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Sorry I've been so absent, flickr friends. But I have a good excuse. 1) work is about to get super-duper intense, so I was trying to enjoy my last week of 9-5 for about the next month and (2) I was preparing for A PUPPY. Jonathan & I are going to pick him up from the rescue place this afternoon, I'm way excited. But first, I had to bake 4 dozen cupcakes for work. Busy day!
I wanted to take a picture of my two fairy girls together, and also capture their adrable ears.
Flora is more a fairy of light, while Elva is a more handy fairy, she helps out with things and isn's afraid to get her hands dirty:)
Two Canadian made trains awaiting delivery at the Amtrack faciity in Beech Grove, Indiana (Indianapolis). And don't these engines look a bit like Bottlenose Whales?
From Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Guns,_Arizona
Two Guns is a ghost town in Coconino County, Arizona, United States.
Located on the east rim of Canyon Diablo approximately 30 mi (48 km) east of Flagstaff, Two Guns prospered as a tourist stop along Route 66.
Early history
Native artifacts found at Two Guns have been dated to between 1050 and 1600 AD.
As white settlers began to populate the area in the mid-19th century, Two Guns was recognized as an ideal place to cross Canyon Diablo, first by wagon, then later by vehicle.
Two Guns was the site of a mass murder of Apaches by their Navajo enemies in 1878. A group of Apaches had hid in a cave at Two Guns to avoid detection, but were discovered by the Navajos, who lit sagebrush fires at the cave's exit and shot any Apaches trying to escape. The fire asphyxiated 42 Apaches, after which they were stripped of their valuables. The murder site is referred to as the "death cave".
During the winter of 1879-80, Billy the Kid and his outlaw gang hid in the ruins of a stone house and corral on the west rim of Canyon Diablo, across from Two Guns.
In 1880, long before Two Guns was established as a settlement, the construction of the Santa Fe Railway was progressing across northern Arizona. At the location where the rail line crossed Canyon Diablo, about 3 mi (4.8 km) north of Two Guns, construction was delayed while a trestle was built. A settlement populated by male work crews was established near the construction site and was named Canyon Diablo, after the nearby canyon. The settlement "quickly became a wild and lawless place as drifters, gamblers, and outlaws made their way to town", Four men employed by the Hashknife Ranch robbed the train at Canyon Diablo in 1889, then fled on horseback with $100,000 in currency, 2,500 new silver dollars, $40,000 in gold coins, as well as silver watches, jewelry, and diamonds. A posse led by sheriff Buckey O'Neill pursued the bandits, but recovered less than $100 when the men were captured. Years later, after release from prison, one of the thieves disclosed that the stolen goods, along with their rifles, had been buried in the canyon rim near Two Guns. The location remains popular with treasure hunters.
The National Old Trails Highway (called the "Santa Fe Highway" in Arizona) was built in 1907 in Arizona, and loosely followed the railway, The highway crossed the dry river bed of Canyon Diablo at the Two Guns location, and zig-zagged up and down each embankment. In 1915, Canyon Diablo Bridge opened at the Two Guns crossing, and was used until 1938 when a new bridge was built nearby.
Settlement
The first settler at Two Guns was Ed Randolph, who built a store next to the death cave.
In 1922, Earle and Louise Cundiff purchased 320 acres (130 ha) of land from Randolph at this location for $1,000, and built a store, restaurant, and gasoline pumps.
Harry E. Miller leased a property from the Cundiffs in 1925 and began extensive construction. Calling himself "Chief Crazy Thunder", Miller wanted to capitalize on the beauty of Canyon Diablo and the flow of passing tourists. Along the canyon rim Miller erected a zoo with cages made of brick, mortar and chicken wire; his zoo animals included mountain lions, cougars, gila monsters, coral snakes, birds and a lynx. A restaurant and Indian gift shop were opened, and Miller cleaned out the death cave, selling any Apache skulls found inside as souvenirs.For a fee, visitors were led on a tour which began at a Hopi house Miller had built, where rolls of colored piki bread was made and sold. They then followed a paved path down the side of the canyon to a soft drink stand at the bottom. Next was a tour of the death cave, where Miller had installed electric lights, and fake ruins of cliff dwellers. Flamboyant signs were placed along the highway, and Miller named his establishment "Fort Two Guns" as an homage to silent movie actor William S. "Two Guns" Hart, with whom Miller claimed to have previously worked.
