ARTCORE

LRAHM PDF!

beautiful.

Time being flat, there’s nothing inconsistent in suggesting that perhaps when Fate (or whoever) was handing out names, she thought about each and checked its Scrabble value for consistency with a variety of conspiracy theories. These are the words of the prophet. Or, if they aren’t, they probably will be.

Do you need evidence? Then try my new ScrabblizeIt! application.

Of course, you can probably guess the value of the name “Jesus Christ”, a coincidence on which this post’s entire hypothesis is based.

Some months ago, I posted “part one” of our trip to Rock City. I had at one time planned a verbose post describing the amazingly bizarre underworld of the Fairyland Caverns, but never got around to it, and then forgot.

Herewith, 21 photos added to Jodi’s and my Rock City 07 flickr pool. So far, this one seems the most popular. . .

. . . but I think others are even creepier!

Nothing to indicate who, exactly, sent it, however. The last name on the envelope was somebody in the School of Visual Arts, but that doesn’t mean anything too specific. Probably tells me that it came from someone in Visual Arts, but not necessarily that someone. Anyway, the contents are delicious! This afghan makes me think of icecream. . .

“Looks Hard – crochets easy”. And these dresses. . .

Crochets easy – hard to look at!

In particular, I wanted to make note of five images:

59
disparition05
curieuses
fleurs
chut

Rezo’s portfolio page is a little hard to navigate—scads of tiny thumbnails. There are some things I find a little unsatisfying about the work. It’s perhaps a little too precious at times, and other times just silly. Many of her portraits have absurdly huge eyes, and I find this both a little off-putting and compelling. A number of the images are consciously evocative of Gustav Klimt, and although I had to think about it for a while, I’ve decided I rather like them.

So stop reading words and go look at pictures!

I could have sworn there was a house here this morning. This lot is on the north east corner of Pierre and Assumption. Note that the local pronunciation of “Pierre” rhymes with “beery”. Like a bad SCA event, eh? “Golly, yer Excellency, this event sure is peery. Er, sorry, your Grace.”

There goes the neighbourhood!

Unfortunately, it turns out our neighbour is one of those guys who gets almost done a job and then leaves the last little bit undone for a while. Jodi and I have NO idea what that’s like. So in August we went away on vacation and asked a friend to come by and feed the cats. Our friend dutifully comes by and finds that he can’t get the gate open. It just so happens he used to work as a mover, so in fact he CAN get the gate open, but it won’t properly close again. Our neighbour had finally finished bracing his new fence, and in the process has fucked up my gate. We find we can force the gate shut and that friction will keep it there, but this only works for August humidity. Once January rolls around, either the gate or the ground or both shrink in such away that, once again the gate hangs open and the crack dudes have an open invitation to cut through.

Finally, after a year or so of thinking about doing something about it, I figured out a new solution that involved cutting off a piece of the gate and putting on a bolt latch that fits into a whole drilled into the fence. This works well in dry weather, but once things get humid again, the gate sticks mightily, and over the past summer just seems to get worse. Perhaps the ground is shifting, or perhaps it’s because I keep backing into the fence when parking the car.

At any rate, over the past couple days I’ve attempted a third solution. With the help of a saw, a chisel, and my newly purchased 8″ rasp, I’ve removed a few hunks of wood from the gate and repositioned the bolt.

If you knew what to look for, you could see evidence of all the previous attempts to fix this thing, along with the various erosion effects of slamming this rickety thing shut. Hopefully this one will last for a while. Meanwhile, you can fantasize along with Jodi and me about the day when our fence looks like this:

The gallery is in a crazy, gated warehouse community, right next door to a recycling centre. The show was called Elements, and feature Cannonball Press, whose work didn’t particularly thrill me, and a wide array of printmaking faculty and students from the various art schools in the Atlanta area. Faculty from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCADs of ‘em) curated the show. I had the great privilege of riding in the car with printmakers Jodi Green, Jessica Mills, and Samantha Mosby, all of whom had work in the show.

More pics here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pzed/tags/bluetower/

Exeter is famous for its white squirrels, which are unquestionably not albino. What Exeter is not famous for is 30°C heat on Thanksgiving weekend. Normal would probably be around 10-15.

There’s a small river that runs through Exeter. I feel like a bad librarian, ’cause I can’t find out what it’s called, but it’s a tributary in the Ausable River watershed. It’s been dry in Huron County this year, and the river is low. It also looks rather like a putting green.

