Friday after work in one of "the 19 best"

Tucson was just listed in October's OUTSIDE magazine as one of 'the 19 best towns' in the country...


After you've lived anywhere for a while, the 'honeymoon' wears off and quotidian reality sets in, producing the occasional love/hate-fest of 'home'-town-feelings...The past couple of years in Tucson have had their ups and downs, 
But yesterday evening, after work, I went for a bike ride in Sabino Canyon--featured in the OUTSIDE article, and rightly so. (I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the most beautiful places in the Southwest.) The recent monsoon rains have filled the creek and pools in this oasis in the Santa Catalina Mountains--a good reminder of one of the 'pluses' that can outweigh the 'minuses' of living here.

So, with scenery like this a ten-minute drive from home (well, plus the hike/bike-ride into the canyon), yes...there are worse places to live...

monsoon scenes

(above photo published a few summers ago in the Seattle Times)

Downpours are isolated but intense this time of year around Tucson.

The mid- to late-summer 'monsoon' in the Desert Southwest of the U.S.

can be the most uncomfortable time to visit,

 if you're only considering the thermometer.

So often, though, the vast skies will fill

with vistas of moving, cooling color--

the alchemy of wind, water, and sunset...

...below, one storm, from a couple of summers ago,

seen from the Catalina Highway, looking over Tucson:

...the next few are from last summer:

(above photo published in the Arizona Daily Star last summer)

...and, from further north in Arizona--looking across from the mountainside mining town of Jerome

off to the red-rock country of Sedona, and then beyond to the San Francisco Peaks,

between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon:

iPhone photo: Gwanghwamun and a 'haetae'

On my first evening in Seoul back in June, I found myself here, in front of a 'haetae' (mythical fire-eating guardian lion/dragon/dog) beneath Gwanghwamun, the recently restored gate to Gyeongbok Palace. This double-roofed upswept structure dominates the historic main artery of the city.

The story of the haetae and the gate it guards sums up the turbulent, but resilient history of the Korean Capital:

1390's: The gate is built when Seoul becomes the capital of a new dynasty.

1590's: The  guardhouse above the stone arches is burned during the Japanese invasions. It lays in ruins until...

1867: It's rebuilt as part of the restoration of Gyeongbok Palace; the construction almost bankrupts the 'Hermit kingdom' which finally ends up becoming a protectorate and then an outright colony of Japan in 1910. Seoul is renamed 'Keijo.'

1926: The gate is dismantled and 're-mantled' nearby during the Japanese Occupation, to make way for construction of the Colonial Government General Building.

1950:  Communist troops retreat for the first time during the Korean War, the gate is destroyed again...

1963:...rebuilt, again.

1990's: the Government General Building is demolished to make way for the restoration of Gyeongbok Palace; Gwanghwamun gate will finally be restored to its original condition and location.

2010: The newly restored gate is unveiled; it has come home, after over eight decades of being 'displaced'...

Once again, the stone 'haetae' can stand guard, as it over six centuries ago when it was first placed here.

This time, may it last for a good while...



traditional symmetry, modern space: National Museum of Korea, Seoul

symmetry, color, rythym of repetition:

the ceiling of the Cheongjajeong pavilion in the garden in front of Seoul's new National Museum of Korea,

painted in the traditional style...

After walking through galleries ranging from neolithic to neo-Confucian,

a pleasure to rest one's feet in the shade of this octagonal structure--

and then lying down, looking up, a surprise to see a kaleidoscope with a pair of cranes at its center...

The pavilion is roofed with green celadon tiles:

Entry Hall of the Museum:

This museum was opened in 2005, south of the historical core of downtown Seoul, in the Yongsan district. Nearby is the Yongsan U.S. Military Garrison; within the next few years, the U.S. is scheduled to move its facilities out of the city, and Seoul has grand plans for this valuable real estate; the Museum is just the beginning...

This marble pagoda from the mid-1300's is one of the museum's centerpieces; during the Japanese Occupation, it was taken to Japan, then returned to Korea in the 1960's...

Looking south from the Museum, the reflecting pond and pavilion...beyond, some of Seoul's typical modern middle-class housing--high-rise apartments in domino-rows...aesthetically challenged, if efficient...

back from Korea...and a backyard mourning dove nest

Yes, wi-fi is ubiquitous in Korea, but during the month of June, while traveling around Korea, I never did get around to posting photos to this site.

