Living Roof, California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park
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Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City
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What a great challenge from Lens Artists!
P. A. Moed explains:
- This week we’re showcasing cities, large and small, near and far. What are the features of your chosen city? Show us buildings, skylines, the streets, the people, and life in public spaces. Or, if you want, focus on two cities, and compare their features. Show us images that are part of your overall impression of the city.
The last big city I visited was Mexico City. I stayed in a newer area called the Polanco. Lots of fancy condominiums around (Sale price, according to a hotel employee: $2 million US). Here are some of the views from my hotel room.
Mexico City seems to be booming. The contrast between rich and poor reminded me so much of the Philippines.
I saw a lot of people walking huge black mastiffs, doberman pinschers and German Shepherds. Which is definitely not the type of dog I’m used to seeing as pets in the US.
I wondered if the dogs were part of hotel security. Imagine my surprise when I was told they were just “pets.”
Stay tuned.
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Leya is the host of this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme is circular wonders.
Without further ado . . .
- Picture # 1: Stafford Park, Redwood City, last summer
- Picture # 2: Parroquia de la Sagrada Familia, Roma Norte, Mexico City, the church where my nephew got married last week!
- Picture # 3: Main courtyard, Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City (That pillar is so imposing!)
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The first of my roses to bloom this year is:
TA-RA!
My Fourth of July rose!
Took this picture a few minutes ago. Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.
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Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday.
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“Bread” appeared in Cricket Online Review, Vol. VIII (Spring 2012)
- “Bread rises. This is something you know.”
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My orchid is blooming again! For years, it never bloomed (I’m not even sure why I kept it — but in this case, indifference paid off), and now it’s bloomed twice in a matter of months.
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One of my great Airbnb finds of the last couple of years was an East London flat facing Haggerston Park, where I stayed the summer of 2022. Not only was the flat homey and spacious, it had the most interesting collection of books (I looked up the flat, thinking to return the following year, but the rate had doubled).
Here was one of the books:
Posting for Debbie’s One Word Sunday.
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My nephew got married in Mexico City, at the beginning of March. He asked me to be a ‘ninang’ (godmother) and my job was to place the veil over the couple after they had exchanged their vows.
The night before the wedding, the guests gathered for a reception in the Roma Norte district. The setting was an old stone house. There was live music, drinks, hors-d’oeurves, and toasts. Plenty of toasts.
Posting for Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.
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Yes! I have managed to maintain concentration while reading this novel — it’s almost been a week! Which bodes well for me finishing it.
Today’s quote is about that excellent literary device: the duel.
The Count refuses to take the elevator in his building but since he is no longer a young man, he gets winded after climbing one flight of stairs and must take a rest on the second-floor leading. While resting, he ruminates.
“Why is it that our nation above all others embraced the duel so wholeheartedly?” he asked the stairwell theatrically.
Some, no doubt, would simply dismiss it as a by-product of barbarism. Given Russia’s long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes. But in the Count’s considered opinion, the reason that dueling prevailed among Russian gentlemen stemmed from nothing more than their passion for the glorious and grandiose.
True, duels were fought by convention at dawn in isolated locations to ensure the privacy of the gentlemen involved. But were they fought behind ashyards or scrap heaps? Of course not! They were fought in a clearing among the birch trees with a dusting of snow.
— A Gentleman in Moscow, p. 46 -
Penny Jackson, who was with me in the Stanford Creative Writing Program, published a collection of short stories last year: My Daughter’s Boyfriends.
She’s now a filmmaker, among many other things.
I remember thinking, when I first read her, so many years ago, that her writing had this wonderful voice.
Here’s an excerpt from the title story:
I am home from a too-long meeting with a magazine editor and my sitter is pale. “I didn’t know what to do,” she stammers. Jack’s father is standing at the doorway of my daughter’s bedroom. I slowly walk toward him and peek into the bedroom. Today Jack has chosen Naomi’s best party dress, which is a shocking velvet pink with several beaded necklaces. If he wore a black bob, he would resemble a Twenties flapper. Jack’s father towers over me. He is still in his police sergeant’s uniform. I hold my breath as Jack’s father watches his son and Naomi jump up and down on the bed.
“Hello,” I say nervously, but I am surprised. Jack’s father is laughing. Laughing so loudly that for a moment I think he is crying.
“Holy Mother of God,” Jack’s father exclaims. “Just look at him! Jack, you’re gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous!”
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I am fascinated by the main character, Count Rostov, of AGIM. Sentenced to a life of imprisonment (inside Moscow’s fanciest hotel), he tries to discern a way to take control of his circumstances.
Since he’s a very erudite sort, he turns to his literary models:
For Edmond Dantes in the Chateau d’If, it was thoughts of revenge that kept him clear-minded. Unjustly imprisoned, he sustained himself by plotting the systematic undoing of his personal agents of villainy. For Cervantes, enslaved by pirates in Algiers, it was the promise of pages yet unwritten that spurred him on. While for Napoleon on Elba, strolling among chickens, fending off flies, and sidestepping puddles of mud, it was visions of a triumphal return to Paris that galvanized his will to persevere.
— A Gentleman in Moscow, p. 29
Kanlaon 