Bayou Bliss...

Today we craved a bit of green. So we traveled a few miles south of New Orleans to Jefferson Parish, and walked along the trails in Bayou Coquille.


You are welcome to have a seat and let your eyes wander....
Click here, for a few moments in the marsh.

The Audobon Aquarium and...

I couldn't decide which I enjoyed more...the displays of fishes, frogs, skates, rays, corals and clownfish, or the mullets, the New Orleans Saints football jerseys, and the many personalities gawking at life underwater.
This aquarium is a true place of encounters, literally...complete with a stingray petting pool. Yes, you can pet a stingray, and even pet a baby nurse shark. Somehow, the stingrays are trained. You merely roll up you sleeves, insert your arm in the tank, make a fist and then extend your index and middle fingers. The rays swim over and hover just under your digits. Then, you gently rub behind their head. I was amazed and even amused when one of the rays protested by splashing a wing and spraying me with water when I cut my ray massage short. (That particular and seemingly docile dasyatid had a bit of an attitude.) Gabriela joined in, and massaged her own.
Here are a few glimpses from our time inside and outside of the water. If you want to massage the photos at your own pace, click here with your index and middle fingers fully extended.

Facades, Faces and other Frames...

I heard someone mention, "New Orleans is a city you eat your way through...." It is true, I have found out. (The colors and the architecture, the door frames, and the people seem to increase one's appetite.)
Click here, and pick through the (.jpeg) jambalaya at your own pace.

Ink-Congruities...

Yesterday, my eye wandered...searching for disparities and asymmetries, as we re-entered the French Quarter. As we approached Café du Monde for another round of powdered sugar and fried dough, I walked past a tourist just sitting...his purposeful self-commodification emblazoned on his right forearm. I asked if my camera could scan his barcode and he said, "sure."

Ink-Commodified Human

Moments later while under the spell of café au lait, I contemplated the alternative readings of this linear impression. A critique of consumer society? An indelible identification with a consumer product?

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Today, I strolled along Magazine Street in the Uptown section bored by the banality of one antique shop after another. Then I saw these mannequins in a storefront window and stopped, and stared.

Humanized Ink-Commodity

An academic assonance played in my head...lyrics borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss' text La Pensée Sauvage, and The Who's song Tattoo. The self-induced pedantic seizure distilled into rhetorical ironies: "Hey mannequin ladies...are your tattoos a brand of conviction, isolation or fraternization? Hey barcode tourist...does your tattoo make you feel plastic, metallic, or elastic?"

Audobon Park...

Yesterday afternoon, we decided to traipse through one of New Orleans' hallmark green spaces...Audobon Park. We cast a few shadows, and sat in the shade. Then it was time to head back. (Nonno was sleepy and needed a nap.)

Here are a few patches of green, and blue, and other colors. Click here, to sort them out at your own pace.


At the park entrance opposite Tulane University, on the way to the car....

New Orleans Noel...

Yesterday, our first full day in New Orleans, we rendezvoused with David and his two girls. (He traveled from Brazil to visit his parents. Last time we saw each other was over 18 year ago in Hoboken, New Jersey.) Our plan was to weave around the French Quarter, and share stories from the last few years, while drinking coffee, devouring beignets, and absorbing the local colors, sights and sounds.
Here are a few of the images from our wanderings. Click here, to trace your own path through the Cajun labyrinth....


This was my favorite array of the day....

Beignet Bound...

We arrived today in the Big Easy after a two-day road trip, and are staying at my brother in-law's home while he enjoys an academic sabbatical in Europe. We have planned to soak up the flavor of New Orleans (or what is left...post-Katrina) for a week or so before heading back home to DC.
(2130 hrs, local time) As I type, there is a live New Orleans Jazz band...singing accompanied by those unmistakable trumpets and banjos...nearby, somewhere down the street in this "Uptown" neighborhood. Tomorrow morning...the French Quarter.

