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On The Road To Christmas; Photos

On The Road To Christmas; Photo. More Ascender’s Photos

~~~

On Christmas Day, Kathleen and I
propel a raft with plastic spoons
through the hissing fur of surf,
stirring as we go
an Alka-Seltzer sun.

We pass Bolinas-Stinson School,
the fire house, and Smiley’s dive;
extinguished geodesic domes
along the mesa road
where Cream Saroyan lives.

With a telescope, my sister spies
the erstwhile chemist of Argonne
who left his post to polish glass.
As penance, he engraves
a glyph of hydrogen

on the blank face of every cliff
from Monterey to Inverness.
Beside us, cormorants describe
the chop in grunts, then plunge
through thirty feet of grease.

I try to hold my breath as long
and cheat or fail. As evening comes
we pass the final spit of land.
Once more around the Horn
and then we’ll make for home.

The Golden Hinde by Devin Johnston

Turtle Mail; Mixed Media, Collage, Two Sided Tag. Remaining available two-sided tags.

We are headed off to spend Christmas with family in Pasadena. Usually we go down for Thanksgiving but this year we’ve switched.

You know how I love my shots along the road. Here’s some from Christmas past…

This one reminded me of Wyoming’s No Dineros Ranch

Zooming down Highway 1; this woman standing on the edge of the hill looking down at cars speeding by. I don’t think she approves.

Got Milk? On the way to Davis University.

Life is a highway… I’m gonna ride it all night long.

I dunno. A circle of sticks in a field. Anyone?

Palm trees near LA; I think this is on the 5. Or the 77? or the 90? Kidding I have no idea the roads down there.

In between the 5 and Gilroy.

Curious… all bald trees except one with leaves; and two chairs looking at nothing. On the way to Santa Cruz.

King kong and a hay maze, also on the way to Santa Cruz

Christmas tree farm near Half Moon Bay.

Trees growing over a bridge; Gilroy to San Jose

Pigeon Point looks like it is on the highway, but it’s not. On the way to Santa Cruz.

Near Point Reye.

On the way to Walnut Creek. Hotel California?

Near Half Moon Bay

On top a mansion in Atherton.

I will return on Monday with a whole not stack of shots from the road.

I hope to finally receive those limited edition prints that I mentioned before and can take some photos then. Looking forward to hearing how all your holiday weekend went.

Looking at me, looking at you, looking at the tide; Photos

Newport Lighthouse by Albert Bierstadt; 13 1/4 x 15 1/2 in; Oil on board.

A day all blue and white, and we
Came out of woods to sand
And snow-capped waves. The sea
Rose with us as we walked, the land
Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.

Here where I built my life ten years ago,
The day breaks gray and cold;
And brown surf, muddying the shore,
Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.
Children and men break bottles on the stones.
Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,
Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.

Land’s End by Weldon Kees

Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his large landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion.

Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed was the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. The shift from foreground to background was very dramatic and there was almost no middle distance.

Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals and reefs, and safe entries to harbors and can also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and replacement by modern electronic navigational aids.

Seagulls near Santa Cruz

Pigeon Point, near Santa Cruz

Fog around Pacifica in November. We had heard the tides were high this year so went to see if we could catch some.

You’ve probably heard that residents of a seaside apartment building in Pacifica were evacuated when a cliff began crumbling into the ocean Thursday?

Looking at me, looking at you, looking at the ocean tides…

The tenants of a 12-unit building at the top of a bluff at 330 Esplanade Ave. were ordered to evacuate after a large chunk of earth fell from the cliff into the ocean. The mandatory evacuation was issued due to fears the building might collapse if conditions worsened.

Looking at you, looking at you, looking at the ocean tides.

The cliff is comprised of compacted sand and soft sandstone, and there has been significant erosion over the past two years. The building owner applied for permission to build a rock barrier last year, but there was an issue with property lines that delayed the permitting. Engineered Soil Repairs, estimated that the cliff had receded as much as 15 feet in recent days because of unusually high tides.

The California Coastal Commission is responsible for the permitting, and the agency could not be reached Friday due a state-mandated furlough. (Sigh.)

A contractor began building a rock barrier at the bottom of the Pacifica bluff Friday evening to keep high tides from further eroding the cliff. A crane dumped 4- to 6-ton boulders at the bottom of the cliff. Unusually high tides washed away about 15 feet of the bottom of the cliff in the last few days.

Ready For Change, Photos

Ready For Change, Photos.

~~~

“Who are you,” said the caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
Alice replied, rather shyly,
“I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—
at least I know who I was when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

My daughter and I went to the Monarch Butterfly Natural Preserve in Santa Cruz yesterday. The park’s Monarch Grove provides a temporary home for over 100,000 Monarchs each winter. From mid-October through the end of February, the Monarchs form a “city in the trees.” This is the only State Monarch Preserve in California.

I am happy to report that I will soon have limited edition professionally printed poster sized prints of my Scatterlings© line.

The Santa Cruz preserve is inviting art and poems on butterflies – I hope to have prints available there during the February Migration Event.

The length of a butterfly journey exceeds the normal lifespan of most monarchs, which is less than two months for butterflies born in early summer. The last generation of the summer enters into a non-reproductive phase known as diapause and may live seven months or more. During diapause, butterflies fly to one of many overwintering sites. The generation that overwinters generally does not reproduce until it leaves the overwintering site sometime in February and March.

Here’s my butterfly whisperer, Alicia, home for Thanksgiving.

Ducks in ponds in the preserve; covered from the green of the eucalyptus trees.

Self portrait; passing Pigeon Point.

The Greater Bay Area is lucky to have several monarch layover spots:
San Leandro (1-510-577-6085 or email butterflynaturalist@earthlink.net);
Fremont (1-510-796-0199 or visit ebparks.org/parks/ardenwood);
Santa Cruz (1-831-423-4609, 1-831-420-5270, 1-831-429-2850);
Pacific Grove (1-831-648-5716, 1-831-648-5730 or pgmuseum.org);
Point Lobos (1-831-624-4909). Be sure to go on a mild, calm day.

Off Highway 1, midway to Santa Cruz.

The butterflies do not like wind. It is a truly awesome experience to stand in a eucalyptus grove and look up at thousands and thousands of monarchs fluttering in the sunlight and shade.

Near Half Moon Bay… I witnessed no pumpkin shortage in our area.

Bird Is The Word; Photos

Bird Drinks Creek Dry, Fish Escapes; Oil on Canvas by Edward Ruscha.

~~~

Open wide, now, little bird;
I who sang you your first word
Soothe away every sound you’ve heard

Magda Goebbels (30 April 1945) by W. D. Snodgrass

Since 1964, Ruscha has been experimenting with painting and drawing words and phrases, often oddly comic and satirical sayings. When asked where he got his inspiration for his paintings, Ruscha responded, “Well, they just occur to me; sometimes people say them and I write down and then I paint them. Sometimes I use a dictionary.” From 1966 to 1969, Ruscha painted his “liquid word” paintings.

In his drawings, prints, and paintings throughout the 1970s, Ruscha experimented with a range of materials including gunpowder, blood, fruit and vegetable juices, axle grease, and grass stains. Stains, an editioned portfolio of 75 stained sheets of paper produced and published by Ruscha in 1969, bears the traces of a variety of materials and fluids. Ruscha has also produced his word paintings with food products on moiré and silks. Ed Ruscha site. More Huntington on this blog.