Bolognaise

There is not much room in my head at the moment for anything but work, so rather than bore you with further tales of the library (which bore me as well) I'm going to share another video from our garden wildlife cam.

This one begins with a mysterious cat that I have never seen before, getting up close and personal with the camera lens. There's some squirrel chaos. Then I put down a container with a small amount of Bolognaise sauce that I thought the foxes might enjoy. The magpie comes to check it out but isn't interested. The starlings peck at it a bit. Then, finally, a lithe young fox shows up, and although the camera failed to catch it actually eating the meat sauce, I know it did because the container was licked clean. (And subsequently recycled by me.)

I think the camera must need new batteries. Its reaction time seems slower than usual. There's no reason something as big as a fox standing in front of it shouldn't trigger it right away!

The Animals

I told you I'd take photos of all the animal-head sculptures that live in the library display cabinets. These are projects that students made in an art class many years ago -- before I got my current job in 2013. So I've been staring at these critters (and they've been staring at me) the whole time I've worked at the school.

Now the current librarian is talking about swapping the artworks out for something new. If the animals do get removed, they will apparently go live in the art building.

Excuse the dusty shelves. No one ever cleans inside these cabinets! I love the platypus on the right.

I think that lizard, or sea creature, or whatever it is, is from a different art project.

The one at bottom right is a boar -- sorry the light is right in its face. The one next to it is a walrus. All these heads are made of clay and they're quite heavy.

A pretty good assortment of creatures! Some are better than others but I do enjoy them all, so it's nice to have a record of them now.

The Storehouse

Yesterday I met up with blogger Sharon, who is visiting London from the sweltering desert environs of Phoenix, Arizona. Sharon had mentioned in an earlier comment on my blog that she wanted to visit the V&A East Storehouse, a vast working museum and warehouse in East London where the V&A houses many of the items in its collection. I said, "I'll go with you!" So yesterday we made it happen.

I met Sharon near Euston Station and we took the tube and then the overground train to Hackney Wick, a colorful neighborhood full of street art near the River Lea. I've been to Hackney Wick many times and you've seen it on this blog. But the Storehouse is a relatively new addition to the neighborhood, which has been dramatically built up and gentrified since the London Olympics were held there back in 2012. What was once a landscape of junkyards and industrial estates is now an Emerald City of glittering apartment buildings and hipster cafes. There's still some impressive street art here and there.

We stopped at a little coffee shop across from the museum where, curiously, they seemed to sell large dramatic houseplants as well as cappuccinos. Only after we left did we see it was called "Coffee and Plants." Well, that explains it.

We entered the Storehouse, where Sharon (like all visitors) had to put her bag into a locker before entering the storage/exhibition area. Visitors are asked at the outset not to touch the objects on the shelves, many of which are within easy range, but the mood is relaxed and there's not a lot of strict monitoring. And how do you know what you're looking at? Well, the displays on the end caps of the shelves have a number, and there's an app where you can enter that number and read about each item.

To learn about the other objects in storage, you have to be able to see the item number and enter that on a different web page. Sadly, I couldn't see the number for the pandas above, so their provenance remains a mystery.

There's a glass floor looking down into a lower gallery, not quite as terrifying as the one I stood on at Blackpool Tower. See the round black objects in the display case at top center of the photo above? Those are Keith Moon's drums, all in their protective cases. The V&A owns an incredibly eclectic collection of stuff, like Mughal architectural remnants, a medieval ceiling from Spain, British Art Nouveau ceramics and hand-tailored robes from Africa. It's fascinating that they've developed a method for simultaneously storing it all and showing it off.

Above is part of the facade of Robin Hood Gardens, an architecturally acclaimed housing estate in East London that is sadly being demolished. (I went there and blogged about it way back in 2015.) The V&A salvaged part of the building and the entrances of two apartments, so you can imagine walking along the outer corridors of the estate back in its heyday. There's also an accompanying film showing interiors and an audio track where residents explain what it was like to live there.

