No Pictures

On Saturday night we were walking home from the metro station in Takoma. We had just eaten dinner with kind and interesting people at a delicious Ethiopian place on 14th St. We opted to walk down Maple Ave, right along the DC/MD boarder like we usually do. That neighborhood is pleasant and beautiful. The people that live there have really nice gardens with tons of flowers and there are a lot of cats that are usually lounging outdoors waiting to say hello to passing strangers. I remember thinking, "blogging about these cats seems like a good idea."

We have conversations about the different cats - there's Mr. Fluffy and his housemates - the orange one and the tiger. They're all at one house. There's the cat that sits, in a very mature manner, on a bench staring at the street. There's the gray, fluffy, polydactyl, and the little black cat that I thought (hoped) was preggers because her belly was a giant barrel. And so on. This is all within 2 blocks.

Saturday night we ran into a couple of these furry friends and got distracted petting them. Until we were drawn very much back into reality as a small SUV came wheeling up to where we were standing and two men got out, holding a shotgun toward us. Yeah, super scary. What happened is mostly a blur to me now (all those cliches you hear are true, you forget it fast). They hit us, they patted us down and felt us up. They took everything we had on us. Cameras, purses, wallets, phones, pocket knives. They were intimidating. They loaded the gun and demonstrated to us that they were very serious by depositing a live round on the ground nearby. We laid there until they had turned the corner, as per their threats.

I'm sort of shaking now as I write this and wondering, "is it too personal? should I put it on the internet? how do you know what to blog about and what not to blog about?" But, I'm writing it. People should know about stuff like this. It's sad and real and true and scary and awful. I guess. I don't feel as though I have anymore authority to speak toward violence than I did before; I think I just learned that.

What's weird is that these strangers totally violated us. Not in the worst way, but in a way. A scary and highly inconvenient way. But, within minutes, strangers helped us. Neighbors let us in and they called 911 and gave us water and a place to sit down. That was all we needed and it felt weird. Not all strangers are bad, I learned that too.

So, we're shaken but ok. No more or less safe than before. Highly annoyed at the inconvenience of having to replace everything. In particular, cell phones and phone numbers. I had never lost my phone before. So, friends, I'm keeping your phone numbers in my email inbox. Getting a new license and student ID was time consuming and expensive. Also, bank cards and car keys and trust.

Last night the dectitive called me to say that they arrested these men. Partially because of us, but they did so immediately after they robbed someone else and were fleeing from that scene. They cops found them because they used our bank and credit cards at a 7-11 in DC and a McDonalds in Hyattsville. Places with security cameras. Everyones decriptions matched, the gun in the car matched and I guess they're off the streets. I don't know how I feel about the criminal justice system and what it will do to three young, black men, but honestly, I'm glad that that particular gun won't be shoved in anyone else's face.

They took our cash, obviously, but they used our cards in weird ways. At 7-11 and McDonalds. Does that mean anything? Does it seem weird? They could have taken so much more money than they did. The charges at these locations were for no more than $17. It's so stupid, and so sad.

And, I have no camera anymore. So, for the time being, the blog will be adorned with old pictures or none at all. Bear with me.

Cyanotyping

Art Projects. Do 'em.
A couple weeks ago, Buddy showed up at my house with two bottles of photo chemicals and an old, white, thrift store sheet and said, "let's make some cyanoprints", and I said, "ok." We did approximately 8 minutes worth of internet research to try and figure out the concentrations of each chemical that was needed as well as the ratio of the two mixtures and came up with something that worked, but not amazingly. However, it proved to be a great starting point and after a couple more trials, Buddy shared with me the ideal numbers to make successful cyanoprints.

Wait, what the hell are cyanoprints? Ok, look at this. Or, look at that picture - those are early examples of ones we did... on the left is a print of a scarf I had knit and on the right is a bunch of holly. Below, I (try to) describe why these didn't come out great - the contrast is low because we didn't expose them for long enough, and with the holly, because it was raised too far off of the sheet and lots of UV light got underneath.

In a nutshell, you mix some ferric ammonium citrate with potassium ferricyanide with some water, in the dark, soak some sheets (or water color paper) in the solution (still in the dark), and then try to find the most efficient way to put something you want to create a silhouette on top of the sheet or paper, rush it out into the sunlight and let it sit for a few minutes. The UV light reacts with the chemical solution that the sheet or paper has been soaked in and wherever the UV rays hit the sheet or paper, it turns blue. So, whatever you place on top will remain white - or some shade between blue and white should there be small amounts of UV light getting through.

