Walkin’ on broken glass — front steps to an abandoned building, University Avenue, Newark NJ.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Photo ... Religion ... Spirituality ...
Although I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for many years now, and even though I disagree with the core belief of the Roman Church that
Jesus is the Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became one of us to free us from sin and to bring us the fullness of God’s revelation . . . Jesus Christ is the Messiah, God’s anointed One, the Savior of the world . . .
there is still one Catholic ritual that I like to participate in. And that takes place once a year on Holy Thursday, the evening of the Thursday before Easter. To commemorate the Last Supper and the vigil of Jesus as he awaited the fatal kiss from Judas and the Temple Guards of the Sanhedrin, some of the local Catholic parishes keep their churches open late so that the faithful can sit in silence. My brother, a practicing Catholic, visits four or five local churches between 9 and 11 PM every Holy Thursday, and so I tag along.
Hey, I still believe in God (pretty much the same kind of God that Jesus believed in), but at this point in my life, sitting in silence each week with a Zen sangha works better for me. And even if I don’t worship Jesus as the Messiah and Savior, I still find him to be a hugely compelling figure who should be taken very seriously. Most of the time, I take Jesus seriously by reading and learning as much as I can about his life and times. Over the past 15 years I’ve digested a lot of books, articles and programs from the “historical Jesus” movement in academia; my “Lenten project” for this year was an audio course by The Teaching Company entitled “Jesus and His Jewish Influences” by Prof. Jodi Magness, an archaeologist with extensive field experience in Israel.
But once a year it’s nice to actually participate in a Jesus-focused ritual with others, and there’s nothing that the good Catholics that I sit in silence with on Holy Thursday do or say that I would disagree with. We would certainly disagree regarding the ultimate implications of what happened on that Passover evening of two millennia ago in Jerusalem, but we all accept » continue reading …
Monday, March 20, 2017
Photo ...
We’ve had a fairly warm winter here in the northeast, and the relatively mild weather continued thru most of February. The last two weeks of February were exceptionally warm, getting over 60 degrees for 11 of 21 days thru March 9. With a lack of snow cover, the warmth seeped down thru the soil to where flower bulbs rest, and the spring flowers became convinced that it was wake-up time. The crocuses, daffodils, snowdrops and scilla got going and were beginning to sing their joyful songs of color and rebirth.
However, on March 10 the temps crashed and stayed mostly in the 20s and 30s thru the 17th. Early spring flowers can take a cold night or two, but not a 2-week return to February. So here’s what it looks like to be too far ahead of your time. This last revenge of winter will soon be gone, but unfortunately it robbed us of some of the wonderful early flowers that make surviving the horrible winters all seem worthwhile.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Photo ...
Looks like this hospitable vittlery is all stocked up and ready for Happy Hour!! This is actually at Taos in East Rutherford, NJ. And yea, I’m giving the place a little plug — I never had an unpleasant moment there, Happy Hour or not.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Photo ...
I haven’t gotten out to the woodlands for a hike in many months (old age is catching up with me). But today dawned sunny with temps bound for the upper 30s and maybe even low 40s, so I decided to finally give it a shot. I decided not to be too ambitious, given that it is wintertime and I’m not young anymore. So I picked the highland park closest to my home, which is Ramapo Mountain Park, just off I-287. Ramapo is not exactly deep in the woodlands, and by afternoon is generally loaded with people walking their dogs (versus serious hikers). But it’s still nice, and I managed to stay on my feet for two hours before getting back to the car for lunch and the drive homeward.
Here are four shots from my little “return to the woodlands” trip today. Despite the lack of color and activity, there’s something charming about the woods in winter (at least on a milder day like today).
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Art & Entertainment ... Photo ...
Here’s a shot that I took back in the summer of 1969. It was taken with a crummy instamatic camera in a setting with not-so-good lighting, but the subject is perhaps interesting (to urbanologists anyway). It’s a shot of the Myrtle Avenue “L” train somewhere in Brooklyn (near Myrtle Avenue, no doubt; L here means “elevated”; the actual subway route for this line was the “MJ” line). I’m a boy from the Jersey suburbs, but as a kid I would sometimes make an urban venture across the Hudson River, often with my cousin Mike. On this day, Mike and I were exploring the Myrtle Avenue subway line, which the New York MTA was about to abandon. You can see why, it was kind-of old and creaky, and there were other subway lines and bus routes in that neighborhood.
