I'm a lasagna boy!

No Man's Land

Edward Burtynsky in Charleston, as part of a three-man exhibit, "No Man's Land".

From the Charleston Net, reported by DOTTIE ASHLEY:

The term "no man's land" first was used to describe the ground between two opposing trenches during World War II and implied that neither side in the conflict was safe in this zone.

Landscape photographers Edward Burtynsky, Emmet Gowin and David Maisel believe there is a kind of trench warfare being carried out today between the environment and the demands of humans.

In their exhibit "No Man's Land: Contemporary Photographers and Fragile Ecologies," which opens Thursday at the Halsey Gallery of the College of Charleston, photographs reflect the results of years spent chronicling the state of the environment. The exhibit is said to exploit photography's power to entice the viewer to see the beauty and the fragility of the Earth, while illuminating seldom seen landscapes currently under siege by development.

Through their work, the artists say they wish to draw attention to the precarious, yet interdependent nature of our relationship with the Earth.

"Initially, their works draw us in by the seductive beauty of the photographic print itself; it is only after this initial reading that we begin to comprehend the content of each image," says Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Gallery.

The photographs will be on display Thursday through Oct. 16 at the gallery in the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip St. A reception honoring the photographers will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the gallery.

That same day, Gowin will lecture on his work in the Recital Hall of the Simons Center at 2 p.m., followed by Burtynsky at 4 p.m. and Maisel at 6 p.m. All events are free.

For 25 years, Burtynsky, a Canadian, has explored obscure sites where industrial activity has reshaped the surface of the land. His surveys of the man-made terrain of quarrying, mining, rail cutting and oil refining are said to remind us that these incursions into the land arise from human needs and desires.

Recently, Burtynsky photographed the world's largest engineering and construction site, the Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze River in Hubei Province in China. His work focuses on the explosive growth of Chinese industrial sectors and the resulting transformations of landscape as that country evolves from rural agricultural to urban technology.

For more than 20 years, Gowin has taken aerial photographs of the landscape in the United States, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Asia and the Middle East. In his collection, the viewer witnesses how man's footprints have visually scarred and continually altered Earth's surface. His most recent book is "Changing the Earth," (Yale University Press, 2002). His work will be shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Yale University Art Gallery and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, among other galleries.

The work of San Francisco artist Maisel also is composed of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted landscapes. Looking down on these damaged wastelands where man's efforts have eradicated the natural order, one sees that the views are spectacular and horrifying. One series of images shows Owens Lake, the site of a formerly 200-square-mile lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Mountains. The diversion of the Owens River into the Owens Valley Aqueduct began in 1913 to quench the thirst of the citizens of Los Angeles. By 1926, the lake was in essence destroyed, with vast expanses of mineral flats exposed.

The photographic exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

Halsey Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

... a girl's best friend?

After Shawn, forever singing the virtues of audio books, praised Diamonds, I picked up a reading copy and sat down with it yesterday afternoon.

Alexander the Great, on his march into India, is said to have heard about a pit filled with diamonds. The pit was guarded by serpents whose gaze would kill a man. Alexander, eager for the diamonds, ordered that his men be given mirrors. When they approached the pit they held up the mirrors and turned the reptiles' gaze back on the snakes themselves, killing them. Alexander then ordered sheep to be slaughtered and their carcasses flung into the pit. The diamonds stuck in the fat. Vultures swooped down and devoured the diamond-studded flesh, and afterward, as they flew away, expelled a rain of diamonds into the hands of Alexander's men.

Although the writing falls short -- the author, a reporter for Rapaport Diamond Report, doesn't compose graceful or rhythmic sentences; unlike the impact of a newspaper story, which is ephemeral, a book's paragraphs and chapters deserve structure and composition -- the books capably tells the story of diamond exploration and of the De Beers cartel.

Sleeping Beauty

Re-read Danny the Champion of the World, in an edition illustrated by Quentin Blake. Although I'm particular about illustrations, Blake's idiosyncratic pen-and-wash style illuminates Dahl's wise story of a boy being raised by his clever father. The father enjoys poaching, and what's bred in the blood means that the boy invents a new approach, so fiendish that it means that they will eat their pheasants and wreck the reputation of the local land-lord / capitalist. Not quite a party-line parable, but the villagers do defeat the local tyrant and celebrate in the quiet, studious way of village-folk.

