Amazing Grace

#9

01.09.10

Tonight we attended the Grace Choi exhibition 'A Small Space Within the Lagging of Time' at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in downtown Anchorage.  Grace is the mother of one of our son's classmates, and she is a wonderful person and artist.  We have been anxiously awaiting her exhibition since we learned of it last fall.  Tonight she told us she has spent the last year and a half in preparation for tonight's exhibition.  She has also exhibited in her native Korea 5 times.

The iPhone camera was really able to pick up the vibrant colors of this painting entitled 'Rest', especially at the top of the canvas.  I wish it could have picked up the whiteness of the feathers better, but I was losing definition in the feathers and color saturation everywhere else when I tried to brighten those.    I was still happy with the photo.  Here is the full piece hanging on the wall:

This is another painting I liked for it's repetition of odd geometrical shapes and the use of metallic bronze and copper paints:

Focusing on the right lower quadrant (an area that is dark in the full frame photo above) you can see the canvas has a reptilian skin appearance:

A hearty congratulations to Grace on a job well done.  It was cute to see her daughter and our son play in the gallery while everyone enjoyed her work on the walls.

The music you are listening to and which I hope you are enjoying is '(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace' by the slowcore band Low.  I chose the song because the title is by itself appropriate to our host artist this evening, and secondly because I adore Low. They are from northern Wisconsin / Minnesota, and their sound fits what life in that region might reflect, much like Alaska, particularly in winter.  The main duo of Low is a husband-and-wife team, who happen to be LDS.  I have never heard of a more major LDS band that doesn't focus on religious songs, which makes them even more unique in my mind.  Just as art, like that of Grace Choi, gives me a chance to look at an object or theme from multiple perspectives; this song  offers a minimalistic and haunting confrontation to the classic hymn.  I embrace the idea that everything can be questioned, and indeed ought to be questioned, if we are ever to arrive at a honest personal belief.

I have been following Low since 2001 when they released 'Things We Lost In The Fire' - an absolutely brilliant collection of sparse music.  I vividly recall the circumstances in which they first laid sound upon my ears.  I was sitting at the computer in a dingy office at Presbyterian Medical Center in West Philadelphia.  I was an overworked second year surgery resident listening to SomaFM.  This is an internet radio station that streams music from different genres; I have always preferred the "Indie Pop Rocks" webcast which was, and remains, DJ'ed by Elise.  I am listening to it now as I type this, and I highly recommend you explore their site and different music stations.  I support them whole-heartedly, and the world would be worse if there were no SomaFM.  And yes, my iPhone proudly sports the SomaFM app for listening on-the-go. 

Anyhow, I had left the E.D. where a C.T. scan was being obtained on an ankle injury.  Once in the resident's office I fired up Indie Pop Rocks to listen to music while I played Tetris.  Music and Tetris was how I kept awake when I needed to remain awake, along with many bottles of Mountain Dew Code Red and Snickers bars.  By this time it was well past 2 a.m., and I had been in the hospital working since 6 a.m the prior morning when I had arrived to round on patients.  This was the pattern of my life every 4th day for 730 days; the first two of four brutal years in residency.  One of the songs that Elise played was 'Closer' by Low off 'Things We Lost in the Fire': 

Hold me closer than that,

Hold me closer than that.

How'd we get here so fast?

Hold me closer than that.

Things we lost in the fire.

How'd we ever get by?

Words we'll never take back,

Hold me closer than that.

And I was hooked.  The hushed harmonies and spare guitar / percussion matched the despair I felt over those long days and nights and weeks and months and years of residency.  It soothed my soul to know others felt as 'low' as I did, yet still managed to get by.  

The song featured today comes off 'Trust', which album they released the following year.  If listening to the song up to this point has you scrambling for your shrink's phone number or searching the couch cushions for a fistful of Paxil tablets, you've missed the chance to embrace a moment of undiluted melancholy.

Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, listening and reading.  