So, you should try this. I haven't ventured out to purchase the chemicals, but rumor has it they're cheap on the internet. And, a little bit goes a long way - you need a tablespoon-ish of each one in order to make about 20 prints - depending on the size you prefer. Ok, so, get the chemicals, make the solution (see below), cut up some sheets into random, manageable sizes, soak them thoroughly, let them dry for a few hours - IN THE DARK - we set up some old screens on paint cans in a windowless basement room, and then try your best to set things up on them while still in the dark and rush them into the light. Watch the magic.

DETAILS

Substances:
A = Ferric Ammonium Citrate
B = Potassium Ferricyanide

Ideal Ratio:
[X amount of water + 20g of A] + [X amount of water + 8g of B]

X Amounts:
Most experiments were conducted with variance in X... a problem of measuring in the dark, not being very good scientists, not properly determining grams of water, etc. However, we finally did some "science" around the mysterious X and used amounts ranging from 15 mL to 200 mL. Note: X is kept the same for both solutions - you just put 20g of ferric ammonium citrate in one container, and 8g of potassium ferricyanide in the other.

When X was 200 mL = pale prints
When X was 100 mL = less pale, but still too-pale, prints
*When X was 50 mL = gorgeously blue prints of perfection
*When X was 15 mL = veeeeeeeery blue prints which looked pretty rad
*done without drying the sheet first, so, as they say, not all else was equal, but I think it would work anyway

Actual Ratios We Used:

The A:B ratio kept creeping toward 2:1, but was always between 2:1 and 3:1. Basically 20g:8g. But, the internet gives you lots of other options, so check it out. Ps. It's hard to measure in the dark.

Prepping:

The first thing you want to do is cut up the white sheet you got at the thrift store. Make it different sizes. Then, find some things to put on it... plants work great. I tried knitting needles, shapes cut out of paper - fyi, some UV light gets through the paper so the contrast ends up being low - clothespins, a knitted scarf, and lots of leaves of various types. Some came out better than others. You'll just have to experiment to see what you end up liking the best. I think we found that the more stuff you put on each piece of sheet, the more interesting it ends up looking. We also found it really interesting to print out some of our photos on transparencies (we would invert them first in a photo editor), and place the transparencies over the sheets. Here's what some of those looked like:

the transparencies are on the bottom, the resulting prints on the top

Some may question the seriousness of our methods, but they basically involved getting the dried sheets out of the very dark room in the basement, setting them down in a sorta-but-not-really-super-dark part of the basement, on a long board, putting stuff on them and then placing some glass over the top to keep things from blowing away. We tried to do this pretty quickly since we knew the sheets were being partially exposed. Then, we rushed them out into the sunlight and let them sit for between 5 and 45 minutes. That's me taking a picture of them in my yard, mid-exposure.

5 minutes is too short. 45 minutes is too long. Somewhere in between. Try it in 5 minute increments because it depends on the type of sunlight you're getting. We found the reactions slowed down/stopped, and the results didn't get any darker, after 25-30 minutes in direct, bright, afternoon sun.

Finishing:

When you've found the optimal time and the sheets are done, its important to wash them, for a couple minutes, in cold, running water. The water serves as a stop bath and stops the reaction between the chemicals and the UV light. Some sources say that rinsing them with perioxide helps to more quickly oxidize the solution and stop the reaction, but we didn't notice a difference.

Hang them up all over your house so your housemates come home and are like, "wtf?"

Hem them, sew them together, frame 'em and give them for presents. Your relatives will be amazed.

Google it, research it, the internet is littered with info about this type of thing and you can buy (for pretty cheap) the chemicals online too. Feel free to ask me any questions though I have limited experience. As a side note, all of my best prints I have given away to my aunts for their birthdays, so I don't have pictures of them - they ended up coming out a lot better and with higher contrast than those pictured here. Good luck!!

Consistency

Ok. The font consistency problem has been solved. First, I tried to pretend I remembered html. I used to use it for a job I had in college, in the late 90s. I didn't get far (but did get somewhere, for the record). Then, I did the second most logical thing, I used notepad to remove all the stupid formatting and then basically re-formatted the posts that were crazy looking. Maybe too time-consuming, but it worked.

