be kind
Tag: photography
Heart To Hang Onto
Johnny boy, he's always propping up the bar He sees life crystallized through his jar He says he only lives for beer But deep in his heart is a cry of fear Give me a heart to hang onto Give me a soul that's tailored new Give me a heart to hang onto A heart to hang onto --Pete Townshend, "Heart To Hang Onto" from the album Rough Mix with Ronnie Lane
an optimist’s view
Universe beneath my feet surreal: optimistically colored.
Coastal waters
As mentioned in a post on Monday, last week I began an unusual period of travel: all of it by someone else, unless you count this day-trip to coastal waters last Friday. The above contradicts the National Weather Service’s forecast of partly sunny, but temps were in the 70’s, and it wasn’t raining. I would have traded Thursday’s sunny weather, but it permitted a nice walk around Lake Lynn where we espied turtles, ducks, geese, more turtles, still more turtles, and a couple of hunting herons:
That afternoon my good buddy received his wish, and we visited the Duke University Store to purchase swag. While there we took a quick peek at the chapel:
The cones and barriers in the photo were courtesy of the setup for Game Day, a Saturday morning TV show focused on college football–according to my friend since I do not follow any sport except baseball. The resemblance to construction fit right in with all the real construction which was occurring nearby.
Now we entertain my brother and watch post-season baseball. Good times.
[Note to CIMPLE: all photos taken with Google Pixel 6 Pro. Top two edited with Faststone. Last one not edited.]
Edisto
In 2014 we vacationed to Edisto Beach, an off-the-beaten path resort area in South Carolina. I was over a year into the Job from Hell (as it has been known to my wife and me). Though this vacation started on some bad notes, Edisto worked its magic. I returned refreshed by a simpler time spent walking, staring at scenes like this, and strolling to one of the dining/drinking establishments at dinner. Sometimes one just doesn’t know until one knows. (“How profound,” says the Editor drily. “Been smokin’ that ganja again, boy?”)
Virtual vacation, going home: Days 14 & 15
This will be short but a necessary post if we are to obtain closure. Day 14 took us down the interstates to Beckley, WV, where we spent our first night out. For variety’s sake, I reserved a room at “Tru by Hilton” instead of the Hampton Inn where we had lodged on Day 1. If you’re over the age of 50 and like things such as closets, drawers, and enough desk space to plop down all your electronics, I would steer you away from this brand. Similar to Marriott’s Aloft, it appeals mostly to 20- and 30-somethings who thought the dorm aesthetic in college “was really rad” or whatever I should have inserted here to show I’m not too far over the hill to know (or care).
Before we checked in, we dropped by the Tamarack Marketplace. We had visited in 2010 when I said, “hey, let’s explore West Virginia” and even though that vacation offered a very mixed bag indeed, I still managed to be surprised when we circumambulated the center (it’s more or less a circle): “That’s it?” We revisited in 2023 because we thought, “hey, we probably were just jaded by the end of a vacation. It couldn’t have been that boring.” It was, exemplified by my uttering the same comment I had the first time: “hey, I think we’ve seen this already. Have we really walked the whole thing?” If you would like to pay $23-25 for a semi-unique pottery coffee cup or hundreds/thousands of dollars for art, then this is your place. Even the snacks get priced as if they’re works of art.
We checked the dry-erase board of recommended restaurants–yeah, that’s how Tru does it–and found an acceptable Italian place close to our lodging.
I’d entertained the idea we would stop by the New River Gorge National Park a second time on Day 15, but the idea of getting home in the early evening didn’t appeal to us. When you’re headed home, most of the time you just want to get there. We arrived around 2 p.m., cracked beers while we unloaded: luggage-direct-to-laundry hamper; ice chests disgorging their contents to the beer fridge; and all the miscellaneous crap which creeps out of your luggage and hides in various corners of the car over the two weeks you’re on the road. We joined our good friends from around the block and went out to a better dinner than we had enjoyed in three days.