Also made into what sounds like an excrescence of a television movie.

Understand your commute needs

I sometimes forget that Caltrain tries really hard to "to get people out of their cars and onto the trains." After the bad bicycle-related publicity of the past few months, they are undertaking a ridership survey to gauge what to do next:

Wish list: Increase the bicycle capacity on baby bullets; promote conductor and rider awareness of the bicycle car; preserve the older rolling-stock bike-car layout, rather than the new ("Baby Bullet") rolling stock, which forces cyclists to move the bicycle through the passenger area; move the low-rise access platforms at bullet-train stations, which impede bicycle and passenger flow through the loading area (keep them at one end of the station, or in an area with an ample footpad; the Palo Alto NB platform is a textbook example of what NOT to do); provide more bicycle capacity during peak hours Use your own URL -- a redirect requires minimal effort and maintains a professional look! -- for the survey.

Closing the Gateway to Homestead?

"Every building in Pittsburgh can be identified by its relationship to a bridge ... " begins this article on Chiodo's Tavern, at the end of the Homestead High-Level Bridge. Chiodo's is closing.

Unnecessary interface

Surely most ATM users would understand if these two ATM screens became one.

For more information on Grand Funk, consult your school library!

Technorati searches blogs (XML? RSS?) in something close to real time. That's how I found Travis' blog, and how I discovered another salim.

Aside: Was the Alan Parsons Project really "some sort of hovercraft"?

... from the palace of Sennacherib to the markets of San Francisco

An article on dates in Yemen and Coachella features a familiar local face.

Haight and Pierce

I see pink elephants.

Steiner and Duboce

You don't sound like much of a prince

Tracked down a library-bound copy of Jay Williams' Petronella, illustrated by Friso Henstra; although the book is still in print, the new illustrations can't possibly have the captivating curves of Henstra's buoyant princess and enchanter.
Now I have to find a copy of their other collaboration, "Forgetful Fred."

... this is the sound of settling

The high-definition beauty of last year's breath-taking Transatlanticism
forms the audio track for two television shows, Six Feet Under and The O.C.. Meanwhile, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard hits the road to advocate a Vote for Change.

Compare and contrast

If I depart from the stoop at 09h50, I arrive in Mountain View:

at 11h17 by bicycle + train (immediate cost: $4.50 for the CalTrain ticket);
at 11h00 by bicycle + bus (no immediate cost);
at 10h30 by private car (immediate cost: $5.00, for two gallons of gas);

and, departing at 06h45 by bicycle, I arrive at 10h00 (but usu. need to shower).

Wanted: handbasket, sunroof, a/c

``I've done made a deal with the devil,'' Adair said. ``He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires out.''

Lewis Carroll, blogger

The Library of Congress have posted Lewis Carroll's collection of clippings.

The historian Edward Wakeling contribues an essay on the significance of this scrapbook:

Scrapbooks were, without doubt, a source of anecdotes and ideas that Carroll could weave into his conversations and literary works. It is fortunate that this scrapbook has survived intact, and in the state that Lewis Carroll left it. It is incomplete as there still are loose items waiting to be pasted in. The scrapbook was put aside sometime in the 1870s ...

The clippings, pasted over 70-some leaves, include poetry, obituaries, notes on linguistics, and Victorian ephemera.

One man's junk

In the time-honoured San Francisco tradition, I had a garage sale today. Or, more accurately, I had a wish-I-had-a-garage sale in which I didn't really sell much. If other people could use the stuff that I found in the basement, it shall be theirs.
I did put a smile on someone's face by selling them a dual-deck cassette player (ooh!) and a box of cassettes ("Van Morrison? The Cure? You're selling this?" he exclaimed) for $1; a 5-disc CD changer went for $5; and then I got tired of thinking about money and put up a "you want, you take" sign. A heavily-tattooed man with a backpack started pawing through a box of old office toys, and stared at a Happy Meal three-dimensional Yoda thingy for a while. "Whoah." he said. "Maybe it's because I'm stoned, but this is waaaaay cool." When I told him he could have it, he lit up. "Oh, that's great. I'm a found-art collage artist, and I'm on kind of a bender today." He walked off with a box full of the geegaws and whatnots that were piled around my space at Topica.
Another fellow stopped by, his Pirates hat framing a sunbeaten face. "How much for the bike?" "Free. You'll need to give it a clean and put some air in the tyres." "Oh, this will be great for Burning Man!" and off it went to a happy home.
I gave the grandson of the guys across the street the old Maguro trainer I bought in Chicago (off a newsgroup -- what a concept!). Someone picked the skewer off it, but I think that a bike shop will sell them a replacement for a few dollars.

