One Word Wednesday: SURPRISE!

Parkitecture: SUCCESS!

My Flickr group, Parkitecture, has taken off nicely. Click this link to see the most recent post, then use your right arrow key to page through enlargements of the numerous and amazing variety of wonderful shots that will make you say, "I-wish-I-was-there" that people have posted to the group. Some of them will tug at your heart-strings and/or are drop-dead beautiful. And all are great examples of the kind of imagination that has gone into creating the perfect atmosphere, or, just as good, preserving original structures that also do just that. Enjoy!

 

Why wait, Shakira? (turn up your sound)

I follow some popular music (mostly "dance" music) through my Jazzercise class, and I admit, I have always loved pop with strong, driving rhythms, and even better, good lyrics. I only recently discovered Shakira's brilliant 2009 hit, "Why Wait for Later," but I can vouch it's terrific to move to. Blaring out of my Jazzercise instructor's boom box it's not possible to figure out what the words are, but I was instantly fascinated by the use of Middle-Eastern harmonies, riffs, winds and percussion. I thought, wow, here's a fantastic American-Latina artist brave enough to be influenced by a regional culture that is not so popular in this country now, beautiful and brilliant Shakira. I thought, maybe our more enlightened Middle-Eastern brethren will see this as an invitation to step onto the cultural bridge. Until I read the lyrics, which (not surprisingly) are deeply suggestive. No, not suggestive, let's face it, explicit, in a nice sexy way, perhaps not something most observant Muslims would be comfortable with. But I like it. Hey, "if there are no witnesses, there is no crime." You GO, Shakira!

Drowning in your sweat
'Til I drench my clothes
You've seen nothing yet
Wait 'til you let go.

Why wait for later?
Obey my intuition
We're going to be just fine
I've got a premonition.

Something's coming on, coming on strong
Don't take too long
Don't you wanna know
Baby come home.

One more
Night with you
I won't
Think it through
Time's golden
But you knew
Nothing in the world
You can think of
That I won't do to you.

I'm gonna dance through the veil of your eyes
While you follow my steps and decide
And I see your fate in the palm of your hand.

No one looks, no one hears us this time
It's only me and your conscience tonight
If there are no witnesses, there is no crime.

Why wait for later?
I'm not a waiter.
Why wait for later?
Obey my intuition
We're going to be just fine
I've got a premonition.

Something's coming on, coming on strong
Don't take too long
Don't you wanna know
Baby come home.

One more
Night with you
I won't
Think it through
Time's golden
But you knew
Nothing in the world
You can think of
That I won't do to you.

Rock art rocks -- and that's not all there is to it!

I've just returned from travels in the southwestern United States, where the opportunities to be inspired by, and learn from, the "things left behind" by peoples living in the area long ago are exceptional. As have peoples around the world ever since man became a tool-user, the early occupants of Arizona and New Mexico (and Utah, and Wyoming, and, and, and!) left their marks, literally, on the hard rock surfaces (that I imagine they trusted would be permanent) abundantly supplied by Mother Nature. They never fail to make me wonder: What is being depicted? What is its significance, its purpose? Whose privilege or duty, glory or penance, was it to make these marks? Were they intended to be things of beauty, or was that outcome just incidental, or are they simply meant to communicate the news (quite a few are now called "newspaper" rocks) in a pre-literate world? Maybe, most disappointingly, they are just Graffiti. Students of rock imagery have many hypotheses. Some are relatively easy to demonstrate today, as in the case of this (phenomenal, if you think about it) calendrical marking system found at the V-Bar-V Heritage Site, Coconino National Forest, central Arizona: 

Observations have revealed to the patient and methodical that the circled rocks are wedged into the fissure in such a way that the sun casts shadows onto specific symbols etched into the rock, to the lower left (click photo to enlarge to see the details), to reliably  indicate the time to plant, and the time to harvest each year. The peoples who created this marvel were the Beaver Creek band of the Southern Sinagua (aka, Sinawa, as the Spanish concatenation of the words for "without" and "water" is typically pronounced), who occupied the region between about 1150 and 1400 A.D..

