In the little town of Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of England, there is a cemetery.
My grandmother is now in that cemetery.
The day after the funeral my mother and I stopped by, and I took some photographs.
The next day it snowed, so we went back.
On the way we drove through a snow whitened Dark Lane.
For pictures of Dark Lane, without the snow, click here: Dark Lane
Or click here for: The Beach at Budleigh Salterton
https://blog.hodomania.com/?p=5420
So I went and made myself a bookshelf out of books.
The books were cut in half and glued together, then placed on either side of the shelf, to act as the framework to hold the shelves up.
Yes, that is a bottle of gin on top.
I really don’t know why it is that I like cemeteries. Is it because I listened to too much of The Smiths as a teenager? or did I listen to The Smiths because I like cemeteries.
I really don’t know, and it’s not like I haven’t contemplated it. There is something wonderfully depressing and refreshing all at the same time.
There is something about all those past lives, somehow telling me to get on with mine.
But it’s not just that, it’s the stories.
There are graves that tell stories.
Like the one with a “mom, wife, daughter, sister, teacher, friend” who died at the age of 44 in 2001. Placed on top of the grave is a banner celebrating Halloween, a picture of Poo Bear and Christopher Robin, and a plastic palm tree.
This was obviously a loved woman, a family woman, she is still loved and missed enough after nine years to have someone return to place a Halloween decoration on the grave.
Who is doing this?
Is it the husband, the mother or the daughter?
I wonder at these stories.
Sometimes I like people just because of their gravestones.
Like Benjamin, who has gone fishing.
The Sierra Madre Pioneer Cemetery is in the town of Sierra Madre, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. This town was once the gateway to the Mountains, but now it is a quiet pretty suburban town. A place with it’s own butcher shop and one little theatre on the main street.
The main street is Sierra Madre Blvd, and the cemetery is on this street, just east of downtown.
Is is a quiet little graveyard, with the occasional auto passing by, and a lady with her dog. Next door are a few houses, and other the other side is a park, with tennis and basketball courts.
The first was buried here in 1884, just as the town was beginning.
What I do when I am in cemeteries, in between contemplation, is take photographs, each with a story.
On the gravestone it says “mom, wife, daughter, sister, teacher, friend” and there is still a friend for her, to bring new Halloween decorations nine years after passing. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
A gnarled trees stands over a few of the graves in the Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
A man who died 32 years before his wife, but they still made it onto the same stone. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
This just seems funny more than anything else, an egg? A round stone? With your eternal family name engraved on the side. I guess incongruous seems to fit. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
There is always something sad about children’s toys sitting beside a gravestone, Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
There is a recent trend to put photographs on the grave stone. Most of the time they are of the person later in life. But here Tom and Betty are young and when they met. It is unendingly romantic. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
While James shows a different personality, that of a wanderer in the world, free of clothing and fetters that keep his hair down. And with a huge smile. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
There are, of course, all the little things that are brought to personalize a grave, most of the time it is flowers, but some deceased have people who do more than that. Like placing angels above the site. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
Or to sleep forever with their favorite cat, Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
Or a pair of puppies forever inquisitive on who has come to look at the grave. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
And there is Benjamin, who has gone fishing, forever. Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
And finally, a last one, to tear at the heart. “Age 9 Months.” Sierra Madre Cemetery, California.
Abstract Los Angeles is an ongoing collection of photographs as I wander about this sprawling metropolis.
Today’s installment is all about fences, because fences always remind me of The Far Side cartoon where the surburban father explains to his fence surrounded son that the bird song is territorial marking common to lower animals.
Fences always seem so necessary and sad at the same moment.
Or sad that they are necessary.
Links of chain hold back humans from entering a community garden just off the 101 freeway near downtown Los Angeles.
A fence guarding a wall; beautiful pointlessness.
Don’t forget to Believe, but what to believe is the question.
I wonder what number 203 is looking at, and why frowning so much.
The end is behind a chain link fence.
With a little barbed wire for good measure.
On a sidewalk in Culver City, with a paranoid look over the shoulder.
In an alleyway beside the Garment District, surrounded by the smell of urine.
