Although I’d lived in Tucson for four years by this point, I had never been out to the Desert Museum (which is much more of a zoo than a museum). In fact, I’d hardly been anywhere outside the main city of Tucson. For me as much as the rest of my immediate family traveling with me, this was something of an experience.

In Connecticut there is little wilderness, per se. Even when you’re out on a highway that cuts through a dense forest you’re never from a town somewhere. You have to go out of your way to find true nothing. For the most part, the city limits bleed into one another, creating a continuous area of built-up civilization that sociologists sometimes unscientifically refer to as a “megaopolis.”

Arizona is nothing like that. Once you’re out of Tucson, you know it.

The drive to the Desert Museum took us out there. Along the way, we passed this helpful sign:

On a day when it was ninety degrees (Fahrenheit—thirty-two degrees Celsius for anyone who’s elsewhere). Knowing that nobody around here seems to know how to drive in the rain let alone the ice, I had to recognize that this was legitimate issue and worthy of the sign. But it was hard to take it seriously on this day (hence the photo).

Getting there also involved driving through Gates Pass, a winding road strung along one of the local mountain ranges that surrounds Tucson before dropping off rapidly. This is a photo looking back at the drop-off point after we came down it:

Those white specks amidst the rock and cacti are other cars descending.

May is one of the best months to take in the desert landscape. All the cacti were in bloom.

Many of the animals at the Desert Museum on the other hand, were finding shade to nap in. Like these javelinas:

And this mountain lion:

We were touring the Desert Museum in the early afternoon, when it was hottest out. In hindsight, this may not have been the best of visiting hours.

The cave exhibit, my favorite part of the Desert Museum, afforded an opportunity to get out of the heat. It’s exactly as the name suggests—an actually walk-through cave:

The above two photos I took with the flash on for obvious reasons, but for this one I left it off in order to capture the sunlight creeping through a small opening in the cave ceiling:

The last exhibit we visited was the hummingbird house, where I spent quite a bit of time trying to capture hummingbirds on video. It’s as futile as it sounds. Every time I had my camera trained on one it’d zip away, and every time I hit “stop” and lowered my camera they reappeared right in front of me as if to mock my efforts. This is the best I could do in the way of still photos:

And this is what I ended up with in the way of video:

Overall, it was a fun trip, but one that probably should’ve been taken in either the early morning or the late evening at that time of year.

For more photos of the desert that all pretty much look the same, you can take a look at the full album I uploaded. The Desert Museum’s website can be found here.

Another destination on my week of Tucson excursions was the San Xavier Mission. I had visited San Xavier a couple years earlier for a photo essay I was doing for one of my Media Arts classes (you can see the photos here), but at the time the mission building itself was closed so I didn’t get a chance to photograph the inside. Scaffolding also obscured the front of the building because restoration work was being done on the front facade. This time, I got the chance to see it as it was meant to be seen.

As their website helpfully notes, Mission San Xavier del Bac was founded by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692. The original building is not the one pictured above. The construction site was several miles from it. The builders quickly discovered that its locale left it vulnerable to Apache raids, and it wasn’t until 1783 that work began on this, the new building. Completed in 1797, it’s the oldest European building in Arizona and a relic from a time when this part of the country wasn’t part of the country at all. The Baroque architecture was influenced by Moorish designs, and the detail shows many signs of its Spanish heritage.

The shell image at the center of the front facade, for example, is a symbol of St. James the Greater, the patron saint of Spain. The shell motif is repeated throughout the mission building, most noticeably on the ceiling inside. The carvings of pomegranates are likewise a piece of Spanish cultural heritage. The word “pomegranate” in Spanish translates to “Granada,” and it’s therefore a symbol of the Spanish Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors.

The mission building is also one of the few to feature only female saints on the front facade. Pictured above are the top two: Saint Barbara (who guards against lightning strikes) is on the left, St. Cecilia (patron of music) is on the right. The bottom two are St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Lucia on the left and right, respectively.

