Food: Creation, Community, and Communion

I'm back from Galiano Island now and am still not quite sure what hit me. It was an amazing experience, hard to put in words. It was pretty exhausting -- hardly a moment to sit and think. Our routine (weekdays) was usually: breakfast at 8, morning prayers around 8:45, class from 9-12, lunch around 12:30 or so, about an hour of free time (which was all the free time we had and we had to use it to do our daily assignments), a couple of hours of work projects (either work in the garden, kitchen cleanup and meal prep, or working with our teams to research and plan the meal we were going to present), dinner, evening prayers, and occasionally a class-related movie in the evening (e.g., "The Future of Food"). Any gaps between those items were filled with walking back and forth between the Wilkinsons' house, where classes and meals were held, and the cottages most of us were staying in; showers after working in the garden and getting all sweaty; and quick checks of email.

I took 2074 photos in all over the two weeks. I'm now into Phase Two of SoFoBoMo, which is selecting which ones to keep for the book. I also want to share a larger subset of them with all the people I took the course with, so I've begun a first pass, which I'm about halfway through. The ones that haven't been weeded out so far are up on my Flickr page. A very interesting phenomenon, by the way: I was somewhat apologetic about posting a couple of potentially disturbing photos showing blood and guts from slaughtering a lamb, but those have been the most popular ones for people to go and visit -- three times as many visits on those as the average for all the other photos in the set. Go figure. I guess people are into blood and gore.

I haven't done much editing yet, other than fixing the exposure and shadows/highlights on a few of them. I'm finding I like the exposure editing features of ACDSee Pro quite well and am so far doing all the work in that, rather than Photoshop. However I know I do prefer Photoshop for detail touch-up work. It seems to preserve the pixel resolution in the vicinity of the editing better than ACDSee does. Before I went out to the island, I did a very thorough clean of my camera, including cleaning the sensor, but I still wasn't able to get rid of a few visible dust specks. So I'm anticipating I'll have to do some spot removal. I guess I will have to have my camera professionally cleaned.

Eating Mercifully

The Humane Society of the US has created this short film (26 minutes) about the importance of stewardship of animals as part of God's creation. Apparently they are realizing the value of enlisting the help of people of faith in this important work, and people of faith are waking up to their responsibility to care for their fellow creatures. This is good news!

Thanks to Matt Humphrey, one of the TAs for the Food Course I'll be taking later this month, for the pointer to this video. I'll repeat his caution:

WARNING: There are some disturbing images here of the treatment of animals. I think it is essential that we become people of truth-telling, which means to face the facts rather than hide behind slogans like "that can't be true - farmers wouldn't do that." This is a call to action and faithfulness which demands thoughtful reflection and creative action.

Watch and pray.

I should point out that at about 13:49 in the video, Rev. Dr. Laura Hobgood-Oster relates a story about Jesus stopping a man from beating his mule. This is extra-biblical (it's from the Coptic Gospel found in the Nag Hammadi library). It's a nice story and quite in keeping with what Jesus might well have done, and surely many of the stories written down about him by others besides the Gospel writers really did happen. But it's non-canonical. However there are in the Bible passages that clearly talk about taking good care of animals, e.g. Proverbs 12:10 ("The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."), Deuteronomy 22:4 ("If you see someone’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help the owner get it to its feet."), Deuteronomy 25:4 ("Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."), and of course the extending of the Sabbath command to animals in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15.

The Oblation of Onions

I've got my computer back up and running for the most part. Still some software yet to reinstall and some settings that aren't quite the way I had them before the crash. But at least it looks like I'll be able to go ahead with SoFoBoMo. I've been getting warmed up with some more food photos lately.

Onions are pretty amazing, you know. I've recently finished reading Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, which is a wonderful combination of cookbook and theological essay. In Chapter 2, "The First Session," he guides the reader through a truly spiritual encounter with an onion. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I'd been exposed to the onion exercise in a class at Regent once before (The Christian Imagination, taught by -- surprise, surprise -- Loren Wilkinsons). But it was fun to savor the chapter from which the onion experience came.

Some choice excerpts: "Once you are seated, the first order of business is to address yourself to the onion at hand....You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that for a moment." Later: "But look what your onion has done for you: It has given you back the possibility of heaven as a place without encumbering you with the irrelevancy of location."

