Marin Black and White

Trees and Fence - Marin County  2019

Buckeye Leaves - Marin County  2019

Taken in the San Geronimo Valley, I think.

Monday Horse Blogging

Tuffy, Stopping - Marin County  2013

Very photogenic horse!

Shamrock Run - Portland

Shamrock Run Billboard - Portland  2019

Run Assistants - Portland  2019

Our last day in Portland. Very exciting! It took all of my will power to keep from joining the runners.

Kids, Shamrock Run - Portland  2019

Portland Sightems - 2

Quality Bar - Portland  2019

West Coast Piano - Portland  2019

Both photos taken with a Canon G5X, my go-to camera for walking around cities.

Portland Sightems - 1

Unusual Cards - Portland  2019

Painting - Portland  2019

Top photo taken at the Portland Saturday Morning Market.

The Unusual Cards website: Unusual Cards.

Portland Views

Mt Hood - Portland  2019

River View - Portland  2019

Mt. Hood as seen from the Japanese garden.

Willamette River view taken from a restaurant/bar in a downtown high rise. Too crowded . . . we didn't stay, but I did take some photos.

Japanese Garden - 2

Rock Garden - Portland  2019

Garden Detail - Portland  2019

Reminiscent of Ryoanji. Also, of the details there.

Japanese Garden - 1

Teahouse - Portland  2019

Exhibition Hall - Portland  2019

We'd visited the famous Rose Garden before, but not the Japanese Garden (located next to one another.) Very impressive! More impressive to me, at least, than the famous garden located in Kanazawa.

Monday Dog Blogging

Dog Outside Grocery Store - Portland  2019

Outside of a high-end grocery store on the East side.

Crocuses

Crocuses No 1 - Portland  2019

Crocuses No 2 - Portland  2019

Seen while walking through an Eastside Portland neighborhood on our way to a fabric store. It was quite a walk!

Chop Suey

Chop Suey - Portland  2019

Chop Suey, Fortune - Portland  2019

We tried to find a Chinese bakery as we had done in Vancouver. But nothing, alas.

BTW, lower photo has a homeless person in it. Big homeless population in Portland . . . maybe not as much as San  Francisco.

Portland Art

Owl Mural - Portland  2019

Bear Sculptures - Portland  2019

Think it's an owl, anyway. Reminds me of the San Francisco bat mural.

All of my Portland photos were taken with either a Canon G5X or an iPhone 7 Plus.

Bubblers and Food Trucks

Bubbler & Food Trucks - Portland  2019

Food Trucks - Portland  2019

Iconic, I'd guess you could say.

Portland Black and White (Minor White)

Columns, Trees - Portland  2019

Railroad Tracks - Portland  2019

"The Oregon Centennial was the 100th anniversary of the statehood of the U.S. state of Oregon. The day of the anniversary was February 14, 1959, but centennial events took place throughout the year. Festivities were held all over the state, with the major attractions at the Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair, located at the Expo Center in Portland's Kenton neighborhood, which took place from June 10 to September 17, 1959." - Wikipedia

I remember attending the show at the Expo Center during a family visit to Portland to visit my grandparents. The main attraction for me was a very compelling exhibit of photographs by Minor White:

"In 1959, the Oregon Camera Club included several of White’s WPA photographs in the exhibit This Land, This Oregon at the Oregon centennial exposition. One of the club’s leaders recruited him to teach a workshop, which continued yearly in Oregon until 1967. He also exhibited his own retrospective, 'Sequence 13/Return to the Bud,' at the exposition. 'I feel that a trajectory that started in Portland, Oregon, in 1938,' he wrote, 'has been completed.'"

White had earlier photographed Portland's older buildings under a WPA project; I tried to echo the mood of his work in the photos posted above.

Portland Airport

Airport - Portland  2019

Oregon Ducks (Airport) - Portland  2019

Our last visit to Portland was in 2015. We enjoyed it! So, for a quick anniversary holiday we decided to spend a few days there last month.

Monday Phoebe Blogging

Phoebe - Marin County  2019

Been a while since I've posted any phoebe pix. Spotted this one at the Hamilton wetlands viewpoint. Taken with an Olympus E-M1II and a 75-300 zoom lens.

Backyard

Tulip Tree - Marin County  2019

Backyard Fence - Marin County  2019

Very nice, especially when there's some wind.

People's Park - 2

National Guard #3 - Berkeley  1969

National Guard #4 - Berkeley  1969

Bottom photo taken at the intersection of Bowditch and Dwight Way. The street sign is no longer there, but telephone pole number 2225 is, as shown in the Google Street View photo below.

2225 Telephone Pole (Google) - Berkeley

People's Park - 1

National Guard #1 - Berkeley  1969

National Guard #2 - Berkeley  1969

So, while going through some of my old negatives for the College Avenue photo I came across some images taken during the People's Park incident.

As I recall, many of the demonstrators were not, in fact, students.

Check out the pup tents in the background. In my four three years of Army life, I never once had to sleep in a tent.

Cherry Blossoms, Berkeley 1969

Cherry Blossoms, Shingles - Berkeley  1969

So, I recently found the photo below depicting my work desk in my Berkeley room: some Joe Grant art of Scrooge McDuck as Uncle Sam and a photo of cherry blossoms against weathered shingles. I was able to locate one of the cherry blossom/shingles negatives with the result shown above.

I used a Nikon F SLR and Panatomic-X film for these photos.

Also stuck on the wall is a haiku by Basho:

Yoku mireba
Nazuna hana saku,
Kakine kana.

Translated as:

looking closely:
a shepherd's purse blossoming
beneath the hedge

I guess that I thought that the poem somehow related to the cherry blossoms and shingles.

Mike's Desk & Art - Berkeley  1969

. . . from the archives #102: Backyard - Berkeley 1969

Backyard - Berkeley  1969

50 years ago. I was renting a second-floor room in a house on College Avenue while I was attending UC Berkeley. Google Street View reveals that the place looks about the same now.

Mike, College Avenue House

College Avenue House (Google) January, 2018

Sacramento Evening

Moon, Evening - Sacramento  2019

Entrance Around Building - Sacramento  2019

Walking to a Japanese restaurant after parking the car.

BTW, there are so many freeways in Sacramento that if you use GPS for directions, even for a relatively short trip, you'll be getting on and off various freeways. And performing lots of merging and lane changes.

BTW, the food was good! Below, their rendition of gyoza.

Gyoza - Sacramento  2019

Monday Dog and Crow Blogging

Dog, Crows, Runner - Sacramento  2019

Taken from our hotel window overlooking the Sacramento River.

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge AM - Sacramento  2019

Tower Bridge PM - Sacramento  2019

Our hotel room overlooked Sacramento's famous Tower Bridge, constructed in the 1930s. "The bridge style represents a rare use of Streamline Moderne architectural styling in a lift bridge, making it an outstanding expression of the social and architectural climate of the period of construction."

One of our walls was decorated with a painting of the bridge, in case we didn't want to go to the window and look out.

Tower Bridge Painting - Sacramento  2019

Placerville - 3

Road, Snow - Placerville  2019

Alley - Placerville  2019

We spent a goodly amount of time in the snow, throwing snowballs and building an avant-garde snowman. Then, a little bit of wandering around town, lunch and a return to Sacramento.

Carrot, Snowman (Masa, Hanna) - Placerville  2019