Images from Beale Street

Welcome to Beale Street

Neither Sandra nor I had ever been to Memphis, and fortunately for us, Saturday proved to be a brilliantly clear day to visit the city's most famous street. For a three block stretch, Beale Street is closed to regular vehicle traffic, so it's all about the storefronts, clubs, and people. While it's much more active at night, even on a February day, the street was active, particularly with tourists visiting from around the world.



Open for Business

Beale Street is Blues City and history and a party. Many of the bars have walk-up windows where you can buy beer and liquor, and open containers are allowed on the three block stretch. Add a wide range of music, including blues, and you have a very vibrant nightlife.



Past and Still Present

Though for me, it's especially neat to see the older architecture. Many of the buildings date from the 1910s or earlier. It's also interesting to step into a retail store, A. Schwab, which first opened in 1876.



A Little of This and That at A. Schwab

There is a certain lighthearted aspect to the street and lots of food. Memphis is a city where the South meets the Delta. Toss in barbecue and the cuisine showcases a variety of influences, even Mexican.



Tacos and Blues?


A Cast of Characters


Stay Funny, My Friends

It's a street worth a walk and a view.



Viewing the Signs

Weekend in Memphis

Arriving late on Friday, Sandra and I had a low-key first evening in our visit to Memphis. Well-rested, we set out for a busy Saturday. Our first stop was the Peabody Hotel, noted for a rather fowl activity. At 11am and 5:30 every day, a set of wild ducks is led from the rooftop to fountain in the lobby.

And it's a big deal. We arrived about 10 minutes early and most of the good viewing areas were already two deep. I found a decent view on the second floor, but unprepared for the speed of the entrance. The ducks leave an elevator and head straight to their destination. It's not like the slow saunter of the local Canadian geese. No, the ducks quick-step across the red carpet to the fountain and dive into the water. In low light and far away, I couldn't snap any useful photos, though, after all the ducks entered, the area opened up and we were able to approach the fountain.



A Peabody Duck

Having tackled one Memphis tradition, we were ready for an even more well known locale, Beale Street.

Week in Wine, Week 2

The past week we enjoyed these wines along with our meals.

Alberto Longo Capoposto 2005:
From Puglia, the "heel" portion of the Italy's boot, the wine was another find in the value bin at The Wine Chap. 100% Negroamaro, the wine boasts deep color, though it tasted lighter with more red fruit, particularly sour cherry, and hints of pepper on the palate. It didn't taste particularly tight upon opening, but surprisingly it opened nicely and filled out in flavor upon tasting two days later. I've noticed the complementary nature of Italian red wine with tomato sauces a long time ago and this wine is an exceptional example. The interaction between the Capoposto and the dish of pepper steak in red sauce was a delight with the wine highlighting lots of spice accents and a long profile. Taste the food and then take a sip—delicious! I would highly recommend this to pair with an Italian tomato dish.


2007 label

Hécula 2007 Monastrell:
An Eric Solomon selection, this is a good value choice priced at $13 from the Yecla region of Spain. This Monastrell, the varietal better known as Mouvedre in France, showcases the very characteristic dark fruit of the grape. Unfortunately, I underestimated the wine's power when pairing it with a pork chop, pepper, tomato, and rice dish. Still this is a quality wine which goes nicely with darker flavors, like grilled steak or lamb. Add some wild mushrooms and enjoy.

Les Granges de Félines 2010 Grenache Merlot:
65% Grenache, 25% Merlot, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, this blend, from Vin de Pays de l'Herault, a designation in the Languedoc - Roussillon region of Southern France, offers red fruit character with herbal and bell pepper overtones. At under $10, it's a good everyday wine with versatility in food pairings, though lighter meat dishes and pasta with tomato sauce are best fits. The blend percentages change from year to year, but having read reviews of more recent vintages, the wine appears to stay consistent in its basic fruit and approachability profile.

