Swami and Bugsy

Morning chat at the Currant Motel.

Swami has friends all over the world.

I still don't have time to post photos from the Grant Range trip. I realize that must nearly ruin your day but this one of Swami and Bugsy lounging at the Currant Motel will have to do for now. I am very in the rears on all that but, at the moment, I must finish a newsletter. It's not anything interesting, just a vehicle for minutes and a treasurer's report, but I try to add something extra each time. It's crazy though. I was up past midnight last night looking for the right image that will, at best, get a passing glance. Can't help it. Anyway, we're leaving for Costa Rica on the 30th and I haven't even begun packing. My brother and his wife pack about an hour before they leave for the airport. Experienced travelers, they. Also, where they go, they can count on buying whatever they need. Not always so in Central America. The neighbor over the back fence is blaring Country Western in his yard, which kind of fits the mood of this blue sky September morning. I hope you are making the most of your day. It's what we've got. Today. Nothing more or less.

Nevada resident

We're back from five days in the Grant Range. I'm on the run but will post more photos later. We saw lots of wild life, including this shy fellow who wasn't at all happy about being photographed. I shouldn't have done it. Harassing wildlife is lame and, with rattlesnakes, stupid but I forgot both manners and sense when he came by.

Home away from home

We're in Tonopah for the weekend.

Again.

Downtown Tonopah without the
Mizpah, Nevada's most haunted hotel,
as the centerpiece.

This is my 13th assembly here in seven years. On the surface nothing's changed much although, since we were here last, the town has put up a spiffy new official sign on 395. You can see it in the first photo. And, by the way, the Mizpah Hotel will be on the auction block September 16th. That's just a few days away! Just think. It could be yours for a song.




The Ramada didn't have our reservation so we're at the Economy Inn for half the price, $35 a night. It's not as bad as it looks from the street plus it has free wi-fi and a great view if you like defunct mining/desert ghost town scenarios. However, the clowns next door carried on until 6 in the morning. Given the volume of their voices and the number of "fuck him, fuck thems and fuck hers" they had to be out of their pea brains on speed and booze.

The sticker on the windshield of the Mustang parked outside their door explains that the car is being moved from Vegas to Portland by a hired driver, so hopefully they are, by this time, gone. Otherwise the manager promised to move them to the front, a place he reserves for Assholes.

Desert elan

Of course, changed or not, I photographed the same old roadside apparitions we pass every time we take 395... Luning and Mina which are wide spots in the road which are well on their way to becoming ghost towns and a roadside brothel called Playmate Ranch.




You will be happy to hear they are all doing well, ie they are still inhabited.

Playmate Ranch (brothel)

White limo at gas station next door to Playmate Ranch

My favorite photos from the trip so far are of the fat, flat, white clouds drifting east although they suggest rain by Sunday, which is exactly when we head out into the Great Basin for a week of camping. Lovely. Well, rain here usually evaporates before hitting the ground but we shall see. We're leaving early tomorrow morning.

Toulouse Lautrec

Today is the 108th anniversary of Toulouse Lautrec's death.

The artist

He died of complications from alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé at the age of 36. A couple of years before his death he tried "drying out" but soon returned to hard drinking, despite a series of paralytic fits. According to Wikipedia, his last words were, "Le vieux con!" ("The old fool!") This was his goodbye to his father.

Self-portrait

I liked his work the minute I first laid eyes on it back in high school. And I suppose his glamorous depiction of the seamy Parisian nights in Montmartre, its brothels and, in particular, the Moulin Rouge, helped lock in my childhood notion that to be an artist one must be willingly and tragically lost. Certainly the fascination helped him to an early death. At least I avoided that.

Self-portrait at the Moulon Rouge

Salude Toulouse.

Outtakes

Me! That's who wants to know.
Portland

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks. Locations range from Portland, Reno, the Mohave, and LA to the lateral universe wherein dwells the Invisible Theatre.

Baby Thea x 2

Glow Boy
Spice Rack, Indian grocery in Reno




Burning Man van


Carson City. NV

Mohave cloud

LA cloud
Station  wildfire

One last round of Bánh mì sandwiches
for the road from the pigeon friendly
Saigon Bakery in San Gabriel's new China Town


Perfunctory Hollywood sign shot.
See it through the smog way off, up on the hill?