More later. I have to go for a run now. While I do that, my cat will be doing this:


(old photo, same cat & position)

Shiny Sinks

Hi everyone. Since I last typed to you, I traveled back to NY. This time was a bit different: I drove my car, Buddy came along, the raspberries were mostly past their peak, etc. We went to a wedding of an old, old, old high school and pre-high school, or pre-any school friend of mine. It was fun. But, I'm not going to write too much about that. You know how it is... going home, seeing people you haven't seen in 11 years, checking out the latest in Upstate NY fashion, realizing you know the words to a variety of country music songs from the 90s - still, seeing pictures of yourself in a prom dress projected on a screen in a room full of 120 people, eating too-sweet cake, and so on. We got back late last night. In the usual summer fashion, I-81 between approximately Canada and wherever it ends in Tennessee is under construction. We sat around a lot and it took a while but we found some juicy radio stations toward the end of the trip and that made it all the better.

So, now I'm back. For a bit at least. I think the next time I leave town is going to be in exactly 2 weeks when I fly out to the great PNW for more visits, hiking, and non-humid summer weather.

I keep thinking that I should be busy. Like, all the time. Busy, busy, busy. I'm working a bit, but I feel like I set a bunch of goals of things to do while I'm having a summer off and traveling. I've tried hard to make the list diverse in the sense that it has equal parts things I should do and things I want to do; I hope that by the end of the summer I'll know which tasks are more satisfying. Thus far, these things have proved to be therapeutic, challenging, mildly absurd, and not relaxing. Like cleaning the sink. Like, REALLY cleaning the sink. With chemicals. Typically I buy unbleached things... paper towels (when I buy them), flour, tampons, egg cartons, etc. But I love bleaching things clean. As far as I know it's not genetic; no one has yet isolated the gene sequence that when turned on in a human makes you love things properly disinfected. I guess I still get it from my mom though, or maybe some of my aunts. I am not sure why. For the most part, I had no troubles living in a tent for 6 months with very little bleach or things to bleach (except potable water containers); I'd do it again. But, when I'm here, in my house, the non-perfectly shiny sink haunts me. So, today I tackled it. And then I could not stop. I cleaned the bathrooms, the bathtub, the microwave, the dish rack, the counters, the garbage can. I wandered around the house looking for things to dump the little bleach powder on and scrub.

Then I made chocolate chip cookies and left the pan in the sink, the shiny, shiny sink.

I keep meaning to blog about certain things. As you may have guessed, I made a list of things I'd like to eventually blog about. I have also made a list of things that I want to learn how to do on the blog. Of course, this is because the blogging is supposed to be for learning... I'm going back to school, to study information and how people find it and process it. It seemed important to get technically good at the blogging. But, here I am, typing away about my feelings on cleaning and bleaching and leaving home and coming back. I feel like perhaps I should be more focused on skills and technical things than on yammering on the internet. But, I guess I'm learning that the yammering is kind of a lot of what blogging is about. It certainly is appealing and probably why people do it. Not to master some impersonal technical skill or to get to the bottom of the grime and say "oh, I did that".

So, this past post still stands. I still need to learn how to do all the things that I needed to learn to do last week in order to make the blog a pleasant internet viewing experience for the people. I'm on it, ok?

Arrrggghhh! Or, Things I Can't Figure Out About the Blogging Right Now Because I Need a Sandwich

Ok people, I know there are some aesthetic issues with the blogging. Like, what exactly do you have to do to ensure font size will be consistent when copying and pasting text in from a Word document? Also, should I have bigger font so more people can read it or smaller font because I like the way it looks? And more things, about links, images, and how to make the side bars look like they do in my head. I'll get to it. I promise. The blogging is the learning. But, now I'm hungry.

Here is a nice picture of dancing pill bottles, courtesy of Hill-ry.

