some do better than others . . .

'm having trouble with the cattleya --- afraid i might not have the right touch with them, but i'm getting little bits of gaudy color

old places

i took a friend for a ride around s. fulton county yesterday and checked in on some places i hadn't seen in a while --- utoy cemetery, owl rock, campbellton, cochran road along the river, etc. --- the wilson house (ca. 1858) has just been bulldozed, but the mt. gilead campground, which i thought had been torn down years ago, was still there ---

wasted

the william a wilson house was built in the late 1850s and remained in the family until the 1960s when it was sold to the adjacent hospital --- occupied for a while, it was a mess by the late 1980s ---

today it was gone

putting your vegetables in their place

john gave me a very large, thick tome on the preparation of vegetables for consumption, which includes all those weird things you see at dekalb and buford farmers markets that you wouldn't know what to do with ---

it may replace joy of cooking as my go-to cookbook

the preparatory instructions are especially excellent == e.g., "scrub the potatoes ferociously with a brush" and another to scrub the vegetable "assertively"

eleventh street

so it's not as homey and quaint as the early 20th century bungalows that they tore down to build this, but i'm sure people bitched when they graded up another part of walker's old farm to build the bungalows ---- never mind the indians

bowie --- r.i.p. 1947-2016

night out

ponce city market is purty great and a fine place for dinner with the susans and don

the importance of one's environment

this, i think, is sound advice:

before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

so much for "dark ages"

the angel wakes the magi, urging them to follow the star --- gislebertus, 12th century, cathedral of saint lazare, autun, france 

this is truly one of the most wondrous images i've ever seen --- now i really need to go to autun

a lot of his work was destroyed in the late 18th century when anything romanesque was considered barbaric, including this, "the temptation of eve," which was removed and used in building a house in 1769

well, thas a drag ----

found a tumor on dog's neck this afternoon --- immediately rushed to the vet --- they'll let me know by the end of the week if it's cancerous --- sure does look like the tumor on hershey's butt

twelfthnight

the zygopetalum started blooming on 21 november and this is the last of three stalks --- an excellent plant it is ---

a very relaxing twelve days of xmas draws to a close --- celebrated with angela and robert ---

rebuilding midtown

i am very happy that the block south of the tenth st station is no longer surface parking, even if the amount of parking on the block has probably doubled and the new viewshed as you exit the station leaves much to be desired --- right now you see the impressively large beams spanning the train tunnel ---

and spring street? it's just crazy all the building going on

ninth day of christmas

caught the hapsburg exhibit at the high before it closes --- some purty great stuff, of which these images are not a representative sample --- an added bonus: free weekend for fulton county residents

stone mountain holiday

i hadn't climbed stone mountain in forty years, but i decided (as did 10,000 other people) to do so today --- it has been a tourist attraction since the 1830s, when it was called cloud's mountain because a guy named jacob cloud built a wooden observation tower and charged people a nickle to use it --- my first memory of the place must have been around the time the state acquired the mountain from the ku-kluxing venables, which was 1958 ---

as a natural wonder it has been much abused, from quarries to cross burnings, radio transmission towers, the stupid chair lift and big-ass visitors center on top of the mountain ---

but is still a purty amazing place ---

people have been marching up and down the west slope of the mountain for thousands of years --- the first people built rock walls up there, which were destroyed around the time this plaque was installed

lots of old petroglyphs, which i don't remember seeing as a kid --- oldest date i saw today was 1879, but there's got to be older stuff ---

now i just need to go back on some miscellaneous weekday and not on a holiday when it's covered up with other people

2016!

a low-key new year's eve on the thirteenth floor with robt and the boys --- we went out for dinner, but otherwise just listened to the hoo ha, including a big-ass and loud party at the end of the hall --- noisy night