Here are some impressions from our interstate journey today. (Click on the moving images to view the slide show at your own speed.)

Asymmetry and Adolescence...

Her choice of socks is playful...and girlish.

Her eyes when accidentally framed, seem to belong to someone much older...

This weekend, I appreciated her preteen form much how she displayed it...with great flexibility.

Pyrrhic Pyre, or Pyric Prolixity...

(A Haiku in Flames)

Promethean yen
emerges at night. Wax log
is Greek tragedy....

Washington D.C. at dusk...

As I prepared to head home this evening, I glanced at the sky and knew it would be a spectacular sunset. So I placed my camera on the empty passenger's seat. I'm glad I did so.

At a red light by the Tidal Basin, I saw a lone figure contemplating....
The light turned green, and I continued with my commute.

Veterans and Verisimilitude...

A few days ago at dusk, I walked along the Fußgängerzone on the northern boundary of the White House and saw him standing. This man, holding a simple wooden cane in his left hand and dressed in dark earth-tones, stood at attention. As I walked towards him, he lifted his right arm in one fluid motion, frozen in military salute...facing the presidential estate. He was a Veteran for sure...his gray hair was long, but not un-kept...his glasses unfashionable and thick. Without a word, he withdrew his tribute. Lowering his right arm, he right-faced and began walking West. His gate was steady, but the cadence punctuated by presumptive injuries...a kinesic memoir written upon battle-hardened cartilage, sinew and bone. I wondered who he was...where he had served...and why he returned to this place....

This face without a name made me think of other names that I had photographed a few days ago. These other cognomina seemed incognito, at first. Then I realized the brilliant interplay, which occurs at this monument...noms de guerre, given a face...with each visitor's reflection. I then looked around and wondered where they would build the next monument, in which direction would it face...the monument for the soldiers that died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sighed, and snapped the picture.

los primos y el pasado...

The Turkey-fête overflowed onto my side of the family last night, as we made a "mejunje" from all the leftover relatives. We seized this opportunity to celebrate my cousin Karla's birthday. More than three decades have raced by since we last ran around the majestic Flamboyan, pelted each other with mangoes, and shared a ripe soursop from my grandmother's garden. Her daughter, thirteen, ran around with the younger cousins...comfortably climbing along this branch of the family tree.

Today, we shared some of the monumental sites with Karla and her daughter. I was reminded of how much I enjoy the city at night and of the permanence of its marble. I was reminded of how much I miss my youthful antics and of the permanence of nostalgia. This streetlamp we saw near the White House today was an interesting omen.



Peruse this recent past at your own pace by clicking here.

Thanksgiving Family Filling...

This weekend, relatives were stuffed in close proximity...turkeys and cranberries, teasing and cackling, We dined, danced, debated, and delighted with extended family. I will gladly share the sights, but I will spare you the sounds. As for the smells, some were related to fowl and some were of the featherless variety. However, when it comes to relatives, it is impossible for them to overstay their welcome...much like the Pilgrims, I suppose.

If you click here, we may even set a place for you at the table.

Ari's Award...

The PTA held an awards ceremony this afternoon for their annual creativity contest, REFLECTIONS. This year's theme was "WOW," and Ari won third prize for his entry in the Intermediate Photography category. After the assembly, we all congratulated him in the hallway as he held his certificate and trophy closely by his side.
Here is his photograph...
Shortly after the ceremony, I asked him how he felt. "I just entered the contest for the cookies," he commented. "If you participate, they give you cookies after the assembly." He then added...with a pensive look, "I think I'll do this again next year."

chubby chewer...

We arrived home this afternoon and found our furry friend gorging on the front lawn. He sat still atop the pumpkin. We exited the car, and as we approached he waddled away.
A few minutes after we entered the house our friend returned, perched and continued to feast. I watched through the window.

bioplastics bemoaned...

