A Child Of Atom

After our, oh so delightful flight(s) to Prague we arrived nearly 7 hours behind schedule. Originally I had planned to take mama to see the castle, and a few other locations on our arrival day, simply as a way of getting her feet wet. She'd never been outside the US before, so I wanted to ease her in and show her around a bit. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Because we were renting a private apartment and not a hotel room we had to meet the owner to receive the keys, and by the time it was all done we didn't have time to do much beyond eat before we wanted to see the bed. We decided to hit the local grocery and get provisions for the morning, have a sandwich and go to bed. The idea was that to save money we rented an apartment, and planned to eat at least two meals a day at the apartment rather in restaurants.

If you haven't had the joy of shopping in a country where you don't speak the language, let me tell you... it's fun. Simply relying on the few cognate words that you can figure out, and the pictures on the box leaves you open for all sorts of surprises. After our culinary adventures we hit the sack and prepared for adventures the next day.

Part of the reason that I wanted to go back to Prague was an event called the PQ, the Prague Quadrennial. This is an international theatre design conference, possibly the only one in the world, that occurs every four years. 40 or so countries participate and send the best of their design work from the past four years. I love it because it is all about the design, not about performance the way most theatre conferences end up. So we set out for the exhibition grounds, only to be turned away because the conference was only open to members on the first day and the general public wouldn't be allowed in until the next.

We decided instead to start the sightseeing. We hopped on the tram, (you can see my discussion of the Prague transit system over here) and headed towards the Old Town. The first stop was St. Nicholas Church, an amazing baroque church that is a huge confection of marble and gold leaf that simply overwhelms you when you enter. It was actually a very good choice to begin with I think. Mama has a great affinity for old places, but old places in the US means 1800, or possibly 1700. In Prague it can mean 1500, or 1300 in a very few rare places 900. It blew her mind a little bit, and it was incredible to watch. We also made our first run at the Castle, but only managed to get in St. Vitus Cathedral before the museums started closing down for the day.

The next day we saw the PQ at the beginning of the day. I must admit that the PQ is an amazing sight. Each country has an allotted floor space to build their displays in and most of them go all out building huge complexes and towering displays full of models and videos and mannequins with their best costumes. Some even make interactive theatrical experiences, like the Czech booth that put the viewer into the role of performer manipulating puppets, sometimes unknowingly, whose performances were visible to the other people within the booth. As a theatrical designer it is amazing to walk through and to see what design looks like in Korea, Lituania, South Africa, Croatia or Ireland. A great, great experience.

After the PQ we decided to try and finish up the Castle, so we headed up the hill to take that in. This time we managed to see the museum attached to the castle, telling the story of the castle complex from 900 or so to present. And again we managed never to set foot inside the Castle proper! I was beginning to wonder if we would ever manage to see all of the things that the castle complex has to offer, but we had seen the Royal Gardens and the moat area, things that I hadn't seen on my previous trip to Prague four years ago.

The next day we went south to an area called the Vysrehad where we saw the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. This is a Gothic cathedral that stands on the area where another of Prague's original castles had stood. The interior though has been plastered and painted by Art Nouveau painters with gorgeous patterning and portraits of the various saints associated with Prague. Prague has an interesting relationship with it's saints, by the way. St Nicholas, St. Wenceslaus (who was martyred in Prague which you can see the site of), St. Ludmilla (who was part of one of the Prague royal families), and my mom's personal favorite St. John of Nepomuk.

Jan Nepomuk was martyred in Prague as well, and is considered the patron Saint of the city. He was martyred after he refused to reveal the confession of the Queen to the King, around 1393. The King tortured him to death, then pitched his body over the Charles Bridge, the most famous bridge in town to date. When he hit the water 5 stars appeared in the sky and so he was thereafter declared a saint. His body rests in a nearly 20 foot tall solid silver mausoleum at the main alter of St. Vitus cathedral. You can find depictions of him all over the city.

Prague has an interesting relationship to its mythology in general actually. The city is full of stories and legends that fill the place with tis great air of mystery and wonder. It's part of the reason that I love the place so much.

The Vysrehad also contains the oldest existing church in the city, a small Romanesque rotunda that was built in the 900s. How cool is it to lay hands on the stone of a building that was started when no one but the Indians knew that America existed? Before the Renaissance. Before the Middle Ages even.

The park also includes an amazing cemetery that is home to some of Prague's most famous people like Dvorak. The graves are often elaborate affairs with statuary and monuments, surrounded by vast mosaics of biblical scenes. The people buried here are the heroes of the Republic, and it is an interesting reminder that the country is small enough, and compact enough that all of these people can be buried in the same place with no problems.

