Here are links to two recent guest posts I wrote for In The Pink Texas:
Teen Sex, The Legislature, and Other Icky Facts of Life about the move towards abstinence-only sex ed.
How Will We Destroy Public Education When This Kind of Thing Happens? about a recent vote in the Texas House to kill vouchers and increase teacher pay.
My aunt and uncle gave me The Color of Jazz: Album Cover Photographs by Pete Turner for my birthday. I’ve been enjoying it a few pages at a time since December, and unfortunately, I’ve finally finished studying the images and reading the accompanying text.
It’s a beautiful book, LP sized to give the full effect of the album art that’s usually shrunk to CD at best or iPod screen at worst, truly made for enjoying the full-size renditions of such iconic covers as Wave and The Sound of New York.
Turner did covers mainly for albums produced by Creed Taylor for Impulse!, A&M, and CTI during the 1960s and 70s. The process was interesting to say the least. Taylor would give Turner an album title only, and Turner would create or find an image that more often than not took the title in a different direction, moving away from the artist portraits that were so in vogue at the time.
The work is amazing. Turner relies heavily on colored filters to create sublime images that are as haunting as they are vivid. His images take the music of such artists as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Freddy Hubbard, George Benson, Deodato, Joe Farrell, and Milt Jackson among others to new realms, often connecting with the music in surprising ways such as with his unsettling image from the cover of Joe Farrell’s Canned Funk: a glass eye floating in a newly opened can of peaches.
Oddly, I didn’t realize how many of the CDs in my collection are graced by Turner’s images and how many of the albums he did that I don’t have but are on my list. Reading this, I can’t help but be saddened by the way that the new download culture of music is dispensing with the notion of visual art accompanying the music. I never bought LPs, but I loved CDs for their packaging. Of course, the whole notion of the album seems to fading away as well.
To have a look at some of Turner’s jazz covers, check out this site devoted to Turner’s work.
Here’s a better shot of one of the Carolina Bewick’s Wrens who is nesting in the box on our porch. He actually came up while I was outside with my camera. Probably to demand mealworms. I checked the box and saw that the eggs hatched today. Hopefully, I’ll be home when flying lessons start.
Last weekend, we decided to see what other birds we could attract. I put up a woodpecker feeder since my wife saw one in the yard the other day. I’ve never seen one before, but the seed block had been pretty heavily pecked by the time I got home.
The only finches I’ve seen in the yard are house finches, but I put up a finch feeder in the hopes that we’ll attract some goldfinches. I think it may be the wrong time of year for them to be here, but perhaps if I plant a garden of lettuce, they’ll come as they seem to have for Amy at Esau.
So far, though, it’s mostly white-winged doves, house sparrows, and Carolina chickadees around here, although this afternoon I did hear a song I hadn’t heard before. The woodpecker, perhaps? I’m hoping to add him to my list.
And, of course, our wrens, one seen here singing “Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons.”
Tonight was one of those perfect spring-in-Austin evenings when the air is cool, so unlike how it will be in a few months. Perfect for a trip down to the pond. I need to remember these nights when it’s 90 degrees three hours after dark. These are the days when there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
Walking along, listening to the birds stake their evening claims, I noticed this tree that seemed to be reaching towards me in a way that made me stop to make sure it was just a tree. It was, and a nice one at that.
I walked along the trail to the dam and spent a little while watching barn swallows swoop out over the water, diving along the surface to grab insects before soaring back into the sky. Swallows are probably my favorite birds; they’re such graceful flyers and when I watch them, all grace and wonder, it isn’t long before I’m with them, oblivious to the ant mound I’m sitting on.
Less arresting than the aerobatics of the swallows, some ducks American Coots paddled slowly out in the middle of the pond, too far out to get a decent shot, so this one will have to do. I’m trying to figure out what these are, but they’re too far out for my zoom. I’ll have to go back with my binoculars this weekend.
These spring nights, when the sun sets so late, the air is cool and everywhere spring green trees and wildflowers make for perfect walking, perfect evenings, perfect…
Joey flings his wolf aside to smile for the camera. Yes, that wolf is airborne. He’s so talented.
[saveagrey]