Old Barn (click to enlarge)
Messing around with a RAW image using HDR and the Luminance HDR (formerly Qtpfsgui) program. I know everybody is sick of these overprocessed, oversaturated, unrealistic digital photographs, but let me have a little fun.
It looks like this is an old, rustic, overgrown barn out in the middle of the swampy bayou, but it’s actually on the campus of the University of Louisiana Lafayette, in the middle of Lafayette, Louisiana.
From the “I really wish I had thought of that,” department. Of course, the music is the “American Beauty” theme – but the fabric looks better than a plastic bag.
When I watch this, I think of what I know about chaotic systems and boundary conditions and I wonder if a setup like this could be designed to be “stable” – in that the fabric would continue to move in a random way, but staying within the boundary of the circle of fans – for an indeterminate time… like years. Imagine a museum exhibit that simply did this, day after day, week after week, for a year. I like to think of it still thrashing around in the dark, after the museum has closed, still dancing in inanimate beauty with nobody watching. Or, even better, I imagine a lonely museum security guard, at four in the morning, sitting there, looking at it, dreaming his own personal unique dreams.
And two pieces of cloth, plus my favorite Sigur Ros tune.
Really cool new Moleskine product.
Moleskine Messages – postal notebooks.
How do you pronounce Moleskine anyway?
And the correct answer.
More Moleskine hacks – How to set up a mini Moleskine for maximum productivity.
8 million hits – so you might have already seen this…. but even if you did, trust me, it’s worth watching again.
I loved Hee-Haw in high school. It was on in Managua, dubbed into Spanish (except for the songs and music). Trust me, Hee-Haw does not translate well. Still, I’d forgotten how much I loved this little ditty until I stumbled across it on a blog the other day.
When we first lived in Nicaragua, before the earthquake, my brother and I had to catch the bus to school at the entrance to our driveway on Carretera Sur. Since the drive popped out in a narrow space between two walls, one of us had to stand there and wait for the bus – or it wouldn’t see us and wouldn’t stop.
The problem was there was this big tree – right there, splitting our driveway at the entrance to the highway. It would bloom all the time – covered thick with bright yellow blossoms. These would fall and form a carpet under the tree. It looked great- the blossoms a colorful scene of yellow against the green of the leaves, the brown of the bark, and the dark gray tarmac of the drive and highway.
But the blossoms would rot in the tropical heat. The sweet-smelling flowers would decay into a sickly foulness that was impossible to stand. The smell was unbearable. My brother and I would take turns waiting under the tree, watching for the bus while our sibling stood well back up the yard in the fresh air, until we couldn’t stand it any more and then switch places. When it was really rank we would have to hold our breath and would trade off every minute or so until the bus rumbled up.
I thought of that as I sat at the Farmer’s Market. The central passage, around the La Marketa Café, is lined in trees and the trees were in bloom. They were thick with white blossoms which were falling like a dusting of snow. A thin layer covered the ground, stirred up into tiny white flowery tornados whenever the wind circled into miniature cyclones coming around the corners of the building. They were beautiful.
And best of all, they didn’t stink.
Yet.
The trees blooming in the Dallas Farmer's Market
blooms against the sky
the petals fall in front of a mural on a restaurant
Off to the side of the Dallas Farmer’s Market is a store that I am very familiar with. It sits on a sharp corner and has a tin-roofed building and high rows of steel shelving outside. It’s a Mexican import extravaganza called Amigos Pottery. They have a factory in Mexico and produce a bewildering array of artwork and such – pottery, statuary, chimeneas, wall hangings, welded steel, fountains, and mixed combinations of all of these.
Long ago I bought a chimenea there – I’ve bought some planters, and we’ve purchased a bunch of decorative stuff over the years. Today, my friend and I wandered around with our cameras – shooting in the cramped aisles full of… all sorts of stuff.
Big digital SLRs always attract attention and a guy working there asked me for copies of my photos for his website.
I’ll send him an email as soon as I can find what I did with his business card.
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A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.
—-Gertrude Stein
This last weekend, after grabbings a couple shots of the fashion shoot next door, I met up with my friend and we wandered the Dallas Farmer’s Market, Nikons in hand, taking photographs of what caught our eye. What I saw first was the vegetables (other subjects to follow in the dreary days ahead).