The mission was built to serve the Christian congregation of the Tohono O’odham people, which explains some of its peculiarities. For example, you probably won’t find too many snakes serving as the door handle to a Christian church, given its connotations of evil and sin in Christian mythology:

For the Tohono O’odham, however, the snake is an important animal, as evident by its presence here as just that.

It’s difficult for me to show the immense beauty of the interior space of the San Xavier Mission in still photos alone, so I’ve compiled a short video that pans and tilts along its walls and ceilings. (If I had epic religious music, I would have put it to this. Since I don’t, I posted it without sound.)

It’s a little shaky, so I apologize. I was filming it on a small camera with no tripod, and I’m a little shaky myself.

I’m by no means an expert on every detail of the mission interior, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:

My favorite part of the visit was taking a seat in the pews and listening to the gasps of astonishment from newcomers entering and looking at all this for the first time.

From the courtyard in the back:

Looking out to Grotto Hill:

And from Grotto Hill to the mission exterior:

For more photos, you can check out the full album. And if you’re ever in Tucson, you should see it for yourself.

I’m finally getting around to posting photos from my dalliances around Tucson during graduation week. Most of the delay can be attributed to not knowing where to put them since I’ve been relying less and less on Facebook and flikr has steadily become less user-friendly, but now that I’ve uploaded them to Webshots that issue has been resolved. So here we go!

One of the places I visited that I had wanted to go to ever since I heard about it was the Pima Air and Space Museum. They have an extensive collection, to say the least, of all things aviation related. My interest is primarily in the earlier years of manned flight and World War II in particular, so that’s where I spent the bulk of my time exploring.

It doesn’t get much earlier than the Wright Brother’s Flyer, the first plane on display when you enter the museum’s first hanger.

In that same hanger were a number of other flying curiosities. Two of my favorites were the Grumman J4F-2 Widgeon “Petulant Porpoise,” in an absolutely brilliant shade of yellow:

And the Pentecost E-III Hoppicopter:

As the museum sign helpfully pointed out, the main problem with the Hoppicopter was that you had to use your legs as landing gear, and if you landed incorrectly the spinning blades of the copter would hit the ground, splinter, and shatter, potentially killing you in the process.

In the World War II category there was plenty to see. These are just handful of them.

This is a Hawker Hurricane, which made up the bulk of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain:

The Bristol Blenheim, a light bomber that was also part of the RAF:

An AT-6B Texan (known as the “Harvard” when it was used by European air forces):

It’s a trainer aircraft, but during the Palestine War combat modified Texans were used by both the Israeli and Syrian air forces.

The B-24 Liberator:

And my personal favorite, the B-17 Flying Fortress:

As the picture shows, the aircraft was open so you could walk right up to it, allowing me to get some great shots of the nose turret…

…as well as what you would see from the inside of the ventral ball turret:

For more photos, you can look at the full album. And if you’re in Tucson, you can visit the museum for yourself.

The Tucson Festival of Books is a curious mix of educational day camp and carnival, blending the academic with the purely festive. Although centered on books and promoting reading (as well as booksellers), it features a wide variety of attractions, including author talks, workshops, musical performances, and plays.

I attended last year’s festival, the first ever, only briefly one of its two days to hear a couple of author talks, but this year I decided to make much more of it. That meant getting up at a reasonable hour on Saturday morning, the second day of my spring break, and catching a bus to campus to attend the first of the day’s events, all of which began at 10am.

Once on campus and on my way to the UofA Bookstore I randomly encountered a mariachi band, in full dress and parading past the Main Student Union:

The day’s events were already well underway.

I was going to the UofA Bookstore to hear John Hemingway, grandson of Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway, give a talk on his book, Strange Tribe, a memoir he’d written about growing up Hemingway and his relationship with his father and grandfather. On my way downstairs to the event I ran into Aurelie Sheehan, my creative writing professor and, as it happened, the moderator for this shin dig. She said hello, walked with me to the bottom of the stairs, and right then and there I was facing and promptly introduced to John Hemingway himself.