The Cundiffs applied for a post office under the name "Two Guns" in 1924, but it was refused. The post office was renamed "Canyon Lodge".
In 1925, "Rimmy" Jim Giddings opened a gas station and cafe at Two Guns called Rimmy Jim's. Another location burned down in 1969.
In 1926, the highway designation was changed to U.S. Route 66. That same year, Cundiff and Miller had a disagreement about the details of their lease, and Miller shot the unarmed Cundiff to death. He was later acquitted of the killing.
The interior of Miller's store burned in 1929, and soon after, Louise Cundiff built her own tourist store. The following year, Miller left the state. Cundiff remarried, and in 1934 opened the Two Guns Texaco service station along a new alignment of Route 66. Behind it they relocated the zoo (which closed prior to 1950).
In 1938, a new bridge across Canyon Diablo was built, and Route 66 began following Interstate 40 at the Two Guns location.
A more modern service station was built at Two Guns in 1963, and in the late 1960s a motel, western tavern, reptile exhibit, and new zoo were added. Later, a Shell service station was built and a KOA campground opened.
Decline
The service station burned in 1971, and Two Guns began to decline.
The ruins of many former structures remain, including the trading post, campground, old cottages, zoo, and burned-out service station.
In 1988, Canyon Diablo Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Photo by Eric Friedebach
The Two Ronnies. A painting on display at Santa's Ghetto, a small temporary gallery, based in a disused shop on Oxford Street, during the Christmas season 2006.
Some Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue antics on Lee Marvin Beach during our Nikko Bay Kayak Tour of the Rock Islands in Palau
"Viaggiare, per i giovani, è una parte dell'educazione, per i vecchi una parte dell'esperienza."
Francis Bacon
Was too busy adjusting after a move, my day job, and family responsibilities to take my camera out lately. Here's a shot of two seagulls on a handrail at a pier in Olympia, WA.
Lit by two anglepoise lamps, photographed on medium format Fuji Reala colour film then converted to mono in GIMP.
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All of my images are ©Kevin Allan and may not be reproduced in any form without my permission. A selection of my images can be purchased as prints, cards, etc from my website; others are available for licensing from Getty Images and a different set from Alamy
From the May 2016 trip to Thailand and Cambodia:
After five days in Thailand (3 in Bangkok, which included the day trip to Ayuthaya, and 2 nights on Koh Chang), it was time to make our way to Cambodia. There were two places in Cambodia I was looking forward to seeing: Angkor Wat (which pretty much everyone who comes to southeast Asia wants to see) and Phnom Penh’s Killing Field memorials.
First, though, was the matter of getting from a semi-remote tropical island in Thailand to the national capital of Cambodia, about 400 kilometers to the east. There isn’t a direct, easy way to do this, so being able to get it done in the time I hoped for was the biggest concern of the whole trip to me. Part of the reason time was such a factor is because I had only planned to spend Friday evening and all day Saturday (until early afternoon) in Phnom Penh before flying out to Siem Reap. With so little time there, I wanted to have as much as possible. With that in mind on waking up, I wasn’t sure how the day would turn out. I’m glad to say, it went very well.
The first thing we needed to do was get from the Arunee Resort to the pier on the opposite side of a small mountain at 6:00 in the morning…on an island with no taxis. (It is a tropical place to relax, after all.) The hotel drove us over in a truck for 300 baht. After another 40 baht/person ferry ride across the gulf, we got back to the mainland sometime around 7:40. From there, another 50 baht/person via tuktuk/van to the main bus terminal in Trat, about 45 minutes away found us in good time to grab a bus. (This is the terminal to come to for buses returning to Bangkok or going on to the Cambodian border.)