Riot-proof, and you know how to swim

The current issue of the University of Chicago Magazine features an article on myths that have arisen about the school: the swimming requirement; the (old) student union's namesake, Mrs Ida "Come on bring the" Noyes; and the legendary steam tunnels between Burton-Judson and the Classics Quad.
Interdisciplinary, my ass.

He will never go hungry again

On the side of the high-rise at Steiner and Haight, southwest corner, Romanowski has started painting a beautiful, bright mural:

While I walked up to it and out of habit began taking snaps, the artist was doing ditto. We talked for a moment, and agreed that the site was perfect for a mural: the wall, next to some ramshackle steps, is only too easy prey for taggers. The strong colours of his mural fit in well with the neighbourhood, and the fish and icons representing local businesses form a subtle tribute.

jimg like

jimg pointed me at these bike photos. sw33t (and some are are pleasantly risque!)

Meta-blogging

Sigh. Meta-filter has the bomb thread on Banksy's latest shenanigans. In my bag I have a sheaf of articles from the New York Times (of all places! so establishment) on Twist and graf in general.

Everything is better with Bacon

While reading online about our friend Eadweard, I found that he had inspired Francis Bacon. I dug out my unread copy of "Anatomy of an Enigma" and got a few pages in to it, but did sneak a look at all of the pictures.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian ran a story on Oaktown doughnuts, which omits the fine counter full o' fried offerings at Ozzie's, properly in Elmwood as well as the phenomenal Kingpin in Berkeley. But without straying from the Oakland theme, the author could have found a few ethnic varieties of fried dough. And didn't. My turn!

Steps to a better

From the City of Seven Hills (and Three Rivers) to the City By the Bay (the Fog City), we love taking steps. More than five hundred sets of stairs, some extending hundreds of steps, grace the hills of Pittsbugh. and more than three hundred stairs in San Francisco.

Eye knows what Eye likes

Unlike Muybridge, who added eccentric touches to the spelling of his name, Burtynsky seems very grounded with his photography. Does this make the work eye candy?

Edward Burtynsky, who self-published a book about the construction of China's Three Gorges Dam, is the winner of the fourth and final Roloff Beny Photography Book Award. The award-winning photographer's Before the Flood takes home the $60,000 prize. The book details the upheaval caused by the building of the dam, the world's largest hydroelectric engineering feat to date. The predominant theme to the photos is how industry transforms nature. Burtynsky's photos have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including Canada's National Gallery, which recently featured a two-decade retrospective of his work. Established in the memory of the late, world-famous, Alberta-born photographer Roloff Beny, the award is being replaced by a new scholarship program for post secondary photography students across Canada.

Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

Your stereotypical doughnut is nothing but dough and sugar, fried in fat. Am I right? Now that fat gums up your arteries, and goes into your brain, and you turn liberal. And the next thing you know, Barry Manilow's on the turntable, and you're not going to work, and you're voting for gun control. You see what I'm saying?

Courtesy the
SledgeHammer Season 1 DVDs, which arrived in today's post. Alas, something that the TiVo won't ever catch, because the show didn't run long enough to become worthy of syndication (the magic 100 episodes).
I never realised that this show is set and filmed in San Francisco! The establishing shots and many of the chase scenes all feature typical San Francisco landscapes: The Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, downtown.

Fever in

Sick abed today, I read through some Golden Age mystery novels: two (of the few tolerable) by Agatha Christie: Death in the Air and Cards on the Table (others I like include The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The A.B.C. Murders); and a perennial favourite, Dame Dorothy Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, a novel which transcends genre fiction.