to get to the top of a closet, and then said it wasn't up to his standards, either.

It's amazing how quickly one can drink a bottle of Albariño, under such circumstances (us, not Moth and Grams).

 

even more wintry

Yes, those are our magnificent icicles.  And yes, that was the one moment when the clouds lifted today.  It's been snowing again all evening, and the temperature is going down to 12 degrees tonight, and we're very much hoping that we'll be able to drive - as opposed to slide - out of town in the morning.  But it is, emphatically, beautiful ,,,

 

wintry

It was so very beautiful at dawn this morning that I went rushing out of the back door without even putting on any socks and shoes: that was doubtless foolish, but I didn't want to miss this magic light.  All other photos, though not from much later, were taken with feet fully shod.

I'm trying to grab the last few days/hours of quiet, although the barrage of admin today has been so intense that I've had to shake myself to see if I missed the start of the actual semester.  Evidently no.  I'll be there in person, of course, further snow permitting ...

 

a lunch outing

I've been to the old mining town of Madrid - about forty five minutes south west of us - numerous times over the last thirty years, but for whatever reason have never been to the Mine Shaft Tavern before.  Well, ok, I've always thought it was a bikers' pub, and I'm sure that there are times when it is, but we'd agreed to meet friends for lunch there today (a green chile buffalo burger!) which, though our spirits were dampened and darkened by the news coming out of Minneapolis, was excellent.  And the atmosphere was more like a regular old style English pub (bar, dark panelling, lots of dark wood tables and chairs - though admittedly English pubs tend not to have cut out cowboys and cowgirls marking the way to the restrooms.  In any case, it was a sanitized, but very visitable, version of a rustic/mining saloon, minus the sawdust, the cussing, and the horses (though there was a stuffed buffalo head).

That sullen looking sky?  There's likely some snow on the way ...

 

it's our room

Actually, I honestly thought that it was my study.  But apparently arguing with these two isn't an option.  I retreated. 

Well, obviously I didn't.  What with graduate admissions business, and a million and thirty letters of recommendations suddenly being asked for, and and and, the semester seems to have begun, even if it technically hasn't.

 

 

from the front door: morning, evening

It would, of course, be a lie to say that I'd forgotten what the semester is like - and in any case, it's not the semester, yet.  But that being said ... it's the Monday of the week before the semester, and emails kept thudding into my inbox, needing to be dealt with.  It has not been a quiet day: the sky maintains, nonetheless, some semblance of tranquility.