play through – Page 119 – Oh Fair New Mexico

From Nature Made to Man Made

Posted on February 18, 2011February 18, 2011
by Karen Fayeth
7 Comments

Going to jump tracks a bit from yesterday’s purple mountains majesty to marvels of human engineering.

A couple days after my return from New Mexico, I had to drive up to Sacramento for work stuff.

On the journey over highway 80, there are two major bridges to cross, the Bay Bridge, and the Carquinez Bridge.

Both are, in my mind, very Jekyll and Hyde. Both beautiful and ugly at the same time.

When riding over these bridges, I always have to wonder what the bridge builders around here have got against the east side of a perfectly nice bridge?

Here, let me show you.

This is the eastbound section of the Carquinez, headed toward Sacramento:

It’s got sort of an Erector Set toy feel about it, no? (assuming you are old enough to remember Erector Sets)

It’s very utilitarian and functional and not very aesthetically pleasing.

And then, for comparison, here’s the westbound section of the same bridge (headed toward San Francisco).

Lovely! Clean lines and very modern and stylish.

You can even see the less attractive side of the bridge off to the left.

I’d like to think that this two opposite halves approach is an anomaly to only the Carquinez, but no.

Let’s talk the Bay Bridge. It’s split into two sections, the eastern span (east of Treasure Island) and the Western Span (west of Treasure Island).

These photos are from the top deck, headed west, but look at the vast difference in the two halves of the bridge.

Eastern span:

Again with the construction by Erector Set! So not pretty. Utilitarian.

And then the elegant, iconic western span:

Rumor has it that they are doing new construction on the eastern span and when complete, it will be a much more attractive suspension bridge like the western span.

But given the pace of the Department of Transportation and CalTrans, I wonder if I’ll see it in my lifetime.

All photographs taken with an iPhone4 by Karen Fayeth and subject to the creative commons license as seen in the far right column of this page.

An Unheralded Medium for Communication

Posted on February 16, 2011September 10, 2012
by Karen Fayeth
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During my recent visit to New Mexico, I got the chance to appreciate a good ol’ fashioned medium for blasting one’s special kind of crazy out to the world.

Look, I’m not talking about no Twitter, no kind of Facebook, no blog telling the world how I think about things. No!

I’m talking about full on signs attached to one’s vehicular mode of transportation.

Not bumper stickers. Signs.

Who knew?

My trip began with a journey from the airport on I-10 headed for Las Cruces. For a large part of the journey, I followed an eighteen wheeler with a rather large sign attached to the back.

As a matter of fact, this sign:

Photo source

I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I always thought The Big Guy had a better sense of humor than that. I’d like to think if he had a problem with my little nickname, well, he’d just tell me. Why’d I have to learn about this from the back of a semi?

Should I call the number on the sign and ask?

Later that same day, I stopped off for lunch. I had a quick bite at a place over by the mall in Las Cruces and when I came out to my rental car, I noted that the car parked next to me was covered with stickers, signs and slogans.

The one that caught my eye was a bright yellow number that said:

“What if Glenn Beck is Right?”

After I finished hurting my head pondering what that meant, I was reminded of the South Park episode where Cartman riffs on Glenn Beck.

Which makes me wonder if maybe the real question is…what if Cartman is right?

Huh? Huh?

“I’m just asking questions!”

So seeing those two signs got me thinking about Southern New Mexico. It seems things have taken a lean to the right since I lived there last.

But just like the old saying about my home state, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” turns out it took only a couple days to bring things back into perspective.

As I drove back to the airport on Sunday, again on I-10, I followed a beat up old Subaru with a hand-lettered sign on the back.

This bit of typesetting said, and I quote: “If you are going to ride my ass, the least you can do is pull my hair.”

In big letters. Covering the entire rear window.

Which just made my eyes ping-zing around in my brain while the word “Tilt” flashed over my head….

Cruces is getting to be an odd place.

Sweet, Sweet Validation

Posted on February 15, 2011February 15, 2011
by Karen Fayeth
11 Comments

In the era of the internet, when the bar to entry is low for artists, writers, and photographers, how does one know if what they are producing is any good?

Well, one quick way to tell comes when your stuff gets, uh, how shall I say…appropriated…by a respectable institution.