Mask #2: the Snowy Owl

#8

01.08.10

Snowy Owl Mask (driftwood, pigment)

- Nick Charles, Sr., Bethel

Bethel, Alaska, is a city of about 7,000 people, mostly Yup'ik Eskimo.  It is the central city of the entire Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, a hub for over 56 different surrounding villages.  One of those villages is Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island, which is where the puffin ceremonial mask from yesterday's blog was made.  I like this region because it is arguably the most pristine region of native alaskan culture left… many of the people still speak their languages and dialects, hunt and gather their traditional foods, etc.  All of that is done elsewhere too… but the “Western Influence” showed up later in the Bethel area than other parts of the state, allowing them to better preserve their own way.  

This particular mask featured today is actually my favorite mask displayed in the hospital.  It was made in Bethel proper, and you can see the style and technique between the Yup’ik and Cup’ik mask of yesterday are similar, if not identical.  This mask features my second favorite animal on Planet Earth; the Snowy Owl, or Arctic Owl.  

I’ve yet to see one of these with my own eyes in the wild, mostly because that’s exactly how they prefer it.  They hunt rodents and birds on the tundra near and within the Arctic Circle (66º north latitude) during the day.  They have massive wings, large talons, and amazing eyes.  They are brown in summer, and white with brown markings in winter.  An injured Snowy Owl resides at the Alaska Zoo, and we are sure to stop and say hello every trip.  My favorite decoration in our house is a Snowy Owl figure that we have named “Olivia”.  She is featured in many of our family photographs either by choice or by chance.  She is a folk art piece by Leo Smith, my wife’s favorite folk sculptor.  Here is an unflattering picture of Olivia taken quickly now with the iPhone camera, though I have no doubt she will be featured in many photos down the line: 

We even hired an artist to paint her portrait standing within my son's middle initial on the wall in his nursery where we used to live.  When it came time to move from that condo, we were devastated that we would be leaving that portrait behind, and went so far as to consult several general contractors to see if there was any way to save it.  Alas, there was not, and it remains a deep regret that we didn’t have it painted on canvas.

The Snowy Owl mask hangs adjacent to the puffin mask in the hospital; and I thought I’d feature them consecutively in this blog too.  The same struggles with unwanted fluorescent light reflecting off the glass, angle of shot, etc applied here as with the puffin.  I won’t belabor the digital processing, but I think the mask and the photo are nice.  This next image was post-digital processing techniques identical to yesterday's final image:

The song featured today is ‘Winter Birds’ by my man Ray LaMontagne.  He is one of the most soulful singers of any genre that I have ever heard.  He will never release an album that I don’t line up outside the record store in my parka to purchase at midnight.  And by “line up outside the record store in my parka to purchase at midnight” I mean “buy in my pajamas while in bed at midnight when iTunes releases it”.  There are many, many connections I feel to Ray’s music, and some of the possible reasons include:

1)      his middle name is Charles (Yo!  Chucks of the world… Unite!)

2)      he grew up in New Hampshire (my son is going to get a full-ride academic scholarship to Dartmouth, if he knows what’s good for him.)

3)      he graduated from Morgan High School in Morgan, Utah (I graduated from Cottonwood High School in SLC, Utah… but drove through Morgan once and even picked up a diet pepsi at the 7-eleven; which is practically like being given the Key to the City.) 

4)      after high school he took a job in a Maine shoe factory (I wear shoes every day, and have other connections to “feet” that I won’t belabor here.)

      

So you can see, Ray (Charles) and I are real, real tight in a cosmic way for now, and we will become very best friends in the future when he returns some of my countless daily emails, phone calls, snail mails, gift packages, song dedications on both John Tesh’s and Alice Cooper's nationally syndicated radio shows, or some of the other more “personal” attempts to contact him and that my attorneys prefer me to not discuss either openly or in private.

Until tomorrow… thanks for looking, listening and reading.