In the middle of all this we visited the Old Town Square to see the Astronomical clock which has been keeping time in the square for almost 600 years. Besides keeping track of four different types of time, the positions of the sun and moon, and the current astronomical signs every hour the clock features a parade of the Apostles and reminders against greed, vanity and sloth. It's really quite amazing to watch knowing how long it has been operating, (give or take some stoppages due to damage during WW2, etc.). And the face of the clock with its complicated overlay of dials and faces is gorgeous to see. It is a beautiful piece of machinery and really really worth seeing in person.

We also visited several of the more unusual sights in Prague. The Lorreto housed two of them, the Casa de Santa Maria that the convent is named after and a statue of Saint Wilgefortis. The story of the Casa, or the "House of Mary" goes like this: In the 17th century infidels, (read: Muslims) were threatening the house in Nazareth where the angel had spoken to Mary. Angels appeared and mystically airlifted the house to safety in Lorreta, Italy. The residents of that town immediately built up a sort of cottage industry making replicas of the house and selling them to Catholic establishments all over Europe. Prague has one of them enshrined within a larger stone structure at this convent. I'll tell you... it doesn't really LOOK very much like a house that I'd imagine being anywhere near Nazareth, but who am I to speak.

St. Wilgefortis has to be one of the most unusual saints you'll ever read about, and there is a shrine to her just a few yards from the Casa within the Loretta. Wilgefortis was a young noblewoman, who had been promised by her father to a local pagan king. She had converted to Christianity, and intended to be a nun, so she prayed to God to save her from the marriage. Her salvation came in the form of a full grown beard that miraculously appeared on her face the next morning. The pagan king was suitably horrified and refused to marry her, but it enraged her father so much that he crucified her. She is often depicted with her shoes off because the first miracle attributed to her had to do with a golden shoe that miraculously fell off of a statue of the saint when a young girl prayed to her for help in getting out of her own unwanted wedding.

Like I said, Prague is full of stories like this. Another church has a mummified arm hanging from a chain in the foyer that was supposedly cut from a thief sometime in the 15th century. It is said that the thief tried to steal gems from the statue of Mary on the alter, but the statue grabbed his arm and held him so tightly that it had to be amputated by the priests in the church. Other churches in town feature gargoyles that are said to be street urchins petrified by the curse of a mysterious stranger that they taunted from the roof of the church. The Charles bridge has a host of legends about it including the eggs and cheese that were used in the mortar for the bridge, buried treasures, and mystical swords contained it the buttresses. You have to love a city that contains so many stories.

On our last day in the city we visited the Jewish Quarter, the small area of town where Prague's Jews had been confined over the years. Several of the more interesting synagogues are still standing including Pikas Synagogue which is now a memorial to all of the Jews from Prague who died during the Holocaust. The Old New Synagogue, which is where the best known Rabbi in Prague history, Rabbi Loew taught. Rabbi Loew is the Rabbi in the mythical story of the Golem and the Old New Synagogue is where the remains of the Golem were supposedly hidden after its rampage through town. Another of Prague's amazing legends. Also in the Jewish Quarter is the Old Jewish Cemetery which is simply an astounding sight.

Prague is a great, great city full of architectural wonders, mythological fantasy, and surprises all over the place. Not to mention good food, and great beer. (The beer is cheaper than water there. Really.) It is an easy city to navigate, with more public transport than you can shake a stick at, all around the city. If you've made it to the end of all this and you are still interested I would seriously recommend looking into a visit to the city. Besides being a great destination it is still relatively cheap, especially the food. If you can go after the high season the prices of rooms drops pretty dramatically too.

Go. See. It's amazing.

12 of 12 for June is another travel day! This time to Prague!! I was VERY excited about this trip, I am taking my mom, for her first trip outside the US and going to see an international theatre festival, which is awesome. No theme for me this month since the day is a theme in and of itself. For reference this project was created by Chad Darnell, and you can see more entries at his blog.
Getting ready, doing the last few minutes of packing and gathering. This is the view into my suitcase. That's my "big" camera, not the one I use for this project.

My other last minute preperation, printing up materials for geocaching. there are a TON in Prague.

Quick lunch. Our flight is at 7:45, but it's an 1:30 travel time to the airport on the subway, (I refuse to pay a taxi $50.) and since it is an international flight they ask us to check in 3 hours in advance.

Mom and Mark just before we head out.

About 2 hours later we make it to the AirTrain the connection between the subway and the airport.

In line at the SwissAir check in. We waited here for 45 minutes before we realized that this wasn't the line we had to be in. That laine was around the corner out of our line of sight.

