Lifestyle Ambience, Fall 2005

Recently I came across this collection of recollections; as you can tell by the reference to Salt Lake City, it is rather old!

Buzz. Statement of Mission: No mission. It's the year of the goose. [1995 was a Year of the Goose in the Canadian Zodiac, so that’s probably when I compiled this.]
It's the year of the one-of-a-kind love affair [from the Spinners 1973 album, The Spinners]. Or is it? I wonder.

Early morning breakfasts: Guess who's coming to
Breakfast.

IMAGE     IMAGE     IMAGE     IMAGE     IMAGE

Sunstream. A slow sunstream on an early morning, on an early summer in the city [#1 hit from 1966] morning.

A sundance, a raindance, all in clay animation.

Take a risk!
Here's a Hug

Things are gonna get easier
Things'll get brighter
Some day
We'll get it together and we'll get it all done
Some day
When your head is much lighter
Some day
We'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun
Some day
When the world is much brighter [1970, from the Windy City’s Stairsteps]

In Salem we had UCC ladybugs and Federal architecture. And the Salem Tab – a tabernacle!
In Salt Lake we have no bugs and Early Mormon architecture. And The Tabernacle.

We have our hope set on the Living God
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight, Time Passages [Al Stewart, 1978]
Home is Shelter. Where is home?

Who was Saint Bavo? I don't seem to be able to ask anyone who knows.

In my entire time I've learned only one thing:

If money is making money, someone is being exploited.
And that's an important thing to know.

You said you'd give me life, but you never told me about the fire.

Creativity!

From an old ad about one of my favorite activities...
oh, yeah,...I'm definitely a grown-up person in the visual arts!

In the beginning...a small bell chimed

Creativity! It chimes like a small clear bell at the heart of the human spirit.

Remember the first time you spoke to the world from a piece of shirt cardboard?

Chances are we made some of that board for you...

Now that the quality of your message has changed, however,
you really should know more about some of our professional products.

...for all kinds of grown-up people in the visual arts.

Columbia 1776 Illustration Board

Way back in the days of routine mechanical layout and paste-up, for a lot of projects I used Letraset's (and other manufacturer's) dry transfer letters, while persistently referencing Pantone and Crayola © colors.

For several years I've gradually been updating my graphic art skills so that in this era of computerized graphics maybe some day I'll be as proficient at art on the puter as I am at freehand and mechanical art—at least as expert as I've become with word processing and spreadsheets.

The very first graphic design app I worked with was Pagemaker; among other things, since then I've learned some Dreamweaver, and Adobe's Creative Suite remains my most important project. In my quest for expertise, a couple years ago I took a semester-long course in Photoshop; this summer I'm enrolled in a fast-paced Illustrator class and I'll have a couple of sessions looking at InDesign, which I need to pursue more next fall. And finally, I've learned a very limited amount of Flash.

cityfence

Now that I have DSL plus image-hosting, I can post some pics! However, since I've scanned only a few dozen, it looks as if more scanning or a digital camera needs to be in my near future. Since this is a cityblog, my first image is a cityfence:

San Diego Padres at Petco Park

Beach Towel Night!
In another expression of Americanism, Friday evening [since this'll stay on this blog for untold ages, the date was yesterday, 15 July 2005] again I attended another winning game at San Diego's extraordinarily state-of-the-art Petco Park. Amazingly, it was Beach Towel Night, so I arrived home with my awesome Padres towel that folds up into its own bag.

San Diego Padres 10, Arizona Diamondbacks 7
Read all about it.

Fireworks from Navy Pier
Toward the ballgame's finale, fireworks from the not-too-distant Navy pier amounted to a short display, but plenty enough to crown the evening.

Half Moon, Nighttime Sky
Remember Janis Joplin's 3-times platinum Pearl? Yesterday evening's moon reminded me of "Half Moon."

Spirit in the Sky
My review of this game gets to include some Pauline theology--believe it! At the top of the 9th they played Norman Greenbaum's famous Spirit In The Sky!

When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
Prepare yourself, you know it's a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you
To the Spirit in the sky
That's where you're gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You're gonna go to the place that's the best
Never been a sinner I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with
The Spirit in the sky

Trevor Saved the Game!
The absolutely unparalleled Number 51, Trevor Hoffmann's save added up to number 26 for this season and a career number 419.

Stewed Tomato

Because I originally wrote this for an online site, this restaurant review is shorter and less detailed than the others. Terrific restaurant; I am so looking forward to going back there—soon, I trust!

Stewed Tomato is a cool restaurant in the once-seafaring, now tourist and residential town of Harwich on Cape Cod. The town was settled around 1665, named after Harwich, England, and incorporated in 1694; currently Harwich Center is one of the Seven Harwiches.

Stewed Tomato Review

Though it's been several years since I was there, the Stewed Tomato at 707 Main Street in Harwich Center is one of my fondest memories and one of the prospective experiences I anticipate with the most yearning and the greatest longing. As a little kid I visited Harwich all the time—my grandparents owned a house with gardens on Church Street near Bay Road, eight furlongs from Pleasant Bay Beach. A few years ago, when I returned to the Cape after some time away, my friend Heather introduced Stewed Tomato and me to each other and I fell in love: in love with the food – especially the breakfasts – and, of course, in love with the matchless ambience! I highly recommend Stewed Tomato for breakfast, lunch, dinner and whenever.

Most recommended: Kitchen Sink Omelet; coffee.

love after love

From my fall 2001 management class, this poem - by the 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature - says it all!

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes;
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~~Derek Walcott~~

dawnwashed blues

On Desert Spirit's Fire, my theology blog, in a post called morning watch, I wrote:

Patterned after ancient practice but now in remembrance and anticipation of Easter dawn, there's a Christian tradition of Morning Watch. The fourth and last segment of the night watch, the morning watch of antiquity and of the New Testament epoch (that's us!) is from 3-6 AM; during this final watch of the night, darkness gently eases into the quiet early light of Easter dawn and God's Glory softly splashes over all creation.

Here's a poem I wrote about that hour of...

dawnwashed blues

during each night's final watch,
darkness gently eases into
quiet early light of daybreak's dawn
God's Glory softly splashes
over drowsing creation

yesterday's final light of day
followed by a slender slice of moonglow
held no starshimmer
during middle night's intensely indigo blues
today's hushed daybreak
whispered itself over creation’s
night's end watch anticipating dawn's first light
the sunup-washed sky shined with light-washed sheen
dawnwashed new morning blues made
fresh-sprung break of pale day blues

*a*n*g*e*l*

Angel | Sarah McLachlan

from the City Of Angels soundtrack

Spend all your time waiting
for that second chance,
for a break that would make it okay.
There's always some reason
to feel not good enough,
and it's hard, at the end of the day.

I need some distraction,
Oh, beautiful release.
Memories seep from my veins.

Let me be empty,
Oh, and weightless,
And maybe I'll find some peace tonight.

CHORUS:

In the arms of the angel, fly away from here,
from this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you feel.

You are pulled from the wreckage, of your silent reverie.
You're in the arms of the angel, may you find some comfort here.

So tired of the straight line,
and everywhere you turn,
there's vultures and thieves at your back.
The storm keeps on twisting.
Keep on building the lies
that you make up for all that you lack.

Don't make no difference, escape one last time.
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness,
Oh, this glorious sadness, that brings me to my knees.

REPEAT CHORUS

You're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here.