Headed home


Mohave hills


~WINNER~
Bad Grammar Sign of the Day Award

Invisible Theatre
Uncle Monkey, Baby T and the Gang

Baby Thea's big adventure

Corn for the critters and an amazing adventure for Baby Thea.


Larger format here.

Home again

The graveyard, the Savannah Memorial Park Pioneer Cemetery, was a bust, by Nevada standards sterile and tame. It got a drive-by. We didn't even bother getting out of the car. Historic? Old graves. Okay. In America anyway but Z-E-R-O character. Now Nevada has graveyards. Desert crazed. Lovely. Lonely. Graveyards. If you are very quite, you can just make out, mixed in with the wind, lingering sighs.

Turns out the motel had coffee in the office after all, plus cold orange juice, danish in cellophane and free copies of USA Today. Makes up for the hair choked shower. We would definitely stay there again. The knock out feature was its incredibly thick walls. I really hate motels with thin walls. I do not want to be hostage to TVs and toilets and late night conversations through the wall. We did not hear a peep at the Rodeway Inn. Now Del Mar Ave. was another matter. Getting past that required ear plugs and Valerian root tablets.

Now we're home until Friday then off to Tonopah for the weekend then we're headed back out to camp in the Great Basin until Thursday.

New Chinatown in a galaxy far far away from somewhere

We're in LA for the weekend. Drove down today, after driving down from Medford yesterday, after driving down from Portland the day before that, where we spent a few days cooing Baby Thea after driving up to Medford to pick up our other granddaughter so that the three of us could drive up to Portland and coo Baby Thea before we drove her back down to Eugene to participate in the U of O's Project Tomato where, she told me yesterday, they picked and transformed a whopping 900 lbs of tomatoes into organic pizza sauce. After making sure she was settled in, Mr. Lee and I drove back up to Portland to coo Baby Thea some more and that gets us back to the beginning. I think. Does that make sense? And all this up and down? Compared to what? Earth is basically round.

Well, we're not exactly in LA. We're in San Gabriel Valley, the new Chinatown, truly a country within a city, staying at a $59 a night motel run by Pakistanis. The room is huge and nice other than little details, like legacy toothpaste splatters on the bathroom mirror and no coffee in the room or office, plus we have a great view of an impressive plume of smoke rising from the current wild fires burning nearby. We had Bánh Mì sandwiches for dinner. They were great but the best part was the pigeon walking around inside the restaurant looking for crumbs under the chairs. He was an old guy with a limp and not moving too fast. The people running the bakery didn't seem to take any notice or care. Eventually he nibbled his way to the door then stepped back out onto the sidewalk. My kind of place. After dinner we followed up with moon, cassava, and mung bean cakes. Much too much but tasty.

And this evening I learned some cool things about the nearby Mt. Wilson Observatory. Given that it was threatened by the fires, LA Weekly republished an article on it by Joshuah Bearman. Did you know that the reflecting element at the bottom of the scope is 9,000 pounds of wine-bottle glass from the Saint Gobain bottle works in France? It was carried up the mountain by tiny burros in 1917 (poor critters) and is still the largest solid plate mirror ever cast.

It was up on Mt. Wilson that Edwin Hubble "first discovered that there are galaxies. Many many many other galaxies in the universe. Then, he discovered from the light of those galaxies that the universe is expanding." Full article here. Amazing, isn't it? Before Hubble's observations on Mt. Wilson, everyone thought the only thing out there was the Milky Way. After his discovery, even Einstein had to rethink things and came up for a visit.

Anyway, it's late. Given that we're in the general neighborhood, we thought we'd drop in and see The Blue Boy tomorrow, but the museum charges $20 a head. We're going to an old, free graveyard instead.

Photos from the Deeps

We are the tiny yellow dot in the middle of the grid.

Roy, this one's for you.

Cookie's Special after a long hike

More photos from the Deeps

Back from the Deeps

We're back from our camp trip to the Deep Creek Range. More later.

Hotel Nevada, Ely

Homestead junker, Utah

Gone camping

Evening in the Bird Park

Hasta luego mis amigos. Hasta la vista la próxima semana.