When We Walked on the Moon

For about ten years when I was a kid, my family rented a beachfront house on Lake Ontario for a week or two each summer. It was called the Speakman Camp, and I slept in the attic. The house had a black and white TV that pulled in one CBS station out of Watertown, NY (WWNY), and I think a couple of the Syracuse ones. Only WWNY had decent reception. I could be wrong, but I think it was from the Speakman Camp that I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in August 1964. And I know for sure that that's where I was when Mom, Dad, Steve and I watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, 50 years ago today. It was a big deal, exciting and important. But the actual image was primitive and blurry, the sound muddy. It was amazing that anyone could speak to us from the moon at all, but it seems to me that I was a little disappointed.

Seven years later, my mom was divorced and I was spending that Bicentennial summer with her in Cape
Canaveral, Florida. We visited Kennedy Space Center, and I saw Mission Control. Even then, the technology that achieved this amazing thing was starting to look a little dated. I can't find a photo from that summer, so here are a couple of Polaroid shots from (probably) 1986.

Something that definitely happened in 1986 was the Big Trip. That was when John and I drove all over the country, up and down the East Coast and west to Arizona and California, looking for someplace it wasn't winter. We ended up in Tucson. A year or so after that, a friend of ours from Columbus Ohio, Mark Haverkos, invited us to visit him on the Hopi reservation. As I wrote in 2004:

Back in the late 1980s, a former next door neighbor of ours from 13th Ave in Columbus, Ohio was the hippie, holistic veterinarian to the Hopi Nation.  He lived in Polacca, Arizona, over by First Mesa. ...

The Hopi Reservation is in northeastern Arizona, basically surrounded by Navajo territory. From Holbrook on I-40 / Route 66, there's a road (SR 87) that goes north.  ... Just 13 miles north of the Holbrook exit is the turnoff for the Little Painted Desert.  A visit to this obscure Navajo County park is like a day trip to the moon.

The Little Painted Desert doesn't have the (relatively) bright colors of its more famous National Park namesake, which is south of I-40. The county park version is basically gray.  That just makes it look more alien. The ground is caked and cracked, and hardly anybody goes there.  The day we found the place, for part of the time it was just John, me, Jenny Dog, and a cow.  The cow didn't venture down into the dunes and craters, or whatever you want to call them, but we did. I don't know whether you can find him, but John is in the lower left picture above.  

I've been to that park once since then, and it didn't look the same somehow. Neither do my 30-year-old photos. I was going to scan some of them at work today, but I didn't have time. I ended up photographing the photos.

All these years later, any mention of the Apollo program reminds me of that day when John and I walked on this strange, moon-like landscape, with no other creatures in evidence except Jenny Dog and a skinny cow. I haven't found any evidence that the Apollo astronauts trained at the Little Painted Desert, but they were at such nearby sites as Meteor Crater, Hopi Buttes and  the Grand Canyon. They also blasted an area at Cinder Lake to make their own custom crater field.

Close enough.

Karen

Left: Astronauts Edgar Mitchell (left) and Alan Shepard on a geological field exercise near Cottonwood, Arizona, Paul Switzer Collection, NAU.PH.426.475, Center of Astrogeology, USGS, Photo No. 1170142PR, Cline Library Special Collections and Archives, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Round Robin Challenge: So Many Goodbyes, Part Two

(This is sort of a continuation of my previous entry: Home Again: Part One)

For the last-ever Round Robin Photo Challenge: Goodbye, I asked people to post pictures that convey the theme of saying goodbye - to a person, a place, a stage of life, even to this meme.  As you probably know by now, my brother Steve died on Saturday, September 6th, so I have been saying my goodbyes to him. Beyond that, my trip back East for his burial included a little side trip to the town where I grew up, a place I will probably never see again. And finally, I should say a proper goodbye to this meme, which has been part of my life since 2005.