Just off Hollywood Boulevard, a young man holds a machine gun while proposing that ‘Violence Solves Nothing.’
Near the Garment District, drugs are not allowed outside the restaurants.
‘Do Not Hump’ the train cars in Travel Town, Griffith Park.
[No, it doesn’t mean what your dirty mind thinks, ‘Humping’ train cars is to sort them, like mail, by using a small hill, or hump, to help push them on their way.]
The Cabrillo National Monument is beautiful, but the name is deceiving. It’s considered a monument because there is a statue of Cabrillo here, but this area should really be called The Cabrillo State Park, or The Cabrillo Ecological Reserve.
The statue sits on top of a finger of land dangling south from the California Coast, guarding San Diego Harbor from the waves, winds and -the never arriving- invading foreign flotilla.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo stands –or at least his statue stands- looking out to sea, with the harbor of San Diego to his back.
Cabrillo was an archer in the subjugation of Mexico City and must have done a good job because he acquired land and became wealthy in Mexico. He also must have become bored after a number of years of wealth, so he built three boats with local materials at hand where Mexico and the Pacific meet, and headed north into the great unknown.
On Sept 28, 1542 he and his ships entered a harbor, which he called San Miguel, and would one day be called San Diego.
There were a few groups of local Indians who already lived by the bay, but Cabrillo ‘found’ the harbor anyway, and claimed it for Spain.
Cabrillo died, most probably from an infection from a broken bone, as his ships continued north from San Diego, and eventually the little flotilla –after losing one of its ships in a storm, and without the captain- returned to Mexico in April of 1543.
The bay has grown from those few Indian settlements along the harbor to -450 years later- a city of 3.5 million and one of the largest naval bases in the world.
The view from the statue is panoramic, with California scrub brush falling away to the blue harbor, submarine births to the left, a military airfield sitting in the center, and the towers of San Diego and the Coronado bridge in the hazy afternoon sun.
The navy is not just visible in the harbor, but out to sea as well. In the two hours I spent in the park I saw three large military ships, probably transport or cargos, a few fighter jets leaving with booming noise, and the top heavy V of an aircraft carrier in the distance.
This spit of land that sticks out and guards the harbor is really one huge military base. On the drive out to the park the road is lined with barbed wire fence and military barracks. Just the tip is open to the public, from 9-5 with a $5 entry fee for my car and I.
There are basically three things to do in the park:
Old Point Loma Lighthouse:
Just a short walk up from the visitor center is the Old Point Loma Lighthouse, restored to look like it did 150 years ago, where I met Robert, decked out in period costume.
He worked in the park, as a historian, or greeter, to the tourists. We chatted a moment about the tide pools down below, and how sad it was that most of the sea creatures had disappeared over the last 50 years. It’s especially sad that the Black Abalone are gone, with their oil-slick-rainbow-colored inside that made them susceptible to the destruction of man.
Robert was kind enough to pose for a photograph in the living room of the restored lighthouse, and smiled, despite probably having to pose for hundreds of these photographs every day.
The lighthouse stopped being used in the 1890’s because it’s situated 400 feet above sea level. Therefore most of the time it was also above the level of the fog, and therefore no use to the sailors. Now there is a lighthouse at the very tip of the peninsula, at sea level, operated by the Coast Guard, but it’s not open to the public.
On the way up to the lighthouse is a tiny cramped building that was once a WWII radio room. During the war years, the park was closed to the public and it was used as a military gunnery and listening station.
In the little building are displays of letters and radios, maps of the range of the guns and a short video. The video shown is probably from the 1950’s and is a description of how to hit a ship 15 miles out to sea.
It’s all about the geometry, trigonometry and triangulation. It’s simple, really.
There are two viewing posts, probably half a mile apart, with the gun in between. To find a target -or to triangulate a target- three things must be known.
The first is the distance between two corners of the triangle, or in this instance, the distance between the two viewing posts.
The other two are the angles to the third point of the triangle, or the ship to be destroyed.
The viewing post measures the number of degrees between the ship in the distance, and the other viewing post.