Some sheds at the market feature fresh local produce, others produce dealers – so I suppose what you get isn’t too much different than what you see in your local supermarket, but it looks so much more ripe and delicious lined up there in split-wood baskets in front of the trucks with hand-lettered cardboard signs. The vendors hawk their wares – holding out sample chunks of melon or wedges of grapefruit they cut in front of you with pocketknives. You can’t help but smile and salivate at this cornucopia of wonderfulness.
Filling bags with food to take home is one thing – buying fruit and eating while you walk around is another, a sweet treat – blueberries, tangerines, peaches and plums – all designed to nibble and stroll, packaged in their own skins, ready to give up their juice and pulp.
An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
—- Will Rogers
One vendor features tomatoes. The back of his slot is filled with pallets of tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes.
Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant’s hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.
– Michael Pollan
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
—-Henry David Thoreau
In our gardens, Lord Ganesha sends His power through fruits and vegetables, the ones that grow above the ground, to permeate our nerve system with wisdom, clearing obstacles in our path when eaten. The growers of them treat it like they would care for Ganesha in His physical form.
—- Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 438, Nature Devas
I bought some of these - the broccoli and asparagus in the lower right.
I think of New York as a puree and the rest of the United States as vegetable soup.
—-Spalding Gray
Dried peppers and tomatillos
This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes, these onions … will soon become me. Such a tasty fact!
—-Mike Garofalo
Poblano and Habanero peppers with some tomatillos.
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.
—-Ambrose Bierce
Apples, peaches, and plums. I love these dark, Texas plums - I love to have a cold bag of them to eat while I drive long distances.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
—-William Blake
I had plans this afternoon to meet a friend at the Dallas Farmer’s Market and shoot some photographs. For days I watched the weather and despaired that the cold and rain seemed to reign over North Texas. Sunday morning was cold, gray, and the water still fell. Looking at the forecast, though, they predicted that the precipitation would end precipitously at about two in the afternoon – so I decided to hold out hope and drove down there.
Sure enough, right at two the sun broke out. Within two hours there was not a cloud in the sky.
In a continuation of good omens, as I was driving down there, coming off of Good Latimer Freeway, I cut through a new urban condominium development and spotted someone doing a photo shoot on the sidewalk – either a fashion shoot or a set of senior pictures. There was a photographer, a model, a couple assistants off to the side, and a small collection of lights, diffusers, and reflectors.
I love taking pictures of other people’s photoshoots – like the one I stumbled across in Pirate Alley in the French Quarter. I guess it’s because I don’t have any models I can use – so I like to steal images from other people.
The problem with shooting in a condominium complex is that people keep walking by. Nobody seemed to notice anything.
I'm actually taking a photo of the STOP sign. The others just showed up by accident.
“There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”― Leonard Cohen
A bit back, I was checking on the sales of Lana Del Rey’s album – in a sort of morbid curiosity on the outcome of a pop culture bloodfeud that I cared nothing about, but was guiltily interested in. Her album busted out on the charts, hovering around the top non-Adel spot, battling with another album by Leonard Cohen. That interested me… I knew who Leonard Cohen was, but I didn’t know who Leonard Cohen was.
Of course, I was familiar with Hallelujah. For a long time, I assumed that old chestnut was a personal cry of lusty woe from Jeff Buckley. But it was written by Cohen… and covered by everybody in the world.
It was made famous for the unwashed masses by Rufus Wainwright version in Shrek. I have always liked the fact that a very successful Dreamworks Children’s movie had a song with the subversive lines, “I remember when I moved in you, the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah.” Yeah kiddos, figure that one out.
Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.
—-Leonard Cohen
I knew that he was a titan of music, but somehow his genius had slipped by me. So I set about cruising youtube and wikipedia and the library’s collection of music and text and immerse myself and learn something.
“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”
― Leonard Cohen
I learned I had been a huge fan all along.
The first song that leaped out at me was “Everybody Knows.”
“a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.”― Leonard Cohen
It reminded me of something, something amazing, and it didn’t take me long to remember the song on the soundtrack of Exotica – one of the great films by Atom Egoyan (it wasn’t up to the quality of the shattering “The Sweet Hereafter” – but what is?) and played during a strange, erotic, and disturbing semi-strip scene at a semi-strip club. The sound and images are searing.
Then there is Leonard himself singing the song… a real heartache.