Returning from a vacation satisfies just like leaving. The familiar looks slightly less so, but the routines comfort in ways hotels cannot provide. Cats cling like two-year-olds demanding you never leave again. You revel in about ten times the square footage you’ve had for the previous two weeks. For me, I look forward to the next day because the day after returning is Re-entry Day, nearly as good as the vacation itself. One gets normalized again, processes multiple loads of laundry, considers midday naps, starts drinking as if it’s still vacation, catches up on all the videos cached during one’s absence, and pulls leftovers from the freezer. It’s like a stay-cation; it’s transition; it’s re-entry. Here we go again.
Virtual vacation: Day 13
I love rock and roll. (Put another dime in the jukebox, baby.) For years I’ve wanted to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and on Day 13 we did just that. I selected a hotel downtown specifically to be near Progressive Field where the Guardians play baseball. On this day our boys, the Phightin’ Phillies of Philadelphia, would open a three-game series against the Guardians and we planned to be there. Having a hotel which was more or less across the street from the park satisfied my first requirement, and offered an extra perk: one mile straight north from the hotel sits the Hall of Fame.
We both liked the Hall despite the thick crowd of people everywhere. I felt let down, though. I’ve been to the Baseball Hall of Fame several times, and to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and both of these establishments have a more formal visual presentation which leads to a better understanding of the subject matter. I had a great time remembering the various decades of popular music (the RnR Hall uses the term “rock and roll” quite loosely), smiling as songs from big names (Rolling Stones) and small (Link Wray, early pioneers in the 50’s) blasted out of the speakers in front of each display case. The Hall does a great job explaining the antecedents of rock, and it dwells on early stars with entertaining and memorable videos which loop back to the beginning when completed. This last feature facilitates watching the video as soon as you see it; you’ll pick up the beginning sooner or later. Several displays, however, were mystifyingly not connected to other areas to which they chronologically belonged.
One of the special exhibits featured Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back in a multimedia curved display. No one stopped me from taking photos, so…
Of course signature instruments, clothes, and miscellaneous items jam the displays: an electric guitar used by Howlin’ Wolf at the beginning of his career, a 1952 Kay K-161; one of Gregg Allman’s organs with a Jaimoe kick drum and a guitar from brother Duane; a large window display with many items each for quite a few signature acts, such as The Faces.
If you go, be sure to go all the way to the top. Each floor in the Hall gets successively smaller–look at the shape in the photo above. At the top a small room featured short films on four acts. My memory should be better than this…one was Nine Inch Nails… Alas, the others have escaped my porous memory cells. Too bad because I do remember eagerly awaiting a film up there, and it wasn’t NIN. Ah! A second film featured Quicksilver Messenger Service. This leaves two including the one I wish I could remember…
We returned in mid-afternoon, snapping photos along the way and prepped for our early dinner and the true highlight of the day: the Phillies meeting the Guardians. A decent dinner later we walked the one block to the field, presented our ticket QR codes….and heard the dreaded “ANCK” all scanners seem to produce these days when they can’t electronically parse the information they’ve just reviewed. One more try, one more ANCK and the ticketmeister said,
“Oh, these tickets are for tomorrow.” I’m going to need quite a bit of time to expunge from my memory the shock and sadness I saw on my wife’s face. We walked back to the hotel, a lot more slowly on the return than on the approach. As a consolation, the hotel’s TV featured the regional sports network which carried the game that night. While the game started I crunched some numbers: if I canceled the hotel for Day 14 and added one more night to our stay in Cleveland it would increase our vacation lodging expenses by over $350, the cost for one night when the Guardians were playing at home. The other hotel room was on points; no money saved there. In addition, we would have a nine-hour drive on Day 15 to get home, not something we like doing on a vacation. Alternatively we could stay out on the road another night, incurring one day’s additional expense for the cat sitter plus the $350+ for the room, plus the extra food we’d need to eat. We didn’t take long to decide to resell the tickets on SeatGeek. Two weeks on the road is enough these days, perhaps a function of my flying weekly to locations all over America during the final five years of my working life. SeatGeek rubbed some vinegar into the wound when we realized less than 50% the original price of the tickets.
I still can’t figure out how I managed to buy tickets for the wrong day. On the MLB website for each team, the game calendar features large squares just like a printed calendar. Difficult to believe I clicked the one furthest right (representing Saturday) instead of the one next to it. Unless I had a brain fart….did I momentarily think we were going to the game on Saturday? No matter; done is done. This was to be our only Phillies game for 2023, though. [insert crying emojis].