 

This is the last picture I took of my brother Steve when he was alive. It was December, 2012, and we were in Wilmington, NC. My stepmother had died six months earlier, and it had become evident that my Dad could no longer live safely in his condo, even with round-the-clock unskilled home care. He had been in the hospital in November and almost died. So we four heirs - Steve, my two stepsisters and I - had gathered to make decisions, sign papers in a lawyer's office and close up Dad's place, taking an equal share of its contents and selling the rest to pay for Dad's care. This picture was taken as we visited Dad in a rehab facility. I don't think Dad knew who Steve was that day.

As for Steve, he had spent a good chunk of 2012 in hospitals and a rehab facility himself. He suffered from heart failure, kidney trouble, sleep apnea and edema. The spring of 2014 was sort of a rerun of Steve's 2012 troubles, with a serious leg infection (cellulitis with a bit of gangrene) as an added bonus. But he came through ICU and many rough moments, did his rehab and eventually got to go home. He even had a cataract operation. He was nervous about it before hand, but delighted with the results.

Here is the last photo Steve took with his Canon EOS. At the end, he was sitting in his apartment, enjoying his newly-restored vision and waiting for a pacemaker operation that never happened. Meanwhile, he used his great camera to take pictures off of the TV. 

This was the view from Steve's balcony. We grew up visiting Lake Ontario every summer, with occasional trips to Cape Cod or some other beach spot. I know he loved listening to the waves crashing into the shore of Lake Erie.

Anyway, we all thought he was doing very well, but on September 6th he fell in his tiny bathroom. He managed to call 911, when when the EMTs arrived he had a heart attack in front of them and died. It became my responsibility to fly to Cleveland, arrange for his funeral, sort out his papers, dispose of his furniture and other possessions, and arrange for his burial in Syracuse before returning to Cleveland for the flight home. And that is what I did. I also wrote a brief obituary:

STEVEN ERIC FUNK was "born in Bethlehem" - Pennsylvania, that is, to Frank E. Funk and Ruth Anne Johnson. Steve grew up outside Syracuse, NY, where he earned a Bachelor's degree from Syracuse University. A computer programmer-analyst, he also had a lifelong love of Turkish Angora cats. Heart disease led to several hospitalizations before his death from a heart attack after a fall at his home on Saturday, September 6. Steve is survived by his father, his sister, Karen Funk Blocher (husband John) and numerous cousins. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions to the National Wildlife Federation or the cat shelter of your choice. Funeral Mass was Saturday, September 13, 2014 at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Gates Mills, OH. Interment was Monday, Sept. 15, 2014 at St. Mary's Cemetery, DeWitt, NY. Buried next to his grandfather, Ambrose Alexis Johnson (1891-1950). Please sign obituary guest book on Cleveland.com.

Here is a Google+ "story" that covers my trip Back East in detail. Warning: it contains a few shots taken at the funeral home, and a few taken at the burial.

Beyond all that, Steve was my big brother, my friend and protector when I was young. Later in life I mostly tried to return the favor. Seven years my senior, at one point as we were growing up he liked the idea of having me call him Jem while he called me Scout. We both read To Kill a Mockingbird that year. Occasionally he even let me hang out with him and his friends. If my parents were fighting, he tried to cheer me up by playing with my stuffed animals. 

As an adult, Steve lived far away from my parents and me. In fact, the four of us lived in four different states, hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Steve did his best to hang onto family connections as best he could. He was the family genealogist, and he kept in touch with Dad's sisters (particularly Aunt Marie, the only one who is still alive) and our cousins. Politically, he drifted to the right as I drifted to the left, which made for a few uncomfortable emails.But there was never any doubt that we loved each other. He was my brother! My only sibling, irreplaceable.

Steve believed in the Rainbow Bridge idea, the story that dead pets hang around in a beautiful meadow, waiting to be reunited with their people when they die. If anything like that is true, Steve is hanging out with a number of beloved cats about now.

