I suppose it makes sense that the fruit for Upside-Down cakes looks upside-down…

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Location Taken: Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008

You know, pineapples just don’t quite look right when they’re on the plant. They, well, just seem attached the wrong way or something.

I mean, you look at a pineapple in the store. Leaves on top, hard spiky bit on bottom, tasty stuff in middle. Well, first off, “pine” and “apple” are both words related to trees, so for a long time I assumed that pineapples grew on trees. Not too unreasonable, I mean, most large fruits that grow on low-growing plants develop flat spots where it was laying on the ground. Just look at melons and squash some time, they’ve all got flatter spots.

There are some plants who have their fruits in the midrange that I see growing occasionally, like corn and peas, but those are all far lighter than a pineapple. Surely something that heavy would bend the stalk too much or something.

But no, it’s on top of its stalk. And even weirder, it grows right out of the top of the center stalk. I mean, most plants I’ve seen grow their fruit on smaller side stems and branches, because that way they can grow multiple fruits per plant, which when you think about it is an excellent idea. More fruits means more seeds means more baby plants. The pineapple, on the other hand, says “one fruit at a time is good enough for me!” At least putting it on the top of the center stalk does mean it can have that stalk be rigid enough to keep the fruit off the ground…

And then there’s the leafy bits! You see the pineapple on the store, and it’s not THAT dissimilar from an apple or a strawberry, with leafy bits on one end. Surely, just like the apple or strawberry, that means the leafy bits are attached to the base plant and are just more convenient (or pretty) to leave on than remove, right? Nope, the pineapple is contrary once again, and the leafy bits are the side that’s NOT attached to the mother plant. Instead, it just looks weird, like someone bought a pineapple from the store and ineptly glued it onto the top of a different plant that had similar leaves or something. But alas, that IS how the pineapple grows. Heck, the reason why it has that hard inedible core you have to remove is because that’s part of the center stalk going through the fruit up to the top leaves. So I guess in some ways the pineapple isn’t placed on top of the stalk, it IS the top of the stalk.

I was weirded out when I first saw a picture of a pineapple plant. Well, I suppose picture isn’t the right word. It was in a video game, I think The Sims 2 or 3 or something, one of those games where you can grow a virtual garden. (And no, despite my fondness for gardening games, I’ve never ever tried Farmville. Too social.) So I did a touch of research, and was still a bit weirded out. I mean, have you seen pictures of whole fields of pineapple? It looks so odd! I guess if you grew up with it, it’d look quite normal, but where I come from, plants just don’t grow that way. Even when I’ve seen a pineapple growing in real life, I’m still a little weirded out. Which is why I took a picture of it, of course.

  

Come See the Fabulous Columbia River Gorge!

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Location Taken: Columbia River Gorge (border of Oregon and Washington)
Time Taken: June 2008

You know what this reminds me of? Those old art deco style promotional posters for travel destinations made in the first half of the 1900’s. Here’s some examples, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s those posters you occasionally see touting the grandeur of some far-away place (or, more likely these days, the local nifty things, since that’s why the restaurant or hotel that has them on display bought them in the first place, the local color). They usually have bold colors, clean lines, and a fantastic use of perspective to make the place seem fantastic.

This photo, if I cleaned it up and made it into an art deco style painting, would fit right into those posters. It really does give that sense of “Travel!” and “Awesome place to visit!” (yes, complete with exclamation marks) that was the goal of those old promotional pieces. Heck, even the photo could fit in with them, since there’s nothing modern hidden away in the piece. Just trees, mountains, road, more trees, and a truck.

I really like those old posters. There were some hanging on the walls of the lounge at my college’s old student union where my friends and I often met up to chat and do homework. Those ones were mostly about the Indiana Dunes beachland a few miles north, plus a few railway promotionals for the rail line that connects the dunes and Chicago, the South Shore Line.

I also recently bumped into a few more at an old-style hotel in Wyoming, promoting the fantastic local canyons, so they’re fresh on my mind.

They’re fantastic posters, and I do encourage looking at more of them. Be mindful, though, that about 99% of the places online that have images of them are poster shops selling them. That’s why I don’t have more examples to show you, though I’d love to be able to. It’s tough filtering out all the dross of selling sites to get to the ones that are just showing them off.

Still, if you just do a google image search for “vintage travel posters” or “20’s travel posters” or the like, you’ll see plenty of examples. Enjoy!

  

I do rather like the red rock in this set of falls…

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Location Taken: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Time Taken: June 2010

One of my mom’s more endearing habits is stopping at every town named “___ Falls” and hunting down the falls. Did I say endearing? Maybe irritating is more appropriate? Endearitating?

Anyway, this is Sioux Falls. The falls are named after the Big Sioux River, well, falling down a cliff here, and the city is named after the falls, of course.

It’s a lovely set of falls. It has a large park and everything associated with it. It was also surprisingly difficult to get to from the major highways. We ended up winding our way through the stockyard district not too far from it, though it was at least nice and easily to get through since it was the wrong time of year for stock auctions (that’s cows, mind you, not what they sell on wall street).

It can get irritating, since they’re usually unplanned detours, and frequently a little awkward to navigate for. Not to mention I get a little time-conscious on long road trips, so extra stops start making me twitch before long. And sure enough, this was a day when we rolled into our planned campground after dark had fallen. But then, I do get some excellent photos out of it, and falls impressive enough for a city to form around them tend to be pretty interesting. So it’s really a wash between whether it’s more endearing or irritating.

  

A Tangle of Keys, in Charcoal

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Time Drawn: November 2006

I don’t recall which class this was for. It’s been too long, and projects like “pick a random object and draw it” are rather common for art classes.

In this case, it was “pick a random object and draw it IN CHARCOAL!” So I did. My random object was my set of keys and all the other random objects I put on the keychain.

Oh, and the box of the charcoal sticks, which was of course missing one stick.

That’s actually a pendant watch there on the left. I’ve never cared for wristwatches (I have a thing about tight things around my wrists, ankles, and neck), so for many years I had to hunt up pendant watches for my use. And since I had a low budget, I shopped at places which put more of their tiny manufacturing budget into decoration rather than durability. I mean, if you want a dependable watch, you’d just get a wristwatch, right? So I had to replace it every few years.

Then along came cell phones and well, that was that for my pendant watches. Now I can just check the time on the cell phone easy as can be (assuming it’s not out of power, at least). I hear rumors that I’m not the only one ditching watches for cell phones. It does make sense, we do put them in places where it’s easy to pull them out, and why buy a watch when the object you bought for phone calls (ok, texting and apps) already tells you the time?

The rest of the key chain looks pretty similar to what’s on it now, though the car keys on my current chain are the plumper modern ones that unlock and lock the car from a distance and all that fancy schmancy stuff. And I’ve changed around the “decorative” pieces some. I don’t remember what happened to that carabiner in the forefront. I had it on there for years, but it’s not on my key chain now nor has it been for a while…