They used this same sheltered red rock face to depict other aspects of their world as well:

 

I'm not sure that its known what, or who, the splay-fingered, pointy-eared, long-torso'd figure represents. Fortunately, some images are more specifically grounded in a reality that we easily share today. This is a mountain lion, indicated by the long, curled tail, attacking the back of a deer or elk:

Rather than being pecked into the rock (which was surely tedious work) some images from related peoples of the same region were painted, most often with clay-based paints. These are referred to as pictographs:

This image of a deer or elk is preserved at nearby Palatki Heritage Site, also managed by the Coconino National Forest. Some of the other markings around it were left by previous and subsequent waves of residents and visitors. Palatki has one particular special panel of images, also originally white-clay wash, but blackened by the smoke from the agave roasting pit on the floor below the cliff overhang: 

This panel includes at least one human figure. The docent at Palatki said it is believed to be a female giving birth, perhaps to the array of animals around her. In the lower left of another Palatki panel is this awesome figure:

My traveling companion posited the hypothesis that this is a shaman with power to hear things others cannot. My theory is that it is an ancestress of the modern Hopi peoples of Northern Arizona, whose dramatic, scalp-ripping traditional hair style for maidens is this:

Adam Clark Vroman photograph, Hopi Maiden, 1901

The Sinawa are, in fact, believed to be the ancestors of the modern Hopi people. 

Even within small regions, styles seem to be particular to sites. This is another archaeological ruin within the Coconino National Forest, the Honanki Heritage Site.  Honanki was also occupied by successions of people, so these particular images may not be contemporaneous with those at V-Bar-V and Palatki; they do look a little different. My impression is that the image below is a sun or moon, perhaps carefully positioned to mark a lunar or solar event. Whoever made it knew well how to create a good round circle, in any case.

Of all these sites, Honanki is the most hard to access, thus offering the most privacy for vandals, I'm sorry to report. There's plenty of evidence they've taken advantage of the remoteness of the site. The compulsion to add one's own undistinguished mark over these irreplaceable images of the past is far beyond my comprehension, particularly using one's actual name!

Below is another example, from V-Bar-V site, but at least it has the cachet of being fairly old; it probably dates to the era when the V-Bar-V was a working ranch. 

 

Petroglyphs and pictographs face natural threats as well. For example, changes in sun and shade patterns caused by the growth or removal of shade trees allows the appearance of destructive mosses and rock-eating lichen. Who knows how much has disappeared below that fluorescence of very recent vintage? 

From the V-Bar-V Heritage Site

This is not a new problem, of course. It's even evident at some of these central Arizonan sites that successive waves of occupants altered what had been scratched, pecked, or painted before them. 

Efforts at remediation are tricky. Sometimes the most that can be done is obliteration of modern man's efforts to compete for attention with the ancients. And we're getting better at that. In the insert photo below, which dates from about 1954, you can see above and to the left of the child's head, a clumsy effort to make something on this Newspaper Rock (in the Petrified Forest-Badlands National Park) disappear. In the contemporary photo (2011), two important things are evident: successful cosmetic surgery has been performed to repair the damage done by early efforts to remove damage, and, it is no longer possible to easily approach the rock face. 

Please click photo to enlarge for detail

And by the way, if you guessed the identity of the little girl and that she grew up to take the 2011 photo with a long telephoto lens from a viewing promontory high above and a couple of hundred horizontal feet away from Newspaper Rock, yes, it is me. 

My new Flickr group

Still silly busy, at work and at home, and one of the things that has distracted me from blogging is the creation and administration of a new Flickr group, Parkitecture: Unique Architecture of National Parks. As it's described: 

The purpose of this group is to showcase and enjoy the rustic and romantic styles of architecture and decor used in or near national and other parks, monuments, and preserves around the United States and the rest of the world. Please limit postings to images that include man-made structures; interior and exterior shots are welcome.
Identify the park and the architect if you have that information.
Let's see your best shots of architecture that makes you WISH YOU WERE THERE!

