Love this photo challenge from Nancy Merrill’s A Photo a Week.
tbh, ALL self’s shots are unedited. She takes all her pictures on the fly.
Here are a few shots she took last week at the Legion of Honor. She went to see the exhibit Last Supper at Pompeii. On the way in, her attention was captured by these Wangechi Mutu sculptures, and there was no way to take pictures of those without including the bystanders. Not the ideal, but here they are anyway. The man in the blue jacket has a starring role:
Really, WordPress? REALLY? Whole paragraphs of text disappeared just now!
Inferno, p. 78: The first plane to leave the ground, destination Hamburg, was “Sergeant P. Moseley’s Stirling of 74 (New Zealand) Squadron at 9:45 p.m.”
Lowe then goes on to describe each type of plane involved in the attack (Self absolutely loves these details):
The “Short Stirling” was a “gentleman’s aircraft” because “it was easy to handle, and capable of absorbing an enormous amount of punishment before it succumbed to flak or fighter fire . . . it was also relatively easy to escape from — which was fortunate, because its lamentable ceiling of only 16,000 feet made it the first target of all the German flak batteries.”
There was even a plane “made only of plywood”: the De Havilland Mosquito. It had “no defensive armament whatsoever but these . . . were so fast, and were capable of flying at such extreme altitudes, that they were in fact virtually untouchable.” There were eleven Mosquitos that took off with the main bombing force: “All of them would return to England the next morning, completely unscathed.”
The Rolls Royce of aerial bombers was the Avro Lancaster: “a huge, sleek machine capable of flying to Berlin and back laden with over six tons of bombs . . . Four Rolls Royce Merlin engines along its wings could carry it to a height of 22,000 feet and above, and at speeds of 226 mph.”
In fact, she has seen this engine. Four years ago, she went to London’s Imperial War Museum for the first time: Polished and gleaming, in its own display case on the ground floor, was a Merlin engine. At the time, she wondered why an airplane engine — even one made by Rolls Royce — deserved its own display case. Now she knows.
Self has many white flowers, so for this challenge, hosted by Jude on Travel World Blog, she will push herself to look for SILVER:
Silver is a precious metal, indicating wealth. “Born with a silver spoon in your mouth”. A cool colour. Sparkling silver water. The light of the moon. It represents feminine energy, pure, emotional and sensitive.
Her MacBook Air is silver. She’s had three MacBook Airs, but this one she’s had the longest (five years)
Here is Alexander Calder’s “Fish.” Self was lucky enough to attend the Picasso/Calder exhibit at the de Young Museum in March, almost as soon as it re-opened:
March was also when self took her first road trip post-pandemic. She went to Sacramento, to visit the Crocker. She stayed in an Airbnb in an old house that used to be a laundry. For reading material (and she ALWAYS) has reading material, she brought Douglas Stuart’s novel, Shuggie Bain. The room she stayed in was white, the bedspread was white, and the book had a black-and-white (well, more like silver) cover.
It is so much fun joining photo challenges. Here’s another one, from the blog Travel With Intent: the One Word Sunday Challenge.
As this week’s challenge is POINT, self went happily through her archives to look for different examples of pointing.
Below, an Indonesian Bis Pole in the lobby of the Crocker in Sacramento. These poles are carved to resemble humans or animals. Self thinks the profile belongs to a horse.
Another from the Crocker Museum! This one’s called Harbor Seal (Bronze, by Beniamino Bufano, American, 1898 – 1970)
Final image from the Crocker: David Ligare’s Landscape with an Archer (oil on canvas), showing an archer shooting an arrow into the sky.
But whatever you post has to be in the shape of a square. Get inspired by the galleries on The Life of B.
Today, a gallery of Calders from the Calder/Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park. Photo # 3 is Calder’s homage to Josephine Baker. LOOOVE the fish.
’twas a memorable exhibit. Going on at the same time as the Frida Kahlo.
Yesterday was her birthday. Happy, Happy Birthday, Becky!
Self took loads of pictures at the de Young last Tuesday. And she bought the Frida Kahlo exhibit catalogue (a steal at $19.99). The exhibit was supposed to open last year, self had a ticket for March 2020. Finally, finally, over a year later, she saw it!
The Snakes (never mind the page, it’s somewhere near the end, that’s all self can give you).
Dan is clearly not a happy man. He even casts shade on what’s become of the old Battersea Power Station.
Battersea Power Station is, in self’s humble opinion, A GREAT RECYCLE OF INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE. It’s now the Tate Modern. OK, maybe it’s a little grim. But that’s just the outside. The art inside is fabulous!
Of course it would go. Everything went. Like Battersea Power Station before it, a place like that was marked for destruction . . . He leaned against a wall and watched the people going by, and the girl cooking the curry in the wok . . . She’d been joined by a friend who had propped up a sign saying ‘vegan.’ She smiled at Dan. He didn’t like white girls with braids . . . He put his hands in his pockets and walked away, out into the noise of Rye Lane, towards the station . . . He was nearly crying when he got to the station, and he didn’t even know why.
Lighten up, Dan!
Self can’t WAIT to see how this novel ends. According to 80% of the people who left reviews on goodreads, it’s going to be terrible.
Self’s next read is an Elmore Leonard short story collection, and those stories will be as far from contemporary London as one can possibly imagine.