Recall back on November 3, 2010, I uploaded this photo from the San Francisco Giants World Series Parade:

This is Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell celebrating on a trolley car on Market Street at Powell:

Note that I put a copyright on the photo because I had a feeling this was going to be a popular shot.

Last evening I was sitting on the couch looking through my Twitter timeline and saw that @SF_Giants (a Twitter account affiliated with the actual Giants organization) was posting some fun Valentines Cards.

That’s when I saw this tweet:

And when I clicked the link for the image, I saw this:

Then I gasped.

That’s my photo. My copyright watermark has been cropped off and the beer cans have been pixilated out, but that’s my photo.

So I was a little at a loss as to how I felt. Was I mad? Not really. I mean, in a way it’s kind of cool. Was I happy? Not really. I sure would have liked a photographer credit on a photo viewed by their almost 30,000 followers.

In the end, I decided I was just going to be sanguine about the whole deal. While it may not have my name on it, my image was blasted out from the Giants twitter account. I made a photo that was good enough for an MLB organization to borrow!

So…ok.

I Tweeted on my own account about how that was my photo and posted the original. Soon after, they sent me a direct message:

“Good shot! We found the picture on Google. Go Giants.”

Go Giants indeed.

I can’t stay mad at my favorite team.

An Ode to the Magical Wood Burning Stove

Posted on February 10, 2011February 10, 2011
by Karen Fayeth
8 Comments

Yesterday afternoon when I arrived at the El Paso Airport, I was heartened to see sunny skies and no snow on the ground.

“Ah,” I thought to myself, “it’s back to normal.” After reading reports of New Mexico’s state of emergency last week, I didn’t know what to expect.

Feeling happy to be home, I gathered my things and walked off the plane. Just outside the door I discovered that gap between the jetway and the plane’s door when a cold gust of wind whipped through and made my eyes water.

Brr!

Once inside the airport, I checked the weather widget on my phone. It reported that at that very moment, it was thirty degrees in El Paso.

Thirty. A three followed by a zero. That’s all you get. Just 30 small degrees.

I’d just come from a connecting flight in San Diego where it was positively tropical.

Brr!

Today I’m at my best friend’s place somewhere in the rural land outside of Las Cruces. It was a frosty night and this morning I, like all of the animals they posses, am lingering close to their beautifully old fashioned source of heat, a wonderful, magical wood burning stove.

As I sit here, I am reminded of the many ways that life is easy peasy where I live now. I want heat, I work my thermostat and the heater kicks in.

Simple. No effort.

Today I have a great warmth in my heart (pun intended) for the curative powers of fire and the simply beauty of a wood burning stove.

As the fan behind the stove kicks in to send toasty air to all corners of the room, let me take you on a journey.

It takes a lot of work to make enough fire to heat a good sized home.

To start with, just building a fire takes the use of tools.

My goddaughters are expert fire builders. They start with this small hatchet, on the ground by the stove.

They use this to ease slivers off a log for kindling. That along with some bits of newspaper help get the flames started.

Then small logs are added. The logs, of course, come from here, the ubiquitous woodpile.

I remember well (and not especially fondly) the call for “Karen! Go get a load of wood for the fireplace.” Yeah, it’s *cold* out there. I didn’t wanna brave the cold and the spiders and the rasty roadrunner living in the woodpile to bring dirty splintery wood into the house.

But I did it because the payoff was hot chocolate in front of a fire (and the consequences too hefty to ignore).

A woodpile takes work. A lot of work.

Now here’s something you don’t see in the backyard of Bay Area homes…

(not to worry, it was not left that way, I laid the axe on a stump for photographic purposes)

Off to the side is a sledgehammer and a wedge for splitting logs.

And oh hey! A bucket of pecans!

Whoops, I digress.

Back to the wood splitting. My brother did the hard work of swinging the axe and sledge. My job was to take the newly split pieces of wood and pile them up in the corner.

This work was usually done in the heat of August or September. Bleah, who wants to think about fire in the summer?

But come December I was always glad we thought about fire in the summer.

And right now, I’m very, very grateful that my best friend, her husband and kids thought about fire during the summer.

Because me, two dogs and one chatty orange cat are relying on the heat.