Mask #1: the Puffin

#7

01.07.10

Puffin Mask (driftwood and pigment)

- Harry Shavings, Nunivak Island

Alaska boasts 8 of the 10 biggest islands in the United States.  Nunivak Island, where this mask was carved and which is located off the western coast of Alaska within the Bering Sea, is 7^th on that list.  Only 200 Cup’ik Eskimo live there now, but there have been inhabitants of the island for more than a thousand years.  They historically lived off walrus and loon, and other birds, using the skins, tusks, intestines, feathers – essentially everything, in keeping with the typical efficient and respectful native way.  The Cup’ik still living on the island continue their traditional way of life for the most part, and now can hunt musk ox and caribou herds transplanted to the island.

I’ve never been to Nunivak, but I have been to St. Paul Island (one of the Pribilof Islands) within the Bering Sea, and also to Bethel on the western coast of Alaska in the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta region. 

I’ve always marveled at the intricate ceremonial masks that they use in traditional dances.  This one features a horned puffin which are amazing little birds found throughout western, southcentral and southeastern Alaska.  They are known to dive deep for fish, and have a unique way of “swimming” with their wings while under water.  Here is a photo I took of a puffin in flight off the coast of St. Paul Island.  I spent more than 100 shots with my Nikon 8800 point-and-shoot to get this one image; so I hope you enjoy it!

Here is another horned puffin that I captured with my Canon Xsi in Seward, Spring 2009:

Back to the mask;  it is one of the many hundreds, if not thousands, of Alaska Native artifacts and crafts displayed throughout the hospital where I have the pleasure to work.  It’s like working in a museum, which can make the days much more interesting.  This ceremonial puffin mask hangs in a hallway near the entrance to the cafeteria.

The photo was a real challenge mostly due to the glass box it resides within.  Diminishing the light glare off the glass was tricky, and I couldn’t remove all of it.  I “warmed” the photo on Photogene to get the white’s whiter; then increased the exposure for the same purpose.  I cropped out the surrounding “debris”, and then increased the color saturation and contrast a little.  Lastly I sharpened the image a titch.  Overall I was pleased with the result.


Here is the original I had to work with.  I hope you agree that it was improved upon:

Here is a non-processed close-up of the mask:

I chose 'To Live is to Fly', a Townes Van Zandt song performed here by the Cowboy Junkies, for the soundtrack to accompany today's post.  This song morphs from a mellow, almost depressing tune into a vibrant and joyful affair.  I felt an upbeat song was needed to honor the noble little puffin.  Watching a puffin take flight and then dive into the sea is something to behold, and it never fails to make me smile.  


I've been a big fan of the Cowboy Junkies alt-country/folk sound ever since their 2nd album 'Black Eyed Man' came out in 1992 (this song comes from that album).  In fact, they were the first of many Canadian bands to catch my attention (now there are many such bands).  Their entire collection is a Must Have in my opinion.  I have a real thing for Michael Timmins' guitar and songwriting sensibilities; but it is his sister Margo Timmins' voice that draws me in to each and every song.  Incidentally, brother Peter plays drums while Alan Anton plays the bass.  I'm guessing the Junkies will make it in to several postings as the year progresses. The writer of this song deserves some mention, too.  Townes Van Zandt is an icon of folk-country music spanning many decades.  He died in the late 90's.  The Junkies credit him as an major influence on their music.  He, in turn, honored them by writing the song "Cowboy Junkies Lament" in the late 80's... so there was a lot of love going around between these folks.


One final note; I am absolutely thrilled to have had a reader suggest that I add a second music player to the blog that has a running list of all the songs I will be highlighting along the way.  It will be an eclectic mix, for sure... but I'm flattered and honored just the same.  Great idea, Thank you!  


Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, listening and reading.  CCE

Purple Haze

#6

01.06.10

Have you ever had a terrible day turn good in a flash of purple?  And no, I'm not implying that one minute you're crying because your friend just left you during the concert to hang out with cooler people, and then suddenly Prince just throws you his sweaty purple towel from the stage while you mosh through your tears in the pit.  (Do people really mosh at Prince concerts?  How sick!)   I'm talking about having a terrible, stinking, rotten day... only to have someone, or something, somewhere, flip a simple switch and make everything feel right?

