For those of you celebrating in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving.
I hope that your celebration was as much fun as ours was!
And now, onto the remainder of the long holiday weekend!
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/22/2023
2004, back in Springfield, Vermont for my 30th high school reunion. As usual, staying at the Hartness House.
A historic location, now a wonderful hotel. Our house was just two blocks away when I was a teenager, and this was one of my stops on my newspaper route, so I was here all the time then.
If you’re ever in the Springfield area and need a place to stay, I recommend it.
Filed under Photography, Travel
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/20/2023
2016 – probably the third best trip I’ve ever taken. (Gotta go with the “3 countries, 3 weeks, 3 kids” Asia trip first, the Pepperdine trip to Brussels and Prague second.)
What a great week. Another place I can’t wait to go back to.
Filed under Photography, Travel
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/19/2023
This one hits a nerve, connecting the dots for my past and a country’s historical past, where the latter was one of the reasons I connected so strongly to the former.
In 2008, as part of my Pepperdine MBA program, we went to Prague and Brussels. (Use that “Search” button over there, I have a LOT of old photos from that trip on here if you’re interested.)
Forty years earlier, when I was twelve, the Russians had invaded what was then Czechoslovakia to put down a massive protest and revolution. There were pictures on the news of tanks rolling through Prague which made quite an impression on me. (1968 was quite the year in the US as well, between MLK’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s assasination, riots, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and finally, Apollo 8.)
I got into town a day early, my first time ever travelling someplace where the language was completely different and even the alphabet was different, where I was alone with no one who could translate for me. Granted, a fair number of folks spoke English. But it was uncharted territory for me. There was a significant feeling of introversion, a strong desire to just hole up in my hotel room and wait for the next day to go out, when I would have the rest of my group there along with our guides and translators.
I went out anyway.
I had done my planning in advance and knew (in principle) where the subways ran, where the hotel was located, where the big tourist sights were. I had cash, maps, resources. And god damn it, it was an ADVENTURE!!
There was a transit station right across the plaza from the hotel and I knew enough to get on going in the right direction toward the central city. I knew which exit got me off in the center of town, at the National Museum. In fifteen minutes I was coming up from the station to the steps outside the National Museum, which turned out to be exactly where I wanted to start wandering, even if I hadn’t realized it in advance.
This is the view from the steps of the National Museum at the top of Wenceslas Square, looking down the hill. Go down to the bottom and wander off to the left a dozen blocks and you’ll come to the Vltava River and the legendary Charles Bridge, with the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral on the top of the hill on the far bank. (Which is what I did that afternoon.)
I was stunned by this view. I knew it, remembered it from when I was twelve years old. I had seen pictures from this exact spot, looking down this hill, this street jam packed with protesters and students on the one hand, and Russian tanks and troops on the other. I don’t recall having seen that picture in decades before going there, probably close to that full forty years, but those images were seared into my brain from 1968.
It was an auspicious start to the trip, which turned out to be spectacular. Brussels was nice, the places we visited as part of our Pepperdine course work were fascinating, but Prague has remained one of the favorite places that I’ve ever visited.
Tonight, having picked this picture to share, I decided to go hunting for pictures from 1968. For whatever reason, I had never searched hard enough to find the pictures that I remembered. Until today.
Thousands of protesters are seen crowding at Wasceslas square in down town Prague, Czechoslovakia, August 1968, demonstrating against the Russian invasion. Some fighting is reported in the capital after the Soviet Union and four Warsaw Pact allies invaded the country August 20, 1968. (AP Photo)
What led me to this perfect spot to start my wandering tour of this foreign city when I forced myself to tell that cautious, scared, introverted voice to STFU? Blind luck? Karma? Kismet?
Whatever, now I have the other piece of the puzzle. And I still can’t wait to get back to Prague someday!
Filed under Photography, Travel
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/18/2023
2007, San Francisco. For being a place that’s only a five or six hour drive away, we sure don’t get up there that often. And when we do, it’s most likely for a convention or for business, so we don’t sightsee much.
This time we did.
I still want to walk the Bridge some time. Maybe park here on the Marin side and walk over and back. With a camera, of course. You’ll be the second to know when I do it!
Filed under Photography, Travel
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/17/2023
What, I “need” to get up in five hours to watch SpaceX try to launch Starship?
The Rocky Mountains are impressive, and you can get some dramatic weather as well. From our Colorado trip in 2008.