In the terminal you can begin to see the problems ahead. That's our plane in the distance. It is half an hour past boarding.

We finally board an hour late, and begin to push back. We don't get very far.

Two hours on the runway. We have now officially missed our connecting flight from Geneva to Prague, no matter how fast this plane flies.


Mom entertains herself reading guide books while we wait out taking off.

The flight info on screen at the time of our take off, about 11:30. We still have a long way to go, and problems to deal with when we get there.

Midnight in NYC by my watch, so the 12th is officially over. As you can see we didn't make it very far. When we arrived in Geneva we were told that there were no more direct flights to Prague for the day. We flew to Zurich where they took my carry-on away, saying it was too large, even though I had already carried it on once. A few minutes later I realized my boarding passes for the next flight were in it, so in Zurich that took some dealing with because we had paper tickets, not electronic ones due to the snafu earlier. We finally arrive in Prague at 8pm the next day, and even though in real time we had been traveling for 24 hours counting the train, we were only 6 hours behind schedule in Prague.

Check back later in the week for Prague photos, adventure tales, and sketches!!

Derby opens this weekend! (Yay!!) Bluebonnet Plague, who is head of the derby outreach program emailed me in a bit of a panic. They are working on the color souvenir brochure that they produce each year and they needed a cover. I had produced an image for them last month that will be used for one of the bout posters (the one that occurs while I'm in Prague, alas!) and they were very happy with it, so they asked if I would be willing to produce a new piece for the cover. Even though I am swamped with work right now I said yes, and took a few hours out of my weekend to get it done.

Here is the result. I'm pretty proud of it. This isn't the final image, I need to add a background, and the cover text, etc. but I just wanted to show off a little in advance. This is also the first piece I've colored using my new Wacom tablet. It had a bit of a learning curve, but I think I'm getting it down now, and I'm beginning to wonder how I ever colored projects with a mouse!

Coney Island is going away. It's a sad truth that New York City is being developed within an inch of its life. Everything from warehouses to piers are turning into condominiums and a lot of the flavor of the neighborhoods, and consequently the city, is being glazed over with that Midwest sheen of homogeneity. The latest victim is Coney Island, that low-rent bastion of carnival culture that was once called "Sodom by the Sea."

Coney Island is an interesting place, a collection of small amusement parks all backed up against each other with very little to differentiate them except ticket booths. The rides are a mix of period piece carnival rides that look like they've been painted a few thousand times, with inch thick enamel that is still peeling off, and modern fiberglass style attractions that you can probably find in any county fair around the US. Interspersed into that are the two landmark rides, the Wonder Wheel, and the Cyclone. The Wonder Wheel is a Ferris wheel of sorts, except every other car is on a looped track so that as the wheel turns the car rocks back and forth in a dizzying motion. It is the only one of it's kind in the world. The Cyclone is also a historic ride, standing in the space where the world's first roller coaster stood, and it is still ranked as one of the best coasters in the world. All of this together is a bizarre mix of modern and past, tacky and fascinating, beautiful, ugly and ugly/beautiful, all at once. It's such a bizarre place.

Out on the boardwalk is the usual mix of beach stores selling tee-shirts and sun lotion, bars and beach food vendors selling everything you can imagine fried, and/or stuck on a stick. But the real attraction is the people. Beach bums, loud Dominican mother's, women in bikini's dancing on stilts, drag queens, burlesque dancers, screaming kids, carny workers, sideshow freaks... everybody is welcome in Coney Island and no one feels out of place. It is one of the best places to people watch that I have ever seen.

But now it's over. This is the last year of Coney Island. The area has been purchased by a real estate developer. They promise that they aren't planning to put in shoebox condos. In fact they are cleaning space and bringing in a semi-permanent circus for the summer, the first time that a real circus has been in residence there in decades, but people still worry. The Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone won't go anywhere because they are registered landmarks, but the rest have no guarantees. All those decisions will be revealed to the public at the end of the season. It's been a much talked about event here in the city as you can imagine. It may be the final straw that gets the people motivated to fight harder against what is happening to the city, we'll see. In the meantime the biggest question what happens to the residents and workers? There are men who have been operating the major attraction rides for nearly 40 years, and that type of job can't have much of a retirement plan. Besides that where else can you go to see the variety of people and events that Coney Island collapses into a single location. Sure all those people I mentioned will go on, out there in the world somewhere... but not as one. Not as a collection so easily accessible, and that's sad. It's a culture that going away, not just a place.

My advice... if you can get here before the summer is over, you should. It really is just a day trip and you can easily fit it into a schedule for any other trip to the city that you might be planning. Come, see Sodom before it falls.