Meet me, get to know me.  This is the story of my day.  I'll skip the terrible, stinking, rotten parts and jump straight to the "everything got good in a flash of purple" part.  I left work exhausted and deflated, and as I was walking to the parking lot I realized "I don't have a photo for tomorrow's blog".  I got to my sled, but before I could climb aboard I hear what I think might be a moose in the trees.  That actually occurs rather frequently; and twice I've seen black bear right there too. So I looked up and did not see any wildlife, but noticed that there was a purple haze hanging over the beautiful snow-covered spruce that line the parking lot.  And I mean purple-purple, as in 'Donny-Osmond's-socks' purple.  It was a dark and cloudy night; but through some strange physical phenomenon the atmosphere and the light from the street lamp created this  delightfully bizarre reaction.  

Presto!  There was my photo.

I only took about 5 shots, and I really would have been pleased to post any one of them here.  They all turned out wonderfully in my mind; and I was even checking them out on the iPhone during the ride home to make sure I hadn't imagined it.  

Above you see the one I decided I liked the best due to the odd angle of looking up while kneeling on the ice.  It adds an element of dimension and curiosity in my mind's eye.  The whole scene looks artificial, like I was doing a macro on a train set with fake plastic trees and snow, right?  (Fake Plastic Trees - excellent song by Radiohead; but it doesn't fit the vibe of my post tonight.  Sorry, MCD.)

I didn't have to alter or digitally process any of these photos tonight; how they appear is how they appeared right before my wondering eyes just an hour or so ago.  Here are a few of the other angles and pics that I shot:

I couldn't be any more pleased with the photos.  My earlier worries of the day have disappeared in a soft purple haze. 

No, I'm not going to choose Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze' for todays soundtrack.  That is a great song, but it's too obvious, and it'd break my streak of folk singers since blog #2.  

So tonight I've selected an upbeat "hard folk" bordering-on-pop-rock tune by Brandi Carlile from the Seattle area.  She has a very strong voice, but tones it down a little for this song.  I have it on my snowblowing playlist on the iPhone, and it's my favorite song she sings.  I like the verse:

Have you ever wandered lonely through the woods, 

And everything there feels just as it should?

You're part of the life there,

You're part of something good.

If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods.

Really nice!  That's the song that came to my mind as I stared at those beautiful evergreens covered in snow, bathed in a purple haze.

Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, listening and reading.  CCE

Shakespeare's Garage Doors

#5

01.05.10

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

- Shakespeare, ‘The Life of Tymon of Athens’, ~1623

I am aware of this relatively obscure play by Shakespeare due to this single phrase alone.  The play features a wealthy man, Tymon, hosting a banquet at which he lavishes expensive gifts on all of his guests.  The guests in turn lavish Tymon with praise, adoration and sworn loyalty.  Only Apermantus, a philosopher who is present at the banquet, sees the act for what it is: an attempt to buy the friendship and loyalty of parasitic sycophants.  So he makes his feelings known, analogizing the life of Tymon to the cycle of the Sun.  Tymon rises like the Sun in the esteem of his peers when he is able to provide them with expensive gifts.  However, when the expensive gifts dry up, the leased friendships and loyalties disappear like the setting Sun.  Nice work, Bill!

So by now you’ve associated Shakespeare's quote about doors with the photo of a door, but are likely confused at their relationship in this blog.  Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no deep or cryptic association.  I’m neither Tymon of Anchorage, nor Apemantus for that matter.  It’s just me breaking my promise from yesterday to stop blathering.  What can I say?  I'm a born blatherer. 