There are myriad examples of fantastic parkitecture in America's parks, like this, architect Mary Jane Colter's 1932 Watchtower at Desert View, Grand Canyon:

It is a highly evocative structure meticulously echoing the native construction and decorative styles  to be used both for 360 degree scenic viewing (the verge of the Grand Canyon is just beyond what you see here) and as, what else, an inspiring gift shop.  More about the amazing Mary Colter later...

As you might imagine, finding images of US landmarks is easy, I'd love to have many more photos of African, Australian and New Zealand, South American, Asian, Canadian, and any other rustic and romantic park structures! 

If you have material that fits the theme, in its most broad definition, please add to the group! Your photos will have to be posted on Flickr, which will require you to open an account (free) if you don't already have one. Once you do that you can post your photos to any of numerous groups and appreciate the work of thousands of brilliant photographers.  In particular, I think you will enjoy the photos posted by the (already!) 54 members of Parkitecture!

Ah yes, I've been traveling again!

I've returned from a rather marvelous week in Arizona, and hope to develop a couple of interesting posts about my adventures soon. Alas, the problem with digital photography is that it enables people like me to over-do it, so I'm still slogging through my goodies. Stay tuned!

Photo of a building undergoing repairs at the most wonderful Desert View stop, Grand Canyon. That's right! Do not inter me, but when the time comes, please scatter my ashes in some magnificent national park instead!

A few days late, but still worth checking out!

Click on the link for a really sweet idea! (hint: it has to do with kittens and polar bears)

Teddy is a different beast

It's been awhile since I reported on the doings of dear Teddy, who first incorporated himself into our lives in October of 2009. He's quite the little family member, always entertaining, always companionable, always up to something. In so many ways he's just like his predecessor, Winston (RIP), but in one major way, Teddy is most definitely his own guy. Winston loved, adored, sought out physical contact with us. If it wasn't forthcoming to his liking, he would shove his head under the nearest available human hand in the hope of a good scratch on the chin or a back-rub, in response to which he would purrrrrrr happily. If I brought his brush out and ran my fingers over the bristles he would awaken from the deepest sleep anywhere in the house and come running for a good grooming, so happy to endure it as long as we were willing to keep it up. When he was a baby, he would sleep lying on my chest, over my heart, and later, as a big cat, glued to my side all night.

Teddy, however, isn't so interested in physical affection or even much in contact, and in fact instead of doing what most cats do and arching his back when a hand comes down to pat him, sometimes he ducks and moves away, with an irritated little "mew!!" (translation: you know I'm not into that, so STOP IT!). All of this is a shame, because he's a particularly yummy cat to hug, with soft, soft fur, and a buttery little squeezable body.
As he "matures" (relatively speaking) he has come to tolerate brushing for a few minutes at a time, and now, if he's in the mood, lets me pick him up and cradle him like a baby while scratching his neck and behind his ears, closing his eyes contentedly while I work on squeezing a bit of purring out of him.This makes me at least as happy as it makes him.

But what Teddy really responds to and thrives on (besides anything that resembles play) is being told he's a GOOD CAT!! A gooooood boy, a sweet, pretty little pooddy-tat, mommy's favorite kitty, and that he's the best love-kitty ever... He flops over on the floor or the bed and looks me in the eyes, rolls over, squirms, rolls over back again so he can look at my face, stretches, balls himself up, stretches, all the while doing the "milk tread" (kneading) until purrs start to pour out of him.

Teddy was yelled at a lot in his growing up years (well, OK, we still yell now and again,  intent on interrupting whatever little trouble he's making at the moment).  Now sometimes if I yell at him (TEDDY!!! STOP DESTROYING THE MINI-BLINDS!!!!) he'll let out a hurt, pathetic MEEEWWWW in response.