From the macro to the micro -- the size of objects in the V&A collection can vary vastly from gigantic architectural elements to the smallest mementos.

Here's Sharon photographing the Kaufmann Office, another architectural installation. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1935 and 1937 and made of cypress paneling, it used to be the office of Edgar J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department store owner. Wright and his acolytes also had a presence in Arizona, at the architectural studio Taliesin West, and Sharon has blogged several of their buildings, so this was a perfect find for her!

After wandering around the Storehouse for a couple of hours we had a quick lunch in the cafe (cheese and piccalilli sandwich and coffee for me), and decided to hop on a bus and take a scenic route back to Marylebone. We caught the 30 bus from Hackney Wick and sat in the coveted front seat on the top deck, which we discovered is not so coveted on a hot sunny day. It was like being in a dehydrator -- we nearly roasted up there before we moved to a shadier seat farther back. But we had a good view!

Hourglass

Well, I got several items crossed off my "to-do list" yesterday. (There is no actual list. Only in my head.)

First, in late morning, I went back to the optometrist. I simply wanted to ask him whether my experience with my varifocal lenses was normal. Was it normal, for example, to only see a portion of a photo on a computer screen in focus? An area about the size of a drinks coaster?

To my surprise, he did not say, "Give it a while and try to get used to them." He didn't say, "Your eyes will adapt." Instead he said, "Oh, that's not good," and promptly took the glasses back. He said the way these lenses are designed, there's a sort of hourglass-shaped area of focus -- which is why the tops and bottoms of the lenses worked fine for distance and close reading, but the mid-range center focal area was so narrow. Why on earth they would be designed so that the CENTER OF THE LENS is the narrowest focal point is my question, but no matter. He said he'd give me new lenses! I don't really need the distance part -- my distance vision is only a tiny degree shy of normal, and I can read signs and see birds in trees and that kind of thing unaided -- so he's going to turn the glasses into bifocals, with mid-range and close-up areas, and I can continue wearing them as readers.

I also wonder how much of this problem has to do with the size of the lens. They aren't that big, and it could be that we were just trying to do too much with too small an area.

Anyway, I'm back using my old reading glasses for the next week or so.

I did some other stuff too, including finally ordering a new couch. Dave and I are ready to get rid of the brown behemoth, which you'll remember we did not even choose but simpy inherited from this flat's previous occupants. (It was almost new then.) The brown behemoth is gigantic, and the new couch is not going to be as big -- about 40 cm shorter, and 20 cm less deep. So we'll have a bit more breathing space in the living room. The new one is also going to be dark blue, a shade poetically called "night owl blue" in the "clever woolly" fabric range. I think it will arrive in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, we have to figure out how to get rid of the brown behemoth. It's worn out, with a big hole in one cushion and substantial fabric wear, mostly from dog paws. The company delivering our new couch won't take away the old one, so Dave and I will have to get it out to the street somehow and schedule the council to remove it. I remember the previous owner telling me that the delivery guys had a terrible time getting it into place because it's so big it wouldn't fit through the hallway -- they had to bring it up the alley at the side of the house and in through the back door. But we've had the side gate replaced since then and I'm not sure even that will be possible. Drama to come!

I also trimmed the neighbor's rose bush overhanging our patio -- aka "the monster" -- and filled a yard waste bag with all those cuttings.

Meanwhile, we had Trump and Putin "negotiating" at their summit about the future of Ukraine, without even allowing the president of Ukraine to be present. What kind of colonialist BS is that? It's like two Victorian kings carving up Africa. Trump is so proud of his statesmanship but all he did, as far as I can tell, is cave to Putin's demands. It's not difficult to negotiate peace when all you're doing is capitulating. Giving in to a global menace is the easiest thing in the world.

(Photos: A hoverfly on our pink anemone, yesterday.)

Hammering and Animal Heads

Another day, another dahlia. I hope I haven't used this picture (or that joke) already. I'm starting to lose track!

