New York

Niagara Falls Redux

October 5, 2017 | 3 Comments

Last April, on the way from Seattle to Quebec to pick up my Alto, I stopped at Niagara Falls for a night, staying on the Canadian side and enjoying a hotel-room-view of the Horseshoe Falls. I found the whole “big loud water” thing amazing and decided that I’d be back someday.

Yesterday was that day. I hit the American Falls this time, up close and personal. Niagara Falls is still freaking amazing. Here’s my favorite shot of the American Falls from my visit.

And here is American Falls on the left and Horseshoe Falls back to the right. Last year, standing on the other side right next to those falls, I thought the American Falls were kind of puny. I was wrong. They are just as impressive!

Yes, that’s a boat down there, with people on it. Maid of the Mist. It was so windy that the last place I wanted to be was down there!

A close-up of the American Falls, because, really, I just can’t get enough of this water.

The wind made most of my little videos too noisy, but this one, of the rapids just above the falls, gives you a sense of the water’s power.

I know I said it last year, but I’ll say it again. If you are anywhere near Niagara Falls, you need to go there. It’s simply one of the most awesome displays of water on the planet.

Reference post: Last year’s visit to Niagara Falls

Erie Canal

September 29, 2017 | 9 Comments

One of the iconic names in American history is the Erie Canal in upstate New York. From 1817 to 1825, men and horses dug a 363-mile path from the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, providing a faster way for goods to flow to and from the Northwest territories (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio). In providing a waterway to the heart of the continent, the Erie Canal changed history, providing a critical supply line during the Civil War and making New York the financial capital of the country.

First, a short geography lesson. The image below shows the path of the Erie Canal, from Buffalo on the eastern end of Lake Erie to Albany on the Hudson River, where traffic takes a right and heads south to New York City. There are two smaller canals that connect Lake Ontario and two of the Finger Lakes. In the days when roads were dirt (or mud), water was the faster way to travel.

There are actually two Erie Canals, the original brick-lined path that meandered across the countryside and is now abandoned, and the newer, straighter, concrete-lined canal that is still in use today.

Meet one of the oldest locks from the original canal. Lock 60, in the tiny town of Macedon, is now a historic site that is maintained by two dedicated old guys. I met one of them, a talkative guy named Bill, and learned a lot about the old lock system. As you can see, the original canal wasn’t very deep or wide. The tops of those walls were where the mule teams pulled the barges through the water.The indented parts of the wall where were the wooden gates could be pulled flush against the bricks to let boats pass with maximum clearance.

Bill also showed me the odd curved cement pathways that were used by the lock workers to give themselves better leverage as they opened and closed the gates. Here’s a good look at one of them at Lock 59, another old canal stop.

Over time, the canal was straightened, widened and deepened to handle the demands of more commercial traffic. It’s still not that wide, but then most of the cross-country commercial shipping has moved to trucks and trains so there are few working barges on the Erie Canal any more.

Each lock has a control booth although most of the workers seemed to be doing maintenance and not dealing with boat traffic. They do a good job of making things look good, every lock sporting the iconic blue and yellow colors of the New York State Canal System.

The section between Macedon and Lyons had several locks and I visited them all in a day. This was my favorite shot.

At Lock 28B, I walked down to the canal under the car bridge and got this view that shows a set of closed gates. Someday, I’ll see them in action, because watching traffic go through locks is pretty fun. I did that with my Dad in Seattle one time and we had a blast watching the lock team stack up the boats and then pass them through.

There’s also a bikeway from one end of the Erie Canal to the other, and many parks along the path as well, so it’s quite an enjoyable area to explore. It’s a part of American history I have enjoyed exploring. You can start with this link if you want to read more about this wonderful waterway.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Lord Acton

Glass in Color

September 26, 2017 | Leave a Comment

As promised, here are my favorite “not black and white” artworks from the Corning Museum of Glass. The combination of technique and brilliant colors in these pieces mezmerized me.

Endeavor (Lino Tagliapietra, Italian, born 1936)

This was probably my favorite piece, a flock of abstract boats made by a Venetian while living in Seattle. These pieces float in the air, moving ever so slightly in unseen slight winds.

Blood Sugar (Tony Cragg, British, born 1949)

No idea why the title “Blood Sugar” but the chaotic and yet somewhat organized display of bottles, vases, and glasses is just so appealing to me.

Maestrale (North wind) (Toots Zinsky, American, born 1951)

When this artist hears music, she sees colors. Once I learned that, this bowl was even more beautiful and it made me wonder what music she was listening to that inspired its creation.