With these three numbers (say half a mile, 60 degrees and 60 degrees) and a little help from trigonometry (view the equation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation ) a shell can be lobbed from up to 20 miles away and hit the target.
Happily this instillation never needed to fire in anger in WWII, and therefore the letters on display talk mostly of the boredom of spending the war in San Diego.
The Hike:
Leading away from the lighthouse is the easy 1.25 mile hike (2.5 mile return journey). It’s not really a hike, but more like a gentle stroll along a smooth easy path, wide enough for a small car.
Along the way are numerous signs, pointing out the old military installations, the local and the migratory birds, the different types of scrub brush and flowers, and the geology of the area.
The hike leads down along the edge of the peninsula, with continuous views of San Diego harbor, and the numerous sailboats, motorboats and military ships entering and leaving.
The Tide Pools:
On the opposite side of the peninsula from the hike, exposed to the pacific waves, are the tide pools. It must have been high tide when I arrived, because there were no creatures on view, just the waves smashing on the jagged rocks.
Or as I see it,where geology and beauty meet.
One selection of rocks were standing at a 30 degree angle, like the ramp for an Evil Knievel rocket car jump over the Pacific Ocean.
These rocks were once under the sea. The visible layers, which look like an infinite layer carrot cake, were created over millions of years on the sea bottom. Sand, silt and dead creatures fell to the flat bottom of the sea and created layers.
Then along came volcanoes, continental drift, and uplift which pulled and twisted this land, eventually turning it 30 degrees from flat and depositing it not on the bottom of the sea, but on its edge.
And this rock, that was once the sea bottom, is slowly being eroded way, so that the fine layers of sand are again deposited on the sea floor, for the whole million year process to begin again.
There is also a perfect stone imitation of the deadly walk-the-plank of a pirate ship.
The mass of stone sticking out is what is left of a molten lava flow. This rock once pushed its way to the surface from deep underground, and slowly cooled. As it cooled the rock shrunk, creating cracks in the solid stone. Weirdly symmetrical cracks.
The sea came and eroded most of the rock away, leaving just this little stump left, with its sisters already broken away into the sea, as remnants of what was once here.
Post Script:
On the drive along the peninsula, in between the barbed wire fences and the barracks is a cemetery. A cemetery filled with symmetrical white headstones.
It’s Fort Rosecrans Cemetery, and is filled with military personal, from those who died on the field of battle, to those who survived to a ripe old age, and even one who never had a chance to begin.
Margarat Ann
March 2, 1947
March 3, 1947
It’s a reminder of all this military hardware crammed into this bay, is all useless without human beings.
I went to San Diego’s Chicano Park to see the beautiful murals. What I found is a park that is beautiful, but not in the way parks are traditionally beautiful. Its beauty is not in huge expanses of rolling hills like Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, or disappear-from-the-city beauty like New York’s Central Park.
The beauty of Chicano park is more like the beauty represented by Gloria Gainer’s song ‘I Will Survive’.
Chicano Park has most of the usual park items: green squares of grass with white concrete walkways, a children’s playground, a bandstand, a fountain, a basketball court and picnic benches. It also has some unusual items; cactus and agave gardens and a tall thin candle shrine with a patron saint stuck to the front.
But it’s none of these usual park items that first catch the visitors eye, it’s the massive columns holding up the freeway thrumming overhead.
This park is hemmed in on all sides, by the grass below, by buildings and walls on all sides, and by flying concrete overpasses.
There is so much concrete in the sky above Chicano Park, it’s as if the sky is gray, rather than blue.
This area of San Diego, on the eastern edge of the bay, became Barrio Logan in 1905. In the years prior to World War II, it became one of the largest communities of Hispanic Americans in the west. It stretched from the low hills over-looking the bay, all the way down to the waterfront where there was a pier and a beach.
During WWII the pier and the beach were commandeered by the military for the war effort. The waterfront property was never returned to the community.
About this time the zoning laws were changed from residential to mixed use. Almost immediately 48 automotive junkyards moved in, as well as numerous chemical and industrial businesses. All of these new businesses sat next to, and in between, the existing homes.
