No damn pool anymore

Just thought that this should be somewhere easily findable should I ever need to refer to it again. The White House website, which used to provide this Press Pool Report page openly linked, no longer does. For the moment the page is there but all the links to it are gone. At first I was horrified, thinking that either Obama suddenly got secretive or the site was falling down. But no. After a little googling, here is the reason. It is not like that on this side of the pond.

Dubya in photos

The Internet Renders Its Verdict on Dubya in HTML, originally uploaded by Madison Guy.

Here is a rather fascinating, extensively illustrated, rundown - in several senses of the word - of the Bush presidency in images. As usual with all great posts to do with photography, the pics are only half the story.

Renewal

Inauguration Day 2009: President Obama takes oath, originally uploaded by USA TODAY.

Moments ago, President Obama (who is shown taking the Oath of Office above) issued the following Proclamation:

NATIONAL DAY OF RENEWAL AND RECONCILIATION, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As I take the sacred oath of the highest office in the land, I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders, renewed by the courage and decency of the American people, and fortified by my faith in an awesome God.

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright — it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

Ahhh. I feel refreshed!

Rather whoooaah

Portrait II, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Last weekend, after going to bed, my left arm went very cold and tingly for no reason I could think of, and I was convinced the end was near. Although it turned out not to be - at least not then - I have felt somewhat like a woozy, lightheaded occupier of my body since, and this self-portrait is as close as I can come to sharing the feeling.

For those who are interested: it was a trapped nerve, most likely in my neck.

It was also a 15-second exposure at ISO 200 and f/22, for those who care not about clicking through to investigate further. I took great care with the shoes, you know.

Almost like a dream

Almost like a dream, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

This was taken on New Year's Eve (actually, scratch that - it was taken on New Year's Day, very very early), but is fitting as a celebration of the festive season in general. Here's to warmth in winter.

Nearly over

Snowflake, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Well, this is it - the Twelfth Night or last night of Christmas for this year. Tomorrow, it will be time to take the decorations down, but there are still remnants of the season to enjoy, whether they are based on food, presents, or memories, and here in Northern Ireland the weather is getting colder. If it keeps this up we might have the promise of snow!

So I sit here sipping a Franconian style dark lager from London, and listening to a lovely lady drawling out some wonderful jazz, and I feel thankful for each of the past 12 days. Here's to the next lot...

Iceland part of America now?!

Heh. Well, here's a novelty. The BBC News website's live stats map (linked from things magazine) thinks Iceland's part of North America!

Well, obviously it is, continentally speaking. Europe generally ends at the Atlantic Ocean, after all. But politically, Iceland has been a part of Europe, and has more recently proudly stood apart, very much a place unto itself, but still more 'European' than not. And while we're at it - how come the UK gets its own stats to itself but isn't included in with the rest of Europe? Why is this part of the BBC's map political whereas the Icelandic bit isn't?

What is most interesting about the BBC's decision to make a continental judgement about the affiliation of any given country is that this isn't a geography subsite but one focused on news. News is only, after all, the small part of what happens that people pay daily attention to and are fed by the newsgatherers. And people care about different things when you start thinking regionally or geopolitically. You could say that poor Icelanders' interests would be submerged by the flood of American and Canadian traffic stats, or (less plausibly) that the American stats would be skewed slightly by the more shark-eating, Scandinavian ways of thinking of the land of fire and ice!

It's probably just the way their servers are set up, or something. But it would be lovely to know in detail about their back end and how it affects fascinating little questions of the regional zeitgeist like this - and whether they think it's right that it should! ;o) Just a thought.

Little things

Noel, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Last Monday morning, the door-knocker rat-tatted in Greenwich, and after some manoeuvring I propped Jonathan’s Christmas tree against the wall in the back garden, waiting for this weekend when he would decorate it.

This past Friday morning, he sent a photo (above, shamelessly stolen) of some of the old, white enamelled letters, found in a junk shop, which will decorate it. The letters spell NOEL. A cat shows obvious interest and delight.

Yesterday morning, I awoke to a quiet, empty house and what I will call frost-light — a promising brightness beyond the curtains and cold air — and found that everything in the garden and the street was coated with hoar frost. It didn’t disappear all day.

This morning, I awoke to more of the same. The bin lid is firmly frozen shut. Footsteps across the garden make tiny high-pitched noises as frost is compacted underfoot. The wooden garden table’s surface looks rather like a dark smooth cake dusted with icing. Coffee steams more thickly amd vigorously than ever in colder, crisper air. The bright, distant sound of a church bell somehow travels at least a mile. And there is a new recipe for a Christmas cake in the Sunday paper.

These are little things, but wonderful. They make me smile and feel excited. I just thought someone should know. :o)

The push and pull of London, paint and steel

Rothko big room at the Tate, originally uploaded by libbyrosof.

