Up in New England

I have finally begun the latest trek. In pursuit of the goal of photographing state capitols I  headed up to New England. I visited my long-time (old) friend Richard. It was a good visit. His 90 year old mom, Eleanor, barely stopped making food for us. Richard is still playing guitar and my plan to capture him on video was cut short by a dead battery plus a dead spare battery. Oops. But the brief bit I did get is quite entertaining. Witness:

Next stop: Trenton, NJ. 

I got to Hartford Saturday evening. Emily directed me faithfully to the Statehouse where hordes of people were heading to a jazz concert on the Commons. So with the streets full, I parked in a legally dubious spot four or five blocks away and hurried over to get some shots in the fading light. I ended up staying at Camp Walmart and got up at dawn for a morning reprise. 

From Hartford I was able to get to Providence and Boston the same day and have time to walk around a little and get shots of the capitols.

I made it to Concord on Monday. After Boston and Providence and Hartford, Concord seemed more like a county seat than a state capital. A nice town but I had to drive to a Starbucks more than two miles away to find an open café with internet. At 10 am.

From there I drove to the western side of the state to Charlestown where I visited Jimmy and Sharon McClammer. I stayed for a very wet week and was able to help build about a hundred feet of spite fence on their property. Good times. I parked Irv across the creek at a beautiful shaded spot near the Little Sugar River they call Louise’s. It reminded me of Pocopson. Jimmy and Sharon and I really did have a good time. 

I left the McClammer’s on a Monday and drove to Augusta. Another small town. And Montpelier, an even smaller town. Then on to Albany. That’s the last stop on the New England state capital/capitol tour. Albany is far from a small town. In addition to the 20th century buildings, it has a mixture of Victorian, Romanesque, Renaissance and Classical architecture with lots of spires and ornamentation that makes it look like a Disney fairytale town 

Thursday I made an appointment with a Mac genius. I thought I had allowed plenty of time to get from Bennington, VT where I was when I made the appointment to the Albany store but when I actually got on the road Emily had my arrival time as 12:16. My appointment was 12:15. Ug! I suddenly remembered that frantic feeling of 100% knowing you’re going to be late but hurrying anyway to try to minimize the problem. That was my feeling almost every day commuting into DC to work.

One thing I’ve learned on this road trip is that your ability to really make a dent in your arrival time is very limited. If your trip is many hours you can erase some time by speeding (a risky alternative) the whole time. But on an hour long drive, speeding can only pick up a few minutes. So the best thing is to drive sanely and just put it out of your mind. You’ll get there when you get there. 

I did have a reprieve though. More than halfway through the drive I realized that I had set the GPS to avoid highways, a nice option when you want to take the scenic route. Not so much when you want to make some time. Just by changing that setting I picked up 11 minutes and so made the appointment. The lesson? Plan better. Pay attention. Think.

Seems to me...

I find that when I'm stationary I don't attend to communications nearly as well as when I'm on the move. Traveling brings a constant inflow of new experiences: new places, new people; things that are exciting that I want to share. Staying in one place breeds a kind of complacency. Thus it's been a couple of months since I last visited this blog. I've been here in Maryland for the last 60 or so days and the upsides and downsides of owning real estate seem clearer to me. When I flew to MD in January, I came with almost none of my stuff (having left my van in Las Vegas), basically just a few clothes and my laptop. Sleeping in my house but in a different bedroom (Amanda and Jose are in my old room—which is cool) evoked the weird mixture of feelings that come with being a visitor in my own home or, I should say, home is a more slippery concept than I once thought.


Now, having driven here, I have all my stuff and yet, surprisingly, this arrangement has its own downsides. When traveling, you are self-contained. All your stuff is right there. I have developed little habits that support peace of mind like, for instance, never closing the door to lock the van without first feeling the keys in my pocket. And hatch-battening habits that minimize drawers and cabinet doors flying open and throwing stuff around. It's easy to hold on to your stuff and your intentions when they are more limited.


The first casuality of staying relatively put is that self-containedness. Stuff you've been carrying around but you really have no need for go first. Books I've read but haven't given away yet, the box that CS 5.5 came in and the boxes my cameras came in, food I haven't eaten and won't eat, the solar panel I won't be using while I'm here. Stuff like that. That's fine. It's better than fine, it's a relief. Space is at such a premium in my "house" that jettisoning the things I really don't need at the moment is all upside.


But then, other things that begin to cross that line get moved out of the van. Musical instruments for instance. Mostly, I don't unexpectedly need a guitar when I go someplace, but it's not unheard of. And if I do I don't have one. I often leave my golf clubs at the house and so I lose that particular potential for unplanned activity and serendipity. So I'm left in a kind of pleasant limbo. I'm happy to be here with Amanda but I look forward to the next journey. And that's why I haven't added to the blog for a while. 