The minibus to the Cambodian border was roughly an hour and a half ride, and I was another 120 baht/person lighter. The time flew by, though, as we only passed through one very small town between Trat and Hat Lek (the border town).
The border crossing at Hat Lek is a bit interesting. Lonely Planet advised me ahead of time that this is the most expensive (and only truly expensive) border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia. (Unfortunately for me, it was also the only practical/logical one to use, so I didn’t have an option.) Via airports and at all other border crossings, the Cambodian visa costs about $25-30. Here at Hat Lek, though – and I don’t know why – it’s over $50. The fact that there isn’t uniform regulations at border crossings seemed suspect to me to begin with, but it doesn’t change the fact that you still have to do what they say. (You just get the feeling that you’re being fleeced unnecessarily…and by government officials, at that.)
On arriving at the border, the first thing you do is pass through the Thai exit post, which is quick and painless (and free). Walking a few meters farther, you come to the Cambodian entry office, which has a lot of folding tables set up outside. The first thing you do (as US citizen, anyway) is hand over your passport to someone who does NOT look official – yet, he is. You pay him 1600 baht for the visa, plus another 200 baht if you don’t have a passport picture on hand (which I didn’t). So…that was $60 more out of pocket.
Also, while sitting at these tables having your passport/visa processed, people will come up and ask where you’re going and offer private cars to get there. There are supposedly three buses from Hat Lek to Phnom Penh, the last leaving at 11:30 in the morning (and taking 5 hours to get to the capital), and you would have to take a car to the town/bus stop which is about 10 km away. (Not knowing, precisely, how to do that, I went for the easiest way there and just agreed to pay a guy 1000 baht/person to drive us in his Camry all the way – 300 km – to Phnom Penh. It ended up costing 2000 baht (close to $65) plus another $25US in total. Now, $90 may seem a bit expensive, but this was a personal car, what amounted to be a 4 hour ride, and he dropped us off right at our hotel. (I put this in perspective simply by thinking of the cost of a taxi ride from Newark International Airport to JFK in New York City…and this deal was much, much better.) The only thing that was slightly disconcerting is that we didn’t actually know this guy and could have possibly been taken advantage of. However, my charmed life seems to continue…
We got to our hotel and checked in by 4:00 in the afternoon on Friday, so things – though slightly pricy by local standards – went very, very well. The Number 9 Hotel (on St. 258) is less than a five minute walk from the Royal Palace in downtown Phnom Penh. There are quite a few monuments around the area as well (Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Monument, Independence Monument, etc.) The hotel itself was also a bit no-frills, and advertised a Jacuzzi/spa on the roof…which they said was under repair after we checked in. No worries, though; the restaurant at the hotel was quite good and I think it’s the only place we ate for the ~24 hours that we were there. The staff and service were top notch.
As I was still getting over the previous day’s bug/virus/whatever, I didn’t go out on Friday night. Saturday, though, was a different story. Just outside the hotel (and there are quite a few boutique guesthouses on the rather short St 258) are a group of tuktuk drivers all happy to get your business.
Now, Phnom Penh isn’t actually much of a tourist destination. In total, there’s the Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda (within walking distance) and the National Museum (just north of the palace). Additionally, there’s the Russian Market (which we didn’t get to). The main reason I really wanted to come to Phnom Penh, though, was to go to the Tuol Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. (I won’t give a long history lesson here, though highly encourage anyone reading this to do a quick Wikipedia search for “Choeung Ek Killing Fields” or, for something slightly more in depth, try to find information from the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979.)
The only things I’ll mention about that era is that, in 1975, the population of Cambodia was about 8 million people. In the five years of the Khmer Rouge regime, they saw fit to assassinate close to 3 million of their countrymen. (Think about that for a minute…imagine your country’s population, whatever the number, then imagine the country is taken over by a military regime that commences to slaughter 35% of the populace. The most conservative numbers I’ve seen are 2 million killed, which is still 25%.)