The residents grumbled about the destruction of their neighborhood, but at this time the community had no say in local politics, so the grumbles were just that, quiet grumbles that changed nothing.
In 1965 the 5 freeway was built, cutting Barrio Logan directly in half. Now the main cultural landmark, a church, had a 40-foot concrete wall right by its side that separated it from the speeding cars and half the community.
After the freeway was finished, the Coronado Bridge was built. It connects the island of Coronado to the mainland, using the new freeway as its connection. The bridge meets the freeway in a T-junction, that looks like the old Atari logo, or the roots of a tree.
All of those roots stand in the sky over Chicano Park, but at this time it was not yet a park.
It was now the late 60’s and things began to change in Barrio Logan, like they did in the rest of the country.
The Hispanic Community, and Barrio Logan, both of whom traditionally had no say in government, began to find their voice, began to stand up for their community.
The community asked for, and received promises, that this small parcel of land, half hidden underneath the bridge, would become their park.
In April of 1970 the bulldozers moved in and began to dig up the land. But they were not building a new park, but a new California Highway Patrol office.
The community was outraged at the broken promise, and promptly occupied the park. They took it over by the sheer force of numbers, stopping the bulldozers and planting gardens with cactus and agave.
There were 14 days of occupation before the local government finally relented and officially turned the area into a park.
As the park was being built, the community decided to cover all the concrete walls and columns and overpasses with murals. Murals depicting the history of the Americas, murals of famous men and women of history and the local community, murals displaying current culture and murals of the struggle of this particular Hispanic community.
Chicano park is just a park, made with grass and concrete and paint. But it is also much more than that. It’s a symbol of a community’s struggle. The struggle to not be over looked, the struggle to have a voice. And a community that made something beautiful from chunks of concrete.
[ Colossus by Mario Torero, Mano Lima, Laurie Manzano., 1974
Renovated, 1989: Mario Torero, Mano Lima, Laurie Manzano.]
[Varrio Si. Yonkes No! Raul Jose Jacquez, Alvaro Millan, Victor Ochoa, Armando Rodriguez, 1977 Restored, 1989: Raul Jose Jacquez, Alvaro Millan, Victor Ochoa, Armando Rodriguez, Vidal Aguirre.]
The two above photographs are details of the same mural, one of the first I saw when I entered the park. When I saw “Varrio Si, Yonkes No!” I mistranslated it in my horrible Spanish into “Locals Yes, Yankees No!”
But I was completely wrong.
The phrase was the rallying cry against junkyards -as yonkes means junkyards- and to gain their community back from the industries that were taking over and destroying their homes and backyards.
La Revolucion Continua, or The Revolution Continues painted on the underside of a freeway overpass, in Chicano Park, San Diego.
A mural of car culture, painted on a concrete bridge support for the Coronado Bridge, within a basketball court, in Chicano Park, San Diego.
A mural of a warrior in Chicano Park, San Diego.
Chicano Power. Detail of a mural in Chicano Park, San Diego.
“Let me say at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of Love.” -Che on a mural in Chicano Park, San Diego.
There are two websites where I found most of the information for this article:
History of Chicano Park
Chicano Park Steering Committee website
Abstract Los Angeles is an on-going collection of photographs taken as I wander about this sprawling metropolis.
Today’s installment is all about created faces; sometimes with spray paint, sometimes with fur, or plaster, or maybe even metal.
At the intersection of two small streets, somewhere on the south side of West Hollywood, or maybe the northern edge of Beverly Grove, there is a smiling face that greets everyone who visits the intersection.
Hiking up the canyon to reach Eaton Canyon Falls, just north of Pasadena, sits a graffiti face, surprisingly unhappy beside a stream.
A bunny, outside a pharmacy/flower shop, ruffled and beaten and matted, with one eye held in by tape. No, I don’t know why it was there. Lake Blvd, Pasadena.
Another bunny, sitting in a window display, probably late, late, for a very important date, but with popping eyes of fear. Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood.
A T-rex, made from metal, hidden behind Hollywood Blvd, attacking clouds, or it’s source of rust, in the Rock City Railroad yard, Hollywood.