Isn't funny that this feline so adores being told he's a Good Cat, and is so sensitive to the tone of my voice that he cries when assaulted by harsh words? 

Why would anyone ever need to YELL at Teddy?

Spring is here, and we have interesting visitors

Vernal equinox, marking the start of meteorological spring, doesn't arrive for two more days, but the temperature is expected to reach nearly 80 degrees in Chicago today, as it did yesterday, and it's time for me to admit it, whether or not it seems right that the trees are leafing and the forsythia are bursting forth a good three weeks earlier than usual.  Hence, we enter into the 2012 Spring Edition of Amusing Musings. The butterflies aren't here yet - at least I don't think so - but spring always heralds the arrival of interesting visitors, such as migrating birds, that we're just beginning to notice.

This blog gets an assortment of visitors too, besides my much-appreciated regular readers. That's why I use a sitemeter (click on the tiny badge to the left of the top of this post) to get a sense of who's nosing around. At least 80% of visitors are automated web sweepers of various kinds. Google shows up as having been here several times a day every day. That's so it knows what's here, should someone be searching on "polar bears of Churchill" or "Laguna Pueblo" or "Puerto Rico 1912" or "Norman Maclean" or "Norman Bradburn." Sitemeter  identified the following particularly intriguing source of a recent search: 

Click to enlarge for detail

I hope this means the White House is considering asking Mr. Bradburn to consult, or perhaps to be honored in some special way!
Sadly, sitemeter also sometimes yields unwelcome information, for example, that photos posted here are being used elsewhere without my knowledge, permission, or approval.  So from now on, with my apologies, those of my photos I know are most likely to attract attention ("dolphin mother and baby" is, believe it or not, by far the most common search term bringing people to Amusing Musings, and my photo of a polar bear cub being loaded into the hold of a helicopter has been lifted and published on someone else's blog, albeit with full credit to me) will be made un-stealable with DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION marring the image. It's a great shame we have to go that route.

March 10

Today, March 10, 2012, would have been the 100th anniversary of Mary Eleanor Lawton Sebeok's birth. My mother was born  to Charles and Mary Cullin Lawton, in Chester, Pennsylvania, but raised in Puerto Rico and educated there and at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She earned her master's degree in linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1947. Also in 1947 she married Thomas Sebeok, who soon after became a professor at Indiana University; a few years later, I came along, and was to be her only child. 

Mother taught English as a Foreign Language and related subjects under various programs at IU from 1947 to 1973, when she and my father divorced, but she continued to teach at the University of Puerto Rico until long after she retired in 1979. She was often honored by her students wherever she taught, and some became lifelong friends. She also consulted, edited, served on numerous committees, ran language labs, and directed special programs at IU and UPR. In 1963-1964 and again in 1971-1973, she taught English and Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) in Spain. In 1993, she moved from Puerto Rico to Florida, where she organized and maintained the residents' library at The Landings at Sea Forest, the community where she last lived.

Mother was a great lover of animals. After her return to Puerto Rico in 1973, she lived in a ground floor apartment with a small, sheltered patio just right for enjoying balmy evenings with a drink in hand, chatting with friends, neighbors, and family to the music of the coquí:

(turn on your sound to hear the sound-track of my mother's patio every evening of the year)

Other creatures shared that patio as well, among them stray cats, and some brought their broods of kittens along. Being sympathetic, my mother put out bowls of cheap generic cat food, figuring it was better than what the cats might scrounge on their own. Unfortunately it was a little too cheesy for the cats and they didn't eat much of it, but she came out to the patio one evening, flipped on the light, and what should she see but a bowl full of immense toads chowing down on the cat food.  She continued to buy the cat food just so the toads would have a nice meal every day. Oh, and she captured the cats, adopted one of the kittens, and took the rest to the shelter in the hope they could find good homes.