With that as background info, we arranged one of the tuktuks to take us to the Tuol Sleng Museum, then to the Killing Fields, 15 km southwest of downtown Phnom Penh. Our driver, Ron (perhaps Ran, but pronounced like the former) agreed to be our driver for the day. He took us to the museum, then the killing field, then in the early afternoon to the National Museum and picked us up at the Royal Palace around 3:00. At 4:00, he ushered us about 15 km north of town to the airport. We met his wife as we went to the airport. Total cost for the day: $33.
Our first stop was the Tuol Sleng Museum. This is a former high school (a place of optimism, aspiration) that the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture chamber. (Additional psychological trauma, I guess?) I’ll give no details, save to say that I likened it to a Nazi concentration camp minus the gas chamber. To visit here, though, you are spared no detail in the presentation. I’ll commend (perhaps not the best word) the Cambodians for owning up to their atrocities. Other countries in the region could learn a lot from this. (They say it’s important to bare all so that people can see the horror and it will be less likely to happen again.) Anyway, after paying the admission ($6, I think?), you wander through the buildings with your audio guide and the many well-presented exhibits. At the end, about an hour later, there’s a man selling a book for $10. He’s a survivor of this place. I really had no words; just hugged the guy. He and his daughter said he was spared simply because he knew how to fix and use a typewriter.
After leaving Tuol Sleng, in quite a somber mood, Ran took us across town to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields (this is probably the most famous one in the nation, though there are literally hundreds here…and also still many active landmines from the war in the 1970s, so…I wouldn’t wander around too freely).
If the Tuol Sleng Museum was somber, this place is equally, if not more, harrowing. The admission here was also around $6 or so, and comes with another audio guide. There’s also a small room/museum with a 15 minute informative video. After that, you wander from point to point where you learn that this place was the former mass grave for Chinese. You also see mass graves for women, for babies…a tree (still standing) where babies were murdered, and so on. The final stop is a memorial stupa which contains the skulls and other bones of countless victims, classified by gender and method of murder (though all victims are still unidentified). However, the presentation is more than powerful enough to make its point.
The morning touring done, we returned to Number 9, had a leisurely lunch, then had Ran take us up to the National Museum. It’s a rather small museum, though quite good – especially if you like stone Buddhas. The museum admission is around $5, and the building has four small wings, that visitors tend to visit beginning on the left and going in a clockwise manner. No picures are allowed to be taken inside the museum (which I thought rather unfortunate, as it really was quite interesting and tasteful, as far as museums go), but you could take pictures of the museum itself and the internal courtyard. Leisurely seeing the entire museum takes less than an hour.
From there, it was about a 5-10 minute walk along the palace wall (north side, around the east wall that runs parallel to the river). After paying to enter the Royal Palace at the southeast gate, you’re allowed entry to the grounds and have access to view buildings such as the Coronation Hall, the Crown Room, and the Silver Pagoda. This is essentially quite similar to Thailand’s Royal Palace in terms of how much (and what) you can see, though it wasn’t quite as nice as Thailand’s to me. (I don’t mean to imply that it’s not nice, though; it was an enjoyable afternoon, though with temps around 40 degrees, my energy waned rather quickly.)
After an hour or so here at the Royal Palace, we made our way back to Number 9 (at this point, barely a 2 minute ride by tuktuk), where we rested until 4:00 and had Ran take us to the airport for our 7:30 flight to Siem Reap, 45 minutes away.