I ate lunch today at one of the "green" government cafeterias near my new office building. The scene resembled an overcrowded high school lunchroom. The faces floating around me were a panoply of extremes, overdressed and under-starched youths mingling with over-starched underwhelmed politicos. The pizza bar offered an array of glistening square cuts. I chose the cheese, one slice. After paying for the reflective polygon, I grabbed a set of flatware. The feel was different, the sheen was absent. These were forks and knives made of corn starch, mostly...a hard resin billed as "biodegradable and biocompostable."
The knife flexed sideways as I tried to slice my cheese pizza. My new eco-sci-fi cutlery eased through the cheese, but barely dented the dough. I ate the pizza with my hands, and then gave the knife and fork a closer look. Bending either of them generated stretch marks, of sorts. The lines vanished after gently straightening the utensil.
The flatware's design was less than inspiring, a design element constrained by its own nomenclature...any semblance of artfulness unnecessarily eclipsed by a paean to eco-pragmatism. I finished eating, and retired the cutlery to the "biocompostables" bin. Walking past the main stand, I grabbed a fresh trio of flatware...souveniers from my close encounter with the eco-chic. Hours later, I wondered how much corn or cornstarch was needed to make a bioplastic spoon, or fork, or knife. I wondered if this maize product was a bit of high-fructose hyperbole for an emergent hyper-environmental consciousness.

This evening, I found an article in Popular Science, The Problem with (Bio)Plastic, by Matt Ransford, dated May, 7, 2008. His text warned of the eco-woes and hinted that bioplastics may be just as harmful as petro-plastics. The assessment was sobering, but artfully critical. I mean literally artful, replete with echoes of René Magritte and his modernist playfulness...of his dissonant aesthetic. I'll spare you the article's fatalism and will neglect to paraphrase the warnings against this particular panacea. But, I have to share that image, the presumptive tribute to Magritte, his Modernist eye, and critical sense of irony.

[I Am Not a Plastic Bag: Anya Hindmarch]

Indulgent Septuagenarian Induction...

Saturday night, the extended family donned their dancing shoes and celebrated my Aunt Jenny's latest cumpleaños. The merengue-frosted dulce de leche-filled cake aptly conveyed the sweetness and savor that have framed her outlook and still give texture to her disposition. We all danced. Our hips and feet echoed Caribbean rythms and 70's disco tunes as we laughed, spilled a little wine, and unveiled a gag gift.
These family gatherings have served as both festive chronometer and flavorful nostalgia. I looked around and saw the youngsters darting around legs, and remembered doing the same decades ago in Puerto Rico. The generations move along, and the family celebrations stay the same.

(Go ahead, cut in and grab a dance partner...cliquea aquí.)

Indian Summer Indulgence...

Early this Saturday afternoon, the mercury hovered near seventy degrees. So we walked all over the leaves.
As we arrived at one of the nearby parks, she decided to dress herself in autumnal modesty.
Gabriela favored an inverted perspective as she swayed around.
Unleashed, Ari prowled upwards and scurried along a plastic perch.

canine coda...

This week, I temporarily left the familiarity of the Executive branch, and began a one-year detail with a Congressional Committee. Monday morning, I arrived early. The offices were empty, so I sat on the couch in the reception area, and waited. A few minutes later, a woman walked towards me, a three-legged dog trailing behind her. She walked by and offered a friendly greeting soaked in Midwestern sincerity, "Good Morning." Then her three-legged companion surprised me. He walked up to me and placed his muzzle next to my lap, gently nudging my hand away from the copy of the New York Times.

Each morning, he arrives at the office with his owner, Lisa, a veterinarian by training. Most of the day, he lays on a dark blanket near her desk. They go for their daily walk. I walk by her desk, and she is on the floor massaging his back, and his legs, and his snout. Their contact is framed by an unsettling empathy, as well as a discomforting urgency. I learned quite a bit about Trooper this week. Along with a remarkable personality and uncanny sociability, Trooper also has terminal cancer. He may endure for a few more weeks, or a few more months. Lisa told me that she will be a mess when he "goes," as she phrased it. Lisa and I traded stories, anecdotes, dramas, tales and narratives...all sewn together with the thread of cancer-tinged experiences.