Image Hosting and a Week in Review

This past week has been rather busy and I haven't been compelled to write about much. Though I have been working on some photos. Most of which are heading to my new blog, Hue and Light, though I might post some of them over here. I also plan to write a discussion on the topic of cropping. Particularly in the world of digital photograph, cropping can quite easily alter the impact of a snapshot.

With photos in mind, I have some work ahead for me. My image host, Image Shack, has decided to start charging for hosting over 500 photos. I have till March 1st to either pay, move some photos, or they will delete the oldest ones until my count reaches 500. The fee is fairly minimal but I am concerned about being held captive to future price increases. For my recent photos, I have been using the Google's built-in uploader, so the images are now being hosted on blogspot. Still I have to make a decision about the images which are on Image Shack.

So the gears are turning in the background even if there aren't a lot of posts in the next week or so.

A Sunday Snow

Sunday Morning Surprise

Even by Nashville's standards (which are actually colder than people like to believe), this winter has been exceedingly mild. Though, for a morning, yesterday morning, the scene embraced a wintry look...



Stopped in the Moment

...and it was pretty.

There are few things, in terms of generating wide-eyed fixed to the moment looks, like fresh snow. It falls clinging to the grass, outlining the barren branches, casting the world brighter, literally and figuratively.



Flaking

Wine in Mid-February

I mentioned a few posts ago that I would like to write about wine on a more regular basis. With that in mind, here are the wines which we've had over the past 8 days to go with our meals.

Treasure Hunter 2008 Judes Vengeance Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon:
This was more expensive ($25) than most wines we normally buy, but we will move up in price if we think it's worth it. Treasure Hunter, similar to a négociant, buys excess wines from producers and sells them under the Treasure Hunter label. While I couldn't say that it's the steal of the century, but the '08 Jude's Vengeance is a classic example of Alexander Valley Cab. The Californian wine is rich with noticeable amounts of oak which is well-balanced by fruit—an excellent pairing with a filet.



A Bottle of Hentley Farm

Hentley Farm 2004 Barossa Valley:
With a very understated label, this wine was occupying the discount bin of The Wine Chap at a price of 3 for $20. Sometimes such "bargains" are merely bad, but that was not the case with this single vineyard blend of Grenache (73%), Shiraz (18%), and Zinfandel (9%) from Australia. With a long developed flavor, the wine actually tasted better 2 days after opening; this for me is an indication that it can age nicely. A good companion wine for burgers, steaks, and other meat dishes, the Hentley Farm must slipped through the sales cracks of the local wine distributor. Richard, The Wine Chap owner, said that it was a closeout—for me, it was a steal. Most wines of this quality command $20+ price tags and the vintage showed no sign of fading. I went and bought the remaining 2 bottles in the store.

Kite Hill White Chambourcin Illinois:
Kite Hill is a winery which is part of the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail in Southern Illinois. The Chambourcin grapes, a French hybrid suited to the area, are grown at the winery, though it's not officially designated as Shawnee Hills, so it's possible that the vineyard is just outside the official AVA (American Viticultural Area). Priced in the lower teens, the wine, a dry rosé, has lots of red fruit character, so it's more of a New World style compared to French style blush. It paired well with a chicken in a Greek red sauce dish. However, it's definitely a drink fresh wine as it did not taste nearly as good after 3 days in the refrigerator.

Le Cantine Di Indie 2010 Vino Rosso del Popolo:
From Italy, this blend of Nebbiola, Barbera, and Dolcetto from the Langhe in Italy's famous Piedmonte offers very characteristic notes of red fruit with an underlying rustic backbone. As expected, the "People's red" pairs well with Italian dishes. It is worth its $15 price tag, though I have to admit that for a few dollars more, there are several Italian reds which I enjoy more.