This morning I was starving on the way to work and I stopped by one of the ubiquitous cofee trucks on the street corner by my office to grab a muffin. I asked for an apple muffin, which I have gotten from ths truck before so I wasn't worried. I got up to the office and discovered that it was a banana muffin.

Anyone that knows me knows that I HATE bananas. I have since I was a kid. I don't like the texture, I don't like the flavor, I just find the whole package distasteful.

But I ate the muffin. I ate it because I was late alredy, and I didn't want to go back down to get another one, and because I was starving. I ate it... and... it wasn't bad. In fact I might have actually enjoyed it a bit. Have I been wrong all these years? Do I actually LIKE bananas? Or have my tastes changed? I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle a fully fresh fruit right out it's slimy yellow wrapper, but... maybe it isn't so bad for them to be in my food anymore.

What has the world come to?

I just got back to the city from my fabulous weekend in the mountains! I'm a little tuckered, but boy am I happy. It was a great weekend.

Kid Flash and I decided to visit Lake Taghkanic State Park, which is in upstate NY. Find the area on a map where the Connecticut and Massachusetts borders meet the NY border and trace your finger towards the left. You'll Taconic State Park immediately, but keep going and you'll see Lake Taghanik. It's a small state park, but it is incredibly well equipped. They have four or five levels of camping, regular ground camping, RV camping, camping platforms, cabins, and cottages. The cottages have private showers where the cabins just have toilets, and a shared shower block, but they are more than adequate.

We arrived Friday afternoon about 3 and found our very cute and quaint little cabin. It has two bedrooms with double beds, (we chose this camp ground because it had double beds, all the others had either twins or bunks.) a living room with a fireplace, a kitchen and a small screened porch. It looked like it had been refurbished over the winter, the floors were freshly polished and it was immaculate. Since the cabins just started season rentals a few weeks ago we very well could have been the first people there this season.

After checking out the cabins we set out on a quest for food for the weekend. KF is vegetarian so I hadn't wanted to do the food shopping without him. It's been a long time since I cooked vegetarian meals for myself, so I wanted the input. It took quite a bit of questing to find a grocery store, but with the help of some locals we finally found an IGA and put together the necessities for the weekend. I won't bore you with the menus but we had some really good meals, included a pasta with pesto and fiddleheads, (that's what's cooking in the pan in the pic) and this eggplant dish, that I HIGHLY recommend. We also picked up some of those compressed wood fireplace logs because it was a little cold and we were planning to make good use of the fireplace that the cabin provided. I am SO glad we did.

The temps on Friday night got down pretty low, but that's just good weather for snugglin' so I didn't complain. The weather said that we were supposed to have rain over the weekend and temps in the 50's so we were expecting much, frankly.

Saturday we spent most of the day hiking around the lake that gives the park it's name. The park had been created and laid out as part of the CCC in the 30's, and a lot of the structures are original to that era. Included in that is a 40' water tower where we found this VERY large bird nesting. If anyone reading this could help ID this bird we'd appreciate it. I know it's a lousy picture and we never saw the full bird, but what we saw was black, except for a white area underneath her bill. To give you a sense of scale the nest she's resting in here is between 4 and 5' in diameter. It was a HUGE nest.

We also did a bit of geocaching, finding the one cache that was in the park. It did end up raining a bit, but it was pretty much just a mist, and the trees on the hiking trail protected us from most of us.

The next day started off with MUCH more rain. We were woken up by driving rain, and figured that any further hiking or fun in the area was probably going to be out. I had one more geocache in the area that I wanted to hit, and we had planned on going over to another state park and doing a bit more hiking. Luckily by the time we dragged ourselves out of bed the rain had stopped and the sun was out. We decided to hit the cache at least, and see how the day progressed. First we had lunch at a classic silver American diner. By the time we were finished there the sun had dried most everything out. The cache was a bust, we never could find it unfortunately, (there's KF standing in the middle of a stream trying to get a clear read out of my GPS unit).


To wrap things up we hit Taconic State park, and hiked up to the Bash Bish Falls (that's them in the pic), and to Sunset Rock, where you are supposed to be able to see all three of the local states from above.

All in all a FABULOUS weekend and a really great start to my summer season. I think it is really going to be a great year if this is any indication. Next up on the agenda is Prague, then probably a bit more camping. I can't wait!!

The semester has ended! Huzzah! What does that matter to me since I'm not in school anymore? Well it means I get my boyfriend back. For a full three months my life will be free of homework and papers and the general ruckus that has meant I only got to see my boyfriend three days a week, and usually when he was grumpy from working all day on group presentations with classmates that are... well... I'll charitably call them "challenged."