I have at least one more entry to do here at the Outpost to finish up, probably two. I'll get that done on Monday, and make my rounds. Meanwhile, check out the other Round Robin entrees:

Linking Listas of Monday, October 14th, 12:35 AM

Karen Funk Blocher - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Ellen - Posted!
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Sylvia D. - Posted!
SMD Paper Arts
www.smdgreetings.blogspot.ca

Karen

Travels With Frank #1 - Tombstone

Okay, this is where I try to start blogging on a regular basis again. For several years I've mostly just used Facebook and someimes Tumbler, and generally only blogged here for the Round Robin Photo Challenges. But I'm going through a time in my life that is both stressful and interesting. I need an outlet, and the discipline of writing on a regular basis again, and a place to keep a log of what's going on in my life that I can crib from if I ever write that threatened autobiography. In short, I need a blog. How fortunate that I already have one! (Actually, I have a number of them. But this is the one that still gets some use!)

So.

My dad in February, before the beard came off.

If you follow me on Facebook, or even if you just read my Round Robin entries, you probably know that my Dad, Dr. Frank E. Funk, moved to Tucson in February 2013. It was not his idea, and he didn't quite realize he was coming to Tucson to stay. My stepmother, Dr. Ruth Christy Funk, had died on June 1st, 2012, and in the months that followed it became clear that his ability to live safely in his own Wilmington, NC condo was greatly diminished. Dad has dementia, and unskilled, round the clock care at home was getting to be both expensive and insufficient to his needs. So, after a stint in the hospital during which we thought we were going to lose him, we closed up his house and he came here.

By here, of course, I mean Tucson, not my house. He lives just a few miles away, in a memory care unit at Cascades of Tucson. The people there are friendly, caring and competent, and the location is extremely convenient for me, being close to both St. Michael's and my home. It means I can make up for all the years that I hardly ever saw him because we lived 1500 miles from each other. Now I see him daily, even if it's just for 15 minutes on my way home from work. And on Saturdays, we go out together for "lunch and adventures."

 Today, for example, I decided to drive him to Bisbee, Arizona, there to see the historic town and a giant open pit mine. But Tombstone was on the way, and we got there just as shots were ringing out from the gunfight reenactment, and the town was having a big Labor Day Weekend Rendezvous of Gunfighters. Needless to say, we never made it to Bisbee.

Now, the fact is, Dad didn't actually enjoy visiting Tombstone today. I asked him whether that was fun, and he simply said "No." It was too long a walk for him, and I don't think he really grasped the history of the place, much less cared about it. But he had ice cream at the oldest continuously-operated restaurant in Tombstone, and rode on a stagecoach for a narrated tour of the town, and got to do some people-watching.

The part he really likes is the long drives. He enjoys seeing the mountains, watching the clouds build up, keeping an eye on my driving and, mostly, reading the road signs, business sign and licence plates. The drive from Tucson down to Tombstone is a fairly spectacular one, with mountains and desert and several historic towns along the way. There was also a big, dramatic storm on the return drive that we watched but didn't need to drive through. So that part of the day was a success.

Karen

Back to the Land - Disneyland 2013

This past weekend was our 34th Anniversary. Like last year, we celebrated the day with a trip to Disneyland. We would go every year if we could, but it's not always easy to get away, financially or in terms of obligations at home. Leaving my dad unvisited for three days was going to be a problem, but friends from church stepped in to help, and we managed to get away for three days, Saturday morning to Monday night. The highlights and lowlights are as follows:

Best Technology Improvement: Using my iPhone this year was less of a problem than last year, due to a battery pack I brought with me to keep the battery from running down halfway through the day. I still ran low, but the phone never quite died on me this year. With it I was able to run several Disneyland-related apps, including something called MouseWait, which had crowd-sourced attraction waiting times, restaurant reviews and more. It's all a huge upgrade from my old Samsung flip phones of yesteryear, which used to be continually "Looking for Service" at Disneyland until the battery drained.

Best New Attraction: Cars Land at Disney's California Adventure, both the overall themed area and the specific attraction at the end of the street, Radiator Springs Racers. It was upsetting last year to be at California Adventure just two weeks before Cars Land opened, and only be able to glimpse it afar by peeking over a high wall. But it was worth the wait, and the return visit. The little California/Arizona border town (judging by the geology and plant life) of Radiator Springs is lovingly rendered in full scale, from Flo's V8 Diner to Luigi's Tires, and all the other familiar businesses from the first Cars film. Inside they are mostly shops, but the Cars Land merchandise is classy and inventive. The Luigi's Flying Tires attraction was a disappointment to me, the tires being too big for a single rider to control more than a tiny bit, and Mater's Junkyard Jamboree was fun but not amazing. The best part was Mator's square dance caller-style accompaniment for each set of riders, different each time as we await our turn.