Back from Thanksgiving in London. I can’t really give you too much of an idea of any of it because it was all so wonderful, and therefore incommunicable in so many ways, but I will say that I had the most wonderful Thanksgiving day with Jonathan, Willie, Ruairidh et al, and that I had a lovely chorizo and rocket sandwich at Borough Market, and that aside from those precious experiences on winter days and nights, there were two others which just overlay themselves on my mind and don’t go away.

Last Saturday morning, I visited Rothko at Tate Modern. The exhibition presents a selection of Mark Rothko’s later works, including some seemingly plain and very luminously dark canvases — and the so-called Seagram Murals, some of which were intended for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York City. They are what we have come to see as quintessential Rothko: massive, insistent, throbbing presences. They were never hung in the restaurant after all; he withdrew from the commission but took the same care over them as over the rest of his work. And anyway, it would be impossible to eat near them.

I was somewhat sceptical of their ability to make me emote. I’d seen some of them before, many times, in the Tate collection, but this was the first time they were nearly all together, united from many different countries, in one perfectly-lit room. I got all choked up with real emotion after a couple of wanders around the other rooms and back to the one above.

The exhibition had the effect on me of at first intensely interesting me and almost pushing me away at the same instant, and then utterly compelling me to let myself get pulled in. It was the same with the Richard Serra sculptures at the Gagosian gallery in King’s Cross later that day. He uses huge, heavy sheets of thick corten steel, sometimes curved and twisted into funnel-shaped forms, sometimes almost sandwiched to create claustrophobia, sometimes left weighty and brutal and straight. They really are almost monstrously large, far far bigger than human scale, but as with the proverbial tree falling in the forest, they are transparent spaces, blank cinema-screens for your soul, and have no power beyond your engagement with them. If you aren’t there, they really don’t make a sound.

So if you get a chance before either of these things leave the UK, please go see. That’s all for now, folks.

House in the woods

Sou Fujimoto’s house in the woods around Kamamura.

Iris Robinson's chocolate balls

Northern Ireland's assembly members have always faced a battle to keep the public satisfied. So a new charity cookbook featuring their favourite recipes could help.

An Assembly of Recipes includes the likes of George Robinson's easy fruitcake, Jim Shannon's hedgehog cake and Iris Robinson's chocolate balls.

I've had enough of Iris Robinson's balls already this year, and I suspect most people would agree.

Apologies for continuing to be remiss in posting. There sometimes just aren't enough hours in the day, what with admiring weird buildings online, and all.

President-Elect!

CAN OBAMA WIN AND BE THE NEXT US PRESIDENT?, originally uploaded by _ØяAcLә_.

For some reason, thinking of America, the money, the mess, the churches and the election, I kept thinking of this passage from the end of James Joyce's story Grace:

`For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.'

Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ. But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters religious.

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a business-like way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience.

Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say:

`Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.'

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man:

`Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.'

For the past four years, whenever America has been on my mind, it has seemed like a question, a living, teeming question more than a nation: "What next?" A question, under strain from all sides, pushing and pulling itself towards a future nobody seems to have envisioned and everyone is sure they are a little afraid of.

Fear has been, at least from a distance, a very palpable undercurrent even in the last few weeks of the American elections. Fear of the economic situation. Fear of what happens. Fear of the wider world. Fear that jobs will be lost. Fear of McCain. Fear of Obama.

Fear for Obama.

I stood in the kitchen very early this morning, and turned the radio on. Almost instantly I heard the phrase "President-elect Obama" and felt myself smiling from ear to ear. Jubilation, excitement, relief - but is it a measure of just how wound up we've become about America that I also feel afraid for Obama? Is it just the after-effect of the past eight years, which will melt away in a few days? Will I relax and stop thinking about the possibility of a staring face, a pointed gun, another worldwide scream, a funeral the like of which I hope never to see?

I think so. Hopefully.

America looked at its fears yesterday, and said "Enough". Obama will stride over them, also. He has a lot of work to do. And I am very much looking forward to seeing him do it. Thanks, America. Many, many thanks. :o)

Browns

Browns, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Brittle and crunchy summer memories, blown into a little corner by the wind. Apologies for the silence: I've had a somewhat intense past few weeks so haven't been posting as much.

This weekend has been grey with wonderfully bright, crisp and cold periods. During one of these I nipped outdoors with my camera (and my new cheap cheap cheap, but wonderfully sharp and bright 50mm lens) and took some photos. This is one of them. It's pretty much what Belfast is like right now.

Greek sculpture

...but posed by real human beings. I noticed this in the centre spread of today's newspaper. Enjoy.

Photography, and a rather lovely video

I like taking photos. Why this is, I have very little idea. It started with flickr, back in 2004, when I realised that far from being some amateurs-showing-their-snaps site, it was a searchable repository of some of the most fantastic and diverse photography, both in subject-matter and style, that I'd seen.

That inspired me to buy a little Nikon compact. It was, and is, a very nice little camera. But all compacts are restrictive - they don't let you vary the aperture, with which you can get cool "this bit's in focus, and this bit isn't" effects, or the exposure, with which you can get equally cool "blurred people walking around a sharp building" effects.