Having not expected such grand treatment and, I must confess, knowing so little about the Hemingways in general let alone John Hemingway in particular, I was a bit lost for words. All the same I did my best to be the model of professional comportment and made small talk. A friend of mine, Zac “Yorkie” York, was interviewing him that day and showed up about five minutes later to join me.

Mr. Hemingway gave a great talk, providing some context for the revelations on the legend of Ernest Hemingway that his book has had on the literary community. He also read some excerpts from the book that included letters written between his father and grandfather. The relationship between the two men was tumultuous at times, so the letters Mr. Hemingway chose to read were intense in the vehemence of their language and, at the same time, heartbreaking to listen to. Below, a photo of Mr. John Hemingway, with Professor Sheehan on the right:

Afterward Mr. Hemingway signed copies of his book and Yorkie interviewed him for an article he was writing. I took a photo of the two of them, striking their best serious, author-like poses:

The next talk I wanted to go to wasn’t until 1pm, so Yorkie and I headed down University Boulevard to lunch at Silver Mine. It was cheaper than anything else being sold at the festival and, thanks to its distance from the main events, much less crowded.

After lunch we headed back to the Main Student Union to hear Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler speak at a forum entitled “East Meets West: East Coast Novelists Working as West Coast Screenwriters.” It was of particular interest to me, being a Media Arts major and Creative Writing minor, to hear how they incorporated both screenwriting and novel writing into their careers. Although they couldn’t offer much in the way of details, the two are working together on a television series that has recently been picked up by HBO.

I hadn’t planned on staying all day but after I told Yorkie about a four o’clock talk called “Vampires That Don’t Sparkle” he was adamant that I should stick around for that. We could’ve taken in another venue but we decided instead to wander around the grounds and take in the sights. There’s so much that goes on in the short two days that the festival is held. You can easily go to one talk after another and still manage to miss just about everything. Already going to the two talks I had gone to meant passing up half a dozen others that I was interested in being held at the same time. So we wandered and took plenty of photos along the way:

I don’t know if the two above photos do justice to the size of the event, but the UofA Mall was packed to capacity. Every place that you could pitch a tent or put up a concession stand, there was one. Yorkie informed me that the festival’s planners were expecting upwards of 50,000 people to attend.

There were a lot more costumed children’s book characters milling about the crowd this year, so we decided to have some photos taken with them. I have no idea who or what this big yellow dinosaur was, but he looked interesting so we got one with him:

I also insisted that we track down a costumed Stella Luna and had our photo taken with her:

There was quite a line for Stella Luna, if you can imagine.

I also got some footage of an old skool barbershop quartet giving a performance by the Union:

The sound isn’t terrific because I was taking it on my little Canon Powershot, and the footage is a little shaky because I’m a little shaky myself, but all and all it’s not too bad. I gave them a rousing round of applause when they finished and they asked me if I was a singer. I told them, “No, I’ve never had the talent for it, so I always appreciate it when others do.” As I left an elderly woman said, “You and me both.”

As we were walking we passed a stage that was hosting a middle school performance of Alice in Wonderland. We only got the tail end of it. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be the only time I would regret missing an Alice-themed performance.

We went to the “Vampires That Don’t Sparkle” talk, featuring Esther Mitchell, Jeanne Stein, and Marta Acosta. We’d gone for laughs and maybe some good old fashioned Twilight bashing, but the latter didn’t factor in too much. Truth is I felt like I had entered the strange world of a genre that I knew nothing about but everyone else there did. If nothing else, it expanded my horizons (as they say).