We drank a bit extra that night–and the Phillies lost in a dispirited contest, although Bryce Harper played first base for the first time in his MLB career and made a fantastic catch into the photographer’s area.
Virtual vacation: Day 12
I love National Parks, National Monuments, National Seashores: in fact, any spot of natural beauty will draw me more than most other sights. Don’t even mention “typical” tourism highlights: amusement parks, rides of any sort, sports activities, hanging at a beach, or what’s euphemistically called “visiting the quaint shops of the [insert name here] district”. My idea of horror would be to wake up on board a two-week Carnival cruise on a ship which boasts thousands of guests. I travel to travel, which means being somewhere different from where you normally are. Places of unique natural wonder only exist where they are–one must travel to see them. Cities which superficially resemble all others boast residents who have uniquely combined their histories. One needs to just be with these peoples to understand them, their cities, their culture. This seems simple and logical to me. What seems illogical: spend thousands of dollars to take a family to some Vacation Destination for golf, tennis, horseback riding, shopping, dancing, and just lounging at the pool. You can do that at home for far fewer dollars.
Case in point: In 1997 I announced to my Philadelphia-area co-workers that I planned to quit and move my new wife with me to my hometown, Spokane, WA. Shortly before my last day, a 50-year-old co-worker asked what route I would be driving. I said we would drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike through Pittsburgh. This isn’t the most efficient route, necessarily, and he asked my why I was going that route. “Because I’ve never been to Pittsburgh,” I replied. His response remains vivid 26 years later: “So? I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve never been to Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh lies 300 miles west of Philadelphia. He recently had returned from a fishing trip to Utah. I’m still dumbfounded. How can you not want to experience what represents the cultural definition of your state?
All of this represents my lead-in to Day 12 when we headed south from Cleveland to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Cuyahoga shares a background to other Eastern national parks because Congress carved it out of settled areas. Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia, and Shenandoah among others share that background because Europeans settled there centuries before the concept of national parks became realized in America. The photo below illustrates that. As the park was being formed–I can’t remember if it had been formally established or if this was the lead-up to it–a car junkyard existed in part of it. Many thousands of dollars were needed to clean it up. Heels were dragged. But the beavers tired of our politics, built a dam, and flooded the entire area. Problem solved–except all those automotive corpses still reside beneath the surface of the waters.
Before visiting the Beaver Marsh, we received a great introduction to the park by one of the rangers at the Boston Mill Visitors Center. He directed us to two specific destinations: Brandywine Falls and the Beaver Marsh. The falls were lovely:
Temperatures weren’t devastating but the humidity had us sweating as we hiked from the viewpoint (from where I took the photo above) around the top of the falls by way of the bridge at the top of the photo, and then along the north bank of the Brandywine Creek. The trail leads down and down until you walk along the banks of the creek. Some (not us) take a “side trail” to the creek and wander barefoot in its cool waters. The trail crosses the creek and then heads back to the parking lot. Unfortunately for people in their mid-60’s and in poor physical shape, the trail up requires a lot. We paused several times to catch our breaths (and maybe let the feeble breeze evaporate some of the sweat staining our shirts). We regained the comfort of the modern air-conditioned vehicle and drove to the Beaver Marsh.
Beaver Marsh offers one of my favorite environments: still waters, marshes, lily pads, and the hidden inlets where long-legged waders lurk. Here’s one:
When we got to the marsh proper, we were welcomed by a bird I haven’t seen much in North Carolina:
Before we encountered Mister Blackbird, we had witnessed a few duck-like birds which have defied my ability to identify them. I’ve looked at Audubon and Cornell using multiple sources for each, and I don’t see ducks which look exactly like this. I think they are some type of teal, but…maybe one of y’all might know?
We gratefully escaped the humid hotness to the air-conditioned comfort of Mr. Lincoln, fueled up, and after a short break enjoyed a pub meal at Flannery’s Pub, an Irish-styled establishment.