Butternut 2010 Chardonnay:
This offering from California is, in many ways, what some people have learned to love (or hate) about Californian Chardonnay. Buttery with toasted oak notes, the wine shows nice balance and integration along with lively acidity—in other words, a good example of "classic" Californian Chardonnay. Also, contrary to some wine connoisseur views, I believe the style is a good companion to several dishes. Paired with the Butternut, last night's scallops in Alfredo sauce proved to be an excellent blend of richness and flavor.

Fairway Rubies

A Youthful Year Ago

Almost a year ago, we bought plants, including 6 small coleus, from a Kiwanis plant sale. All 6 are still healthy and growing. The following photograph shows the two end terra cotta pots containing four of the plants.


4 of 6

A characteristic of coleus is their colored leaves. They also flower readily. Most notes on maintenance suggest clipping flower stems to avoid flowering, but I tend to be more "hands off". While delicate and pretty, the flower petals do make quite a mess.


Closer Look

One benefit of the flowers is that it's easy to propogate the plants from the seeds. Here's a look at a young plant I cultivated.


Youngins

In the background, you can also see the leaves of much smaller coleus reaching above the pot rim. The plants have been fairly easy to maintain, though semi-regular (2-3 days) watering is necessary. Like some plants, coleus will let you know with droopy leaves if you haven't watered them. If you like gardening, I would think that the Fairway Ruby coleus is a nice addition to a garden, whether indoors or outdoor.

Roses

Last September, I wrote about Sandra's and my trip to Portland's International Rose Test Garden. Recently I added a post with a photo collection of roses on Hue and Light. If you want to view the flowers in a larger image-only setting, take a look.

Aurora Video

With the recent increase in solar activity, auroras have been stronger and more plentiful. Photographers have been taken advantage of the great viewing conditions and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site has been showcasing the results. Last week, there was a special treat, a 5 minute time-elapsed video of auroras over Norway by Christian Mülhauser.

Very nice.

When Small Looks Big

While reading online, I found this article on Yahoo about an interesting artist, Takanori Aiba. Drawing upon his past as a bonsai tree sculptor and maze illustrator, Takanori uses bonsai and other media as focal points for mini-buildings.

From treehouses woven to bonsai branches to a hotel formed from the Michelin man, his elaborate work shows an imaginative and deft touch. You can view images of his art in the Yahoo post or on Takanori Aiba's website, Tokyo Good Idea. I recommend taking a look.

Finding Treasures

Being a wine lover, I've written posts about wine, though considering that Sandra and I usually enjoy a glass or two with our dinners, I probably don't write about it enough. Perhaps I should write more, because winemaking is a rather fascinating human endeavour. No matter what you know, no matter what you've tasted, there is always something more to experience. Even if you've had tried every wine in the world, a new vintage waits in a barrel or a tank with its own flavors to explore.

Such is exploration. It could be tasting a 10 year old Gran Reserva from Valpenas, a small yet old Spanish region unknown to me, or tasting a Garganega/Chardonnay blend from Italy. And sometimes I think (and sometimes even say) Wow! that was $9, so I save the bottle and try to remember to buy another one. That was certainly the case for the 2008 Bianco Del Drago, the Garganega blend. Of course, weeks have passed since we drank it and I still haven't bought another, because there are always new wines to try.

I could blame it on Sandra's curiousity. Perhaps I should blame it on my own. Frequently it seems that we buy more than we could possibly drink. Of course, maybe I should blame it on the store we visit, The Wine Chap, for having tasty and varied selections. It certainly doesn't hurt that the owner Richard has a good eye and nose for a deal. Musella's Bianco Del Drago is normally priced in the mid or upper teens, though with the current offering most likely 2010, someone wanted to dump the older vintage no matter if it was still showing well.

With all this in mind, I think I will be writing more about the explorations. Like I said, there is always something more to experience.

Eddie

Eddie, taken by Jamie Trudo

My brother Steve and his wife Jamie lost their long time companion Eddie after a long illness. Having been close to animals in the past, I know that it is very jarring emotionally when one dies.