En route, though – and also from observations riding around on the way back from Choeung Ek – I got the impression that while Phnom Penh may not be the most touristy place in the world, it sure seemed like a great place to live (as much for expats as anyone). There’s still a lot of French influence, so my first abstract impression is that it reminded me of a combination of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Fuxing in Shanghai, and just some trendy/hippie areas in general. There were lots of cool little boutique hotels, restaurants, stores…and the Cambodians are exceptionally friendly and pleasant (as are Thais). I don’t know that I’ll ever come back here, but I certainly wouldn’t feel bad if I did…
At any rate, those were just my impressions on the way out of town. Getting to the airport, I was ready for the final stop: Siem Reap & Angkor Wat. The only thing standing between me and my ultimate destination…a prop jet.
Two lovers cycling ... (Didier Tronchet).
The installation has been made with recycled materials by the Green Management Service of Turin City.
A netsuke is a small sculptural object used in Japan over more than three hundred years. Netsuke initially served both functional and aesthetic purposes. The traditional form of Japanese dress, the kimono, had no pockets. Women would tuck small personal items into their sleeves, but men suspended their tobacco pouches, pipes, purses, writing implements, and other items of daily use on a silk cord passed behind their obi(sash). These hanging objects are called sagemono. The netsuke was attached to the other end of the cord preventing the cord from slipping through the obi.
September 4th. Sunday. Alice and Sarah here.
My two lovely friends Alice and Sarah came over today.
I love them both a lot and they're so easy to be myself with.
We had so much fun together. Eating, dancing on the roof,
trying on dresses, taking pictures, eating more... So much fun.
I love them both a lot.
He's a very special individual, my Tom. We've now been married for two years - could it be that much already? It's been a turbulent time, some very good, some not so good, but we're the strongest and closest we've ever been together now. What doesn't destroy you only makes you stronger.
I didn't take the decision to marry him the year before last lightly, and wouldn't want to be married to anyone else. So much loving, learning and exploring left to do. I love you Tom. x
Two Prudential Plaza shot from Randolph St. Building is the 6th tallest in Chicago
One of my fav buildings along with 77 West Wacker (United Airlines building)
(Nope Aqua does not make my list)
Shot back in November
We saw these two beautiful girls near the Saphan Taksin station. Not sure what their stories are but we really hope that they are given the assistance towards welfare and education. Pain our hearts to see them in such a state.
As usual, I was up late. Getting to bed, I picked up this photo to give it its two seconds of attention, never having noticed it before. What the heck are those white blobs, I found myself asking. I had no idea.
Even with a magnifying glass it took me a moment to realize that that was a man standing there. On the back is written "Spring near Camp [Hause, House, not sure what the last word is]"
Portugal has some of the most impressing two storied cloisters I have ever seen ...
Portugal hat einige der schönsten zweigeschossigen Kreuzgänge, die ich je gesehen habe ...
The Manueline or Portuguese late Gothic, is the sumptuous, composite Portuguese style of architectural ornamentation of the first decades of the 16th century, incorporating maritime elements and representations of the discoveries brought from the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral.
This innovative style synthesizes aspects of Late Gothic architecture with influences of the Spanish Plateresque style, Italian urban architecture, and Flemish elements. It marks the transition from Late Gothic to Renaissance. The construction of churches and monasteries in Manueline was largely financed by proceeds of the lucrative spice trade with Africa and India.
The style was given its name, many years later, by Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Viscount of Porto Seguro, in his 1842 book, Noticia historica e descriptiva do Mosteiro de Belem, com um glossario de varios termos respectivos principalmente a architectura gothica, in his description of the Jerónimos Monastery.
Varnhagen named the style after King Manuel I, whose reign (1495–1521) coincided with its development.
The style was much influenced by the astonishing successes of the voyages of discovery of Portuguese navigators, from the coastal areas of Africa to the discovery of Brazil and the ocean routes to the Far East, drawing heavily on the style and decorations of East Indian temples.
Although the period of this style did not last long (from 1490 to 1520), it played an important part in the development of Portuguese art.
The influence of the style outlived the king. Celebrating the newly maritime power, it manifested itself in architecture (churches, monasteries, palaces, castles) and extended into other arts such as sculpture, painting, works of art made of precious metals, faience and furniture.