AllanThinks

Remembered

On the Saturday following Memorial Day, a ceremony was taking place at the Lexington Cemetery to remember those who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and who are buried there.

Alison and I happened upon it by accident. I don't know what organization was holding this memorial service, but it was a surprising sight to see these flags and flowers planted by each gravestone.

These soldiers are all buried in one section of the cemetery, near to, but not a part of the section that serves as our National Cemetery.

I guess whoever was doing this did not want these men, who were someone's children, brothers, or fathers, to be forgotten.

Our First CSA Share

Clicking the image will take you to its Flickr page. You can see a larger version there.

This is the haul for our first week's garden and meat shares from Elmwood Stock Farm. Elmwood is one of two (that we know of) CSA Farms in our area. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

We've been talking about participating in this program for a while, wanting to do what we can to be more responsible consumers. And we found that we had been buying more of our food from local farms at the Farmer's Market.

So this year we finally signed up.

Included in our basket this week were:

Asparagus
Green Garlic
Spinach
A mixture of three lettuces
A quart of fresh strawberries
A pound of ground beef
A free-range roasting chicken

All of these are organically raised. The newsletter included in the box said they also had radishes, but they must have had limited quantities, as we didn't get any.  But that's okay.

We are very pleased with what we did receive. It was more than I expected this early in the season. 

We ate the lettuce last night, and today at lunch. We had strawberries for dessert. Tonight, Ali roasted the hen, and some of the asparagus. It was all great. We're going to eat very well this summer.

I dedicate my 1000th blog post to the woman I love.

FreeKY

This is a photo of a troupe of fire dancers called Foxfire Hypnotica, who performed during the FreeKY Festival, a free festival of music, art and exhibitions of eclectic culture, held on April 26 in downtown Lexington. It was the culmination of Alternative Music Week, sponsored by WRFL, the independent, commercial free, student run radio station at the University of Kentucky.

The entire week of concerts, art shows, and other events also served as 20th anniversary celebration, and a fund raiser for the station, which plans to increase their power, and reach a wider audience.

Alison and I attended several of the events during the week, including a concert feathering Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, at The Dame the Saturday before FreeKY, a bluegrass music show at Al's Bar, and a concert and art show held at our friend Lori's shop Isle of You.

The FreeKY Festival began at 11 a.m. and continued until almost midnight, featuring a number of bands, an art exhibit, vendor booths, and community group exhibitions. The musical headliners were Jolie Holland, and The Apples In Stereo. We hope that they decide to throw another party like this next year.

Ali and I got there around 3, and stayed until it ended. We took our cameras, and we both took tons of photos. You can see her set here, and mine, here.

As always, the photo is clickable.

 

Neogothic

The photograph is, as always, clickable.

This is the PPG Tower in downtown Pittsburgh. It is the centerpiece of PPG Place, a complex of six buildings that is the headquarters of PPG Industries, one of the world's largest glass manufacturers.

The complex was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, and was completed in 1984. The tower is 40 stories, and rises 635 feet above ground level. I took this photo from atop Mt. Washington, across the Monogehela River from downtown Pittsburgh. Alison and I try to make it up there every time we visit the city. Luckily, Sunday was a beautiful, if cold, day.

And for the photogeeks:

Exposure:      0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture:     f/8
Focal Length:     170 mm
ISO Speed:     100
Exposure Bias:     0/6 EV

Café Society

Clicking the image will take you to its Flickr page. You can see a larger version there.

The first time I visited Alison in France in the spring of 2005, I took hundreds of photos. Over 400 in Paris alone. At the time, I only processed a small number of them for upload to Flickr.

I had every intention of completing the task over the next several months, but I ended up back in France for 5 weeks that fall, and I never returned to the photos from the first trip.

Since I haven't been  taking many photos lately, I decided to try and complete the task. As it turns out there were only a handful of photos that I felt good enough about to upload. They are now in my Flickr sets here and here.

This shot was taken as we sat outside of Café Psycho, across from the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, enjoying a beer and watching the world go by.

Chomp!

Clicking the image will take you to its Flickr page. You can see a larger version there.

One of the things we did while the kids were here was visit the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to see their recently renovated dinosaur exhibit, Dinosaurs In Their Time.

That was the culmination of a whirlwind trip to Pennsylvania. Visits to Erie, Titusville, and Pittsburgh over the course of four days. That last day, besides visiting the museum, we ate dinner with Ali's dad and his wife, then hit the road to drive back to Lexington. We got home in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Then we had to ready the house for a visit from Ali's brother and his family on Sunday. They returned to Erie on New Years Day.

The holidays were busy. Pretty much a blur. But we had a blast.

And I think it did me good to stay so busy. It made what could have been a depressing couple of weeks a delight.

I wish you all the best in 2008.

"Lord I was born a ramblin' man."

Alison and I are getting ready to vacate the gîte, and begin our trek back to Lexington.

It is customary to leave a rental such as this as spotless as you found it when you moved in. This one was immaculate. Alison wrote the other day about how nervous it made her. But I think we will be leaving it in very good shape.

The floors are vacuumed and mopped, and we are going to go have lunch somewhere. We will finish packing when we return.

We will pick up the kids when they get out of school this afternoon, and drive to Bordeaux, where we will spend the night in a hotel. We have to get up early in the morning to return the rental car and board our flight to Paris.

We will then board another very long flight back to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, followed by an hour drive back to Lexington. We should be home early Friday evening.

As usual, it has been an adventure. Full of fun, meeting old and new friends, and the consumption of wonderful food.

And the traveling isn't over. In a few short days we heading off again to spend time with Ali's family for the holidays.

See you all soon.

Got Jetlag?

Alison and I made it to France, and have settled into the house we are renting for the week.

We realized that we had gone for more than 24 hours without sleep. It was impossible to sleep on the flight over. The plane was packed, and we were surrounded by some of the most annoying fellow passengers you could ever imagine.

Ugh.

I wish I could afford for us to fly first class on international flights.

In any case, as I said, we are settled in. The kids are spending the weekend with us. Ali cooked a wonderful meal last night, and afterward, we sat down to watch Shrek the Third. Well, Ali and the kids watched it. I fell asleep on the sofa and missed the entire thing. I went into our bedroom to check the internet (yeah, we have tenuous internet access, thanks to a neighbor with an open router), and crashed on the bed.

I awoke sometime during the night in a dark room, fully clothed, and covered with a quilt. I went right back to sleep, and woke again at about 6 a.m. local time. I had slept for 10 hours.

Ali had slept in the kids room, and had awoken a little bit before me.

I guess that puts us back on a relatively normal schedule.

It is very cold here, but the skies are clear, and it promises to be a beautiful day. I don't know what we will end up doing, but I don't think we will spend it inside.

Time to put some kilometers on this unlimited mileage car we rented.

This is going to be an amazing weekend.

Our friends, Cathy and Mike from Washington State, who took us in back in August in a time of great need, arrived in Lexington tonight. They will be staying with us until the middle of next week.

Beginning tomorrow morning, a large group of friends will be arriving in Lexington. All of them are people we know from Radio Paradise. Some we have met in person. Others, we have never met before. But, even those, we consider friends. Radio Paradise is that kind of place.

This promises to be one of the largest meetups of RPeeps in the history of the radio station. As far as I can tell, it will be the third largest. It all came together at the suggestion of Alison and our friend Agnes.

It was so good to welcome our friends into our home. Based on this evening, I know that the next few days are going to be amazing.