Eddie, a black coated Burmese, was a friendly and engaging character. Not surprising given the breed, he was a very chatty cat. Enter my brother's apartment and he would greet you with a long line of vocalizations. In more typical cat fashion, he was inquisitive and would often lie in the light that streamed through the front window. He would get so much sun, that at the end of the summer, he would look more brown than black.

It's the experiences and memories which enrich a life. In his cat way, Eddie enriched Steve's and Jamie's lives. He even enriched my own.

A Scene Returns

I still have several old posts with broken image links. More than a year ago, I had to change my photo storage site, but haven't reuploaded all the images. Though I felt compelled today to work on a few I took a while back and were originally posted in October 2010.

What I did back then was dissect a snapshot in the hopes of telling the tale of how a complete image emerges. The story still fascinates me, so I posted larger versions on my photo blog Hue and Light.

Here's a little peek...



Building Dusk

Moon Shots

The first shows the moon shining a bit too brightly for the shutter aperture. Below is a planet, which I believe is Venus.



Dusky Moon

The second is an afternoon image shot through barren tree branches.



Afternoon Moon

Post-Study

Social Networking study reported on Yahoo
Another study reported on Slate.com

Another link that the first study into social networking found was that the more time you spent social networking more likely you think the world is not fair. Whether spending time on Facebook leads to the cognition of unfairness can't be answered by the study, because correlation analysis doesn't imply causation. It could be the other way around: thinking the world is unfair leads people to spend more time on Facebook. Or, there could be a third factor which influences both.

No matter what the causation is, the connection is still there. People are spending time on social network sites and thinking, compared to less frequent users, that others are happier and the world is more unfair. The implications are a bit unsettling for a world which is moving more and more into the cyberworld. The view of "openness" which Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, envisions may actually make it harder for people to actually connect and share what's truly important.

Though it's not simply a matter of Facebook. It's also Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, LinkedIn, and even more sites. The barrage of other people's lives might make it difficult for us to live our own.

Somewhere beyond the easy calls of people need to grow up and learn some perspective lies insight which will allow us to move forward. We can now peek at the lives of John Jones and Sally Smith. We need to live with the consequences of that view in a healthy manner. But how?

Observation

It might not be focused on epidemiology these days, but over the past several weeks, the blog Observational Epidemiology has become a mainstay of my internet reading. Recent topics have been ranging from college and its costs to the politics of investing, though the site delves into many other issues. The bottomline is that the authors write about matters in an insightful, thought-provoking, and sometimes quite humorous manner. I believe it's worth a visit and a read.

In the Background of Posting

Social Networking study reported on Yahoo
Another study reported on Slate.com

After controlling for several factors including race, gender, religious beliefs and whether the volunteers were unattached or in a relationship, the study found links between hours spent on social networking (Facebook, etc.) and attitudes. The first connection was that frequent social networkers thought others lived happier lives. This perhaps isn't surprising when you surf the web and are bombarded with images of people smiling and having a good time. Of course, the image is merely an image, a collection of pixels that was selected to be displayed. A person, who is smiling when the camera shutter opens, could very easily be unhappy.

Considering that, I would have to admit that this blog could be guilty of misrepresentation. It's not that I'm trying to show off my "well-adjusted, happy" life, but the fact is that some people stop by and reach that conclusion. My main intention is to showcase moments and people and locations which I find positive. At some point in my life, I decided spending a lot of time criticizing and focusing on the negative can be left to other people.

For example, when my Mom was in town, we visited Opryland to see their holiday displays. I took photos, prepared the images for the blog, but I simply couldn't find a lot of positive about the experience. I stopped writing. A partially written draft still resides in my post list, though it's unlikely I'll finish it. Yes, there can be a lot of value in intelligent criticism, even if it's unbalanced and negative, but considering the time I have to blog, I'd much rather write something which could inspire someone to see and try something.