Virtual vacation, Day 11: coda
Returning from dinner the day we arrived in Cleveland, I noticed statues of what I took to be saints on top of a parking garage across the street from our hotel. As I followed the line of statuary eastward, I saw that the parking garage must serve a church since the statues continued up to there. I snapped one of the lesser photos of my life, then went inside to look up the name: Saint Maron Church. Thus do we learn new things.
Saint Maron lived in the 300’s AD, a Syriac Christian hermit monk in the Tarsus Mountains. His followers established a religious movement after he died, and this movement became known as the Syriac Maronite Church. This church is in full communion with the Holy See (the Vatican) and the Catholic Church. From my readings it’s debated whether the Syriac church ever left the communion, but it’s definitely in communion now. This makes them my religious family since I’m a Roman Catholic. The Maronites are part of the Eastern Churches, what we loosely call Orthodox churches. There are six traditions in the Catholic Church; one is called Latin, what most Americans think of when they hear the word “Catholic”. Maronites were re-established after Islamic rule by the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, hence the official name Antiochene Syriac Maronite Church. Today its parishioners are primarily Lebanese, with smaller amounts of Syrians, Cypriots, Israelis, and Jordanians.
Huh!
Virtual vacation, Day 11: foibles & fumbles
Hitting the road again makes me feel good, even if I’ve enjoyed where I’ve been staying. That Grand Rapids provided a couple of days where I didn’t feel so good only made it a little bit sweeter (even if it wasn’t GR’s fault). We loaded Mr. Lincoln with our spare luggage–one airline carryon works well for two weeks, especially if you pack shoes in a separate duffel–then retrieved 15-20 ice packs the hotel graciously froze for us. Distributed over three ice chests containing a sampling from Beer City U.S.A., these packs would keep things cool for the five days remaining…we hoped.
One week later, we pointed Mr. Lincoln back to Lansing specifically to stop by Lansing Brewing Company. LBC drew me back because of a style of beer I had not known before, amber cream ale. A nuanced difference, surely, since a cream ale mimics a lager and an amber version therefore drinks similarly to any Vienna lager such as Samuel Adams Traditional Lager, Devil’s Backbone Vienna Lager, or many, many others. Subtly different though, being an ale not a lager. Additionally, on Day 4 LBC had offered an English Pale Ale (Wayfaring Stranger) which nailed the style perfectly. I’d brought an empty growler along for just such a discovery! We serendipitously left such that we would arrive just as the brewpub opened at 11:30. At 11:32 we entered, growler in hand, to discover the staff had waited until then to clean the beer lines for all the special beers poured “in the back”. A 30-minute wait. What was there to do but drink a couple of lunchtime pints?
Beer lines cleaned and dispensing, we grabbed a case of the amber cream ale, some pilsners, and a growler of the Wayfaring Stranger, then headed toward an Audubon Society bird sanctuary about 45-60 minutes away. The Haehnle Bird Sanctuary undoubtedly has much to recommend it, and I would like to do so except for one thing: when you show up with a pint of beer accumulating in your bladder, a restroom of any sort–heck, a reeking port-a-potty would have been okay–proves a formidable barrier. As a man, I had no issues with finding a sheltered spot behind a tree, but such would not do for my wife, and we left minutes after our arrival.
Our drive to Cleveland proceeded uneventfully, as interstate drives usually do. The highest form of drama occurred when the Google Nav quit talking to me. Negotiating freeway-to-freeway maneuvers in greater Cleveland were made much more difficult needing to read the directions on the phone. Our hotel, one block from Progressive Field, seemed to be situated in a….less than desirable section of town. To be fair, we eventually walked entirely through the downtown area, and I didn’t see much more to recommend any other part of central Cleveland. Perhaps a few tax dollars directed toward repairing the potholes in the sidewalks?
We attempted dinner at a restaurant which looked promising…on the web. It seemed a bit skanky when we got there, and when the waitress obviously didn’t know anything about beer–and the restaurant had little to offer either–we headed to a Southern Tier brewpub a block away. (Yeah, it wasn’t local, but we didn’t care.) We returned to the hotel by way of this historic cemetery.
It had been a short day of whimsical weirdness, but not bad overall. Travelers need days where nothing goes quite according to plan, yet the day ends well anyway.
all the voices in my head 