So this is more stuff from 2014 that never got posted. Things were going very well for us then-- she was still healthy enough to do many things. We enjoyed walking together. She was very active in her rose garden. Roses require a lot of effort, as I have learned since taking it over. Results are worth it though.
So, after visiting the tiny house I used to occupy many years ago, we stumbled upon the ruins left after a house fire. This was back in 2014 remember.
Terrible destruction!
The house next door got scorched, too. This was a poor neighborhood. Very unlikely that anyone affected by this fire had insurance.
Very sad.
We moved on to the site of the old YMCA near the TTU campus. My wife recalled that before it became that, it was a church. But whatever it was it was abandoned when we looked at it. I belonged to a chess club once, and we used to meet there Saturday afternoon. I was a Freshman. I recall seeing Drueke plastic chessmen for the first time there. A math professor, Dr. Underwood, used such a set. I was impressed! Eventually I got a set of triple-weighted Drueke's of my own. Eventually, in a used bookstore, years and years later, I found a little pamphlet by Dr. Underwood: "Silhouette Mathematics". In that pamphlet he described a quick graphical method of solving simultaneous equations with many variables. Exponents were no problem-- everything got mapped into a 2 space. It seemed for a while to be a promising approach to Fermat's Last Theorem. I digress.
The old building was overgrown with vines!
Well, I'll continue this next time!
I whipped out the abstractions in the garage, and it was too easy.
Surely, using a digital camera to create the final product trivializes the product. For one thing, it becomes infinitely reproducible. You can also use a macro lens and zoom in on subareas to create "new work". That breaks all the rules. Then again, the traditional rules of traditional art might be stupid.
The thing above is just a gouge in the sheet rock that lines the garage. It is a kind of "found object". Below, more of those found objects:
Lets move on to photos I took in 2014 with my wife's camera, that I bought for her on eBay, that were never posted here. I just found these. She was with me, of course, and she took two of these photos. I'll point out the ones she took, when we get to that point.
We visited a playa lake near Ave U. This must have been in the Fall. Judging by all the migratory birds.
For a few years in the 1970's I lived in this place when it was an apartment! It was like a small house ahead of its time. It did not look so bad then. I described it to my wife, sketching the floor plan, and we day dreamed of ways it could have been made more livable and space efficient. She was fascinated by small houses. Amazingly, we examined small houses in Spur that were tinier than this! Insane!
I will continue with pics from my wife's camera next time...
Some of this is from Unofficial Lubbock, a website I created shortly after I retired. I set it up with Adobe Pagemill and used a free server provided by ATT. They don't do that anymore. Those free customer websites went away years ago. I liked Pagemill but it is obsolete today. I guess I won't have another website. This blog will have to do.
So...
I read this book when I was in grade school. I remember asking my mom where Lubbock was. And then I found myself living in Lubbock. So I did a little thing on those famous Lubbock Lights.
As you can see, I tried to find where those Tech Professors lived, who spotted the mystery lights. The house is long gone. That residential section is now commercial, devoted to fast food. I think I found the approximate location.
The following pics were taken at a Fourth On Broadway celebration when it was still between University and Avenue Q. It was much, much, better then. David Langston was still mayor-- probably the best mayor this city ever had.
It was actually RAINING, but not enough to cancel the parade.
Today I was able to drive around and take a few pics without being depressed. I missed my wife, of course, but I accepted things and decided that I could still take pics, but with a different emphasis. I also experimented with abstractions, as I did years ago. Easier to do this stuff in a garage with lots of room and material to work with. I found other pics taken several years ago with my wife's camera, and I don't think they were ever posted here. Those, too will be going up. I plan to revisit old sites, old places we photographed, and do it again with a better camera. And surely, there have been changes over the years.
More old stuff. This will be going on for quite some time.
These are a few of the RC airplanes I had when I first started out. I had trouble flying them, crashed one beyond repair, and gave up. About six years ago, with the advent of 2.4 gigahertz radio systems and electric flight I gave it a try again and finally learned how to fly RC. Best of all, I did not have to drive miles and miles to find a flying field. I had a nice area right at the end of our block.
This is an MRC Cessna Cardinal. If I could find another one of these today, it would be a perfect vehicle for an electric flight system.
Model ships! I quit model sailing ships after building these-- too tedious!
Everything in this collection of x-planes is 1/48th and all are assembled from cast resin kits except the X-3. Eventually I threw these away. Can't believe I did that.
This was my room at home, many years ago. I was a model builder from an early age. Note the X-2. I carved that out of hardwood. I had nothing but a few pics in Air Force Association magazines to go by. I didn't get the wing sweep angle right but otherwise it is pretty good, I think.
When I got to Texas Tech on a National Merit Scholarship, I lived in a number of dismal apartments in North Overton. As you can see below...
...they really were very dismal. This was not the worst of them.
More memories next time.
Terrible destruction!
The house next door got scorched, too. This was a poor neighborhood. Very unlikely that anyone affected by this fire had insurance.
Very sad.
The old building was overgrown with vines!