There’s a small damn that creates a wide, slow section of river next to a lovely little park. But because this thick layer of algae has formed on the river, you can sit with your picnic lunch under the pavilion¹ and watch the river sit there. Water is flowing, slowly, but there’s no way to tell. I’ve a few more pictures of Pea Soup River here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/pzed/tags/unknownausabletributary/

updates: The park is called McNaughton Park, and Jodi and I are fairly certain the river is actually the Ausable, though not the main branch.
—

¹ – feel free to ask Jodi her pavilion story, and why she has that scar on her back.

Rock City is in Georgia, but so close to the state line that the nearest city is actually Chattanooga.

We spent the morning (of July 31, 2007) checking out downtown Chattanooga, which like most downtowns in America isn’t particularly people friendly. We walked down a number of barren streets (literally—one entire block of abandoned and falling apart shops was so desolate I was nervous to stay long enough to take out my camera, foolishly) looking for coffee. We finally got lucky at a place called Greyfriar’s, which was nice enough, and the coffee was reasonably priced (not what we’re used to in Athens, who like Chattanooga has a main street called Broad; but I digress).

Rock City costs about $15 to get in, and then you follow a path through some nifty fissures and other formations until you get to the peak of Lookout Mountain.

If you ask at the ticket counter or the main gate (and people do!) “How long does it take to get through here?” the answer is about an hour and a half. However, we did overhear some seemingly relieved power tourists saying they could do it in more like an hour. Incidentally, we obeyed the signs and stayed on the path. There’s some mighty powerful wildlife in them there parts.

That guy was about five millipedinous inches long. One interesting thing about this place is that it was originally created as a private garden, and the wife of the couple who owned the property and subsequently opened it to the public made an effort to bring in a wide variety of native and regional plant species. Since the location is relatively near the Carolinas, and since Southern Ontario too is (was?) a carolinian forest region, a whole lot of the plants brought in for the garden looked very familiar.

The path through the rocks winds past a variety of sites of interest, crossing over itself in a number of places.

Here’s a picture of Jodi’s butt following the butts of some other tourists through the Grand Corridor.

Those who know me know I absolutely hate tucking in my shirt, and I pretty much also hate looking at tucked in shirts. And the worst is t-shirts tucked in to shorts. If you’re gonna tuck in your shirt, do it right and wear some proper trousers and decent shoes, fer cryin’ out loud. Here’s some more wildlife.

And of course, no self-respecting tourist attraction is complete without a deer park.

Reindeer—no doubt the carolinian kind. Unlike us, they weren’t mad enough to come out in the summer sun.

Getting close to Lookout Point, you get to choose whether to cross the safe-seeming stone bridge, or the entirely not safe-seeming swinging bridge. Jodi and I staged this lovely shot for you of her on the one, and me on the other. That’s Chattanooga over her right shoulder.

They say from Lookout Point, you can see seven states.

That’s on a clear day. The day we were there it was so hazy we could pretty much see Georgia (the state we were in. . .  I mean, the State we were in; you can see for yourselves what state we were in) and Tennessee, all of a half mile away. We could, however, see Lover’s Leap.

We didn’t, thankfully, all though it looks like maybe these people did. From Lookout Point we could also see a number of fascinating local features, like the Enchanted Maize. . . 

. . . and Chattanooga, of course. . . 

. . . and this little guy.

Here’s a close-up. He was rather hard to see, but that’s why our cameras have lenses.

Here’s another view of Lover’s Leap, complete with waterfall.

So Part One of the tour is above ground, and kind of fun. Complete with a break for coffee at the concession stand up top, it took us well over our allotted hour and a half. It’s like we already had our money’s worth, and we hadn’t even gone underground yet!

Underground is where things get a little weird.

The gnome thing goes from being an occasional curiosity to the central theme. Here Jodi looks back in some distress, wondering “should we go on, or should we run far, far away?”

She’s also shimmering like some Celestine Prophecy character planning to vibrate into another dimension, but that’s just lighting. We’re actually not quite underground, yet, so I can show you the little gnome guys working the still.

And here’s one more bug shot, to round out that theme. Is that a carpenter bee?

Actually, no, it’s not. Don’t know what it is though. It floated like a bumble bee, which it clearly isn’t, and was hanging out around the hanging flowers.

At any rate, this has become a long, picture-heavy post. Here, to whet your appetite, is the gate to the Fairyland Caverns, about which you will hear (and see) a great deal in Part Two, whenever I get around to posting that.