Victoria, Canada

Recently, I went out on the town to photograph Victoria, Canada, a lovely city. Here's some of my favorite photos.

This is the Legislative Body of British Columbia from across the nearby harbor. The lighting done on the building is similar to the Eiffel Tower.

There was a fair amount of sidewalk chalk art in the downtown area. Here's a Mona Lisa.

In addition to the sidewalk chalk art, there were lovely pieces of art just on the corners. This piece was one of my favorites. It has a poem ("You who/lift a penny/from the gutter/with the same hand/point out stars/find me.") has part of the art. I wish there was more poetry-art decorating the world.


Victoria has many chocolate shops. This was a white chocolate Hello Kitty. How cute.

Despite how upscale the city is, there is a fair amount of punk music and bohemian culture here. This was one of my favorite band posters. I love the bright colors and the use of Alf. (Also, the TransAm Burnouts are a great name for a band.)

Victoria even has its own Chinatown.

Chinatown has two lions guarding the neighborhood. Legend holds that if an honest politican crosses between the two lions, they will spring to life. Here's one of those lions. Looks like no one could find an honest politican. Shocker.

This lion is even a little crabby about it.

Chinatown is decorated with all sorts of fun art like this.


I love the way the lights behind the clock turned out in this photo.

A part of a mural map. Here is obviously Victoria, on the British Columbia/Canada side, and Port Angeles, on the Washington/U.S. side.

Another bit of the same mural map.

I love this little bit of graffiti, which depicts a panda bear with two guns. (A commentary on animal rights and violence perhaps?) If it's not Banksy, it sure looks a lot like his work.

People are really into Killer Whales in the Pacific Northwest.

The Empress at night. I really love that I captured someone looking up at it.

The Empress. This might be one of their conference rooms.




This last photos are the inside of the Empress.



I have other photos of the Empress on my Flikr page.

Mount Tolmie Park

I recently was able to wander around Victoria, Canada, and I thought I'd share some of my pictures with everyone. This first set of pictures were taken in Mount Tolmie Park, which overlooks the city.
Tolmie Park was first concieved of in 1937, when people began making efforts to conserve the surrounding area. The last set of improvements were made last year, in 2010. It is the highest peak in the Bowker Creek watershed. The part has 1150 miles of trail, most of which lead up to the summit. There are fifteen mammal and thousands of different insect species that call the park home, in addition to other creatures.






This is a Garry Oak, the only tree native to this area. Other fauna in this area include western buttercups and licorice ferns.
4457 The summit is a great place to see some of the other surrounding geography, including Mount Douglass. Unfortunately, on the day I was up there to take this picture, you really couldn't see anything that far away. Even so, the view was glorious.



The park has a mass every Easter Sunday at the summit, and I'm assuming this is the venue. I really hope this gets used more often than just once a year, as I think it would be a great place to have poetry readings at dawn or dusk.



A delightful bit of sidewalk art. I really love the color choices.
4455 The rock at the summit, with labels telling you what direction everything is in. Among other things, this plaque indicates where Seattle, Mount Douglass and even where Port Angeles is, which is probably now most famous for being one of the towns featured in the Twilight series.



I like how dark and forboddening the clouds are in this picture.






About 30 percent of the Bowker Creek Watershed is covered by things like roads and parking lots.






I had the opportunity to meet this older man while on my travels. He told me that he was a retired preacher. He's one of the more colorful and delightful people I've gotten to know. (And I will admit, if he was still preaching, I'd go to his church.)



He scrambled right up to the top of this rock, without reservations and without the need for help.






The preacher again. Look at that wonderful smile!



Are these perhaps those western buttercups that are a part of Mount Tolmie's ecosystem?









The reminder I needed.
I also have pictures of the Empress, the famed hotel near Mount Tolmie Park, posted on my Flikr page if you are interested.

National Museum of the American Indian

Most people use Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday as a free day off. And maybe I'm just in the wrong circles, but I never hear of a rally or other events/ideas to celebrate King's legacy and life. This year I wanted to do something specifically to celebrate him, to educate myself and to think about the future of people of color.
What I ended up doing is going to the National Museum of the American Indian. I realize, of course, that King was African American, but King was not fighting for just civil rights for African Americans, and his cause inspired other people of color to demand justice and equality. If King had survived his shooting, he would probably be proud to see his words inspire other activists fighting for other minorities.
Moreover, I feel like I have a personal blind spot when it comes to Native American culture. Not on purpose, of course, but I do not know much about the differences between nations. So going to this museum was an attempt to spend some time, in honor of King's work, educating myself. I wanted to post some pictures I took and share some of the assorted thoughts I had.