So, here, finally, are a couple of photos:

This is one of my favorite scenes in Seoul--the six-story-tall Buddha of Bong-eun-sa temple (which dates back to the end of the 8th century), gazing out at the skyscrapers of the Gangnam district, including the 748ft/228m-tall World Trade Center Seoul Tower, built in time for the 1988 Olympics.

As recently as the 1970's and early 1980's, much of what is today Gangnam (southern Seoul) was still farmland. Perhaps no other city has undergone the transition from essentially medieval to modern so quickly. My mother lived through the Korean War, when the city was mostly flattened, and I remember my childhood visits, seeing the streets torn up for subway construction, and the endless rows of cranes and high-rise skeletons in what was still, then, countryside.

Seoul is now a city where commuters, at rush-hour, can use their smart-phones to shop for groceries, scanning bar-codes in some subway-station-displays.

The rapid change in lifestyle has created several decades of generation-gaps--each generation has grown up, literally, in a different world...but a few landmarks have remained. The tug-of-war between values--between religious and secular, Western and neo-Confucian, materialism and asceticism, progress vs. preservation, Christendom and Buddhism, filial piety vs. egotism--often not pretty, occasionally harmonious, but always vibrant.

...looking through one of the arches of Gwang-hwa-mun gate at Gyeongbok Palace,

during the recently reinstated changing-of-the-guard ceremony...

Period-dressed soldiers march on ground that until the 1990's

was dominated by the Government General building that the Japanese

had built during their colonial occupation (1910-1945).

The historical seat of Korea's Joseon dynasty has been restored

and visitors flock here several times a day for the vivid medieval pageantry.

Standing amid the architecture and sounds of the changing-of-the-guard,

you can almost forget the skyscraper-dominated sprawl of the rest of Seoul.

(More from the palace to come later.)

Locally, then:

from this morning in the backyard,

perched above the patio: 

(above photo published in the Arizona Daily Star in September, 2011)

I thought it was too late in the year for mourning doves to be nesting in the desert, but I was wrong. How these creatures have survived the neighborhood hawks and ravens so far, I don't know...

NOW showing in the desert: Saguaros in bloom...and on to Korea

May and June in the Sonoran desert: birds and blooms
(these guys are ubiquitous here, but you just gotta love their sky-blue eye-shadow, eh?)

 

Desert white-winged doves feast on the saguaro blooms during the day;
 bats pollinate them at night...



Each bloom (about the size of the palm of your hand) opens at night...
and by the end of the next day, they're spent...



...without blooms...

...and then with:

 

Even after living here for a few years now, I always find the interiors of cactus blooms to be surreal--
sinister hands, sea anemones, tentacular, arid echoes of fantastic corals...

======================

Next week, I leave for Korea;

after eighteen years away,

I'll be spending about four weeks there,

in Seoul and also on the opposite coast, in the city of Sokcho,

at the foot of Seoraksan Mountain National Park...

No other country in history 

has modernized as rapidly as South Korea;

within one lifetime--my mother's--

from completely war-shattered

third-world ruins,

it has become the world's most Internet-connected society,

one of the world's largest computer, cellphone,

automobile and ship manufacturers;

the world's tallest building, the 2000-ft+ Burj tower in Dubai,

was built by a South Korean company, Samsung.

Crazy.

Here's one of the last photos (scanned; taken by a cheap point-and-shoot camera)

 I took the last time I was in Seoul:

...one of my last days there, in the fall of 1993--

new construction going up just behind

the grounds of Deoksugung palace,

(late XVI c.)

I can't wait to see what else is new...

With the ubiquity of wi-fi in South Korea,

 I hope to be posting while there...

'stay tuned'...

hummingbird nest...back to Central America

We had an out of town visitor this weekend--so a visit to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum was a must. The timing was right--there were six different nests in the hummingbird aviary, and here's one of them:

...another de rigueur activity to introduce desert life--an evening walk in Sabino Canyon:

The out-of-town friend lives in Guatemala, which is, incidentally, where I got my first digital camera. I began learning to use it, walking around her hilltop neighborhood to the west of Guatemala City; this sunset view of the Volcán Agua was one of the first photos I took:

Her home in Guatemala was a home-away-from-home for us during the year we lived in Central America. When we got back to León, our Nicaraguan 'hometown,' 

I had fun taking pictures of the many colonial doorways in that hot, lowland, university town:

...my favorite is this one:

I was running errands (that's my bike) and on the ride home a row of buildings caught my eye. I got off my bike, got my little camera out of my backpack to take a quick picture, and then when I turned around to continue on my way, I realized, ahh, THIS is the photo I want!

If you never stop and look, the unexpected will never grab your eye.