What really happened is that I left work well after the sun set (which is unavoidable, because it sets around 4:00 p.m. this time of year), and I needed to get a photo pronto.  As I was nearing home and passed my neighbors house, I realized I’ve always loved their garage doors.  Meanwhile, I've had the line about 'shut doors' from Tymon circling my mind for days, and for reasons unknown.  (Incidentally, I have also had the phrase "Stand back, or I'll shoot!" circling my mind for days... but I think I know the "why" on that one.)  So I decided that since my neighbors had “shut their doors against a setting sun”, both the quote and the pic would be fair game.  The problem is that tonight it is dark-dark, and the only light on the garage doors was from an exterior light fixture.  I got the photo anyway, and hoped that I’d be able to Photogene-it at home.  I would have taken another few photos to work with in case the first one didn't turn out, but I had spontaneously pressed my flattened form up to the door for a warm embrace when I heard sirens, so I had to rush home. 

Well, the results in the photo are admittedly mixed.  I had to increase the exposure, increase the color temperature to “warmer”, and then increase the contrast.  It definitely left the photo rather grainy, though I don't ever expect to eliminate that in such low lighting.  I was still impressed with the improved color and definition using such simple digital processing techniques.  I had to 'straighten' it out too; you know how I obsess over my verticals.  I don't think I got it totally straight, either.  The vertical seems true; but the horizontal seems off.  I’ll tinker with the photo bit more over the coming days to see if I can improve upon it.  Maybe I'll even try photoshopping, aperturing or iphotoing it just for kicks to see how much better they can resolve the photo, if at all.

I really like these doors, and maybe I'll post a daytime pic down the line under better lighting.  They have an almost medieval look to them.  You probably cannot tell from the photo, but the hardware is hand-hammered.

Here is the original “dark and crooked” photo so you can see what I had to work with:

Talk about a fixer-upper, right?!  (Clarification: the photo is the fixer-upper... not the beautiful doors!)

Finally, the musical selection is 'Crosses' by José González.  You know, because, Hello?! There is a cross in the picture.  On the doors.  In the picture.  Sheesh, I'd have thought that more obvious!  González is interesting because he was born in Sweden to Argentinean parents, he sings in English, he began his musical career in a punk rock band, now he performs almost exclusively solo with his acoustic guitar, and he is working toward a PhD in biochemistry.  Yo!  That is one diverse cat.  His vocals belie his punk rock past, I'm sure you'll agree.  Like every other musical selection I've chosen to date in this young blog; he has a very quiet vocal delivery, but with some perceptibly increased intensity over Nick Drake and the Kings of Convenience.  The only singer with whom I can compare his "quiet intensity" is one of my very most absolute favorite musicians... Elliott Smith (r.i.p.).  This song came off González's first EP, 'Crosses', back in 2003, but you can get it on his first LP 'Veneer', too.  I hope you like it. 

Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, reading and listening.

CCE

Scarred Birch

#4

01.04.10

I've officially had my first panic attack only four days into this project of creating an iPhone photo journal / blog over 365 consecutive days.  How in the world am I going to keep up without resorting to posting silly photos of myself grinning while wearing soggy Cap'n Crunch treasure chests sticking to my chin?  Of course, I cornered myself into this project on purpose knowing that if I gave myself days, or even weeks between posts the whole project would just whither and die.  That eventuality might be cheered by anyone other than myself, because I've really wanted to get started on "something" for some time.  I've always wanted that "something" to be a book, but fear and slothfulness have always kept me back.  I'm hoping this blog will give me a little discipline and a little confidence toward that end.

Today I've quashed my anxieties (likely just temporarily) by giving myself a loophole.  Namely, any day where I simply cannot find a subject I want to capture, or time will not allow the search for a proper subject, I will post an older pic taken on my iPhone over the past 2.5 years.  {Deep exhale}.  There... I feel much better.  

Part of the anxiety developed this morning when I saw that my hoar frost from yesterday had vanished over night with wind, cloudy skies and a warming trend (it got up to about 14 degrees above zero).  Thankfully I had constructed my "loophole", which eventually gave me the courage to put on the snow gear and march out into the yard for a few minutes to look for something interesting.  Nature never really lets us down, does it?  Of course not.  Especially in Alaska!