Mother was an energetic world traveler. Shortly after she married my father, they sojourned in northern Scandinavia, bringing back photos of themselves in Finnmark (aka Lapland), "Land of the Midnight Sun" with a detour to Budapest, where my father's mother lived. Here they are with their Lap guide. He seems rather taken with my mother, does he not?

In the early 1960's, the whole family spent a summer Europe-trotting, with stops in England, Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Moscow, Hamburg. As I've blogged before, she spent a total of three academic years in Spain, one with me as an eighth-grader, and two alone. And none with her husband (as he was a difficult man, it was just as well). In each of those years she had a car, and traveled widely around the Iberian peninsula, with little forays across the Straits of Gibraltar and to the Canary Islands. Here she is in Casablanca, 1963:

Being fluent in Spanish, she got the most out of those years; later, she and a lady friend took off for South America, exploring numerous countries to the extent their budgets allowed. We cruised the Caribbean together one Christmas week, and in another year, she steamed up the coast of Canada to Alaska with her oldest childhood friend from Puerto Rico days.

She was known as a generous hostess. My father ran a small research center at Indiana University that frequently hosted visiting scholars from around the world. When someone particularly noteworthy descended in our midst, my parents would throw a party. This is the delicious punch she made that somehow never gave a very accurate impression of being as loaded with alcohol as it was. Many a renowned pundit waxed silly by the end of an evening at our house. Note the samples of punch, and handle with care if you decide to make it:

She was also an extraordinarily good cook. Bloomington didn't have much by way of an international grocery trade in those days, but she managed to find or adapt recipes from around the world to produce fantastic facsimiles of exotica. She made wonderful bacon, sour cream, and paprika-laden chicken paprikás and oh-so-tender, better-than-Hungarian goulash (the secret ingredient of which was a can of Campbell's tomato soup). She even made completely convincing Peking duck. Of course she prepared Puerto Rican food like a native. But best of all were her All-American fresh blueberry pies and peach pies. Lucky were the visitors who were invited for an intimate dinner rather than a bash in a punch bowl!

She was always frugal with her money, but nonetheless was admired for  being an elegant, tasteful dresser. A big contributing element was her tall, life-long slim stature, which she enjoyed until her last few years robbed her skeletal strength and she literally pancaked into little old lady-ness. But here she was at her early best in this 1933 photo taken of her as a college student on a visit to West Point ("where the boys were"):

Eleanor Lawton Sebeok lived nearly a century, and what a century it was. Puerto Rico was an undeveloped agricultural economy when she was born, and now, it is a world-contender in tourism, banking, pharmaceutical manufacturing and other industries. She witnessed the beginning and the end of the Cold War, two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Great Depression. When she was born there was no treatment for infectious diseases;  as happened to many families, her sister Louise succumbed to a streptococcal infection, but just 20-some years later her father, following surgery for cataracts, suffered an allergic reaction to newly-available sulfa antibiotics, but his sight was saved. We even sent a man, and more, to the moon during the prime of her life. She came from a background in which few women pursued degrees, but she not only graduated from college, but went on to take an advanced degree and enjoyed a long teaching career in academia. Well into her 80s, she got to swim with dolphins (Discovery Cove, Florida). She looks as happy in this photo as in any I've seen of her!

She died on January 24, 2005 following a fall, just weeks short of her 93rd birthday, in New Port Richey, Florida. KLK and I returned her ashes to the Atlantic Ocean off the shore of Puerto Rico, near the site of her favorite childhood home, in February 2006. Rest in peace, Mother, you led a remarkable, long life, and you left a wonderful legacy of memories for me.

As long as U can be (very) patient

While cleaning out some files today I came across these undated prints - I suspect they go back a very long way. If they can wait, say, another 30 or 35 years, it'll work for me!

Always nice to see that someone has a cheery take on a dreary subject.