We have had very warm weather the last week or so. One day we got up to 88º F (or 31º C) and that was no fun. Fortunately at school they're finishing up a replacement of the air conditioning equipment, so yesterday I had nice, cool air conditioning at work. The downside is that they're doing power-drilling on the roof, so the construction noise never stops. And you know how I love that.

Then I came home and found that Mrs. Kravitz had hired people to build some sort of structure in her back garden. They were out there hammering and sawing and from the looks of things it's still not done. I have no idea what it is. She already has a summer house and shed in the back, so it's a bit of a mystery. More construction noise!

In the library, my boss is on a campaign to remove a collection of animal-head artworks that students made many years ago from the glass display cases facing my desk. (I blogged one of these animals once but I don't think I've ever shown the whole collection. I'll photograph them all next week so you can see them.) They're very creative sculptures, all made of clay, and they've been there longer than I have -- at least a dozen years. I really like them and I've argued for them to stay, as did the art department head yesterday, but my boss is having none of it. She insists that the students all think they're creepy (in other words one person may have said that), and she's been asked by administrators to change them (I'm skeptical). I actually said out loud, in resignation, "Well, that's fine. I'll only be here another year anyway."

I have a feeling I'll be saying that a lot this year. Assuming my buyout package is approved, which I still haven't heard.

After work I picked up my new glasses, with my "varifocal" lenses. So far, I am not a fan. It's very hard for me to wear them to work on the computer, for example, because the mid-range focal area is so small. If I focus on one word on the screen, everything within about an inch of that word is in focus, but beyond that it gets progressively blurry. In other words, I can't see my whole screen clearly, and forget looking at something like a photo or a painting in its entirety. Not to mention a spreadsheet. Shouldn't I be able to clearly see more than that?

Also, when I turn my head, everything sort of tilts and slants. My screen goes from a rectangle to a parallelogram. That doesn't happen with my regular reading glasses. It's like being underwater.

So, I dunno. The jury is still out. I'm wearing my old reading glasses at the moment.

The other day I happened to look at my secondary e-mail account at Gmail. I almost never use it, and I found an e-mail from April, from a guy trying to gin up publicity for a book release about some New York graffiti artists. I had allowed the artists to use some of my photos in their book, and he sent me photos of the printed pages so I could see how they turned out. That's one of my photos above on the left, superimposed over a negative image of the artists. (Here's the original shot, from April 2010.)

And here's the second one -- this picture, from April 2011. I must say, that looks quite good on the page.

I allowed these pictures to be used for free. After all, I took them mainly to make a record of graffiti and street art in New York at that time, and I'm glad they've served that purpose for the artists. (I did get credit, which is all I usually ask.) The book is a 468-page behemoth selling for $150 so I may have to be satisfied with these images of my images -- not sure I want to shell out that much myself!

Venus and Nicole

This lovely (?) mosaic version of "The Birth of Venus" graces a tunnel beneath the train tracks near Waterloo Station. Dave and I came across it while walking to lunch on Wednesday. What would Botticelli say? Probably "Get all that junk off my artwork!"

When I went to Italy in 2007 I saw the original painting in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was kind of like standing in front of the Mona Lisa in Paris or Van Gogh's "Starry Night" in New York -- I felt a sense of disbelief and awe that this is the REAL THING.

The mosaic at Waterloo is definitely not the real thing. But it has a certain rustic charm.

My first day back at work was uneventful. It mostly involved just getting my desk organized -- cataloguing and putting away all the magazines that accumulated over the summer, dealing with mail and deliveries, putting things back in place after they'd been moved and pushed around by whatever itinerant workers happened to wander past the circulation desk at some point. I shelved the returned books and prepared some beginning-of-the-year displays.

It was especially nice doing all those things with the lingering sense that it may be the last time I'll have to start a school year. Still no word on whether my application for the school's buyout offer will be accepted, but I expect to hear something any day.

Nicole the Nicotiana has bounced back quite beautifully after her bout with root rot earlier this year!