I mentioned yesterday that we have a lot of birch and pine here in the Anchorage bowl.  Well, I had taken a mere 4 steps from our side entry when a scar on one of our paper birch trees looked my way and said "yoo-hoo" in its unique and sassy way.  So I plowed through what is now about 13 or 14 inches of snow (it has been shrinking over the past month in the extreme cold with little additional snow) to inspect the birch.  I've probably seen this birch and its large scar hundreds of times over the past several years, but only today did it strike me as both interesting and beautiful.  Which is not to say I take pleasure in the tree having been scarred, but rather it lends a sense of maturity and perhaps nobility to this wild thing that has continued to exist despite the fairly inhospitable environment, the chainsaws and bulldozers of developers, moose antlers, wind storms, aphids, etc.

I took about 20 photos of the scar from different angles, and just felt like the real colors weren't coming out based on our typical gray-blue midday skies of Anchorage when under cloud cover.  I mentioned this to my wife, who promptly reminded me that professional photographers use light boxes to bring out the finer colors and features of their subjects.  So I skeptically retrieved a small flashlight from our emergency box (it's the only one we own), and proceeded to shine it on the scar with one hand while taking pics with the other.  That is no simple feat with the iPhone; having a touch screen button just doesn't jive comfortably with the need to keep a firm hold on the slim rectangular camera.  Many will have discovered this for themselves, no doubt.  But we LOVE our relatively buttonless iPhones, do we not?  So I am not complaining here, just trying to find ways to adapt to that amazing little device.  

I felt like the difference with the flashlight was absolutely amazing, and it opened my mind to other possibilities of shooting with this small camera.  {Sigh}  I hate it when my wife correctly educates me on MY HOBBY.  {Sigh}  It really brought out the oranges, coppers and browns quite nicely.


I only took about 3 photos with the flashlight, and felt like I could not improve upon them.  And that was a good thing, because after those 15 to 20 minutes or so in the yard my right hand was submitting angry complaints to the "comment boxes" in my parietal lobes.  There was no digital processing of the image shown above.

Here is a photo without the flashlight.  I think you'll appreciate the difference readily.

For the soundtrack I wanted to add the Kings of Convenience's 'Scars on Land' off their latest album "Declaration of Dependence"; but it was not available on Playlist.com.  This album is just their third over 10 years, and was released in October 2009.  They are an indie folk group from Bergen, Norway - which is cool because my brother-in-law T.M.O. lived there for awhile in his late teens.  The Kings of Convenience sound is super mellow and soothing, a trend over these last four posts that I'm just noticing.  I promise to spice things up when appropriate.  This particular song 'Scars on Land' has a nice little lyric that goes:


Still untouched,
No stain of hands,
Caramelized
In a tilted light.  


Wow!  It's as if they lived in Alaska.  Well... it makes sense.  Bergen is on the western shores of Norway; just as Anchorage is on the western shores of Southcentral Alaska.  And guess what the latitude of Bergen is?  Why, 60 degrees 20 minutes.  Anchorage is just 1 measly degree further north at 61 degrees 20 minutes.  So we share that "tilted light", the Kings of Convenience and I, right down to the "caramelized" bark of my birch tree scar, even.


Why not treat yourself to a lovely listen of that song here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgzyIkiCDMU


Until tomorrow... thanks for looking and reading (and hopefully listening, too).  


CCE 


PS Tomorrow my professional life resumes, which means you will likely not have to labor through my protracted blathering on near-future posts.  {You're welcome.}

Hoar Frost under the Northern Sky

#3

01.03.10

The most common question I am asked by folks in the lower-48 states is "Why Alaska?"  The answer is difficult to articulate, and "Why not?" never seems to suffice.  I guess for those of us who live here and love it, there are innumerable reasons why life in the Arctic/Subarctic holds us here, and happily at that.  One of those reasons for me is the hoar frost, which paints a winter's paradise.  While this frost is by no means unique to Alaska, it occurs commonly enough here that we probably have equal days with it as without it during winter.

