When I was in Seattle my friend Jen was trying to take 'real life pics' to send to her brother so that he could know what her 'real life' was like. She forgot her camera a couple times so I took some to send to her. I managed to get some real life pics in San Francisco while I was there too!
In SF while I felled a tree some neighbor kid helped Bonnie dig plastic grass out of the compost! Later Mariah and mom had a video chat staring contest:
When I took off from SF the whole city was covered in clouds with Sutro Tower sticking out, it's a little blurry but if you click through to the big size you can probably make it out. Then when I got to Seattle it was cloudy but it got sunny the next day. The view from the light rail in SoDo:
Real life pics - in the car, at the restaurant, group hug:
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Real Life Pics
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
West Coast and Pickles
I'm going to San Francisco for five days and then Seattle for five days. I'm excited, I'm going to leave for the airport right after I write this blog post! What else takes ten days (plus a little) you might ask? That's right, making pickles! Lesley and I started some pickles a brewin last week and when I get back they should be nice and crunchy.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
rosiewilsonbriggs.com
Rosie and I have been working on her website for a few months now and it's finally done! See it all at rosiewilsonbriggs.com!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Projects
Sometime in the last few months I started way too many projects to actually be able to finish all of them. I've been spending the past few weeks trying to organize them all and finish some. I'm gonna go print a couple pages to be able to bind the last two copies of Brendan's book and Jess and I are on a schedule to finish our new book by the end of April. Hopefully we can stick to it. I've been putting everything together on the computer and I made this cover mock up, hopefully we'll be able to figure out a version that has less white space.
We're still trying to figure out how we're gonna put it together because color printing is so expensive and it takes so long to bind them by hand but we'll probably do at least a few that way so that we have copies to show people by springtime.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Gelatin Silver Photographs
The photographs have to be developed within a few minutes of the plate being exposed and the images slowly appear on the plate, cloudy at first but within a few minutes they clear up a lot.
To prepare the plates he starts with some egg white glue on the edges to keep the image from peeling away later. He then puts on a layer of a combination of cotton and ether to help the silver stick to the plate. Next, the silver is put on inside a dark box because this is the light sensitive chemical. The camera he uses is from the 70's and is about a 1' cube, though it can expand more since it has bellows. Once the plate is exposed he pours the developer on by hand and then stops the development with water. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. The boomerang shaped hole in the second image is a place that didn't get any of the cotton-ether bonding agent so the light sensitive chemicals didn't stick.
The texture of my skin in the images is because the silver shows some of the ultra-violet spectrum that is invisible to the human eye so you can see under the first layer of skin.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Adventure Club #2: Staten Island
Adventure Club #2 went to Staten Island's Sea View Hospital which is in the middle of the Staten Island Greenbelt that Erik and I visited last month. My co-adventurists this time were Eric (not Erik!) and Valentina who were both carrying film cameras with light meters and manual focus so their pictures will probably turn out better than mine did. It was a rare sandal weather December day so we took advantage of that and went the long way through "Blood Root Valley" which was great since it's almost far enough away from anything to feel like you're in a real forest.
There are about 10 abandoned buildings which are all eerily similar. Inside there was a lot of debris and rotting away ceilings. The buildings were brick and seemed to be pretty old but there were certain things like a concrete staircase that we thought had to be from the 50's or 60's. I've read that this part of the hospital was used until the 70's so maybe they were renovated right before they were closed.
One of the coolest things that we found was a big pile of metal trash outside of one of the buildings. It was interesting to see how well a lot of it had held up being outside for who knows how long.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Adventure Club #1: Flatbush
A couple weeks ago my friend Allison and I went out to Flatbush to check out the houses where my grandparents grew up and try to find some graves at Holy Cross Cemetary. We found the houses pretty easily, on the left is my Grandma's house on Beverly Road and on the right is the building my Grandpa lived in on New York Avenue.
Next we went down the street to the cemetery. When we told them we were looking for somebody with an Irish name from the 30's or 40's they said we might be there a while but we were able to find some likely candidates pretty quickly. However! When we got to the grave-spot there was nothing there but a tree. The person who was supposed to be buried there is John Drum my great-great-great(?) grandfather.
The neighborhood has changed a lot since the 40's, it's mostly West Indian now, we went to a local supermarket and I got some hot sauce for my hot sauce collection. Tomorrow I'll post some more pictures from my adventure last week to Staten Island!
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Thanksgiving Pie Experiment
A couple days before Thanksgiving I saw some Persimmons in one of the grocery stores across Queens Blvd near the library. I had been trying to think of something interesting to make to bring to the potluck Thanksgiving that Lesley and I were going to go to at our friend Maggie's house.
I went home and investigated Persimmon pie and it turns out that the internet recipe community is pretty split between two versions. The first I call "Pumpkin Pie Style" where the persimmons are pureed, the filling has milk and eggs in it, and there is no top crust. The second, "Apple Pie Style" uses sliced persimmon, sugar, corn starch and lemon juice in the filling.
I decided to make a Pumpkin Pie Style Persimmon Pie for the "Wendsgiving" dinner I was going to at my friend Brendan and Jennette's house and an Apple Pie Style Persimmon Pie for real Thanksgiving at Maggie's house because I could make that one vegan.
Both turned out great although I didn't end up with enough filling for the Apple Style Pie (I used 4 persimmons for each pie but I should have used more for that one).
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Staten Island Adventure
Erik was visiting last week and we decided to try to get out of the city but it turns out we didn't even have to! We grabbed some samosas and ginger-mango chutney in Jackson Heights on the way down to the Staten Island Ferry and were quickly rolling along the Staten Island Railroad to the New Dorp Station. After eventually figuring out which direction we were facing we made it to High Rock Park which ran right into Latourette Park. We found a series of winding trails marked by painted squares on trees. It was probably one of the last warm days of the year so I even got to wear sandals.
The middle of Latourette Park is supposedly one of the most isolated spots in New York City, a mile from any building! I'd believe it because we didn't even get all the way through before we had to turn back because of the daylight. On the way back we saw the Scooby Doo Van!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
#N17
