by j | Jan 4, 2009 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
My wonderful lil bro-in-law Jody just graduated from U of TX at Arlington (outside Dallas) and is going to continue on as an asst. coach to the track team he’s been running for. We had a great weekend celebrating. Below are a few of my favorite shots. For more visit my Flickr photostream.
The proud and happy family
The silly and goofy family
The graduate
Jody gave us all (with the track recruits) a great tour of campus
Maile, Ellyn, and J, walking on the moon
Maile, with Fall colors, in a car window reflection
by j | Dec 7, 2008 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
Thanks to all the neighbors, friends, and art-seekers that stopped by this weekend. It turns out I was the lone musician on the trail. We had dozens of visitors and beautiful weather. The greatest part had to be the guy who showed up having recognized my name with information about how to collect $730 of mine that the state has from a job long ago! And I was happy having sold a dozen CDs. As Maile suggested, god bless her, it all goes straight into the fund for the next album.
A few youngsters stopped by and tried out my little guitar. One eager young player attempted an Old McDonald/B-I-N-G-O medley (and confused himself).
[audio:2008/12/old-mcdonald.MP3]
When no one was around I recorded myself singing Room 304 on the porch (for all the people who couldn’t make it).
[audio:2008/12/room-304.MP3]
I snapped this shot with my new G1 Google phone of Maile stretching out some thread on the porch.
by j | Dec 7, 2008 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
Mom put together a wonderful 90th bday dinner for her dad in Dallas along with an historic slideshow of Jim’s life. I caught a lot of what he had to say about the old times.
Jim talking 1 (1mb, 1m)
[audio:2008/12/Jim-bday-dinner1.MP3]
Jim talking 2 (7mb, 7m34s)
[audio:2008/12/Jim-bday-dinner2.MP3]
Jim talking 3 (22mb, 24m)
[audio:2008/12/Jim-bday-dinner3.MP3]
Jim taling 4 (59mb, 1h4m)
[audio:2008/12/Jim-bday-dinner4.MP3]
The next morning we met at La Madelaine for breakfast.
by j | Dec 3, 2008 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
Sunni Brown tried out the presentation she needs to make next week in Chicago tonight with us at Austin VizThink.
[audio:2008/12/sunni-vizthink-12-2-08.mp3]
mp3 [1hr, 15mb]
She led us through some basic concepts for helping to visualize and draw.
I worked on a constant challenge of mine: How do I capture and catalog my thoughts.
When I drew the lower-right hand pic of an empty journal at the end of the day, I was half-intentionally referencing the image below, which I found while volunteering with Peter Mears at the HRC many years ago. It’s always stuck with me; it hung inside my closet door for a long time.
by j | Nov 23, 2008 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
Frida
Punk
Punk by the Rosemary
Townes, wrigling backscratches in the yard
Townes, chewing on a stick in the creekbed
Jonathan and Alex Jam
Maile (at La Madeleine)
Jody (at La Madeleine)
Mom and Granfather Jim
Self-portrait Shadow
Jo Ellen, watching the slideshow, at Pappadeaux
Jim and Mom, at Pappadeaux
Becky and David, at Pappadeaux
Below are a few pics (not taken by me) of Jim Howell and his family, put together by my mom for her father Jim’s 90th birthday slideshow.
Me, Jim and his wife Marcy holding my lil’ sister Katherine
Jim and his first wife Virginia with their kids
My grandmother KK and my mom as a little girl
Great grandfather feeding a squirrel
My mom’s aunt Moo
My mom’s unlce Wes
Jim as a boy
by j | Nov 9, 2008 | uncategorized & miscellaneous
I had an amazingly full three days in NYC this weekend staying at Jen’s in Brooklyn with Libby (pictured to the left, Jen and Lib figure out the route), eating out, walking around Chinatown, SoHo, the Villiage, the MoMa, the SNL studios with Chris and out to see his girls in Queens, meeting serendipitously with Ben and Brian at the New Museum, out to Glen Ridge for dinner with Ted, Sharon, and Julia, walking through Prospect Park to the farmer’s market, out to lunch with Trystan, and dinner with Patrick, Kelly, Jen, Libby, Diego, Brian and Miranda, and home again.
This is Jen’s station, Parkside Ave. I got good at navigating her Brooklyn hood.
Here is a poem I wrote on the way home, late one evening.
This Train
There is no one but you and me
(and a few others on this train) this evening.
Perhaps you are on your way home
or perhaps you are on your way out.
All I know is that you are here with me
(through this poem) riding along with me.
Nothing like a poem to unite us anonymous travelers.
A fire plug in Little Italy
Reflections of buildings in a building in Manhattan ’round Chinatown
A section of a Dali painting at the MoMa: Reminds me of myself commuting to work with the day’s weight on my head. It’s nice to think I’m not alone. Very Magritte-like.
Partial reflections in a window of the MoMa
A stairwell in the MoMa that struck me as just as artistic as some of the art
Street art
Street art. The red label reads: Long Live Ephemera.
Ballerina (yes, a real person) window-art for some red carpet event on 5th Ave.
The stairwell across the atrium at the MoMa from another floor
The reflection of a homeless man, passers-by, the church opposite
Otherworldly assortment of dried sundries in Chinatown
The New Museum. Hell, Yes!
Feet across a rubber mat at the New Museum
My reflection across the rubber mat at the New Museum
Fall colors in Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Stoop colors, Brooklyn
Me, in Trystan’s Holloween costume
Shot from the plane over Brooklyn, Manhattan
Shot from the plane of what seems to be a layer of pollution
Shot from the plane of a housing development. I love the painting-like quality.
See the whole NYC set.
Here’s a poem I scrawled waiting for the plane in the way-too-early morning before I really woke-up that seems to distill a darker side of the city experience.
Flight From New York
In the breakneck morning
When the ocean swells toward the land
All questions in another tongue
The answer ‘mentira’ spoken low
Slight nausea enters sleepless speculation
Where is that smell seeping in?
Sores of one visable limb cracking
I speed toward you, eyes closed
Beyond the second and third, fifth, seventy-second
season of sayings, suspicious looks
I wait in the seating area clicking my pen
savagely scrawling obnoxious verses
Getting silently worked up over aliens
On bad footing, onerous obligations
Without knowing what wraps me
in another level of confusion
Where the roar of the rider
splits the dreams of hosts
Setting off alarms
Beneath scolding water
Running down stairwells
Like grimy gimmicky gifts unwanted
But finally arriving much too early
With unsent thank-yous, arid, hurtful
Basking in a backache, ripped-off
Forgotten alone among the gallery-goers
Refusing to stop for any masterpiece but our own.