In my last post I was in Kentucky where I was in mid March. Kentucky: ground zero for dogmatic ignorance; home of the Creationist Museum. For those unfamiliar, Creationism asserts that the Bible is literal Truth; the inspired Word of God. Thus, the Earth was created in 6 twenty-four hour days 6001 years ago, was destroyed by the Flood except for Noah, his family and two of every species of animal (minus the unicorns but including... wait for it... dinosaurs!) Now, I'm not saying that I know. In fact being agnostic, I'm saying I don't know, so maybe they're right but I seriously doubt it. There are many many questions science doesn't answer. Science mostly just stays out of the metaphysical realm concerning itself with the physical universe. Science doesn't address the basic existential question: Why? but tries to get at What? and How? Science is systematic and serious. Scientific theories are tested and tested and refined and replaced when a better explanation is found. Science is the opposite of dogma. The Biblical literalists feel compelled to delegitimize actual science by coming up with a competing "science," Creationism. 


If you're going to go toe to toe with science you better have something real to back it up. When you begin with an assertion like that the Earth is 6001 years old, whole branches of actual scientific thought must be thrown out. And they do. The fossil record and the geological record at least must go. The creationists sponsor trips down the Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon that "prove" that the formation of this awesome geology happened in just a short time. Every bit of evidence is bent to conform to the preordained conclusion. It's positively pre-Copernican. Of course, the attack on evolution is the tip of the spear. More effort is put into discrediting evolution than any other branch of science.


The museum is interesting. It looks just like a museum of science with dioramas that dramatize "historical" events. It has displays with ancient artifacts and fossils. It has film presentations and even animatronics (which I've always found unconvincing, even at Disneyland). It is to a real museum of natural science what Fox News is to actual journalism. It looks like the real thing but it's a load of dogmatic propaganda. 

One other thing that stood out for me was the general lack of friendliness of the people. I like to meet people and will happily have conversations with strangers. In fact, I met some nice people in Kentucky but these weren't them. Everybody seemed in a hurry to line up to get their steamin' bowl of bullshit. Oh well, maybe they had me pegged as a non-believer and not worth their time. Could've been the 666 on my forehead. The slogan of the museum is "Prepare to Believe." Well, I believe alright.  

Okay, enough spleen. Deep breaths. 

Frankfort, the capital is a quiet, historic little town, the 5th smallest in the US. The capitol building is a very beautiful building with a traditional dome and some beautiful magnolias in spectacular bloom.

Ebbis's House

Graceland has never been high on my list of places to go but since I was headed to Memphis and I'd never been, I thought I ought'a. If you haven't been, maybe you should but for me, this will be my first and last time. Elvis was exploited in his life and he's still being exploited in death. I felt a little exploited myself. First of all, Graceland is a kind of nice, upper-upper middle class house with what looks like a Formstone® facade, a faux southern-plantation-with-columns front porch, a swimmin' pool, a target practice tool shed and the King's gravesite along with his parents' and granny's. Bad 1970's taste abounds. I hurried out of Tennessee and made it to Kentucky by nightfall.

 

Here's a little Graceland giftshop item I had some trouble getting my brain around:

And here are a couple of shots of the beautiful sunset in Kentucky:

Little Rock

Little Rock is a nice town. It was very quiet the day I was there, Tuesday, March 13. I'd had a yen for Thai food for about two weeks and I found one on Google Maps but it had just closed when I got there so that flavor had to go untasted for another while. I spent a couple hours at the capitol while the sun set.

I also noticed a fire hydrant in a way I hadn't before and used it as inspiration for another 3D project.

Moving Right Along

These pictures are about three weeks old, so I'm starting to catch up with reality. ([{!?!}]) First step after New Mexico was Oklahoma City (I was traveling at least two hundred miles every day), the next capitol I haven't been to yet. 


Here's a shot of the sky on that day. The skies in that part of the country are some of the most spectacular I've seen.

As it happens, I-40 takes you right past the famous Cadillac Ranch, an art installation that's basically a bunch of Caddies buried... well you see. The people in charge encourage the graffiti so I imagine it changes appearance quite a bit over time.

On my way through Oklahoma City I happened to drive past the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. So I stopped. It's a very powerful tribute to the people who died there at the hands of our own home-grown terrorist, Tim McVeigh.

And the capitol. This place has oil derricks right on the capitol grounds.

Arizona to New Mexico

Heading east, the first stop was Tempe, AZ to see Ersula, Amanda's college roommate who's now a hot shot college professor at AU. We had a nice time. Tempe is actually a nice town. If I seem surprised it's because it contrasts so strongly with my impression of Phoenix.

I like this shot. It reminds me of a Giorgio De Chirico painting. It's on the campus of AU.

Next, I headed north to Flagstaff by way of Sedona:

From there it was on to Corrales, NM where I also a had a nice time with Debby and Marsha. I also had some of the only snow of the winter there.

3-D Stuff

Lately I've been gaining some skills in Strata Design 3D, the program I use to model, texture, light and render objects. This Gibson L00 guitar is one of my more challenging project in progress. I want to be able to create an exploded view so all the parts will have to be fully modeled.