At the beginning of the hike to the Tunnels to Nowhere [link] an old water tower is covered with graffiti, and a happy face, in the San Gabriel Mountains.
London in Winter.
When the sun disappears at 4:30,
and the gray buildings reflect the gray sky and the gray trees,
all moments of colour stand in contrast.
Upon exiting the underground, on the edge of Hyde Park, the famous blue and red symbol glows in the darkening sky, London.
On the edge of Hyde Park stands a faire,
and in the middle of this faire is a Helter Skelter.
It’s not just a Beatles song, it’s a classic British faire ride.
Walk up the stairs in the center of the cone,
climb outside at the top and
ride the slide round the outside,
down to the bottom.
“When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again ”
– The Beatles
As the rain falls in London, a group of tourists collect on the porch of the National Gallery, photographing the Christmas Tree in the center of Trafalgar Square in the background.
A road, just like any other in London, with the darkening sky and the cars with their headlights. This one happens to be just north of Oxford Street.
Walking through Hyde Park, just north of the Albert Memorial, with winter trees gray and naked, no green leaves covering their privates. A lady takes a walk with her white dog, who pauses to sniff a tree.
Three signs, from the London Underground, in an effort to keep us, the general public, safe.
‘Take Care After Drinking Alcohol’ says the sign, which I found beautiful, after drinking some alcohol and attempting to look sober on the platform. The lilting angle of the photographs is not the world turning on its axis, but my photographic eye goes sideways after a few drinks. In the London Underground, England.
This sign, announcing “Mix And Platforms Alcohol Don’t” is at a skewed angle, not because I was drunk, but because it sat on the ground at an angle. In the London Underground, England.
“Be Careful When Doing Something Stupid” is my favorite of the posters I found on the London Underground. It might be the illusion of safety with the hard hat, or the little rubber ducky happily floating on the water in the knowledge that its plastic body will repel the short circuit. Or maybe it’s the little danger lightning escaping from the socket. But I think my favorite, here in 2009, is the copyright date at the bottom of 1974.
In December of 2009 I spent six days wandering about London, just looking around with my camera.
Look up is spray painted in the corner of a brick wall, for no reason what-so-ever. All that was up was the sky, and maybe some sun. Must be one of those intellectual statements about seeing things differently. Or maybe just to fuck with people. London, England.
There is something eternally beautiful, or maybe distressing, about looking at perfectly photoshopped models living on billboards, next to actual human beings. The unreal versus the real. The ideal versus reality.
Reality always wins. Near Sloane Square, London, England.
There is, without a doubt, no smoking in the New Covent Garden Wholesale market, south of the River Thames, London, England.
On one of the concrete barriers, to keep terrorists out of the Houses of Parliament, is a no walking sign, with the help of a head sticker. London England.
Spray painted on the edge of Westminster Bridge, looking over the River Thames to Big Ben, are the words ‘Come Clean’. Why are those words there? Who or what should come clean? Is it a prank, or a subtle government plot to pick up your litter? In central London, England.
On the northern edge of Regents Park runs one of the canals through London, where someone has to give way to someone else.
In December of 2009 I spent six days wandering about London, just looking around with my camera.
Memorial for the ‘Glorious Dead’ standing in the middle of Parliament Street, between Trafalgar Square and Houses of Parliament, London England.
Standing on the Tower Bridge looking east along the River Thames, with detail of one of the structural members holding up the towers and the ghosts of pedestrians, London England.
The Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges, flanking The Hungerford Railway Bridge, stand with their supporting cables soaring into the sky, over the River Thames, London England.
The infamous Battersea Power Station, famous for being on the album cover of ‘Animals’ by Pink Floyd, stands hidden behind a wall that attempts to provide a beautiful green lawn and manicured bushes rather than the filthy ground surrounding the rebuilding of the station, London England.
South of the river Thames stands the skeleton of a storage tank, waiting to be filled, London England.
Don’t forget to visit:
London Abstract Photographs: Movement [Fragment 1]
London Abstract Photographs: Faces of Stone [Fragment 2]
