October 25, 2004

if only

you will be rich

A bookstore in San Louis Obispo with attitude. (Also a great used book selection.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:05 PM

October 21, 2004

mighty big TV

jellyfish tank

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium on our trip north this summer.

Posted by Tamar at 10:16 PM

January 23, 2004

on the rocks

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Posted by Tamar at 11:31 PM

January 16, 2004

interior

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Sometimes a home looks the most perfectly inviting when you're peeking in the window.

(This is the house we rented in Cambria.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:20 PM

January 13, 2004

through a lace curtain

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Taken in Solvang, a touristy Danish town just outside Santa Barbara.

Posted by Tamar at 09:32 PM | Comments (2)

January 10, 2004

against the sky

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Windblown Monterey Cypress. Central Coast, just north of San Simeon.

Posted by Tamar at 10:16 PM

December 20, 2003

flashing past

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Posted by Tamar at 11:54 PM

December 13, 2003

boat slices

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Kayaks on the Morro Bay pier.

Posted by Tamar at 08:02 PM

December 10, 2003

"Cut it out, you guys!"

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On the beach near San Simeon, a spot known as an elephant seal hangout.

Posted by Tamar at 09:33 PM

December 09, 2003

sea of tranquility

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Sunset on Moonstone Beach.

Posted by Tamar at 10:02 PM | Comments (3)

December 07, 2003

on dry land

beached.jpg

Last week's Photo Fridaychallenge was foreign. I missed the cutoff but found myself thinking about the subject anyway. To me, foreign isn't necessarily about a language or culture not our own, because those are native in their own environment and we become the foreigners. But a boat in the dry California hills? A stranger in a strange land, a foreigner, lost and adrift. Maybe it can learn to float on wind instead of waves.

Posted by Tamar at 10:04 PM

December 06, 2003

a veil of trees

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At San Simeon State Beach.

Posted by Tamar at 10:29 PM

December 04, 2003

small people, big sky

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Posted by Tamar at 10:21 PM

December 03, 2003

swarm

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They came right up beside the boat, lured by the rain of fish flakes. Jack smelt up close.

I chose this image even though I have ones that are technically better -- sharper focus and so on -- because I thought it captured the motion and the chaos of the cloud of fish surrounding us.

Posted by Tamar at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

December 02, 2003

home brew

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At Zin Alley winery. (Good stuff.)

Posted by Tamar at 10:22 PM

September 22, 2003

blue

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My men at Peggy's Cove (Nova Scotia) last summer.

Posted by Tamar at 11:31 PM

September 19, 2003

fractured

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And so this travelogue of my weekend in Boston ends as it began, with a ghostly airport image.

Posted by Tamar at 11:58 PM

September 18, 2003

real/not real

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On Newbury Street in Boston.

Posted by Tamar at 11:22 PM

September 14, 2003

celebration through the trees

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At my cousin's wedding.

Posted by Tamar at 11:05 PM | Comments (1)

September 13, 2003

awaiting a wedding party

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Posted by Tamar at 11:52 PM

September 12, 2003

Charlie on the MTA

subway.jpg

Did he ever return? No, he never returned and his fate is still unlearned. He will ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston, he's the man who never returned.

My uncle put the song in my head and it's still stuck there.

Posted by Tamar at 11:57 PM

September 11, 2003

underground

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A spooky T station. (T=MTA=subway)

(Pictures from my trip to Boston start here.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:22 PM | Comments (3)

September 10, 2003

an unusual conversation

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Taken in Harvard Square on a sunny summer Sunday.

Posted by Tamar at 10:19 PM

September 09, 2003

the Gold Room

It's just a glorified foyer, but I've always loved the room. (Yes, we're still in Adams House. At this rate, my single long weekend in Boston will end sometime in December. Hey, come back! I was just kidding. Sheesh.)

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gold-rm-rail.jpg

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(Pictures from my trip to Boston start here.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:40 PM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2003

the echo of plates

dining-hall-1.jpg

The dining hall was not only empty of people but of tables and chairs too. The room felt at once cavernous and too small to be the site of so many bad-tasting meals with friends and enemies. Then there were the festive occasions: faculty dinners, waltzes, the yearly Christmas dinner complete with whole roast pig with the requisite apple in its mouth (and the ritualized reading from a Winnie the Pooh story). The room fit those times better than the usual scrape of fork and knife scooping mystery meat off cheap stoneware.






dining-hall-2.jpg

I'd forgotten about the griffins. And the stiff, formal portraits. I think (though my memory is not altogether reliable on this) that this one, in the place of honor just inside the entrance, is John Adams himself, Harvard alum and Adams House namesake.

I'm having fun with these. Are you?

(Pictures from my trip to Boston start here.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:45 PM

September 07, 2003

mutant golf balls

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Outside the Gold Coast (see yesterday's pic).

(Pictures from my trip to Boston start here.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:54 PM

September 06, 2003

clearing out cobwebs

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I was worried that with no students in residence, I wouldn't be able to get into my old college dorm (known in campus parlance as a House). No worries. A cleaning crew was there, preparing for the first day of school.

This part of Adams House is known as the Gold Coast. It was built by the Vanderbilts (in the 1880's? 1920's?) for their children and their children's friends and was later annexed by the school. I always loved the dark wood and marble. Like living inside history.

(Pictures from my trip to Boston start here.)

Posted by Tamar at 11:54 PM

September 05, 2003

iconic

widener.jpg

Picture a group of undergrads giggling through the snow, dining hall trays tucked under their arms. Picture these little-more-than-children on their bellies sliding down the majestic, so-historic Widener Library steps on tray sleds. Picture wind-reddened cheeks and wind-torn hair. Picture them running up the slippery steps again and again in the dark to do it just one more time.

Posted by Tamar at 11:17 PM

September 04, 2003

medieval castle

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Or maybe not. Maybe it's just Sever Hall, the site of various classes and seminars. The site, basically, of many and sundry doodle pads, though I suppose they've been replaced by Tetris on everyone's laptop computers. That door is a gothic gracenote in an otherwise colonial setting.

Posted by Tamar at 10:44 PM

September 03, 2003

tour guide to the past

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The strangest thing was seeing all the tour groups wandering Harvard Yard. Were they there when I was an undergrad? They must have been. Was I so myopically focused on my own little world that I blocked them out or were they so ubiquitous they became part of the scenery? Maybe they were simply more noticeable this time because classes hadn't started yet, the students were still AWOL, the Yard barren of frisbees, sunners, and study groups lolling on the lawn. And so an odd time to visit, the place inhabited mainly by ghosts from my past rather than flesh and blood people.

Well, except for those tour groups.

Posted by Tamar at 10:05 PM

July 02, 2003

NYC reconceived

legoNYC.jpg

Posted by Tamar at 11:52 PM | Comments (2)