I was pretty tired after day one, so on day two I decided to sleep in a little and didn’t get to the festival until the early afternoon. I regretted it later when I happened upon the tail end of an Alice in Wonderland-themed circus and magic show. I had trouble getting good photos because the crowd by that point was four or five people deep everywhere you went, but I have to post the ones I did get. The costumes are an absolute visual feast:

Here’s the Green Frog and the White Rabbit, at left and right in the foreground. Alice, in blue (and apparently a trapeze artist in this circus) is behind them:

The purple worm, at center. To the left you can see one of the kid-playing cards:

The Mad Hatter, on the right (presumably losing his hat at some point during the show):

The full cast of characters here…

…and here:

Some more photos are here, if you click on the second page of the photo album.

After I took those I went on to Gallagher Theater for a talk by Joe Garden and Chris Karwowski from The Onion:

This was a little underwhelming considering it consisted mostly of a PowerPoint presentation of cover pages and video clips that any fan of The Onion would already be familiar with, but Q&A session was good. The most interesting thing I learned is that the entire Onion staff is only about twenty people (not including interns and “clones” as the two pointed out).

Following that, I was torn. One of The Onion‘s writers had a comedy workshop at four o’clock. The Alice in Wonderland circus had another performance at four o’clock. And my creative writing professor was part of a panel on fiction writing at four ‘clock. To help resolve my indecision I got food. I figured, “What’s a fair without having some fair food?” so I prowled the concession tents. As soon as I saw the BBQ tent selling pulled-pork sandwiches, I was sold. A pork sandwich and a coke was $9. If it wasn’t the best thing I’d eaten all week I would’ve been upset.

In the end I decided that I hadn’t done much in the way of academic so I went to “Taxing the Imagination: Writing from the Other’s Point of View” with Fenton Johnson, Elizabeth Evans, Manuel Muñoz, and my creative writing professor, Aurelie Sheehan. Here’s a (blurry, very blurry) photo of the panel in progress:

Having four authors on one panel for a talk that was only scheduled to last an hour was a bit much, but overall it was a great discussion on the issues involved with portraying “the other” in fiction. One important point that was mentioned is that whenever we write fiction our characters are inevitably “the other” because they’re never exactly like us.

It was intellectually stimulating, and a good way to cap-off the weekend’s events—but next year, nothing is keeping me from that Alice in Wonderland-themed circus.

You can find video and more photos of the event on the Tucson Festival of Books website.

In the latest addition to my ongoing series of Random Things I See On Campus, there’s this:

Apparently it was part of the Campus Rail Jam Tour. I don’t know what that is, but it involves snowboarding on artificially created snow when it’s 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 degrees Celsius) outside.

I stopped to watch for a few minutes and snap these photos. None of the snowboarding tricks were all that interesting, and the crowd, despite its size, didn’t seem all that enthused.

For a desert, Tucson has been seeing quite a lot of rain the last few weeks. We had more this afternoon, but the protesters were on the UofA Mall during a break in the showers. I stepped out to lunch around noon when I saw them.

They’re out because Thursday (February 11) is the anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Green Movement plans to be out in force–and so does the Iranian government. Tehran Bureau has a preview of the night before. Andrew Lee Butters over at TIME has one as well. My personal prediction is that it will be big and bloody. Both sides have known this date was coming and have been preparing accordingly. Iran News Now and Enduring America will both be live-blogging throughout the day (at current time of posting, it’s just short of 9am in Iran). I know Andrew Sullivan will have posts throughout the day as well for The Daily Dish.

Just a sign of how involved I’ve become with this unfolding of events: for weeks I’ve been waiting for this day to come to see what will happen next, but up until last Saturday I had completely forgotten about the Superbowl.

By the time I walked back across the Mall for class at 2pm for class the protesters had vanished but the rain remained. It picked up its pace as the afternoon wore on. My professor for my class on Kubrick even let us out half an hour early on account of the lousy weather.

The sun broke through the clouds right as it was setting, lighting up a double rainbow in the eastern sky.

It lasted all of twenty minutes before the sun dipped farther, the light shifted, and it vanished altogether.