“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game
Then I came across the song “First We Take Manhattan.” This is probably my favorite Cohen song. I actually remember it best from an REM recording. An excellent version is by the female singer Jennifer Warnes. The eighties video features eighties dancers running down a street for no reason at all, Cohen himself looking mysterious, and, best of all, Stevie Ray Vaughan playing guitar on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Jennifer Warnes is best known for film music (Dirty Dancing, Officer and a Gentleman, Norma Ray) but had a long working relationship with Cohen and did an entire crackerjack album of his stuff – Famous Blue Raincoat.
“It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
― Leonard Cohen
I found that Leonard Cohen was a poet first, songwriter second, and performer third. I have copy of his novel, Beautiful Losers, but can’t seem to get any traction with it. I’m going to buy his new album and get to know, learn, and love the songs on it.
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen
So, I’m sure a lot of y’all are going to think, “You mean he didn’t know about Leonard Cohen ’til now? Way to be four decades or so behind the time.” More will simply think, “Wha? Who cares? Glee is on.”
“I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her”― Leonard Cohen
I do the best I can.
“Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.”― Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
Photograph taken on the University of Louisiana Lafayette campus near the Intramural Athletic Fields, Lafayette, Louisiana.
This is a relatively untouched photograph. After I put up this entry I brought it into Illustrator and traced it. Now I’m trying to think of an interesting background to put behind the shoes. Any ideas?
Never Number One: A Whole Bunch of Great CCR Songs
5. “Travelin’ Band”/”Who’ll Stop the Rain” (1969) was denied by Simon and Garfunkel‘s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” No reason for complaint there, really.
4. “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”/”Long as I Can See the Light” (1970) was held off by Diana Ross and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” No shame in that, either.
3. “Green River” (1969) could not overcome the Archies and “Sugar Sugar.” We like “Sugar Sugar” more than most people do, but c’mon, that’s crazy.
2. “Bad Moon Rising” (1969) stalled at #2 behind “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” by Henry Mancini, which is pretty close to the exact opposite of “Bad Moon Rising.”
1. “Proud Mary” (1969) was blocked for a week by Sly and the Family Stone‘s “Everyday People,” which is a great record and a worthy rival. But the next week, Tommy Roe‘s “Dizzy” jumped over both of them to #1. And that is a crime not merely against rock, but against art itself.
50 new fairy tales are discovered in Germany
Read one of them here:
more:
In one sense, the rule of the law must be consistent with at least some form of public administration. Over the centuries, governments have had to enforce the criminal law, tear down firetraps, and issue driver’s licenses. It is often not easy to decide what disabilities prevent people from driving or what qualifications must be met to operate a heavy rig. But with conscientious officials, these focused tasks can be accomplished. Today’s “administrative state,” however, goes far beyond this modest level of public administration.
Well You Don’t Say: 10 White Singers We Once Thought Were Black
Lana Del Rey On SNL, Haters, & Her Hair In First Radio Interview And On-Air Performance
Rock Flashback: Patsy Cline’s Plane Crash, 1963
The 12 Dos and Don’ts of Writing a Blog
This guy found Eva in an album of 60s and 70s polaroids at a Berlin flea market. She appears prominently throughout the album, and his curiosity about her life led to Tuesdays with Eva, which began with this post.
Somewhere miles deep underground the dried salt remnant of an ancient sea is being squeezed by the unimaginable weight of the Mississippi delta building up above. All the loose mud from Ohio and Minnesota ends up washed downstream, piles up, and presses down. The salt becomes a sort of geological fluid and globs rise like pale columns in a crystalline subterranean lava lamp – reaching miles up until they almost burst forth under the starry sky.
One of these salt domes sits under Avery Island – pushing the land upwards above the surrounding sea-level flatness. It is truly an island – a disk-shaped protuberance rising above… not the trackless sea but the feckless swamp – a bit of dry, elevated land looking down on the miasma and the bog.
The salt dome rises and bears a number of gifts. There is the salt itself – mined or boiled from springs for centuries with only a short break when the saltwork was captured by Union troops during the Great War Between the States (as it is known in these here parts). There is the gift of petroleum – oil is dragged along and concentrated by the rising column until, like Spindletop to the west, a forest of derricks sprout up sucking at the black gold.
And finally, there is the gift of high, dry farmland – rich and fertile. The Avery Island Plantation could grow pretty much any crop and – luckily for us – they chose a unique crop, grown from seed brought back from Central and South America… Hot Peppers.
For Pepperheads and fans of spicy food Avery Island is capsaicin ground zero and a visit there, at least once during a lifetime, is a necessary pilgrimage – a hot sauce Hajj.