First up in my exciting new life? A camping trip. This time tomorrow I'll be in a cabin in the woods snuggling in front of a fireplace. (And possibly listening to the rain on the roof... but let's keep our fingers crossed that that doesn't come to pass.) I can't wait.

Oh, and the key to my boyfriend's heart? I discovered it this week. After two weeks of begging I allowed him to stick a wasabi pea up my nose. Apparently it was the ultimate act of love and now he's convinced. Who knew?

(Yes it burned.)

It's the 12th! That means it's time for another 12 of 12! This is based on an idea created by Chad Darnell, 12 photos to document the 12th of each month. I up the ante a bit by creating a theme for myself. This month: These Are The People In My Neighborhood!

About 10:30 I leave Kid Flash's apartment. (That's his elbow.)

This is my Super, Maggie, in the lobby of my building. She's always friendly. She's lived in this neighborhood for so long that there's a park named after her down the block.

First task for the day: laundry. I usually try not to do this on the weekends because it's super busy at the laundromat, but it wasn't bad today.

After that I head downtown for some fun. I liked the green shirts of these ladies against the green trees. It was a beautiful day, a tiny bit chilly.

In the subway station, waiting for my train. Since there are two levels at my station a lot of people wait on the stairs in-between so that they can catch whichever train arrives first.

The movie theatre. I saw Waitress. It's a cute movie. It was interesting because all of the characters are such broad caricatures yet they somehow become real over the course of the movie.

A hot dog vendor outside the theatre.

Starbucks. I left the house in a tee shirt but the temp dropped pretty fast so I swung through for something warm to drink.

I also stopped by K-Mart. I need a pair of swim trunks for the summer, something that I haven't owned in years.

The booth attendant at the subway station.

On the way home.
Back in my own neighborhood I snagged a slice of pizza from a place around the corner, and that's it. End of the day. Next month I'll probably be late posting for this, but it should be a fun one since it will be another travel day and I'll be on the way to Prague!

May
May 19-21 Lake Taghanik campgrounds with Kid Flash

June
June 12-19 Prague with my Mom.
June 22-24 North South Lake campgrounds with Kid Flash and friends.

July
July 4-8 Wildwood, NJ with Kid Flash and friends.
July ?? (Date TBD) Working trip to Orlando Opera (well... and some fun too).
July ?? (Date TBD) Watch Hill Beach camping with Kid Flash and friends.

August
August ?? (Date TBD) Watch Hill Beach camping with Kid Flash and friends.

I'm tired already, but BOY does it seem like I have a fun summer ahead of me!!

Since I moved to New York City I have been resisting the standard path that most people in theatrical design take, which is doing a few shows here and then, and attaching yourself to an established designer as an assistant to learn the biz. Everyone always warns you, "Don't assist for too long." The danger is that you miss the window of becoming your own person and just end up as an assistant for the rest of your career. I had been getting good work and making a living without ever having gone the assistant route. The past year or two though I have felt as if I had hit the ceiling of what I can do on my own, so when the opportunity came to assist on this tour I jumped on it. First off let me just say what a joy it is to work on a show without terrible budget constraints again. After 3 years of doing shows with $250 budgets it's nice to be able to design unfettered without having to worry where I am going to get something. I already know that this was the right decision, in the past two weeks I have done things that I never had to do in my freelance life before. Sending proposals for bid out to a scene shop, creating breakdowns on a design to be sure that it will all fit in a transfer truck, etc. etc. Basically all of the things that they talk about in grad school but never really give you practical experience on. I'm supposed to be in this shop for 6 weeks. Everyone here tells me that they were given the 6 weeks line when they were hired as well, and some of them have been here for years. Would I stay that long? I dunno. It's tempting. Steady pay, benefits. But it is still doing other people's work, and not so much my own, so we'll see how long it takes for me to get restless. For now though... I'm happy as the Assistant Designer.

Well, I have just turned into a piss poor blogger haven't I? Sorry, I do apologize. After 10 days in Savannah where net connections were often iffy, and the starting this 9 to 5 lifestyle (usually more like 9:30 to 6:15 frankly) I've just been off my game. I'm trying to settle my life back into a routine but it's weird. Plus... my transit times are off, so there are MANY more people on the train than when I used to ride it, so I have trouble sketching. I have steady work that is enjoyable. I have a boyfriend that I love and adore. What the hell am I supposed to blog about? All the usually bitchy whiny-ness of my life seems to have settle ditself out. I'll try to do better in the coming days, I promise. I have three sketches that have been languishing in my sketch book, (two of which were done before I left for Savannah), but I've been too lazy a fuckwit to scan them. I'll get there, I'll get there.