The first floor of the museum had this wonderful collection of everyday items Native Americans made. Obviously, this is a bowl. (I am having trouble discerning my notes, but I believe this is from either the Lakota or Dakota. At the very least, it's Sioux.) The artist who created this did a great job capturing the animal's likeness.


This is a set of playing cards. After having contact with Westerns, Native Americans adopted some of their games and changed them. Games were also played by Native Americans to settle clan disputes, which made me think about how some Southern African people would use poetry as a way to battle one another without actually shedding blood.

I believe this is a cribbage game.


The dramatic lighting in the museum. The museum is located in a historical, Beaux-Arts building.

A more modern piece of art the greets you when you first walk in the museum.
There were a lot of omissions at this museum. I realize most people do not want to talk about the issues affecting living Native Americans, like all the problems that plague reservations, but there was not even a discussion of the horrible things that happened to Native Americans as part of the U.S. attempts to "civilize" them, just brief mentions here and there of them being moved against their will to places like Oklahoma. This is a huge gap in history to ignore, and important one.
I also wish there was some discussion of what modern life for Native Americans is like. There was art from contemporary Native Americans (which was very cool), but it had muted political quality, and a fair amount of it, displayed in another context and without information, could have been seen as non-political art.
I have more pictures on Flikr and I wrote a longer review of the museum on my review blog.

Civil War Photos

The Library of Congress has recently posted an entire collection of Civil War photos on the Flikr page.  It's a pretty intense collection of images.  They are hoping that people will see an ancestor and contact the library so that they might finally get some names with those faces.  No one in my family participated in the Civil War, but the images are a great reminder of that people who served.  They often look stiff in these photos, but at the same time, it is easy to see how they were fathers, brothers, husbands and friends and not just dead bodies. 
Thanks to the ladies over at Two Nerdy History Girls for the link. 

Quidditch World Cup

I was lucky enough to make it to the Quidditch World Cup this weekend, and let me tell you, it was sweet. I was so impressed with not only the turnout of people but also the great sportsmanship of certain teams. Here's some photos from the event.


I asked this player to give me his game face, and this is what he showed me. Okay, so maybe it doesn't strike fear into the hearts of many, but it does probably make the enemy pause and wonder what's going on. So maybe it's a surprise tactic.
I'd also like to say here that I loved a lot of the jerseys that players were wearing. I would totally love to buy an MSU Quidditch jersey. Schools like McGill, Emerson, Middlebury and Wringley also had great jerseys that I would love to wear. So, if anyone knows anyone and has a reasonable price, drop me a message.


There are some very impressive players on the MSU team. Bailey, for example, is a good keeper. She's just a wall of scary. This here is Mike, who is the seeker. (You can tell he's a seeker because of the yellow-colored headband.) Mike and I have been acquaintances for a while (hazard of living in nerd-infested places) and even though he's kind of a creeper, he's a great seeker. He runs like Hermes and he's a spry little fellow. Professional teams should be all over this guy. (If you're wondering, that is what he gave me when I asked for his team face. Maybe it's a charm tactic? You make the enemy think you're harmless and kind and then BAM! you're winning the game?)


And that's Wilkins giving me his game face. Okay, does anyone on this team have a fierce game face? Or even a slightly serious one?


You'll be unsurprised to hear that MSU won against Syracuse. Right after the game, we decided to take a team photo. But then we realized that the coach was missing. He's that blur at the bottom, throwing himself into the picture. Notice no one even tries to catch him, they just let him dive bomb to the ground.


That's better. And much more respectable than some of the game faces I got.


This is a very social team. Everyone is friendly and analyzes the matches afterward so they can be better players. Here's Bailey and Erin having a conversation with someone off camera. And in the background, one of the other players is practicing what is probably his game face.


One of the treats was that, at the end of the night (after a great game featuring the Transylvania University team) was that Harry and the Potters showed up to play their awesome wizard rock. Here's the band during one of the early songs.


Loving the hair motion here. This guy can totally headband with the best of them.


And here I'm just loving the scream.

Don't discount wizard rock as anything less than punk. It's totally punk.
As always, more pictures on flikr for the fascinated.