Avery Island is the home and only manufacturing facility of the McIlhenny Company – the maker of Tabasco Pepper Sauce. Every little red bottle – somewhere around 750,000 bottles a day – are made on Avery Island.
We were going to drive back to Dallas from Lafayette, about a seven hour drive, but I wanted to go see the McIlhenny Tabasco factory on Avery Island first so we drove south instead and, after a couple of wrong turns, crossed the little wooden toll bridge (one dollar per car) onto the complex of green hills atop the salt dome.
The first thing you notice when driving up to the factory is the smell. It is wonderful. It’s not a hot, painful tear-gas like capsaicin reaction like you might expect, but a mellow, complex warm feeling that envelops the whole complex. First, we took a tour of the factory. You get a lecture; watch a film, then walk past the filling lines behind a glass wall. It was a Sunday, so the filling lines weren’t running, which was fine with me – I’ve seen plenty of food filling equipment filling food in my day. It was good enough to be standing behind the glass looking at the place where all the goodness happens.
At the end of the tour was a little museum with facts about Tabasco Pepper Sauce. I already knew most of it, having seen it on the How It’s Made television show. The most amazing thing about Tabasco is that the ground up peppers are aged in second-hand whisky barrels and allowed to ferment for three years before being mixed with vinegar, blended, and bottled. The barrels are covered with a layer of Avery Island salt while they age. Ground peppers (the seeds are developed on Avery Island, though the peppers are grown in Latin America), water, salt, and vinegar… that’s it.
To help the pepper pickers pick the perfect peppers they are given le petit baton rouge – a little red stick. This is painted the color of a perfectly ripe Tabasco pepper.
Then we walked across to the Tabasco Country store and bought our share of touristy knick-knacks and hot sauce products. I looked long and hard at the gallon jugs of hot sauce with the plastic pumps – and was able to resist the siren song. They had a sampling table with all the different flavors, including one I have never seen before – a chipotle raspberry sauce (I bought a bottle). There is no reference to this chipotle raspberry Tabasco anywhere – it’s a bit gimmicky, but it tastes good.
They also had spicy cola, two flavors of ice cream, and anything else you can imagine – plus a few you can’t. Candy bought some stuff for Nick (he loves Tabasco) and a bag of cooking wood made from their broken fermenting barrels.
One odd thing I did buy was a big ziplock plastic bag of pure pepper mash. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but it makes every room smell wonderful.
I took a walk around and snapped a few pictures, like a good tourist. Down at the end of the factory were some long brick buildings – these must be some of the fermenting warehouses where the sauce ages for three years in those oak barrels because the odor wafting out of the vents was unbelievably wonderful. One must have been the Chipotle warehouse because I could detect a smoky note in the air.
We had planned on stopping by a tony Cajun restaurant north of Lafayette on the way home, but there was a little trailer set up next to the country store selling red beans, rice, and sausage from crock pots. Of course, there was a large selection of spicy condiments available for testing.
I doubt the expensive restaurant had anything on the five dollar foam cup of red beans that I gobbled down with dabs of at least seven different Tabasco sauces on different nibbles.
There is a lot more to Avery Island – the Jungle Gardens and the Bird City went unvisited by us. We had a long drive ahead and couldn’t tarry. I’ll be back though, to smell that smell and explore some more. Once is not enough.
The factory has this crazy bayou gothic look to it.
The recycled whisky barrels with salt on top. The mash ages in these for three years.
Walking around, I found this pallet of old barrel lids after the peppers have been aged.
A box of labels from the filling line.
The food stand - great beans, rice, and sausage.
I haven't seen or read about this anywhere else.
Taking on Big Tabasco – Or, a little undercover research into le petit baton rouge
Tabasco’s Red-Hot Beginnings in Louisiana
The Fascination of Tabasco Sauce
Cajun Country’s Saucy and Spicy Tour
January, 2012. On the Geaux – Again – in Louisiana
McIlhenny Tabasco – Avery Island, Louisiana
Avery Island and Tabasco Sauce
Yes! My Camera Loves New Iberia Louisiana
5 Healthy Reasons to Love Tabasco Sauce
Avery Island – Tabasco, Alligators and Egrets
Touring the Tabasco Hot Sauce Factory and Scenic Avery Island, Louisiana
RV Trip Favorite Photos #51-55
Roadtrip: South Louisiana, Part 1
Bill Chance 