But Radiator Springs Racers! Oh, my! There's a reason the line at 9:15 AM just to get a Fastpass for this hot new attraction was two or three blocks long! We opted to skip the Fastpass and stand by immediately. The wait was already an hour and a half, but it was worth it. The pre-ride line wound through beautiful scenery with a fun, clever backstory about the founding of Radiator Springs. Eventually we arrived at the loading area, in a cavern at the edge of the red rock mountains. We soon found ourselves in a full-sized, four-door race car, racing through the mountains in competition with another carful of riders. We lost, but who cares? It was awesome! We would have gotten a Fastpass afterward for a second go, but by then all the Fastpasses were gone for the day.

Biggest Disappointment: The Blue Bayou Restaurant is normally my favorite place to eat at Disneyland, but every year it seems less worthwhile. I love the romance of the fake dockside-at-night ambiance, with the restaurant's dining area located across the lagoon from the peaceful opening scene of Pirates of the Caribbean. Service is good and the menu is upscale - perhaps too upscale. For $112 including tip, the two of us had rack of lamb with a somewhat paltry amount of medium rare meat - and we'd both ordered medium well. At that price, ambiance and a miserly quantity of mediocre food just isn't good enough.

Best Food Find: Still hungry several hours after the Blue Bayou, I asked a cast member for the location of a food cart selling Disneyland's "famous" turkey legs. I was directed to a cottage-style food stand near the Matterhorn, I think it was called Edelweiss Snacks. They had not just smoked turkey legs but also barbecued port shanks for the same price, $8.95. I opted for the pork, and I didn't regret it! It was very tasty, not too greasy or sweet and only a little bit sticky. And there was more meat there than in my $40 rack of lamb entree earlier!

Best Unexpected Encounter: The day after the terrific Doctor Who season finale, which we were lucky enough to watch in HD at our hotel room, I spotted these Doctor Who cosplayers, appropriately turning up in Tomorrowland. Later I caught up with them and snapped this photo. The costuming is better than the physical resemblance, particularly in the case of the Eleventh Doctor (right). The others are portraying (left to right) the Tenth Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness. They told me there was also a Clara Oswald around somewhere, but I didn't see her.

Best Cast Member Performance: The pre-show and post-show of the venerable Enchanted Tiki Room was shiny and new because of this man, who called himself Tiki Maynard. He did new gags, voices and accents, and was generally highly amusing. I tried to congratulate him afterward, but the cast member I spoke to, who looked exactly like him, wore a name tag that said George, and claimed not to be Tiki Maynard at all.

Biggest Waste of Time: Innoventions, which seldom has anything better than remotely interesting, had an exhibit of Tony Stark's Iron Man suits, from relatively primitive beginnings to the latest and greatest upgrade as seen in Iron Man 3. We got in a line to go have a look at the suits, only to fine ourselves stuck in a queue for a game in which the visitor virtually dons a suit and watches his or her animated self move around in it. Neither of us had the slightest interest in doing this! Eventually we pushed our way out of there (politely, of course) and made our way around to where we could see the physical costumes and props from the films.

Worst Mistake: I have to award a tie here. One mistake was not allowing a fourth day, to give us more time for travel and rest. John can't take the go-go-go of three long days at the park on inadequate sleep, and even I was pretty exhausted by the time the plane home took off. The other was John's mistake of not checking his shoes for signs of wear before relying on them for three days of almost continual walking around and standing in line. His shoes turned out to be badly worn out inside, and he ended up with a two inch blister. I got a box of the biggest bandages the hotel gift shop offered, and taped him up for the final afternoon.

 Karen

So Falls Niagara Falls

Carly was curious about my other shots of Niagara Falls in winter, which date from February 1986. I think John took most of them, possibly all of them. Here's some of what I have floating around on my hard drives. They have mostly been posted before, but six years ago and longer.