Since my teen years, I have learned a little bit about fine art, and I came to appreciate the works of the “Ash Can School“, especially painter John Sloan. The Ash Can School was active and prominent in the decades leading up to World War 2, and focused on every-day urban scenes using something of an impressionist style. I thought it might be interesting to take my Myrtle Avenue L shot and run it through the Photoshop “artistic” conversions, to see what a Sloan or a Glackens might have made of the Myrtle Avenue L. Here’s what I came up with, for better or for worse:
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Personal Reflections ... Photo ...
It hasn’t been a very good season for my outdoor mini-garden. Once again, the landlord had no objections to my cultivating a few square yards of land along side of the backyard parking lot; and so back in March, I once again invested in a few bags of fertilizer and black soil, got out the shovel and hoe, and prepared a seed bed. I also prepared 7 or 8 clay pots for growing herbs (basil, sage, oregano, parsley and mint). By late April, I had a variety of flower seeds planted, including my usual morning glories and moonflowers and recently adopted nasturtiums. I’ve had mixed success getting sunflowers started, but I was ready to give it another go, having bought 3 or 4 different varieties of seed. And I wanted to try something new and supposedly easy to grow, so I added 4 O’Clocks to the routine this year.
Well, the morning glories eventually took hold, although it took several tries (I would start the seeds indoors and then transplant the seedlings into the backyard). The moonflowers seemed to take pretty well, and the nasturtiums got going right away. But as to sunflowers, I just couldn’t make them work. I tried planting new seeds every few weeks from April thru early June, but it was always the same; the seedlings would poke thru and seem to thrive, then after a few weeks » continue reading …
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Current Affairs ... Food / Drink ... Photo ...
Before I get to my culinary experience with shallots, let me acknowledge that the past week was an extremely important and tumultuous one for our nation. FBI Director James Comey recommended that charges NOT be filed against former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because of her exclusive business use of external e-mail servers while serving as Secretary, despite the fact (according to the FBI) that classified information had been received and sent through those servers in a manner that would have easily allowed it to be “hacked” by foreign interests. And then came the very questionable shootings and killings of African-American men by while and Hispanic police officers in Baton Rouge, LA and St. Anthony, MN — followed by the equally shocking assignation of 5 white police officers in Dallas by an African-American gunman intent upon revenge. Various other violence was intentionally done upon police officers throughout the nation in response to these shootings.
I wish that I had some wise words to offer about all of this. Well, as to Ms. Clinton, that’s not all that hard. Comey cited the notion of “prosecutorial discretion” in abstaining from any further action by the FBI and US Dept. of Justice against Ms. Clinton, and I believe this was a legitimate decision. I am somewhat familiar with the workings of a local prosecutor’s office, and the idea that you can’t go after everyone whom you possess potential evidence of guilt against is very real. Justice in America is not completely blind, and never was. The enforcers of our laws only have so much money and so many people available. In the FBI’s case, they would have tied up a big chunk of their resources and US DOJ’s resources for many months and probably years in trying to convict Ms. Clinton for her mis-handling of sensitive national information.
However, even though the legal standard of “gross negligence” was clearly violated by the former Secretary (Comey used the term “extremely careless” to describe Ms. Clinton’s e-mail behavior, which is logically the same as gross negligence), there was no evidence » continue reading …
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Photo ... Society ...
I took a 3 hour walkabout today through the inner suburban maze of Essex County NJ, looking for an interesting photo angle or two. Well, actually that’s a tough assignment, as the older ‘burbs of northern NJ can be rather bland in outward appearance (and the newer ones are even worse). One element of this blandness is the widespread use of straight lines and square boxes, with a few triangles thrown in here and there to spice things up (but not by much). So, I’ve posted two shots that I took today that seem to celebrate the squareness of suburbia. The top photo shows » continue reading …
Thursday, May 19, 2016
History ... Photo ... Society ...
“What’s this?”, you of a younger persuasion might ask upon viewing this picture. Why, this is what the 1960’s looked like! (The 1970’s too, but they were kind of depressing for being mostly a lethargic, warmed-over version of the 1960s.) These here are the remains of honest-to-goodness phone booths! Yes, once upon a time, people in public places depended upon coin-operated telephones to stay in touch with the world. And “Ma Bell”, which is what we lovingly called the AT&T telephone monopoly back then, generously provided its patrons with a glass-enclosed private area (a “phone booth”) with a small seat (which you can see here) and a little desk surface just beneath the phone box. » continue reading …