Still farther on, one of the best sections, worth quoting at length:

"Note once again what you have discovered: an onion is not a sphere in repose. It is a linear thing, a bloom of vectors thrusting upward from base to tip. Stand your onion, therefore, root end down upon the board and see it as the paradigm of life that it is--as one member of the vast living, gravity-defying troop that, across the face of the earth, moves light- and airward as long as the world lasts.

"Only now have you the perspective needed to enter the onion itself. Begin with the outermost layer of paper, or onion-skin. Be careful. In the ordinary processes of cooking, the outer skin of a sound onion is removed by peeling away the immediately underlying layers of flesh with it. It is a legitimate short cut; the working cook cannot afford the time it takes to loosen only the paper. Here, however, it is not time that matters, but the onion. Work gently then, lifting the skin with the point of your knife so as not to cut or puncture the flesh beneath."

Later on: "Perhaps now you have seen at least dimly that the uniquenesses of creation are the result of continuous creative support, of effective regard by no mean lover. He likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the lines, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions as turnips, but to His present delight--His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen....With Peter, the onion says, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Yes, says God. Tov. Very good."

Later he touches on his idea which he elsewhere calls oblation: "Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences....But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him...[r]eality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods--to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things."

I think a photographer's calling is very connected with this idea of attentiveness to things, of oblation (offering them up to God and to others by really seeing them and loving them).

Ron Reed, in his blog Oblations, quotes the core exposition of this idea of oblation from Capon's chapter "The Oblation of Things" in his book An Offering of Uncles. My church, Point Grey Inter-Mennonite Fellowship, is going to have Ron as a guest speaker on Sunday, Sept 6, to give a version of his talk "Oblation: The Artist's Holy Calling." Lucky us!

SoFoBoMo at risk

Woe is me. My computer crashed and the hard disk is toast. I stupidly had it configured as RAID 0, not RAID 1 (I hadn't really understood all that stuff) so I don't have a duplicate drive to jump back in and keep going as if nothing had happened, as I thought I would. My latest full external backup of the drive was over four months ago (again, stupid; I should be doing them nightly). I've got the disk down at a data recovery specialist place and they will be able to retrieve it all, but it doesn't sound like they will return me a bootable drive exactly identical to the one that died. I think they're just going to get my files back for me and put them on an external drive. I will have to start fresh with a new install of the OS and reinstall all my software, etc. Very time consuming. Bleeacchh! This is a major setback and might put my entry into SoFoBoMo at risk.

No photos to share today, as I haven't been taking any, since I don't have anywhere to put them to process them and don't want to get too far ahead of myself until the computer is back up and running.

More SoFoBoMo Thoughts

I did some thinking about PDF file creation and hosting, as I was coming up with an answer to Billie Mercer's question on the SoFoBoMo Flickr forum.

Here's what I wrote:

If you have CS3, perhaps you have Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not just Acrobat Reader). It comes with Creative Suite. Anyway, if you've got Acrobat, you can combine the separate PDF pages generated by Photoshop CS3 into one multi-page PDF file by starting Acrobat, clicking on "Create PDF" and selecting "From Multiple Files..." then browse to the folder where your files are located.

If you don't have (and don't feel like buying) Acrobat, another easy way to make a PDF file is to create the book in Word first. You can lay out pictures and text there however you like. Then using any of several "print-to-PDF" utilities (such as the free PDFCreator) which you would have installed first, just print from Word as if you're printing to a printer, but select the PDF output instead of your printer.

Now about hosting: Anita has her own website and she has uploaded the PDF file directly to the root folder on her website. That costs money and is non-trivial. However, there are other options that are nearly as good.

1) Try http://freepdfhosting.com (it's free, but you have to register, and you have to make a donation in order to store a PDF file larger than 2 MB which a book of high quality photos probably will be). Pretty straightforward to create an account and upload files. I haven't tried it myself, but I've Googled to find other books hosted on it. The URL will look something like this http://freepdfhosting.com/uploads/413a3e072b.pdf (you can check out that book to see an example of how your book will look).