I think it was -11 degrees F that day, and windy. Miserable weather, but well worth it to see this! This was during our "driving around the country, looking for someplace it wasn't winter" trip. But when even the Florida Keys were rather chilly, we drove north to where it was really winter. We saw the Falls, visited my Dad in Syracuse for his birthday, and ended up photographing snow sculptures in Montreal.

My favorite moment was when we stood on the river itself, just a little upstream from the falls. There was a little island that the water would normally rush past, but it was so heavily frozen that the snow and ice extended past the land. Daringly, I stepped out on the frozen patch of river, perhaps a few hundred feet from what you see here. 

I think my pseudo death defying feat was somewhere near this spot!

I think of this as the "grotto" shot. I remember looking through an observation window in a gift shop or museum or something, and seeing nothing but ice.

 I later did an FX version of the lamppost shot above, lighting the inside with fire.

All of the photos were originally developed in some other city after we left the Niagara Falls area. They came out all gray and awful. Fortunately, that's fixable to some extent with modern photo editing software!

Karen

Round Robin: Long Enough, Far Enough

Okay, so I can't give you the oldest of my old photos for the Round Robin Challenge: Long Ago, Far Away. My oldest photo album, the one I filled up in about third through eighth grade, is hiding from me. But I do have lots of photos from 1986, when we drove around the country, looking for someplace it wasn't winter. I've shared a bunch of them before, including shots of Niagara Falls in winter, Boot Hill in Tombstone, and some backyard wildlife photos. But let me try for some new 1986 scans for you.

 Hannibal, MO. I eventually won second or third prize in a camera store photo contest with the photo I took a few seconds later.

 Niagara Falls in February. The store that developed the film basically ruined the roll, making everything gray.

Lookout Mountain and Rock City, Chattanooga, TN.

Karen

Now let's see the bumper crop of other Robins' pictures from long ago and far away!

Linking List
as of Saturday, 1/26/13, 5:46 PM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Danielle
My Blog Thingy
http://dindannieblogthingy.blogspot.co.uk/

Martha - Posted!
Seaside Simplicity
http://seasidesimplicity.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Tina  - Posted!
Tina´s PicStory said...
my entry:
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.de/2013/01/royal-barn.html

Ria **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Airforcewifecabral
Riacabralphotography
http://airforcewifecabral.blogspot.com/

Bobby **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Creative Collision
http://creative-collision.blogspot.co.nz/

3 Sides of Crazy **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
http://www.3sidesofcrazy.com/2013/01/round-robin-photo-challenege.html

RRPC2: Fly the Fluffy Skies

When I announced the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Clouds, it was just two days after my stepmother Ruth's death. The next day I would be flying across the country to Wilmington, NC for her funeral, and I hoped to catch some cloud pictures either in Wilmington or out an airplane window. (Hooray for window seats!)

What I didn't realize was that US Airways rules required that my iPhone be turned off for the entire flight. I was only able to catch clouds from the ground with that. I didn't have my Canon camera with me because it was only a short trip, and I was traveling light.

I did, however, have my iPad with me. Because it doesn't have a built-in hot spot, I was allowed to turn it on while we were at cruising altitude and take pictures with it. The iPad was about as big as the airplane window, but I got a few interesting shots anyway.

And let's not forget what comes from clouds: rain! We thought the gray, rainy day was appropriate for Ruth's funeral.

The reason I wanted to photograph clouds out of town is that Tucson's rainy season, the summer monsoon, has not yet arrived. But I did catch some clouds at Gates Pass on a blustery April day earlier this year.

I will be posting more photos from the Wilmington trip on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, but this will do for the moment. Check out all of this week's participants!