Gold Scallop Bowl (Ann Robinson, New Zealand, born 1944)

The glow in this bowl, with the tiny bubbles on the edges of each scallop, was simply brilliant.

Eat Your Hat (Ginny Ruffner, American, born 1952)

If you’re going to have fun with glass, this is the way to go. The whole piece was so comical but this part was my favorite.

What struck me about these pieces was how each artist started with the same material (glass) and created something so amazingly different from everyone else. Truly artistic vision at work and incredibly inspiring to me as a photographer.

Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

Claude Monet

Sunday Special: Glassworks

September 24, 2017 | 2 Comments

I’m an hour from Corning, New York, this week, and visiting the Museum of Glass there has been on my bucket list for years. Today was the day! And it was even more amazing than I had hoped. There was so much that I’m going to do two posts, one today focusing on form and the other on Tuesday, focusing on color.

Concentric Validation, by Bandhu Scott Dunham (American, born 1959)

The shapes made out of glass by newer artists were breathtaking. Both the one above and the one below were exquisite.

Handmade, by Anna Mlasowsky (German, born 1984)

The one above has a video that goes along with it, showing that the artist took the term “handmade” quite literally, using fireproof gloves to bend and shape a sheet of hot glass as if it was origami paper. Amazing to watch the video and then see the piece right there.

Continuous Mile, by Liza Lou (American, born 1969)

Some art makes a statement not only about beauty and complexity, but also about community. This piece took the artist and a group of Zulu women a year to make: one mile of rope, covered by hand with more than 4.5 million black beads. As the artist said, “The idea was to employ as many people as possible, using the slowest possible technique in order to engage a community in the process of making an artwork.”

These two pieces of art stand apart from each other, separated by the length of the museum. I knew after seeing the black one that the white one had to be the same artist, and it was. Both pieces are cast glass, and the artist moved to the Czech Republic to find a studio that could support the technical demands of casting such large pieces.

Dresses by Karen LaMonte (American, born 1967)

To round off today’s collection, here’s a whimsical piece the artist said came to him in a dream!

Tire, by Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925-2008)

Art is the most intense form of individualism the world has known.

Oscar Wilde

Clearwater in Saugerties

May 5, 2017 | 1 Comment

A couple of lifetimes ago, I worked on the Clearwater, a replica of a Hudson River Sloop that does environmental education and activism. It’s too cold to sail on the Hudson in winter (unless you have an old iceboat, and then ice-sailing is fantastic!) so the boat gets put under a temporary shed and a small, hardy crew of people do winter maintenance work.

Lynch’s Marina in Saugerties was our home base back then, and that big building with the name on it is where we did indoor work when we weren’t on the boat itself. Connie Lynch, the man himself, left us many years ago, and the marina is now an upscale restaurant thing, I think.

Back in the 80s, Saugerties was a run-down, working-class town and I loved the three winters I spent there. Once the ice receded, we’d put the yawl boat back in the water and row around Esopus Creek, hoping the big boat would soon be sailing again.

That picture is me, taken by my Dad, who came up to visit one weekend. I took him out for a row, and we went all the way down to Esopus lighthouse. It was an abandoned mess of bricks back then, but since then, it’s been restored and even has a working light.

I’d forgotten about that weekend until I saw some old photos on my computer and decided it would make a good post for today. And also because it has this photo of my dad, one of my favorites of all time, facing the wind with the Hudson behind him.

A lot of people know Clearwater because of Pete Seeger, who was one of the founders and a long-time advocate, fundraiser, performer, and activist for the Hudson. Here’s one of my favorite photos of him, a long time ago, singing somewhere along the banks of the Hudson.

Sometimes people wonder how I can live in a tiny trailer. Well, I worked on the Clearwater during the sailing season for a few years, doing everything from deckhand to bosun to cook, and when I was full-time crew, I shared a space about as big as my trailer with four other people, in the fo’c’sle of the boat. So I know small!

Here’s a picture of the Clearwater under sail on the Hudson. She’s still going, and as a matter of fact, she’s sailing to Washington DC this Spring to bring attention to the Federal Clean Water legislation that is under fire by the current administration.

Clearwater under full sail. Photo courtesy Clearwater.org

You can read more about Clearwater and the sail to Washington DC at this link. I donated to support the trip, and there is a fundraising link on the page, if you want to support this action. Every dollar helps.

Sailing down my golden river,
Sun and water all my own,
Yet I was never alone.

Pete Seeger (1919-2014)