Getting to Fairfield from Terryville requires driving down Route 8 South for what seems like forever. This narrow length of highway, much of it only two lanes wide, cuts through the wilderness of Connecticut’s Litchfield and Fairfield counties. It twists and turns past the sheer rock walls of an endless series of rolling hills that make up so much of the western half of the state. The highway itself ends in Bridgeport, splitting into I-95 North and South. Once you’re there, it’s less than ten minutes on I-95 South before reaching the city of Fairfield and the Metro-North Rail Station.

I had made this trip a dozen times before. When my older sister studied at New York University half a decade ago I took the New Haven Line to Grand Central with my parents to visit. This was the first time I was doing it solo. So far I was in good shape. I had purchased my train tickets online ahead of time and had shown up with five minutes to spare before the train arrived.

The occasion for the trip was Geraldine’s twenty-first birthday party in New York. Geri, originally from Singapore, is one of several good friends with whom I became acquainted when writing for The Tattoo in high school. We stayed in touch long after we “graduated” from it and went off to college. She was taking advantage of a year abroad in Toronto to have a limo party in New York. Since I was in Connecticut for the winter break it worked out well.

After so much time spent flying back and forth across the country, trains have become my favorite way to travel. It’s an almost magical transition to take the Metro-North train to Grand Central. In a little over an hour you’re transported from the wide expanses of Connecticut to the very heart of New York City. I emerged from Grand Central Station onto 42nd Street. After walking around for about fifteen minutes to get my bearings (no matter how many times I go to New York I never retain any sense of direction) I walked a few blocks down and over to get to the Eastgate Tower Hotel where we were all meeting up.

In the lobby I ran into Teague, another former Tattoo colleague. Geri met us there a couple minutes later. By seven o’clock we were set to get packed into the limo and head off for a royal tour of Manhattan.

I’m not sure if the above shot of the limo’s interior conveys the sheer size of it. There was over twenty of us packed into it. With the flash you can see everything relatively well, but without it we had only the light-up floors to illuminate what was going on. This shot is from the far end, right behind the driver. I’m near-sighted, but even granted that I couldn’t see the other end of the limo from where I was seated.

Geri deftly maneuvered the limo’s interior, giving up her heels fairly early on to work her way amongst the party-goers. This is her, in the center, below:

One of the advantages of sitting at the far end of the limo was that I was seated right below the emergency exit in the roof, which offered some opportunities for overhead shots of the city as we crawled through the Manhattan traffic.

Along the way we were treated to some live in-limo entertainment, courtesy of Geri’s musically talented friends (of which, sadly, I cannot count myself a member).

We made a stop at Brooklyn’s Park Slope to take some night photos of the Manhattan coastline. Below are two of my favorites:

Geri, wearing an admittedly stylish but nonetheless flimsy dress that appeared to be made up of 80% nothing managed with only the addition of a light coat once outside. I told her I admired her tenacity in making do with so little, and she quipped that compared to Toronto this weather was positively freakin’ gorgeous. We did have a relatively warm night by New York winter standards–the light-up board on the Watch Tower told us it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

After Park Slope we popped two bottles of champagne on the way back to the hotel. Both were gone in minutes. Here is Teague showing his love for the occasion:

Once we were back at the hotel it was time for birthday cupcakes, songs, and presents. No one had a lighter handy so Geri borrowed one from one of the hotel staff on break. She gave him a cupcake afterward to thank him.

Here’s a shot of most of Geri’s entourage for the evening:

Teauge and I stayed after most of the guests had left. About midnight I bid her farewell. She left me with a letter–the latest in our ongoing North American correspondence–and I began my walk to the train station. I tried to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city, knowing it’d be well past two in the morning before I reached Terryville. On the way back to Grand Central I figured I had time to take one last photo of the New York night. I decided to take this shot of Grand Central’s exterior, with streetlights elegantly illuminating its stone facade.

Had I known then that I only had three minutes left to catch the next train to Connecticut I probably would not have lingered as much as I did.