cathleen's place: Travels

I was just rummaging through an old folder stuck in the back of yet another folder and lo! Look what I found.

A rose in New Orleans, May 2005.

Bamboo shoots, San Diego Zoo. I didn't use a tripod -- it was dark and I liked the blur.

Water and beer glasses, Quigs Restaurant in San Diego, the weekend Bruce and Celia visited.

Very old door, New Orleans, May 2005.

A few weekends ago we went to the American Craft Show in Sarasota. These amazing shows are part of the work done by the American Craft Council. We saw such incredible things, such beautiful things, things you could easily and happily design an entire house around. Let me show you...

This lovely chair was made by T. Bayley Wharton who owns Furniture x DESIGN in Mount Airy, North Carolina. What we saw at the Sarasota show that isn't on his website, was a truly unique and exquisite platform bed. Absolutely gorgeous. And yes, I'd be thrilled to build a house around such a piece of furniture.

Then there were phenomenal pieces of glasswork, like this bowl with what might be little worlds resting in it. It would be like having your own universe sitting on your table, to be inspected any time you wanted. This was made by Geoff Beetem of Athens, Ohio. There were about 2 dozen glass artists and all the work was extraordinary. It was hard not to buy everything we loved.

Our house is full of ceramics. Kim's whole family -- his mom, brother Jeff, sister Susan, himself, and his daughter Slayde -- contributed graceful and handsome pieces. My brother Doug is also a potter and we have some of his work as well. I also collected pieces made by students when I worked at a high school. There were at least 30 ceramics booths at the show. We were awed, to say the least. This graceful piece was made by Gayle Pritchard of Social Circle, Georgia. I was sorely tempted to add this to our collection.

I really wanted to spend money on the elegant clothes. They were genuinely, unbelievably stunning. But I know that I don't wear clothes like that, I just admire the hell out of them and want to own them. Here's a divine jacket by Lynn Yarrington of New Haven, Vermont.

I typically don't spend any time looking at the jewelry booths since I don't wear any, other than my wedding band. I also wasn't drawn to the leather work. Normally, I wouldn't stop at musical instruments, but the booth called StrumSticks was amazing. Bob McNally of Rockaway, New Jersey has come up with a marvelous musical instrument that he claims anyone can play -- and never a wrong note. Check it out and decide for yourself.

I could go on and on. There were about 120 booths, an incredible array of handmade works of art. We talked about furnishing a house from an event like this, as opposed to Pier One or Target. What a different environment you'd create that way. Actually, our goal is to learn about making these kinds of things ourselves. We truly were deeply inspired.

All photos in this post came from the artists' websites. They are used without permission and will be removed at the artist's request.

Wow. Kennedy Space Center. Wow.

We've lived in Florida more than two years and hadn't been to visit this incredible place. I guess that's always the way. The things that tourists come to see, the residents never go to see. We don't like touristy kinds of things, so that was part of it. But we're both big fans of extreme technology, so we really had to visit it before we book out of Florida. (You might have noticed a few disparaging remarks about Florida in the blog. Don't get me started. I could rant for days.)

This is the tourist Kim visiting the Kennedy Space Center. We stayed away from the super touristy things, like the IMAX theatre. We wanted to see the history of the space program, the old rocket ships, stuff like that.

We were hoping we'd get to go into the Vehicle Assembly Building. It's a truly amazing building. It's 23 stories high and covers 8 acres. This is where the orbiter gets mated to the massive fuel tank (plus the two booster rockets). All four pieces are the shuttle, not just the one piece that looks like a plane. But, no. There might have been a time when ordinary visitors were allowed in there, but not now. I think there's a scene in Apollo 13 where tourists are in that building.

There are launches coming up. That's very exciting and we would really really really like to see one. Maybe we'll make the two hour drive and take our chances on getting a spot from which to watch. This is the orbiter Atlantis (the white part that looks like a plane). It's sitting on the pad waiting. The launch is scheduled for December 6th. This will be the Atlantis' eighth visit to the International Space Station. The mission is called STS-122 and you can find out about it and the crew here. This photo is from the NASA site, we did NOT get that close.

As I said, we didn't get very close to the launch pad, but this shows a bit of the layout. Way over there is the shuttle on launch pad 39A. See the lighter square in the bottom left of the photo? That's to call attention to the crawlerway. What incredible technology. Looks like a gravel road, right? Well, that 'road' is 7' deep. It has to support the weight of the crawler-transporter plus the shuttle.

This is another unbelievable invention. This is the crawler-transporter. It weighs 6 million pounds. Yup, 6 million. And the shuttle on top of it weighs another 4.5 million pounds. Do the math. The crawlerway has to stay put while this behemoth rolls from the VAB to the launch pad. It takes about 8 hours. This is also one of NASA's photos.