Filed under Photography, Travel, Weather
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/16/2023
What was supposed to be an “atmospheric river” bringing us 1″ to 2″ of rain over three days has turned into far less than an inch of rain yesterday, a nice day today, and maybe another half inch of rain or so tomorrow night into Saturday.
Meh
There were scattered showers popping up here and there. Most of them were “there.” We got nothing.
Out to the west over Ventura County there was some action and convective activity. Very pretty!
Filed under Photography, Weather
Not NaNoWriMo, 11/14/2023
The first storm of the winter has arrived.
Just before the rain started, and it wasn’t a hard rain, just steady, the undersides of the clouds were dramatic.
The mail carrier was driving up one side of the street and back down the other as I was wandering around in the street to get the best pictures with minimal interference from wires overhead. He was nice enough to not run over me.
The smell of petrichor was heavy just before this first rain. The rough underside of the cloud deck indicates that it’s a cold storm with a lot of turbulence.
It will be cold and wet here for several days.
Filed under Photography, Weather
NaNoWriMo, Day Fourteen
(For those not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s the National Novel Writing Month – in brief, slap 50,000+ words onto the screen as a “zeroth” draft of a novel. It’s not pretty, it’s not even a first draft, it’s simply an exercise in “Just – Keep – Putting – Words – TOGETHER!” and seeing what comes out the other side. I’ve done it five times and “succeeded” twice. I’ve decided to be incredibly self centered and foolish open about my process so I’ve put my work up here on this site for the last three attempts. Just do a search to see some of the crap I’ve inflicted on my loyal readers in the past. Actually, that might not be totally true – while being “zeroth” drafts, at least three of them had stories and characters that I actually thought were pretty good if I ever managed to get past the NaNoWriMo stage, finish them, and then start editing.)
I finally pinpointed part of the mental problem I was having with getting in gear again. In big, big strokes, the 50,000 foot view, I know what I want to accomplish next mechanically (get Ed into trouble, maybe some further exposition on what’s going on with him and what’s in that truck) and I’ve got at least an idea of how to get him out of it and where he’s going next (which is useful in a day or two when his chapter comes up again). But in practice, what I was writing was getting bogged down in details and wanting to go back and re-write and looking at making sure I had accurate information about what things weigh and how much a semi can hold and what would make the cop suspicious, blah, Blah, BLAH!
That’s not the point. As pointed out above and repeatedly, the goal here is to do a “zeroth” draft. Throw some freakin’ words at the wall and see what sticks. Those details are what get looked up when this glorified outline is done and I go back and start re-writing to come up with a first draft where the story actually has to make sense (well, as much as a story with non-leprachauns and unseen evil geniuses has to make sense) and the facts have to be believable.
To put it another way, I’m not trying to win this “marathon.” The Kenyans already did that and I’m not even done with the first quarter. The goal is to get to the goal line with something that isn’t totally random text and has some semblance of a story line, characters, and perhaps a touch of my style.
All comments will be welcome.
ANY BAD SITUATION CAN BE MADE WORSE
CHAPTER SIX
“I’m sorry, say again? You want us to do WHAT?”
They had finished checking out seven of the ten seismometer stations set up around the expected eruption zone when their satellite phone had gone off. Perched near the the side of a cliff, hooked into a safety harness that was anchored to the jeep which was parked well back from the edge, checking systems on an automated seismograph base station, Carl didn’t think that this was an appropriate time for joking around. And yet, here was his boss, the seismic investigation team leader, saying something ridiculous.
Sara, belaying the ropes hooked to Carl’s harness and trying to prevent him from plunging to a horrible, painful death, couldn’t hear what Carolyn was saying to him, but she could tell that he wasn’t happy. He listened for another minute, then hung up, shaking his head. He went back to his systems checkout, verified that the base station was functional, and started walking back up the steep slope. Sara started taking up slack, keeping tension on the line.
“What was that all about?” she asked as Carl got back to level ground and started disconnecting from the harness.
“They want us to drive up toward the epicenter of that last earthquake, up toward Eyjafjallajokull. They’ve got something odd they want us to check out.”
“You’re kidding.”
“My sentiments exactly! They’re not. We should be getting some information uploaded to our tablets momentarily, which Carolyn says will explain it better. They’re sure we can get there, for some reason totally lost on me they think that we can do it in relative safety, they think it’s really important, and we’re the best ones to try to check it out.”
Sara digested all of that for a few seconds. “You’re kidding!” she repeated.
Filed under Writing
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 