2) Try the free webspace available through SkyDrive on Microsoft Live Spaces (http://spaces.live.com). Uploading files is pretty straightforward (once you've created your account, navigate in the browser to your public folder and click "Upload Files" then Browse on your hard disk for them), but viewing them isn't quite as smooth as if you had your own webspace. It doesn't show up embedded in the same browser window, but asks whether you want to download the file. And the URLs aren't very nice. But you can store up to 25 GB for free.

3) Try creating a free website on Google Sites (http://sites.google.com). Pretty straightforward to sign up for an account and create a new site. You need to upload your PDF file as an "attachment" to some page in your site (e.g., your home page), but then you can point people to the URL of the file directly. File size limit: 10 MB per attachment.

4) Try uploading the PDF file directly to Google Docs (http://docs.google.com). Like Google Sites, you have to have (or create) a Google account to do this. But once you've got one and are logged in, just click Upload, Browse your computer to find the file, and click "Upload File." Again, the URLs aren't very nice, and there's a bunch of Google Docs framework stuff at the top and right of the window. File size limit: 10 MB per PDF.

None of those solutions is IDEAL, but they're all pretty simple and have varying advantages/disadvantages.

I have realized that I can't just do a Blurb book, because I do want to have a PDF result to post online, and Blurb doesn't give you one. So I'm back to the drawing board planning to either use InDesign (which I'd need to spend some more time learning) or Word. I don't want to have to do the layout twice (both for PDF and for the printed Blurb book), so I'm going to try to do what someone else suggested and just export the individual PDF pages (complete with text and photos) as JPGs and plop them in to Blurb pages one at a time with full bleed. I'd like to try that once before the real thing comes along. I still think I'm going to go with Issuu for the hosting, as I really like its polished looke and page-turning interface.

Another thing I've decided to do, at the recommendation of an artist friend, is to prepare for the actual shooting I'm planning to do over the two weeks of the Food Course by photographing my meals from now until then. I think that not only will that discipline prepare me for the SoFoBoMo task, but it will also prepare me for the contemplative aspects of the Food Course. It will make me more mindful of what and how I'm eating, and it will help me to slow down as I approach my meals. Perhaps I'll be more grateful for them, too.

OK, here goes the first meal. Took 23 shots and kept 6 of them, to tell the story of my dinner.

Hmmm, a full fridge, but nothing interesting to eat...

Besides, I haven't done dishes in weeks and there's gross stuff growing in my big cooking pot...

I guess it's one of those frozen dinner days...

Zap it...

Nice and hot...

Yum!!

Back from Boston

I had a wonderful visit with my nephew Isaac over the past week. There's nothing like spending time with a baby to bring you back in touch with what is fundamental about being human. All other things fade in importance when you're looking into his eyes and babbling back and forth with him. I could sit with him on my lap for hours mesmerized by his little movements, his attentive looks, and his adorable smiles and coos. It was very hard to tear myself away to go to the airport. Here are a few choice photos.

SoFoBoMo 2009

The challenge is on again this year, to complete a photography book, from start to finish, in one month. It's called SoFoBoMo (for Solo Photography Book Month) because it's loosely modeled after NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month). Last year 170 photographers signed up, and 60 of them completed their books. That shows it is challenging, but not impossible.

This year I will be taking part in a two-week intensive course on the theology of food, called "Food: Creation, Community, and Communion," on Galiano Island, from May 25 to June 5. My intention is to photograph every aspect of this course, the participants, learning, gardening, slaughtering a lamb, cooking, partaking in meals, celebrating communion, etc. This book will be a documentation of the course. I plan to complete it by June 25, 2009. I am even hoping to get credit for doing this as my optional extra project.

Today's photo is of one of the sheep from Hunterston Farm on Galiano Island, with her triplet lambs. Who knows? Maybe one of these lambs will be the one we slaughter for the Food Course. I shudder to think of it. Reminds of me of the time when my mother went to visit her cousins as a kid and she naively asked "where's Blackie?" (their pet lamb). Her cousin blithely replied, "Oh, he's in the freezer." I guess, though, when you live on a farm, that's part of life. I don't know how they choose one to slaughter for this course. It seems such an ominous thing to do, but of course humanely slaughtering an animal on one's own farm for the purpose of food is far better than what they do in commercial slaughterhouses. I'm sure I will be learning more about all of this in this course.