Karen

Linking List
as of Saturday, June 16th, 2:01 AM

Karen  - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
http://mavarin.tumblr.com/
@mavarin

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com
https://twitter.com/#!/ondinemonet

Sue **Welcome, new participant!**
A Picture is Worth 1000 words
http://susiesphotospace.blogspot.it/

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Tina - Posted!
Tina's PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.de/2012/06/wordless-beautiful-piece-of-heaven.html

Clearly I need a long drive North and West

visited 38 states (76%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Some of these places I barely remember, but I've been there, all up and down the East and the Southwest. (Okay, okay, I'm only 80% sure of Vermont.) But for many years I've wanted to drive north from Santa Barbara California (as far north as I've been in Calif.) and keep going, all the way to Alaska. And I want to see Utah, and the Dakotas and all the rest. Will I ever make it? My mental Magic Eight Ball says either "Cannot predict now" or "Don't count on it!"


visited 17 countries (7.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

My world travel stats, by contrast, are decidedly pathetic. So much more of the world to see, if only I had the time and money!

Thanks to Ruth the Scrabblequeen for the map link!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #358: Zoom Zoom

Ack! Forgot it was Wednesday!

Weekend Assignment # 358: Drive
Is driving something you actually enjoy doing, or is it merely a means to an end? Do you ever go for a drive for fun, or revel in certain kinds of driving? 

Extra Credit: If time and money were not at issue, and you wanted to go somewhere 500 miles away, would you prefer to drive, be driven, take a train or fly? (Okay, you can also choose to go by boat.)

This topic came about because a) my commute to my new job is 38.2 to 41.3 miles each way, depending on the route, and b) I was about to drive to Los Angeles solo on Friday night, stay over Saturday night and drive back Sunday night. The distance from home to the LAX Marriott was 510 miles, but I was leaving directly from work and stopping off near work on the way back. That's just 475 miles each way.

So how do I feel about that long morning drive? Well, if I could get a full night's sleep first, and if gas weren't going up in price almost daily, I wouldn't mind it at all. In fact I kind of enjoy it. Driving is a game, in which the object is to arrive safely but also quickly, and without drawing a traffic ticket by going too fast or doing anything stupid.

And sometimes there are fun things to see, and possibly even photograph, sticking a camera out the window while keeping eyes firmly on the road. Sometimes it's a sunrise or sunset, mountains or desert, a blimp or a hot air balloon.

Other times it's about the vehicles, like this Breast Cancer Awareness cement mixer. Amazing!

I am having trouble wrenching my sleep schedule toward early to bed and early to rise, but yes, for now I'm mostly enjoying the drive.

And I pretty much actively chose to drive the 1,000+ miles (actually over 1,100 on the trip counter) last weekend. It's true there weren't many options, though. Airfare would have been over $200, and would have meant getting another night's hotel stay. It also would have required me to procure transportation between the Marriott, where the convention was held, and the Travelodge a mile or two away. Rooms at the Marriott, if available at all, would have cost more than twice what I paid. Rail service between Tucson and Los Angeles is only a few times a week, and completely incompatible with a weekend trip west.

But it doesn't matter, because I like the drive. I have my traditional stops and landmarks: Picacho Peak, with a choice of old and new truck stops; Toltec Road, about a third of the way to Phoenix and site of a Carl;s Jr.; The option to take the "southern route" on I-8 between Casa Grande and San Diego, or maybe just to Gila Bend; the IKEA in Guadalupe AZ outside Phoenix; the nuclear power plant and the state prison;  mountains that look like piled rocks, sometimes topped by windmills; and the Wheel Inn in Cabezon, home of a brontosaurus, a T-Rex and now a robot dinosaur museum. Depending on which route I choose, I either stop at a rest area where I once saw a bobcat at dawn, or drive past the city where the transmission on my Capri died en route to an interview with Scott Bakula. I love it.

Mind you, I didn't love going to work on one hour's sleep on Monday morning!

Karen

Weekend Assignment: Packing for Gallifrey

I'm going out of town on President's Day weekend, and I've been thinking about what to take along:

Weekend Assignment #357: The Art of Packing
When you go on a trip, do you travel light, or try to make sure you have everything you might conceivably need? Specifically, what do you bring along by way of electronics?

Extra Credit: What's the most important thing you ever lost, broke, or forgot to bring on your trip?