Next to Nicole you can see Tommy the tomato (all names courtesy of Dave). We have not yet picked any of the tomatoes. Dave is convinced they're not ripe, even though they are bright orange with red stripes. He thinks they're going to turn red. I'm not convinced -- we don't know what variety of tomato it is because the plant was a gift -- but every now and then I give the tomatoes a light tap. I figure if they don't fall off the plant then maybe they're still OK.

Citizens!

Here's one of our new dahlias, on our new patio table. I love the color of the dahlia but the plant, along with almost all the rest of our dahlias, has been attacked by powdery mildew. It's a problem they often face as the summer wanes, and it's especially bad this year, I suspect because of that dubious compost I planted them in. The stuff is like sawdust and doesn't hold moisture well, so the plants dry out quickly, and repeatedly drying out puts a plant at risk for powdery mildew.

I read online that spraying them with a milk solution can help, and although skeptical I tried it. Hard to say whether they benefitted or not, but they did briefly smell funny.

Anyway, enough of that. I know you're all wondering about our citizenship ceremony!

Yes, Dave and I are now citizens of the UK. Here we are with the Camden borough mayor, Cllr. Eddie Hanson, holding our citizenship certificates. Hanson has an interesting backstory -- he came to the UK as a teenager from Sierra Leone and is the first Camden mayor of West African descent. In his brief speech to all of us, he used his own experience to illustrate the opportunities available in the UK.

The ceremony went like this: After registration, we all sat in the Camden council chamber, an ornate room where borough council meetings are normally held. There were 61 of us being sworn in as citizens, and we were separated into two groups -- the "swear" group (who took a traditional oath mentioning God) and the "affirm" group (who pledged a more secular affirmation). Dave and I chose to be in the "affirm" group, which was the larger of the two, but honestly it wouldn't have made much difference to me. I don't particularly believe in God but I don't have a problem saying his/her name.

A professional photographer took our pictures when we first arrived:

See those big cloth flags? There's a story attached to them. When Dave and I first moved into our flat, in 2014, those flags were in the closet. I kept them, always planning to use them if and when we became citizens. So when the opportunity finally arose I brought them with us. We were also given little cardboard flags like the small one I'm holding. There were plenty of Union Jacks on hand! I'm also holding a printed copy of our citizenship affirmation.

As we waited for the ceremony to start, an acoustic mix of Beatles songs played softly in the background. I thought this was both enjoyable (being a Beatles fan) and kind of funny, as hearing "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" and "Norwegian Wood" at such a ceremonious occasion seemed a bit incongruous.

We were sworn in all together, first the "oath" group and then the "affirm" group, pledging our adherence to British laws and values and our allegiance to the King, his heirs and descendants. The mayor gave his brief speech. Then we were called individually to the front of the room to collect our certificates, which is when the photo with the mayor was taken. Interestingly, Dave and I were the only family group -- everyone else was being sworn in singly.

The people came from all over the world -- the clerk read out many of the countries and they included many of the nations in continental Europe, as well as Taiwan, India, South Africa, Eritrea, Colombia and Brazil (and the USA, obviously). An Italian guy sat next to me during the ceremony. As the clerk said, "I think we've hit every continent!" (I don't remember Australia or New Zealand being mentioned, but maybe they were.)

There were several other Americans among the crowd, including a guy sitting in front of us wearing a "Denali" t-shirt. (I chose to believe it was his silent protest against Trump renaming the mountain McKinley, but I didn't get a chance to ask him.) One American we spoke to said she'd lived in London for 40 years, but was only prompted to seek citizenship when Trump came to power.

After the ceremony, Dave and I went to the OXO Tower Restaurant on the Thames and had a fancy, leisurely lunch on an outdoor terrace with pink champagne and a view of the river. It was a great way to cap off the special occasion.

The restaurant gave us congratulatory plates with our desserts. (I told them what we were celebrating when I made our booking.)

So that was that! We came back to the flat, Dave promptly fell asleep (he's still a bit jet-lagged from his visit to the states) and I did some necessary stuff around the house in preparation for going back to work today -- which I am about to do now. Nose to the grindstone!