Getting feedback

I'm thrilled to report that my bleeding heart photo (see Feb 13 post) was selected by one of the admins of the "A" Class group on Flickr, and I was invited to post it on their best Valentine's Day photos thread. What a way to get more traffic and comments! Much as I like to think I do my photography just for the joy of it and to be a blessing to others, I have to admit to some baser motives: the kudos I get are part of what keeps me going.

It's been a while since I've done a mystery photo, so here's one.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is a repost, but it's seasonally appropriate, and I don't have anything new right now. As you can probably tell, my project of taking 100 photos a day got derailed. I'll try to get back to taking some new photos for the blog soon, but I had a few deadlines to meet on other stuff.

One Hundred Photos a Day

I'm starting a new challenge that an artist friend/mentor has given me to get in practice for SoFoBoMo 2009 (Solo Photography Book Month) in May/June: take 100 photos a day for 30 days, cull them down to the best three each day, and then pick the 35 best ones of the 90 I end up with at the end of the month. I'm to attempt to shoot photos in a theme, and look for ways to connect the best photos of each day using that theme; a new theme might emerge as I look over my photos for the first few days, which is OK; but then I should direct my shooting for the subsequent days to fill out that theme.

This is a good challenge for me, as I never shoot this way. I'm finding it really hard to even shoot 100 photos a day. I can do that with no problem when I'm travelling somewhere outside my home turf, but it's harder with the familiar. The first day I took 20. The second day I did better and took 73. The third day I did none. And today (well...it's yesterday by now, it's nearly 2:30am), I have taken only 60 and am about ready to call it a night and go to bed.

Here are a few of the photos from the past three sessions:

This one I took when I thought I was working on a theme called "thresholds":


I was thinking this next one could be part of a series called Departure.


This one doesn't fit into any particular theme, but I like how it came out. It took the most set-up and post-processing of all the photos so far.


This one I've titled "Constellations" -- see the constellation reflected in the Christmas ball, as well as the constellation of lights on the tree? Kind of a Little Dipper / Big Dipper pairing. Not set up. It just turned out that way (after some cropping), and I didn't even notice the resemblance to the dippers until now.


So, you see, I'm not very good at finding a theme to tie all my photos together, or sticking to a theme I've pre-selected. This project is going to be very hard!

From the archives

I haven't gotten out to do much shooting in the snow apart from that one day. I've actually not even gotten outside much. I still haven't dug my car out in two weeks. Church was cancelled a second week in a row this morning, due to the snow and ice on the roads. So I've been spending lots of time inside, and one of my projects has been scanning old photos and slides.

Here's one from my archives. Taken in 2004, it's of the piano at Regent College. Taken on my old Yashica 230-AF, on Fujichrome Sensia slide film.

Let it snow, redux

Well, the snow did eventually come, and come, and come. Buckets of it! It just won't stop. As of Wednesday morning, we'd had 62 centimeters (about 2 feet) of accumulated snow since all of this began. And probably about 10-15 cm more has fallen since. Closing in on an all-time record snow fall for Vancouver for the month of December. We did have the record accumulated snow on the ground by Dec 25, so it was the whitest Christmas ever for our fair city. Here are some photos:

A tree in my yard.

Icicles on my house.

The view out my front door.

After I shoveled my walk.

Someone's car. Yes, I think that's a car!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

We were supposed to get a snow storm tonight, but we didn't. So I've put some digital snow in my blog instead. Enjoy!

(Note: You can't see it from a feed reader, you've got to actually go to my blog site. And for the technically inclined, here's where I got the code.)

The First Noël without Cricket

I'm tired of having a dark and gloomy house for Christmas when all my neighbors have lights up and/or trees showing through the window. I want to be part of the Christmas cheer. So I caved in this year and bought an artificial Christmas tree. I like real trees better. They smell nice, they are more environmentally friendly, and they were part of all my Christmases growing up, so they bring back fond memories. But they are such a hassle (they're hard to get home, they drop needles all over the place, and then you've got to find a way to recycle them afterwards), that I rarely get one. I've actually only had a real tree once, when I had a housemate with a truck who helped me pick it up. (The year that I used the trimming off the top of a friend's tall hedge as a "tree" doesn't count.) So I figured if I'm not even going to enjoy a real tree, why keep hanging onto the somewhat irrelevant sentimental notion that they are nicer? So I finally took the plunge. I went out and bought myself a Noma 6-1/2' Pre-Lit Self-Shaping Pine Tree, with little white lights. Here it is, pre-ornaments. As my Dad used to say every Christmas, I think it's the nicest tree I've ever had! I've already had one compliment from a neighbor about it. It has already enhanced my Christmas mood, and I got out my trumpet and have been playing Advent hymns and Christmas carols every day since. Yay! I love this season of the year.