Being There & Going Back

When my grandma was in her 60s she took up a second or third career in the form of basket weaving. She got amazingly good at it quickly and was soon teaching basket classes in various places in NY State. One of these places was in the Adirondack Mountains, in Blue Mountain Lake. I’m a little shaky on the details but I guess what happened is that she needed a place to stay when she went up there and so her and my grandfather found some cabins on 7^th Lake near Inlet, NY and began renting them. This was in the mid-70s I think. By the time I came around a few years later, several family members (my grandparents had 9 kids) began staying at these cabins
each July. This has never stopped. Since I just quit my job and found myself with all sorts of free time to travel and fill out pre-college paperwork, I decided to go to Camp this year. It’s the first time in a few years that I have been able to go up for the entire week. It's a fine balance, going there, being there, and coming back. I can't decide if it makes me feel like my real life is suspended, or I've time traveled. Or, both, or neither. Camp always feels the same but different. The Adirondack Mountains are part of the Canadian Shield and are 3.5 billion years old, my family is crazy and fun, we always eat salt potatoes with at least one meal. But I don't live in NY anymore and I keep becoming more "me" in my own way, as everyone does, and sometimes it's hard to fit back into the space that my family has kindly reserved for me to jump into whenever I can. But I jump, and I'm welcomed with open arms, and it's fun, my new me traits, everyone's issues, and all.

Anyway… that’s the brief history of Camp, and also, my feelings… here’s some of the highlights of Camp ‘08.

Camp generally includes a few classic events. These are: going to the “boat launch”, going to Raquette Lake and Buttermilk Falls, going hiking in the High Peaks, and attending a quasi-formal wine-drinking and dinner event at the Woods Inn with the ladies of the family. The rest of the time is filled with a lot of chaotic planning, swimming, running, shit-talking, reading, wandering around various small towns and generally enjoying the beautiful Adirondack scenery. It is actually quite difficult to portray the utter and complete chaos and dysfunctional fun that ensues at Camp; I’ll just stick to the facts. The boat launch is at the northeastern end of 7^th Lake; it looks like this:

We swim there because the "beach" is better than at the Camp. You can wade out really far before the water gets waist deep and there's a little bit of sand to set up things like towels and coolers full of cheeses of various sharpness. Raquette Lake and Buttermilk Falls are both north of Camp, on Route 28. Raquette Lake comes first. I guess it's the largest, non-human made, lake within the Adirondacks. It has 99 miles of shoreline and was not named because it looks like a Raquette. Rather, I guess some dudes walked across it with snow shoes on one winter and made a bunch of raquette-like snow prints. Dudes get to name things whatever they want. It is a beautiful spot, but the highlight is the Raquette Lake General Store. Its full of shit you don't need - ranging from ice cream to squirt guns to moose-shaped miniatures filled with cedar chips. Here is a photo I took in the store last week, it was a sign on something filled with cedar chips.

Buttermilk Falls is, well, a waterfall. The water is dark, full of tannins and moves pretty fast some times. We often try to "swim" here, but this year it was cold and rainy. I stuck my feet in and sat and stared at this for a while. Buttermilk Falls is in Long Lake, NY which is also home to the Adirondack Hotel - don't get the ravioli. In fact, stick to the pizza and pints of Ubu Ale and sit on the porch if its nice. Sometimes we drive up to Long Lake one evening of the week to wander around, drink at the Hotel or buy some crap at a tourist shop. This year though, my mom, cousin, and I went after hiking up Nippletop Mountain (yes, it is really called that). Nippletop is #13 on the list of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks. In order to be considered a High Peak, a mountain has to be above 4000 feet. The hike was hard and we didn't bring enough of the following things: bug spray, sunscreen, water, ability not to fall down. Needless to say the last couple hours were miserable. But, check out the view:

If you're interested in such things, the land management of the Adirondack Park is very unique (I think). It covers a huge amount of land and some of it has been designated "forever wild" and you can only walk around on it and some of it is fully of houses and snowmobiles - all within the Park boundaries. To get to this particular trailhead we had to "hike" through parts of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. It sorta looks like the resort in Dirty Dancing.

Ok, but remember the houses they stay in and stuff? Like that. So, we walked out of the wilderness, all dehydrated and miserable to find a big, unguarded water cooler, full of ice water, complete with little cups sitting on the side of the tennis court. Luckily, the yuppies were all inside enjoying some prime rib - er, mountain wilderness - and we were able to gulp down 6-7 cups of water apeice.

Finally... the Woods Inn ladies evening. I know, this doesn't really sound much like camping - none of it is, really. Just go with it. The Woods Inn is interesting because it is one of the real-life places portrayed in the novel An American Tradegy. Read it, it's a good book. The Woods Inn is where Chester Gillette stayed after he killed Grace Brown. Asshole. Anyway, we get dressed up, and go drink wine and stare at 4th Lake.

Lots of other things happened at Camp... I learned a lot about baseball from my dad, we sat around the campfire and drank beers, my cousin and I ran up a mountain (ok, the trail was a mile long but it was still really hard), we had tons of zany meals together, went boating around the lake, saw loons, and so on.