With my new job providing a much-needed infusion of cash, I've been able to convince John to let me drive to the Gallifrey One convention next weekend. This is the annual Doctor Who convention that I try to get to every year, but only manage to do so about half of the time. Between the celebrities and the fans in costumes, it's an event that pretty much demands that I take lots of pictures and post them online.

Traditionally, when I go out of town, I take along my camera, a charger for the camera's battery, a phone and the charger for that, and my laptop. But my current camera takes AA batteries, so that's what I'll be packing. As for the laptop, I plugged it in at Halloween and it totally failed to turn on. So, after much mutual consulting, negotiating and agonizing, John and I went out this afternoon and bought this:

It's an iPad. John's been wanting one since before they first came out, but couldn't make himself spend the money while I was underemployed. Now that I'm working basically full time, he's put it off because a) he's used to denying himself stuff like this, and b) the next generation of iPads is due to come out soon. But Best Buy was on the last day of a promotion in which you can buy a current iPad now, and trade it in for a good deal on the new one when it comes out. More likely, John will eventually get the next generation one, and hand the old one down to me.

Meanwhile, I get to borrow his iPad for my trip next weekend. This both thrills me and makes me nervous. I'm considered a bit of a techie, especially by people over age 70; but smart phones, PDAs and iPads are outside my experience. I don't even use my cell phone for anything but phone calls, the occasional photo if I forgot to bring my camera, and rarely a text message if there's no good alternative. I've never browsed the web with my phone, and my iPod is an old monochrome one.

So now we've got less than a week to get myself and the iPad ready for my trip. We did a test run over at Borders tonight, where we successfully watched a few of my videos on YouTube and looked at my photos on Flickr and Picasa, but failed utterly to log me in to Blogger and Gmail. It turned out that I needed to change a setting in Gmail (enable IMAP) and download something called BlogPress to blog on Blogger with an iPad. Myself, I'm not entirely clear on why I can't just use Safari on the iPad to access any website and expect it to work, but apparently the platform isn't quite capable of supporting the full-featured Internet, with Flash and all that stuff. Or vice versa; Google isn't exactly bending over backwards to make their products work on rival Apple's products.

Anyway, expect to see a few more blog entries this week as I attempt to get all this up and running!

As for stuff lost or left behind on a trip, I remember the time I couldn't find my passport anywhere the day we were leaving for London. John threatened to leave me home, but it turned out he'd already packed my passport and it was in the car, ready to go! On a more recent trip I forgot to bring the charger for my phone, and I once left behind the charger for a camera battery when I checked out of a hotel. This year, I hope to do better.

But will I be packing light? Well, the iPad is certainly lighter and less bulky that the Sony Vaio I bought in 2008. The camera is fairly compact, and doesn't need a charger. But clothing may be a bit of a problem this time. Gallifrey One this year is having themed clothing days, including a call for Hawaiian clothing one day, Doctor Who costuming the next, and something relating to their Islands of Mystery theme the day after that. I probably won't even be there for the Hawaiian day, and I'm certainly not going to do a full-fledged costume. Besides where can I find a fez at this late date, or a bowtie and suspenders? Would a fez even fit in my suitcase? The Islands of Mystery include Treasure Island and Jack Sparrow's Isla de Muerta, so I suspect that Black Rose Kate will be making an appearance that day. Or I could get a Gilligan hat for the Gilligan's Island theme. Gilligan hats are cool.

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: Signs and Symbols

For this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, Symbols, as suggested by Ruth of  Scrabblequeen, I initially thought of religious symbolism. Here's just one example:

Deacon Michael Meyers lights the Advent Wreath

In the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches (at least), the four week "season" leading up to Christmas is known as Advent, symbolized by the Advent wreath. Unlike the wreath on your door (or my alcove wall) at Christmas, it hangs horizontally. On Sundays it is lowered so that a priest, deacon or subdeacon can light one or more of the four candles on top of the wreath, one for each week. (One candle is lit the first week, two the second, and so on.) Three of the candles are purple, but one is rose colored.