But someone is missing from it all. Here's a photo from Christmas 2005 with Cricket. This is my first Christmas without her, and I still miss her a lot. I doubt she ever knew that there was anything special about the Christmas seaon. She actually looks kind of bewildered about the Christmas tree in this photo; it's the only time she ever saw one. But she loyally kept me company no matter what incomprehensible things I did. She just wanted to be wherever I was in the house, and she got used to being posed for photographs. She was usually pretty good at it, though in this one she does have that look of, "Come on, Rosie, haven't you got a good shot yet?" (I took six.)

Thanksgiving

I have much to be thankful for this season. I'm still in the Thanksgiving mood, even more than a week later. I continue to be impressed with the way President-elect Obama is thoughtfully putting together his team, fostering transparency in government, and soliciting input from the people. I love the way he's using a YouTube channel to keep people informed, and we can "join the discussion" and give our suggestions (which they take seriously) at Change.gov. Very interesting "Inside the Transition: Health Care" video, for example.

Well, enough politics. I'm also very thankful for the great time I had with my cousins over an extended Thanksgiving weekend. We had our turkey meal at Point Roberts and went for a hike down to the beach. There we saw these interesting rock formations.



Here we are playing a game of "Bananagrams" (aka Speed Scrabble) at Arbutus Cottage on Galiano Island.



An arbutus tree.



There's an awesome view behind the fog on the hike up to Bodega Ridge, honest.

Tunnel View, Yosemite, Election Day 2008

This is one of the most spectacular views in the entire world. Made famous by many photographers, including Ansel Adams. El Capitan on the left. Half Dome off in the distance. Bridal Veil Falls on the right. I stopped to see it on my way back out of Yosemite Valley earlier this month. I was awestruck. No other words are needed. Since I saw it on Election Day, perhaps it was a portent of clear skies ahead. I hope and pray so. You must click on it to see it full size (or at least as full a size as I was willing to post here).

Segue to a Segway & Touring San Francisco's Architecture

I had a great time in San Francisco last week. One of the highlights of my trip was getting to ride a Segway for the first time. I've been wanting to try one ever since I first heard about Dean Kamen's invention back in 2001. So when I heard about the tours San Francisco run by the Electric Tour Company, I signed up right away! They give you a half hour lesson on riding the Segway safely and then take you gliding around in groups of six or so, following in single file behind the tour guide who tells you (over a walkie-talkie system) all about what you're seeing. The tour I went on was around Fishermen's Wharf and the North Beach neighborhood. You get to stop and take photos and just buzz around on your own at a few places. It was way cool!

Here's a video of me riding it (click on the image first to activate the control, then click the start button at the bottom left):



Another highlight was the Architectural Walking Tour of San Francisco, led by historian Rick Evans. It was outstanding! He gave all kinds of fascinating information about the quirky history of buildings, the privately-owned public open spaces (POPOS) which hardly anyone in San Francisco even knows exist, and future urban planning for the city which is already underway. Rick is very knowledgeable and a great communicator. He's been researching all of this for years out of personal interest and for a book he's writing, but has only been leading the tours for the past year. You'd think he'd been doing it for over a decade based on how good it is. I highly recommend this tour.

Rick Evans, tour guide extraordinare, showing us the POPOS atop the Galleria Park Hotel, 191 Sutter Street, where our tour began:



The Hallidie Building (1917) at 130 Sutter Street, designed by Willis Polk, is remarkable for containing the world's first glass curtain wall, even predating the Bauhaus movement. Rick says that in spite of how ugly it is, this is the most architecturally interesting building in San Francisco. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) have their offices here, so they must agree.