My trip to Camp this year was sandwiched by a few days in Syracuse on either side. Or, Navarino, where I grew up. Even people in Syracuse don't know where it is. Anyway. Being home is always interesting... comfortable, easy, quiet, beautiful, full of cats and dogs and family... There's always new gadgets, homemade Italian food, and a huge garden. It;s never boring, but never really calm either. Also, these days, it smells like cow poop. But, that's what happens when you live in the country.

More photos here.

I'm going back there tomorrow. The person I've known longest in the world - who I'm not related to - is getting married. I'm looking forward to escaping the heat and humidity of DC, to swimming, eating raspberries, hanging out and visiting with some friends.

Why Coseismic?

I can't remember where or when I came across the phrase "coseismic dislocation"; it was a while ago, when I lived somewhere else. It's not in my Dictionary of Geologic Terms and if you search for it on the web, with quotation marks, not much comes up. It relates to earthquakes as you can probably tell from the presence of "seismic". It basically refers to one earthquake, or activity from one epicenter, impacting two points, simultaneously, that are not adjacent to one another. That's the best I can figure it, anyway.

When I first heard (read?) this phrase I thought it rather profound, deep, and well, kinda funny. Funny in the sense of, "hmmm... if I mess up now, what will I coseismically affect?", and so on. But, I didn't think to do anything with this phrase until my friend, who was then living abroad, and I discussed making a zine. The plan was to fill the zine with all of our emails, which were plentiful, from the approximately 1 year period that she was living in Japan and I was just moving back to the East Coast. We emailed multiple times per day, in face of such epic challenges as time zones and jobs. We felt as though we had really worked out a lot of deep, philosophical issues. We both saved all our emails. The zine never got created though. Mostly because it would have been really difficult to hide the personal aspects of ourselves and the people we were spending time with (read: dating). Anyway... when we first talked about it I thought, "Oh! We should call it 'coseismic dislocation' because we're living far away from each other but still dealing with a bunch of shit". It seemed so brilliant.

A few other projects, paper and digital, were tossed around in my brain and in bi-coastal phone conversations but nothing ever came of any of them.

So, I started a blog. And I named it this. I don't expect that each post will be about how I'm emotionally falling apart due to activities happening in remote locations, but maybe some of them will.

Lists

I make lists. If you're reading this, you probably know me and possibly even know that about me. I love making lists. I love checking things off the lists and then re-writing the list so that it doesn't include anything that's previously been checked off and then starting again. I love having the lists be written with the same pen, be in the same font and fit onto one piece of paper. If the lists need to be amended, I love doing so with post-it notes of various sizes - with any amendments being written with the same pen, of course.

My lists typically ignore the space-time continuum, in a sense. They will include things that need to be done sometime in the next two months, or tomorrow, or that have no time frame whatsoever, but really just something that I should probably do, something that would make me feel as though I were working on self-improvement, or something that would be nice to do for someone at some point, should they have a birthday.

I just quit (sorta) my job. The plan right now is to go back to school in the fall, to shift gears, change hats, move on up, etc. Or, procrastinate going, again, into the world of full time employment, commuting, and lunches at Cosi. Anyway, the point is that I have the summer off. Or, mostly off. I'll be working a bit for my old job, doing some writing and database creation. I anticipate that being a good thing, working from the comfort of my own home or a coffee shop in Portland in August, getting a little bit of money but mostly keeping my freedom. I was briefly concerned that I might be bored or have too much time on my hands. So, I made a list.

Yesterday the list had 53 items on it. I had completed 7, but 1 was "apply for 2 jobs", so that took awhile. Today the list has most of its items checked off because things like "buy cat food" and "do laundry" do not take as much time as "apply for 2 jobs". See? The list I'm currently working on (seriously, I'm staring at it now, its on 1 page of a notebook, in red pen with hand drawn checkboxes next to each item; 2 columns) varies in scope, time, and importance. I had to call the financial aid office, find last years tax return, and water the plants. But, now I'm working on other things - like starting my blog. Yeah, it was on the list. I've been wanting to do this for a while, I'm not sure if I can specify why. Something was holding me back (like Angela Chase's hair color) but now its time because I'm starting something new. I'm about to jump off a cliff into the world of underemployment, a week with my family, and a trip to the west coast. I figure I'll have lots of things to write about and lots of time to do it. Stay tuned...