Vitro Nasu

Cars outside our fence.

Burning cars captured on the road trip.

Tomorrow my family and I will head to the ski slope and afterward we’ll spend the evening at Grand Canyon. (Like we have no other place to go).
Last time I went skiing I saw burning cars on the road, luckily no burning men.

<> Red boat in the desert mountains

History of violence in the desert
Six cops and nothingness

Border Patrol

Headless ceramic wall piece.

Took a day trip to Taliesin West courtesy of our local library. Came back with these photos of his Asian collection.

Two images in the middle are from Japan.

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Photos: Where Frank Lloyd Wright comes alive Taliesin West slide show.

Imperial Hotel Lobby (replica) by Frank Lloyd Wright on youtube.

Frank Lloyd Wright Trivia

Actor Anthony Quinn once applied to study with Wright at Taliesin. Wright suggested he take voice lessons to help overcome a speech impediment.

Wright also advised him to become an actor rather than an architect, he felt that he would make money if he becomes an actor. (via) That was the right advice for Anthony Quinn otherwise we would never see his Zorba the Greek dance. On the other hand acting is just as precarious as being an architect.

Gammage Auditorium has perfect acoustics, but was originally designed for the city of Baghdad. The building looks out of place in Tempe, was designed by Wright and built by his students after his death.

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Two police cars

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We had no idea what they were doing in the desert.
They are making our dogs very nervous. Our dogs take their job of patrolling seriously.

Chipmunk on the bricks

We spotted Wendy’s ballon floating in the mountains or a chatty cowboy riding backward talking stories last year. Recently we had cops and police cars visiting the desert mountains disturbing the quails, snakes, chipmunks, rabbits and roadrunners living in the desert.
Viewing from here

The convicts were here one day to work in the desert mountains.
The image was turn into a little fantasy piece.

(repost 4th times due to imagined popular demand)

Take heart, Obama administration may reconsider joining the court.

Lastly read this story,

Tennessee’s ‘Little Houdini’ revives the outlaw legend
Supporters say Chris Gay is a modern Robin Hood. Lawmen call him “a little thief, a little con.”

Mr. Gay’s much-publicized prison-break in 2007 to reach his dying mama‘s side failed, but only after he led authorities on a five-state, five-day chase that ended with him being arrested driving the country singer Crystal Gayle’s stolen tour bus in Florida.

Yesterday I took this photo – a storyteller cowboy riding backward.

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Not long ago in a park I spotted a duck with a strange haircut.

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Does Alaska need saving along with Polar bears?

The questions Obama has been thinking about all his life are the very ones that dominate the world today. And the mounting economic crisis only makes the construction of a wider identity – and conversing across the waters – more urgent, not less so. I happened to be in Alaska the week Sarah Palin was introduced to the world, and around me I saw the America I had grown up on: full of open space and possibility, blessed with great oil reserves and immigrants from everywhere, scenically gorgeous – but tied to the go-it-alone spirit of a “last frontier.”

It’s more than possible to make your fortune in Alaska – but I’d much rather find the future in Hawaii. (My Chance Encounter with Obama in Hawaii – Pico Iyer)

Tseng Kwong Chi
The bad weather is keeping us home today instead of camping at the Grand Canyon.
Meanwhile you may follow the late Tseng Kwong Chi as he went around the world.

Of course there is plenty of humor and irony in these photographs but seeing them in this context they also begin to take on an somber air of loneliness and sadness.

Tseng was an improbable pilgrim

In 1979, Joseph Tseng changed his name to Tseng Kwong Chi and embarked on a decade-long project called East Meets West (also referred to as “The Expeditionary Series”). With the camera’s shutter release in hand, he posed for approximately 150 images as a self-described “ambiguous ambassador” from the East, wearing the vintage Mao uniform he purchased from a second-hand store in Montreal, Velvet-Underground style sunglasses, and a visitor identification badge.

One more clip, here.

Christopher Strone plays bass, cello, piano , mandolin and percussion.

We tubed with the help of Henry Purcell‘s Indian Queen.

I fly from the place where flattery reigns.
I hate to see fond tongues advance
High as the Gods the slaves of chance.
What flattering noise is this,
At which my snakes all hiss?

Fame
Begone, curst fiends of Hell,
Sink down, where noisome vapours dwell,
While I her triumph sound,
To fill the universe around.

The libretto for Indian Queen, semi-opera by John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard and music by Henry Purcell.

Films with Purcell’s soundtrack.

Antique plate click to see large
The antique willow design plate from our video was made in England (Ashworth & Bros, Hanley, Staffordshire). Found at a garage sale for $1.00. Internet research valued the plate for $100.00.

Guard Dog
Weekend at the park, many suspicious cars are parked outside the gate.

Owl and the pussy dogs or two chihuahua patrol.

Who are questioning the wisdom of dogmacracy?
(Daisy the brown and white cowchihuahua is a Mexican and possibly illegal. She will defend this adopted land with great determination.)