Today I found some dudes for our mannequins to date!
And Galleria security didn’t appear and threaten to eighty-six me from Macy’s for using my camera. So shhhh, don’t tell!
Tag: houston
Button Sunday: Double Shot
September 26 – October 3, 2009 is Banned Books Week.
You get two buttons today, because this issue rates high on the Becky List of Importance. It should rate high on anyone’s list. Not every book is for everybody, but once we allow a group to dictate what we can’t read, the next book on their list may take YOUR intellectual freedom away. Thank every librarian, teacher, parent, citizen, attorney, publisher, bookseller, and organization who has protected your precious right to choose your own reading. Please understand that every time a “crazy liberal” speaks out to protect And Tango Makes Three, that effort stems from the same passion that protects some of the books pictured below in a display from the Montrose location of Half Price Books in Houston, Texas.
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Some titles seen in these photos:
The Secret History of the English Language Some banned books not pictured here: 1984 |
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Here lies originality and thought, loving progenitors of imagination. |
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RIP Invention, Ideas, Progress, Imagination, Originality, and Thought |
Another one bites the dust
It was different from all the other stores in the Bookstop chain. The people who worked there had a certain attitude–not quite as “customer-friendly” as the one trained into Bookstop employees in different stores. The attitude came with the neighborhood. Their customers seemed to expect and even like the rudeness, much as tourists crave the same from NYC cab drivers or the French. Such attitude gives us stories that usually end with a shake of the head and a slow smile of acceptance that we’ve joined a community of the skillfully insulted.
When Barnes & Noble bought the chain, only the Alabama Theater Bookstop got to keep its name, as if to reassure customers that nothing important to them would change–and the exterior, with its blazing marquee and art deco facade, rated high on the list of importance.
Over time, Bookstop’s next-door-neighbor, Cactus Records, disappeared, but Whole Earth Provision Company expanded to fill the empty space. Another neighbor, Whole Foods, moved to a new location across from the Borders down the street, but was replaced by a Petsmart. The copy place turned into a restaurant, then a different restaurant, but Bookstop stayed, lighting up the night, luring customers with the promise of multi-levels of book browsing, a magazine off the stand in the mezzanine, a cup of coffee or tea from the barista in the balcony, an impromptu conversation with a fellow shopper, and beautifully preserved walls and ceiling.
Now B&N has been lured to a tonier address in a new development a few blocks away–across from the River Oaks Theater, also a beloved landmark. No one knows what will become of the Alabama Theater Bookstop, but we all know this is a city that loves to level and rebuild. So we wait and see what an improving economy will bring and hope developers are listening–the chatter seems to have made them back off a plan to tear down the River Oaks theater, at least for now.
On the night when I took these photos, the doors of the Alabama Theater Bookstop closed for the last time not just on a store, but on a piece of my history. It was here I met a person who would reshape my personal and political landscape in ways I never imagined. I miss him.
Photo Friday, No. 164
Current Photo Friday theme: Plants
Veins 2008
Advice worth more than five cents
This is the small version of the reflecting pool at the apex of Houston’s Police Officers’ Memorial on Memorial Drive.
And so I go forth, to try again
I thought it was interesting that the theme for Photo Friday was “Fear.” Even if Friday hadn’t been the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I still would have thought first of tall buildings. During my twenty years in Houston, I’ve worked in skyscrapers downtown and in the Greenway Plaza and Galleria areas. (In fact, it’s been my plan for a while to go around Houston and photograph the many buildings I’ve worked in.) Before that day, I liked the views that being on high floors offered, because Houston has so many different skylines and its flatness makes them visible from great distances.
As it happened, most of the corporations I worked with prior to September 11, 2001, were severely impacted by that event, as well as the subsequent economic woes of Compaq, Enron, and Continental Airlines. As a contract employee, my work went away. It was probably for the best, as images from that day were so burned into my brain that just getting into an elevator made me break into a cold sweat. I’m not sure I could have handled ten hours a day twenty or more stories above ground.
The second thing “Fear” brought to mind was jets. I was never a good flier to begin with, and September 11 pretty much sealed the deal. Of course, I’ve flown again–including to Manhattan three weeks after the attacks, and as I’ve mentioned on here before, when Tom and I walked into the terminal at IAH and I saw the National Guard standing inside the door with weapons, I burst into tears. And, sadly, I then started profiling all my fellow travelers. I’m a flawed human. Regarding jets, however, the only photos I might be able to get would be of jets landing or taking off, and I actually love those two sights–as long as I’m not on the jet–so shots of that wouldn’t speak to my fear of flying.
Fear… I thought of sharks and cemeteries, but since I don’t actually have any photos of sharks, and cemeteries don’t really scare me–unless maybe I was trapped in one after dark, and I’m not in a horror movie or a gothic novel, so that isn’t likely–I tried to think of something else. One of my worst fears is losing anyone else I love to AIDS, but any photos I have related to AIDS are either sad or hauntingly beautiful–not the same as “Fear.”
I was talking to Lynne on Friday, trying to decide what to shoot, and she told me I could take pictures from the twentieth floor of her building. That would work, because looking straight down really does scare me. Then Tim came over, and since he and I share many of the same fears, he’d been thinking of buildings, too, only he wanted to shoot them from outside looking up. Off we went, and he took some amazing shots of the building I insist on calling Transco Tower, even though it’s actually Williams Tower now. If you haven’t seen the one he picked for Photo Friday, check it out here, because I’m all kinds of awed and envious. Great photo.