I offered to take pictures of Trooper during one of their daily walks. Lisa then mentioned that she had hundreds of pictures of Trooper, taken by her boyfriend with his digital camera. I asked if she would share some of those pictures with me, and she did. These two are my favorites, and were taken a few years ago according to the data encoded in the images. The artistic quality of the photographs pales in comparison to Trooper's character...a compliment to both the photographer and his subject.

GMail Video? Yep...

Google Mail now has a video-chat capability. Click here to read today's post on the official Gmail Blog.

Screenshot from today's news...

winemaker's wittiness...

The display bottle intrigued me as I walked by, an elegant and simple design from a Virginia winery. So, I made a purchase from the vintner at the farmers market this past weekend...feeling a sense of pride in supporting our local wine growers. That evening, we poured a round and then, while inspecting the font my better half noticed the anomaly. "They misspelled Raspberry," she sang. "The p is missing."
I pondered the presumptive typo for a few days, and today I decided to email the winery. To my surprise, the owner replied an hour later. In his own words: There is a little story behind it. It was originally spelled wrong and we decided not to fix it because our wine has no "P". We have since made a couple minor changes and the new bottling will be spelled correctly. Thanks again and we hope you come out to visit us sometime.

I laughed...a Virginia winemaker soaked in self-effacing humor. After reading the email, I poured a bit of the Rasberry Merlot, thought about planning a trip to the vineyard, and with a smirk offered a toast...to all those who can make light of their mistakes. Cheers.

saltation salutations...

These past few months, our lawn has played host to political signage. So before retiring the displays, we had a bit of fun...tacked them up on the shed...and jumped around...welcoming the future.
(If you want to bounce along, click here.)

prismatic passion...

While walking through a local farmers market today, many people and much of the produce drew my attention. The colors were enchanting. Neighbors chattered and children pined. Then, I spied the not-so-public display of reflection. Nestled quietly, amidst all the frenzy and trapped within a cellophane membrane, a leaf and a bundle of lavender tenderly embraced.

Papo Pictograph...

My friend Rob sent me a link via email today. I clicked, and slowly leafed through the many images...the way one turns the pages of a favorite and dog-eared novel.

I envy those who earn a living as fine art photographers. Rachel Papo's array artfully documents moments, glances, and experiences...betwixt and between Israeli women, initiates into compulsory military service.

(Click here, if you want to zoom into the rank and file.)

signed...sealed and delivered!

portentous pastiche...

The polls closed at 1900 hours here in Virginia...still nervous. So, I created my own good luck collage from a picture (click no.13) I noticed earlier in the week.
[a reconfiguration of 'The face. Aiko' by Russian couple Galina Brando and Alexander Abramov]

Wandering, Wondering and Waiting...

Earlier today, the anticipation and restlessness led me out of the house and away from the computer. I walked around a nearby neighborhood's polling site. The intensity of RED vs. BLUE was only a glance away...a few more hours before the election coverage begins digesting the ballots and spewing predictions.

Election Enthusiasm...

The polls in my neighborhood opened at 0600 hours. By 0530 I was in line, with approximately thirty other voters. The line kept growing and growing with every passing minute.
By 0615, I had cast my vote, and was ready to head home. Then I thought about the day, stopped, and pulled out my camera. I hope you had a chance to vote today.

Cartesian Coordination...

While her brother etched his skills along the pitch, she decided to cart around her sense of spontaneity and wheel through the air.

(Click here, if you wish to tumble along.)

Witchy Women...

Yesterday evening, spectral wavelengths danced in costumes. The sisters reveled in relative mischief at the edge of the neighborhood bonfire as ghouls glowed in the dark. Pumpkins, carved anew by squirrely incisors, radiated a warm glow. After basking in the spectacle, we later faded into the nighttime carnival and began to trick or treat.