It occurs when vapor (fog) skips the "turn to liquid before becoming solid" routine and sublimates directly to ice on supercooled objects, usually of a small diameter like the branch of a tree, a blade of grass, the links of a chain-linked fence, etc.  These objects get 'supercooled' relative to the air around them when warm air escapes upward on cold, clear nights.  The results can be breathtakingly beautiful.  


The hoar frost (also called "air frost" or "radiation frost" wasn't as thick this morning as some mornings; but it was pretty enough to make me want to take Co-pilot Q out for a drive.  I got this pic right around noon, and within a mile of my home, facing directly west as the sun sat low on the horizon in the southern sky.  It has not been enhanced by digital processing whatsoever; though I did crop out my vehicle and an ugly fence at the bottom of the pic.  It goes without saying that a finer lens on a higher megapixel digital camera would give a more powerful shot; but this is still quite pretty considering the humble camera that captured it.  Well, in my mind it's very pretty, anyway.

The soundtrack for this post is 'Northern Sky' by Nick Drake, in honor of our frequent hoar frosts here in the far north.  If you're not in to folk music, you're in the majority.  But I fear you're missing out!  If you ever consider giving it a try and wanted to jump in with an absolute icon of the genre, please give Nick Drake a try.  He was from England and tragically died at just 26 years of age in an Elavil overdose (an tricyclic antidepressant, though I prescribe it for painful peripheral neuropathy sometimes).  This track comes off his second album, Bryter Layter.  The tune is all-the-more special to me because it features John Cale on piano / celesta / organ / harpsichord and viola.  Cale, from Wales, was a founding member of one of my favorite bands, the Velvet Underground of Andy Warhol / the Factory fame.  If in yesterday's post I praised the 7 minute, 56 second version of 'Bye Bye Blackbird' by Miles Davis and John Coltrane as the greatest musical recording of all time; perhaps it is John Cale's emotional rendition of Leonard Cohen's (yet another of my favorite musicians!) 'Hallelujah' that may be my all-time favorite recorded song featuring vocals.  (Admittedly, if you follow this blog long enough you'll find I have a long list of songs referred to as "Best Song Ever"... so I guess in my mind it's more of a Tier than a pedestal built for one.) Sadly, the song 'Hallelujah' was featured on the soundtrack of "Shrek", which nearly devastated me... but regardlessly the song shines forever on.  None of which is meant to detract from the beauty of Nick Drake's 'Northern Sky'.  I hope you find it lending a mellow, contented vibe to your day.


{Sigh}  I've just noted that this post has leaned more heavily on the music than the photo.  Maybe I should have started a music blog, instead?  Nah... it's been too much fun combining the two here.


Runners-up:

These are 4 other photos I shot today.  I liked 1 and 2 quite a bit; but for some reason they are really blurred out at the bottom right quadrant.  I actually checked the iPhone lens to see if there was grease or something there, but there wasn't.  Perhaps it was just cold?  The so-called "fata morgana"? (It was around -6F at 9 a.m. this morning; I'm not sure what it was when the pics were taken.)  These have not been digitally processed, either... the blue sky was just that blue.  For these three I was facing north.  Option 4 is included merely because it shows the gorgeous view I get to enjoy from my living room 365 days a year.  The "yellow" is actually white; the hoar frost almost looks like leaves in the photo.  I attribute that to shooting through the window?  Most every tree we have in Anchorage is either birch or pine; you see both in these photos.

Two older (non-iPhone camera) hoar frost photos:

I shot these one day in early 2008 at the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage.  I was using my trusty old Nikon 8800 point-and-shoot.  It shows how heavy the air frost can become.  Beautiful.  I can't get enough of it, obviously.

Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, listening, and reading.  CCE