It's always been a bit hard for me to understand that when NASA throws something up into space, there are two very different places where it's happening. There's all the stuff that happens to get the shuttle put together, taken out to the pad and then actually launched into space. That's the part that Kennedy Space Center is all about. Then there's Mission Control, as in "Houston, we have a problem." So there's this huge crowd of people in Florida and this other huge crowd in Texas and somehow (you can look it up on the NASA site, I've given you the links) they get the rocket or shuttle or mission or whatever it is up and back. Amazing. This is a re-creation, using the original consoles, of the control room at Kennedy Space Center that was used for the Apollo missions.

Here's tourist Kim again, happy and excited to be standing under the massive engines of the Saturn V rocket, the same rocket that was used in the Apollo missions.

Rocket engine. Umm. What can I say? It's really huge and incredibly powerful and more than that you'll have to investigate on your own.

We looked around the International Space Station Processing Facility. There actually were things in this place waiting to go out to the Space Station. Remarkable. This is the famous Canada Arm. Meet the Canadian who manages the Canada Space Station Program. He knows a lot about the Arm.

There were work and habitat modules that you could walk through. Very cool. You have to be a total organization freak to even think about spending time in one of those things. And you obviously better not be claustrophobic. This is a wardroom. That means bedroom on a ship. The zipper bag is the bed. Gnarly.

Here's more of the equipment awaiting transport to the ISS. JAXA is Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. So the deal is, countries that have stuff that needs to go to the ISS bring that stuff here and then it gets scheduled and goes up. This is like visiting another planet. Know what I mean? So alien. So not everyday.

This is the Rocket Garden. It was fun standing next to real rocket ships. This is no attraction by the highway on your way across the country. No sirree. This is the real deal. And extremely awe inspiring.

By the end of the day, tourist Kim had really seen enough and read enough little explanation signs. A cup of coffee was needed before the long drive home. It was a lovely day.

Delicate. Lovely. Soft-looking. Always surprising. Flowers, wherever you find them, are wonderful. They fill the world with every color and the most delicious smells.

This is the quintessential Florida scene -- wet, wet, wet and green, with some Spanish moss thrown in for good measure, of course. Although Florida is not a great place for hiking, we decided to "hike" through this park. It's called John Chesnut Sr. County Park and it's located in Palm Harbor, Florida.

It covers about 255 acres and was built in cooperation with the Army Corps of Engineers. The reason Florida isn't a great place for hiking is because 7 months out of the year it's too hot and humid to move with any speed and there are no hills or mountains in Florida, so there's just these flat, boring stretches of path through the humidity.

And truly, in the months of June to October, the bugs will eat you alive in a close environment like this. The air barely moves at all. It's really amazing -- people who've lived here for years don't seem to notice that you can't actually get any air when you're outside. On our walk through Chesnut Park we were warned about the dangers of messing with the wildlife. We've heard stories, like everyone has, but we haven't seen anything scarier than a medium sized spider.
The park is built beside the rather large Tarpon Lake and is full of swamps, so the Army Corps of Engineers built these cool raised boardwalks. The boardwalks do two things: keep your feet dry and keep humans out of the marshy, swampy, somewhat delicate terrain.

Walking through the Florida jungle on these boardwalks in late October was almost pleasant. There was a tiny breeze, it was cloudy and the temperature wasn't much higher than 79 degrees. What kept it from actually being pleasant was, of course, the humidity, which was probably in 90% range. Yuck. But the marsh is full of wondrous life.

This is what fall looks like here. Pretty much that's it, the one leaf. We saw some orangish-brown needles on the pine trees. It was just some old dead branches.

It's really a lovely place and easy to enjoy. There are plenty of benches for relaxing, watching the wildlife and listening to the sounds of the water creatures. There's even a swing.

It's truly unfortunate that I still associate relaxing outside with smoking. I'm happy to say that the urges passed quickly and Kim helped me by talking through it with me. He's very understanding -- he quit smoking more than 30 years ago.

I was thinking about how to choose what to write about. Everyone has oodles of stories, lots of things happen in a person's life. My sister had coffee with Jim Morrison after a Doors concert in Phoenix, one of my friends moved to Dublin just because she loves Ireland (and Guinness) so much, another friend was living in Japan teaching hip hop, and my brother drives all over the southwest finding new butterfly species -- see what I mean? Really interesting stories.

I have so many photographs of flowers, must be because I love flowers -- in my garden, in the forest, in parks, in my neighbors' yard, doesn't matter, I just love flowers. So I've taken lots of pictures. There are stories here.

These were taken early, early in the morning at the New York City flower market. Many years ago, the fresh flower market stretched for blocks and blocks, now it's down to just the one block. Nevertheless, it's incredible when the delivery trucks are being unloaded: Thousands and thousands of flowers, all colors, all shapes and sizes.

I watched the other early risers making purchases -- flower shop owners, florists for the big hotels, and regular folks like me. I couldn't get enough of the smells; and they were so wonderful mixing together with the coffee shops on the block. Sensory delights, mmmmm.

Kim and I go to New York once in a while to visit Allison and Carl. We've been there in the summer and in the winter. Someday I'd like to see New York in the springtime. Allison says it's really pretty then and in the fall too.