Though, in my private life, I can be very quick to criticize negatively even about actions which don't matter to me one way or the other. To criticize is a very natural thing for me to do, though I believe it rarely advances me or the world. I have spent a lot of time examining the reasons and feelings behind my sharp words. One of the things I've learned is that focus is a key. It helps for me to remind myself of the good things which happen daily in my life.

This blog is, in some ways, a set of reminders, therapy in action. There are many experiences which I find beautiful and rewarding. In writing about them, I hope to inspire myself to see more.

When the Road Bends, Take 2

Ribbons or ribbon? That's a question I asked myself as I looked over my post, When the Road Bends. Considering "does the road. It's asphalt ribbons", I changed the word to ribbon, because a road is singular and so it should be a ribbon. But then I think about it.

I tutor and I tell students all the time that on tests unless you know something is wrong stay with your initial instinctual choice. This doesn't mean that your instincts are correct, but you're more likely to change something that is right to something wrong than the reverse. So perhaps?

And I really should know better. Writing poems in the past, I've learned that the brain sometimes does get the wording perfect the first time. It's just that I don't fully understand what I'm writing. It's that misunderstanding which drives change, often an incorrect change. Now I have to consider what did I mean when I wrote the post.

Not far from my residence, the road curves over a hill. Crossing the top, you can see to the east the city of Nashville stretch before you. When the weather is sunny and pollution levels low, the scene is brilliantly beautiful. For a while now, I've been wanting to capture that view. So last Sunday, I walked to a vantage point not far from the crest of the road and took pictures of downtown. Afterwards, I examined the images, and quite honestly, I didn't get it!, that beauty I see on those sunny days when the air is clear.

Of course, I should know better; the road is intrinsically linked to the view. You drive up the hill, reach the peak, and there it is--Nashville! Of course, a photo won't ever capture that view, that moment. But I don't think I can ascribe to the moment "ineffable". If it is, don't say or do anything. You're wasting your time. Though, artists aren't wasting their time, because we're not after the scene, that moment, the one which is the focus of our attention, but another moment, one that is with us always.

So I changed the "ribbon" back to "ribbons" and a meaning returns.

Election Talk

Being an election year, this year will be exciting and also irritating. Why irritating? A lot of talk related to certain groups of people is just meant to marginalize the groups, and there is nothing instructive or moral about marginalizing someone.

When the Road Bends

The descent begins and the scene opens before me. It's a whole city not just asphalt ribbons flanked by barren trees and homes. It's the distance, miles of distance, and skyscrapers. For that moment while driving, I'm perched to examine this perspective of Nashville. Yes, it's not people shuffling past one another, not a pair exchanging words between puffs of smoke. It's neither a sermon nor a hand strumming a guitar string, but the scene is Nashville.



Downtown Nashville

And if the words can't quite express the moment, I cannot worry. It's fleeting. An image can try, but fixed points of light must change and so does the road. It's asphalt ribbons flanked by barren trees and homes.

The Magnetosphere and Auroras

Magnetosphere: region of space of where charged particles of the solar wind interacts with a planet's magnetic field.

Magnetospheres are rather oddly shaped and Earth's is no exception. Bulging in front of the sun side of the planet, the magnetosphere deflects the solar wind, thus protecting the planet. So, when a scary coronal mass ejection shoots towards the planet, the only thing that people might notice is very unusual auroras, not only in terms of color and size but also viewing locations. For example, in the Northern Hemisphere, places much further south can actually see an aurora.

This has been true recently as solar flare activity has risen. Of course, Astronomy Picture of the Day has been spotlighting photographs of the auroral effect when the particles hit the Earth's magnetosphere, causing excited atoms to light up the night sky.

The first entry was January 24th's January Aurora Over Norway, which looks like an eagle head. The next was a 360 degree view in Sweden titled Planet Aurora Borealis on January 28th.
The current entry moves to the Southern Hemisphere with Red Aurora Over Australia, which captures nicely the Milky Way in addition to a very red aurora.

The trio offer an interesting look at not only auroras but also photographic style. I recommend taking a look.