Each part of the Advent wreath has its own symbolic meaning. The wreath itself, like most Christmas wreaths, is made of evergreen branches, symbolizing eternal life, since evergreen needles don't die with the autumn leaves. An advent wreath, again like many Christmas wreaths, may have red holly berries, symbolizing the blood of Christ. The candles represent the four weeks of Advent, a time to repent (literally to "think again") in preparation for Christmas. As more candles are lit, the Light of the World draws closer. The violet color of the three candles is the color of penitence. The rose candle, lit on the third Sunday (Gaudete Sunday, "Gaudete" being the Latin word for "rejoice"), symbolizes an element of rejoicing in the midst of our preparation.

And now you know more than you ever wanted to know about Advent wreaths, right?

The other symbols I thought of were the pictographic and color-based symbols of traffic signs - the red that means stop and green that means go (Starman thought that yellow meant "go very fast"), and most especially the shapes we recognize as meaning "Walk"...

...and "Don't Walk"...

...and similar symbols meaning "Pedestrian Crossing" and so on. Such symbols are a big factor in making the streets safer, because we can read the symbols faster than the words they represent. But photographically, they're kind of boring, aren't they? Let's move on to a street sign that symbolizes much more than is printed on it. Here it is:

John bought this retired road sign from US Route 66 in Oklahoma, as I recall, on our big trip up and down the country (plus a bit of Canada) in 1986. We had been watching the 1960-1964 tv series Route 66 on Nick at Nite, and I was going to write a book about both the tv show and the road that inspired it. But U.S. 66 had been decommissioned by the Federal government, on the theory that it had been superseded by the Interstate Highway System and was consequently no longer needed. Towns and cities unlucky enough to be on Route 66 but without an exit off I-10, I-40 or any other Interstate, were bypassed and struggled to survive. A truck stop owner in New Mexico told me that each year, more towns fell off the Rand McNally road maps as their populations fell below the threshold for inclusion.

(Okay, so I only took two or three of these photos. But I did the editing!)

So what does a Route 66 sign symbolize? It's a symbol of the Open Road, the two-lane blacktop that could take you "more than two thousand miles all the way," or to the next adventure, like the adventures of Tod and Buz, on some obscure piece of classic American real estate. It symbolizes Roadside Americana, like the Buffalo Ranch and motels made from metal teepees. It symbolizes the call of the West, the Mother Road that the Joad family followed from the Dust Bowl to California. It represents that trip we took in 1986, the only time in our adult lives when we had no obligation to hold down a job and pay the rent or the mortgage.

End of the Road: the unedited version from 1986.

Most of all, it represents a time gone by, a time that was already starting to fade away as writer Stirling Silliphant drove around the country and wrote about the adventures of two guys and a car, and Martin Milner, George Maharis and (later) Glenn Corbett filmed those adventures on location. When we drove the old route in 1986, it was a patchwork of state routes called 66, which had a tendency to dead-end with little or no warning. The most memorable case was when it petered out at a cemetery, at which a cow was grazing. We thought that was a perfect symbol of Route 66 as it existed by then: quirky, picturesque, and dead, but with life still hanging on where it had been.

Added:

More on Route 66: there is an Historic Route 66 designation now, but back when we were driving it there wasn't. The signs for it are sporadic, and it's basically a collection of state routes where the original highway was. The highway itself did not have a completely stable route over its long history, and is not only about 85% drivable. The good news is that interest in Route 66, with an historic preservation society, travel guides and so on, have saved some businesses from the brink of extinction. More info here:

National Historic Route 66 Federation
Wikipedia entry


Now let's see what other symbols the Robins have found to show us!

Linking List
as of Saturday, December 18th at 8:35 PM

Ruth - Posted!
The Scrabblequeen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Monica - Posted!
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com/

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

gMarie - **Welcome, new participant!**
gMarie
http://gmariesews.blogspot.com

Halie - **Welcome, new participant!**
My Memoirs
http://lifemomentsmemories.blogspot.com

Krista - Posted!
Through the Eye of my Camera
http://ourhomeschoolinthewoods.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Manang Kim - Posted!
My Photography in Focus
http://mgahulagwayko.blogspot.com
Karen