Digital SLRs are larger cameras, with removable lenses so you can fit different lenses for different effects. I bought one relatively recently. And without becoming too geeky, I'll just say here that the tilt-shift lens is possibly one of the most versatile lenses ever invented for sheer jaw-droppingness of visual effects. It can let you take a photo of a tall building without it seeming to curve at the sides and bend backwards. It can make a photo of a street look like that street is in fact a tiny model street, if you do it right.

So I give you what I've seen in plenty of photos, but never like this: tilt-shift videography.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo

Stockwell Shooting

Stockwell Shooting, originally uploaded by coconinoco.

Oh my.

Oh my goodness.

I'd really like it if this was deliberate.

Summer and Autumn

Autumn and Summer, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Today has been both in Belfast. So here goes.

The cover of the book underneath shows part of the large Autumn canvas that Cy Twombly painted for one of his Four Seasons cycles. The cover of the book on top shows a house torn apart by Hurricane Katrina.

Reading both of these at the same time, my mind mixes them up. There are little boats in the other Four Seasons paintings, blurred, primeval and dreamlike - setting out on the water to make an offering, perhaps? To the gods of wind and water? To keep us all safe as each season passes?

Too bad.

Twombly's seasons paintings say: we are small beside all this. It is neverending and has nothing to do with us. It is beautiful and dangerous somehow; bountiful, also.

In a certain mood, your mind too may play at chinese whispers, and suggest much the same about hurricanes. And old cities.

Now move away from my nigiri unagi, you tramp

Feng sushi, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

...a good deal of the progressives’ attitudes, preferences, and sense of identity are ingrained in an unlovely disdain for those outside their charmed circle. In Lander’s analysis, much of their self-satisfaction derives from consumption (the slack-sounding “stuff” in the title is deceptively apt)—and much of that consumption is motivated by a desire to differentiate themselves from the benighted.

Sushi, for instance, is “everything [White People] want: foreign culture, expensive, healthy, and hated by the ‘uneducated.’”

White People [like being protected] “from having to look at things they don’t like. At the top of this list is anything that has to do with Christianity”—an aversion, Lander discerns, rooted not in religious enmity but in taste (Christianity is “a little trashy”), formed largely by class and education.”

The other week in London, after spending a small amount on trainers and trackies, and a small fortune on a trendily branded item of sports clothing — which I’ll probably never use for sport and nobody else will either — I ambled along to the cultural enclave of the South Bank, took a few arty photos with my expensive new camera, and then met my atheist friend and some other white people from his writers’ group. We all drank, and talked about how normal and hard-up we are for a while, and discussed creative writing, and agents, and getting published.

And then went for sushi. Oooops. Cough.

Warmth

Little brown leaves on the pavement outside the office, but only in patches. The sort of air that makes your skin feel all-over cold, but you don't feel cold. A short night's sleep. Darker outside than you remember for the morning. A strange clarity of mind and vision.

If things keep on like this, I'll start imagining some radiant, crisp autumn.

London, this time, was marvellous. Nearly two whole weeks there, packed with things to do, but nothing was rushed. The Prom at the Royal Albert Hall held electrifying music, played slightly slower than the CD, and an interval that glowed with Victorian warmth and a wonderful friend. Then he was gone with his other half for a few days. The house was very empty but full of the rich, slight sadness when you miss people.

When they got back, the world shifted, London became cushioned again but absolutely not any worse for that. The cats moved around the house more, there were little warm social calls to make, there was a wonderful 10-minute stretch of morning at a market by a cathedral. Warmth above the table over dinner, breakfast, lunch. Warmth on the Bakerloo line. Warmth in a cold mojito. Warmth in a cushioned space around which floated a vanishing room. Warmth, even, in the morning alarm bleeps.

It can't last forever, though. Really, it can't. There's a reason these times are so special. They are unusual. And until the usual next dose of the unusual in November, I suppose I'll find my warmth in bed, in the slow turn to autumn... and hopefully in a few other things too.

Inhabitants

American Folk Art Museum, originally uploaded by ekainj.

To make a break with the London posts but still stick with architecture for a while, because I’m still in the ‘larger architecture than my home town’ phase that comes after London:

I always like before-and-after photos of sites that have had new buildings built — or spaces where buildings were. So it’s fascinating and infuriating and encouraging to see this lengthy and hearty set of just such photos about new buildings in New York City. In a city that size, it’s unsurprising, I suppose, that so many striking (and sometimes strikingly ugly) buildings have appeared recently. But even London has a proportional paucity of such character in its brick and stone and metal people. Anyhow, do a bit of google searching on the addresses given in the article, because you will turn up far better photos of the new creations than the article is able to provide.

This New Orleans post mentions architecture too — new stuff before the storm, evacuation, stuff after the storm, and now old stuff being stolen. Or is everything old stuff now?

Finally, things magazine has an excellent entry on material spaces.

Now I need a little space inside my head. So if you’ll excuse me...