The cure for dry chicken

We love "broasted" chickens from the grocery store on lazy days, but nobody eats the breast meat, which nothing, in spite of the moist cooking method (long slow rotisserie at low temperature), keeps from turning to cardboard by the time it's on the plate. I had almost completely stopped roasting whole chickens at home as well, since the breast was  a leftover that nobody ever wants to tackle. Then I got a brainstorm for salvaging the breast and any other part that isn't consumed and it's so easy and good I'll share it here.

Ingredients (vary according to your taste): 

• Leftover roasted chicken meat, breast and/or dark, including bones, wing tips, etc.
• 48 ounce box of Swanson's (or other brand) reduced sodium chicken broth *
• 1/2 medium yellow, white, or Spanish onion
• 3 or 4 medium-sized carrots to taste
• Cooked short-grain brown rice, in any amount that pleases you
• Garlic, herbs such as parsley, thyme, marjoram, and cracked pepper, as inspired

Procedure:

        Brown rice: 

•  Measure 1/2 to 1 cup of dry rice  (the more the merrier, in my opinion)
• Add just slightly under double the amount of water (e.g., just a smidgen under 1 cup for 1/2 cup of dry rice, a little less than 2 cups for 1 cup of dry rice)
• Add a few shakes of salt (less than 1/4 tsp altogether)
• Bring to a boil uncovered
• Reduce to a gentle simmer, cover 
• Check after 25 minutes; if not all the water is absorbed, cook in additional 5 minute increments until water is absorbed and rice is tender and yummy

        Soup:

• Chop onions into 1/2 inch pieces
• Peel and chop carrots into 1/2 inch pieces
• Remove most of the skin from the chicken (to reduce the amount of fat in the soup); you don't have to be too meticulous about this since the skin adds lots of flavor
• Pull chicken meat from the bones, cut larger pieces into 1/2 inch dice
• Add chicken broth
• Optionally, add dried or fresh herbs of your choice, especially if the chicken was roasted without herbs, garlic, or other seasoning
• Boil over low heat for 20-30 minutes; if covered, you will end up with more liquid, if uncovered, the liquid will boil off to some extent, makes no difference to the flavor 
• Pick out and discard the bones and wing tips
• Add cooked brown rice to taste; lots of rice means lots of soup servings     
• Cool and refrigerate to reheat later (the flavor develops even more overnight), or serve right  away. It's especially great with rosemary crackers (try Carr's or Wasa Rosemary Flatbread, both are delicious)

Variations: The short grain brown rice holds up extremely well in soup, and adds an especially lovely texture and flavor, but surely long grain brown would be good too (and it's likely to be easier to find than short grain) but the more traditional extenders, white rice or noodles, would also be worth a try. 

*When first opened, the Swanson broth has a slightly odd smell, but it tastes great yields a first rate finished product.

Think about this

I like bumper stickers, with their silly puns ("Visualize Whirled Peas") and wonderful cynicism ("Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole").  Every once in a while I see one that gives me pause (as opposed to just making me laugh):

Of course the jump-to assumption is it's aimed at Santorum supporters, but on second thought, I think I'm going to think about this one some more...

So, I'm standing there waiting for the bus...

....and as is proving to be not all that unusual, the mundane daily routine of waiting for the bus suddenly takes an interesting turn. My eyes happen to fall on an odd pink and white object in the middle of the winter-trampled patch of grassless dirt by the trash can at the curb:

Is that what it looks like? Hmm, it's not Halloween, so those aren't vampire falsies. Although it is Presidents' Day, on which we celebrate the birthday of our First Founding Father, George Washington, famous for his dentures...Yep, they're the real deal, a full set of lowers (?), probably not long ago helping someone chew their cud.

Leave a comment and tell me your story of how they got there!

Before and after

I liked it from the moment I saw it:

In a display at the Churchill airport of regional artwork available for purchase in town.

I like it even better on my wall after my favorite frame service has worked their magic. Giclée of the painting "Eternal Night" by Canadian artist Nathalie Parenteau. Enjoy looking at more limited editions at her website.

This is a screen snip of a Google search on the artist's name. Click to enlarge and marvel at the charm and brilliance of her work.