I got some good shots from inside Lynne’s building, but not exactly what I wanted. Still, I got to see Lynne, so no complaints. After coming home and starting dinner, I went out to shoot the American General Center. In spite of its tallness, I appreciate that building and the flag on top of it because whenever I’m out wandering and lose my way, it’s my landmark to get home. When I saw that its flag was at half mast, I knew I had the photo I wanted.
All these years later, my memories of September 11 still evoke so many emotions–fear and horror, of course, but also pride and compassion–and especially hope, because my family got a new baby on that day in 2001. Steven has always helped me look toward the future, as do all the beautiful children in my family.
On a lighter note, I could have used this photo–little sea creatures laughing at me as ONCE AGAIN I vow to conquer Moby Dick. I’ve gotten further into it than I ever did on previous attempts, but Ishmael still makes me laugh, and I still wonder if the novel’s supposed to be funny or if I’m just strange. It still rocks my world that I got A grades on every essay question I ever answered on the book, or every paper in which I referenced it, in spite of the fact that I didn’t read it. Students, this is what LISTENING to your teachers and developing your WRITING skills will do for you–turn you into a CHAMPION bullshitter with the pen. I may be afraid of tall buildings and jets and sharks and palmetto bugs and dogs I don’t know and people who text and drive or talk on their cell phones and drive or hell, just drive–have you been in Houston?–and I’ll probably end up afraid of white whales, but when it comes to writing a literary essay, I am FEARLESS.
Photo Friday, No. 163
Current Photo Friday theme: Fear
Flag at Half Mast
September 11, 2009
American General Center
Houston, Texas
For Photo Friday and September 11 remembrance.
Button Sunday
Wouldn’t that be something? That button is from the early 1970s, after the big break-up. I told Tim I felt like I’d gone back in time when I received this recent issue of Rolling Stone.
Back in February 2008, Lisa and Mark were in Houston. They, along with Lindsey and Tom, went downtown to shoot some photos, which I often go back and look at in their LJs and Flickr sets. Included are photos of David Adickes’ “The Virtuoso.” Here are a couple of shots I took of that sculpture when I went out night shooting with Lynne:
I’ll admit that sometimes I can be a little bit of an art snob, but my preferences are rarely based on what art critics tell me I should or shouldn’t like. I react to art viscerally. If I like something, no one can make me dislike it by telling me I’ve got awful taste. However, sometimes when I don’t like something, I can come to appreciate it, at the least, when I get the insights of someone who views it with a perspective different from and more approving than mine.
In general, I like David Adickes’ work. I think it has a whimsical quality and his sculptures are public-friendly. There are lots of people who love him and just as many who dismiss him. Probably the first art of his I saw, without knowing it was his, was “Big Alex,” a giant telephone once visible from I-45 which has since been moved.
My second introduction to his work, again, without knowing the artist, was “Cornet” in Galveston. In the mid 1990s, Tom and I went to a friend’s wedding reception when the building behind the sculpture was a restaurant called “Trumpets” (long gone). Because of that restaurant and a jazz club using the “Trumpets” name, many people mistakenly call the sculpture “The Trumpet.” It was originally created to display at the World’s Fair in New Orleans in 1984.
I like both sculptures, but I’m not as fond of “Big Sam,” a sixty-foot statue of Sam Houston between Houston and Huntsville, Texas. Sam overwhelms me a little.
I’ve visited Adickes’ studio–a HUGE warehouse by necessity, considering the scale of his work–and will probably eventually publish my photos of the gigantic presidents’ heads that replicate ones placed in parks in Virginia and South Dakota. But there are four sculptures that I FREAKING LOVE, and they go with this post.
They get high with a little help from their friends. Thirty feet high.
From a different angle, with the Houston skyline a couple of miles behind them.
You can read a good Houston Chronicle article on David Adickes, his perspective on his work, and reactions to it, at this link.
Sometimes a great [sewing] notion…
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the dead-of-night hours Thursday/Friday were the worst of being sick. Even though I felt like crap physically and had insomnia, visiting dogs (Sugar, Rex, and Pixie) made for some highly comedic moments in the battle of mattress real estate. Somehow we all eventually got sleep.
Last year, a storm called Ike had whipped itself into hurricane status out in the Atlantic by this time. Here at The Compound, we had no idea whether Ike would impact us, but looking back at my day planner, I see that I was making notes about it, just as I had Gustav. I moved to Houston in 1989, and I don’t remember giving much thought to hurricanes and tropical storms even when our city was flooded because of them. Katrina changed that in 2005. Now I pay attention.
But last year, Ike’s landfall was still more than a week away. I’d just returned from the Southeast, where my family and I held my mother’s memorial service, and I was looking forward to a visit from Mark G. Harris. We’d planned to do lots of sewing, and as Mark reminded me in a note I got from him on Friday, we did just that, sitting at the table in the dining room with this on the floor next to me.
Photo Friday, No. 162
Current Photo Friday theme: Urban Landscape
Technically not one of the better photos I have of Houston. I like it because the downtown skyline is so visible, even with clouds rolling in, more than seven miles east of where I’m shooting–evidence of the city’s extremely flat topography.
Also, that tiny dark shape in the approximately one o’clock position is a jet flying into Hobby Airport.