The Crocker Galleria (1983), a spiffy shopping center with virtually unmarked access to two of San Francisco's underutilized POPOS. If you go there, take the escalator to the top floor and look for nondescript doors hiding staircases up to roof gardens adorning the two adjacent buildings. You can't see these garden courtyards from anywhere below, and you'd miss them if you didn't know they were there. See COMMONSpace for more info on San Francisco's privately-owned public open spaces.



The Hobart Building (1914), 582 Market Street, designed by Willis Polk (same architect who did the Hallidie Building). Because the building next door was torn down for the construction of a BART station, and its "air rights" sold to another developer so the latter could build a higher skyscraper, that odd exposed wall will remain there forever. Rick hopes it is used someday for a mural, to prevent advertisers from taking it over and ruining the view. The tall building behind it in the first of these photos is the 44 Montgomery office tower.





111 Sutter Street (1926), the Hunter-Dulin Building, aka The "Sam Spade" Building (on left) next to 44 Montgomery (office tower). The former has an interesting mix of French Chateau and Romanesque ornamentation. The building was the site of Sam Spade's office in The Maltese Falcon. The author, Dashiell Hammett, lived in San Francisco while writing the novel, and the building appears in the movie.



In the elevator lobby is an amazing hand-painted ceiling with an eclectic mix of imagery (birds, Stars of David, heraldic shields, lions rampant, fleurs-de-lis). The ceiling had been hidden for years under a layer of cigarette smoke until restorations completed in 2001 revealed it and it was repainted to its former brilliance. (Rick told us that buildings never get face-lifts by their original owners; only when a new buyer takes over, as in this case, is anyone willing to spend the money to restore great architectural history.) The lobby also features Italian marble columns and floor. A neat tidbit: you can see a foot-sized impression in the floor that was made by elevator attendants pivoting from the same spot for 50 years to direct people to one of the six elevators. (Unfortunately I neglected to photograph it, but you can see it here.)



The Shell Building (1929), at 100 Bush Street, the last great Art Deco building built in San Francisco, reflected in the glass of the Crown Zellerbach Building (1959) across the street at 1 Bush Street. The latter, designed by George Kelham, is the first glass building built after WWII. This photo shows the irony of their juxtaposition. Because it took San Francisco a long time to recover from the Great Depression and WWII, there was nothing much built between 1929 and 1959. Incidentally, I learned an interesting fact about why most tall office buildings are built with glass walls nowadays. That way they can rent out all the square footage all the way up to the edge, whereas otherwise you lose some space due to the thicker walls.



Here is the lower portion of the Shell Building:



130 Bush Street (1910), one of the narrowest buildings, if not the narrowest, in San Francisco. Sandwiched between two taller skyscrapers, this Gothic Revival structure is 10 stories high and 80 feet deep, but only 20 feet wide. (It doesn't quite make the cut for narrowest commercial building in the world -- that's the Sam Kee Building in Vancouver, at 6 feet wide). The building was originally occupied by a garment manufacturing company that specialized in thin accessories: neckties, belts, and suspenders. (Hee hee!) Notice how the Shell Building to the right has matched the height of 130 Bush with its lower floors. Contrary to what you might think, the narrow building wasn't squeezed in to a narrow spot. It was built that way when nothing was to the right of it. The Shell Building came later.



Former Standard Oil Building (1922), 225 Bush Street. This was not a stop on our tour, but Rick did point it out from a distance as we walked by, and I've learned some more about it from the Web. It was the tallest building in San Francisco when it was built. Built in the Beaux Arts style, it was modeled after the old Federal Reserve Building in New York. It "has a Mediterranean crown--a loggia capped with a red tile roof supported by a heavy, corbeled cornice." The Renaissance ornamentation was derived from a Florentine palace. (Sources: Wikipedia, SkyScraperPage, Emporis, and Vernacular Language North)



All of this has gotten me excited about architecture, which I'd never really been that keen on before.

Election time

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been obsessed with the U.S. election and haven't been paying attention to much else online for the past few weeks. In honor of this election which is sure to go down in the history books no matter who wins, here's a photo I took of the Oval Office. (Actually, it's a replica from the Jimmy Carter Library & Museum in Atlanta, which I visited in 2006.)

After the rain