Rain and Parking Garage and Road and Houses

Last week I showed you the pedestrian bridge at the hospital and I described its structure. After I tore myself away from examining steel, I looked out the windows. It was a rainy day and the glass was covered with drops. Somehow it made an ordinary scene really beautiful, I think.

I even like this blurry one.

I went to college about two miles from here and my first apartment was in a complex within a short walking distance of this location. The area has changed very much, though, in the forty years or so since then – this building did not exist. Looking out of the windows of the doctor’s office I could not orient myself. Well, that’s all right. Nothing stays the same. I’m focused on today and the view that this February rainstorm and this new (to me) building has given me to enjoy.

 

In Which I Am Fascinated By How This Pedestrian Bridge Holds Itself Together

A few days ago I had a doctor’s appointment at a local hospital. We parked in the garage and walked over an enclosed pedestrian bridge to the office building.

Though I’d made a couple of other trips to this site, this time I saw something I hadn’t noticed before:

Yes, it’s this assemblage of oversized bolts, screws, and rods that caught my eye. I immediately saw the structure of this bridge very differently – as from the standpoint of – how is this thing actually put together and holding itself up so that I can travel across it without a thought?

Well, it’s simple. As you can see, there is a series of diagonal supports from ceiling to floor.

Halfway over the bridge they switch direction.

You saw the giant screw threads:

and how about these cotter pins?

I would have loved to see them putting this structure together. Below is the original view of the bridge I showed. Now, if you were to take a seat and relax here for a while, you’d feel pretty good about the glass tube this bridge pretends to be, right? Because it’s really a pretty brawny entity.

Keep your eyes open next time you’re in an office building or other such structure. Even if they put in ceiling tiles and so on…there are clues as to how the building works. It’s interesting to follow the clues.

By the way, above these ceiling tiles, which don’t cover the whole surface, it’s possible to see utility pipes carrying the building services over the bridge. Painted a slimming and hiding black, but they are up there…

Pound and Pounded (Apart)

I take a class at the gym called Pound. You use a couple of bright green plastic sort-of-drumsticks as you exercise, hitting them together or on the floor as you do various moves. Let me tell you, you do a lot of squats in this class and your legs will hurt. But the sound of the sticks hitting is a great motivator.

It’s also hard on the sticks. They break. Not every class or even every week, but it happens. And in our gym when they do it’s something to be commemorated. I’ve been hoping I’d someday join that club, and today, I did. One stick, snapped in half! Was I surprised.

Following tradition, the instructor signed my stick parts and I took them home.

She put my name, the date, and even the song it broke on. Hey, I know it’s one of those things – “you had to be there” – but it put a smile on my face.

(Look here if you want the official info on Pound class).

Montco Mornings – Visit Again

You’ve heard me mention art drop-offs and Poetry Marathons at Montgomery County Community College (nickname – Montco). I take a photo from my car when I arrive and send it to my husband to let him know I am there each morning. I’ve got a lot of those photos and have posted arrays of them before now. Here’s another group.

I generally park in about the same place each time I go to the school, so the views are similar in each photo. For reference, the blue-painted squares designate the handicapped spots at the top of the lot – looking out of my windshield, they are in front of me or to the right, if I have to park a little further out. The trees and the light poles also serve as orienting marks. But usually I park within a 10-space area in the lot, always facing the same way.

There is something about the slow changes as the year rolls around that appeals to me. I like series photos  and I think the banality of the image becomes kind of timeless when it plays out over a longer period of time.

Or, it’s just fun to look at, I hope.

 

11/8/18

11/21/18

12/13/18

12/20/18

1/17/19

2/1/19

2/21/19

3/7/19

3/28/19

4/4/19

4/11/19

4/18/19

4/25/19

5/2/19

5/9/19

5/16/19

5/23/19

5/30/19

6/6/19

6/20/19

6/27/19

7/11/19

8/15/19

12/19/19

1/10/20

1/30/20

 

Look out!

Here’s a photo from October 2019. I thought I was taking a picture of the humdrum, but I may have captured drama in the making.

Look out, person shadow! A giant blob shadow is about to eat you!

Never mind…it’s just the shadow of me, and next to me, the shadow of my faithful vehicle, Cara Mia McGill. Who will not hurt anyone and in fact, only wants to please.

Well, that is a relief.

Art Drop-Off January 14, 2020

I’m catching up here on my art drop-off doings – though there haven’t been too many, as I haven’t been outside a lot in the last couple of weeks. COLD! Anyway, here is a drop-off from a couple of weeks ago or so.

The weather was mild on this day, though gray, so I decided to walk in my neighborhood. I left some tiles at the Thomas Williams park about a mile from home. Now it’s tennis courts and ball fields on a fairly small plot. In previous times it was the Thomas Williams Junior High School before the building was torn down. The area where I left the tiles was part of the former school’s entrance:

If you step back toward the street here’s a better view. I set the tiles on the section up near the fence, behind the trees.

Wait a minute. Has someone else been dropping off art here too? Something caught my eye on the left side of the stairs. I went closer. Look.

Not art. I don’t think so, anyway. Shoes! Very tired shoes, too.

Well, there is a story there, yes. I thought about it as I made my way home, but came to no conclusions.

Animals I Saw (Fairly) Recently

Please excuse the unseasonality of this post, but I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t had time to show you this outing my husband and I took right after Christmas.

You may remember that last year, we visited Glencairn at this time of year – it is a museum near my house and the former home of the Pitcairn family (PPG or as it was called, Pittsburgh Plate Glass), who were of the Swedenborgian faith and instrumental in the building of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral next door. I’ve written other posts about this site (listed at the bottom of the page), and here’s a couple of photos of the building:

and here is a statement from their website that explains Glencairn:

Glencairn, built between 1928 and 1939 in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, was once the home of Raymond and Mildred (Glenn) Pitcairn and their children. The building now serves as a museum of religious art and history. Glencairn Museum invites a diverse audience to engage with religious beliefs and practices, past and present, by exploring art, artifacts, and other cultural expressions of faith. By appealing to our common human endeavor to find meaning and purpose in our lives, we hope to foster empathy and build understanding among people of all beliefs, leading to positive social change through tolerance, compassion, and kindness.

Anyway, they have a display of Nativity scenes from all over the world each Christmas, and I like to visit it. I am not religious, but I like Nativity scenes, and this exhibit is wonderful for the artistic and faith expressions in each one. Each one has a personality given to it by its maker’s skills and the culture from which the artist comes. Invariably they are meaningful and convey feeling and emotion, no matter what your religious outlook is, I think. I find them so, anyway.

All right. We arrived at the museum and got looking.

The scenes are set up in these main rooms. Remember, this was a family home; pictures of the Pitcairns enjoying Christmas are also on display.

I’ve shown photos of various Nativities in the past posts I’ve done. For some reason, this visit, I was interested in the animals in the scenes. There are the traditional cows, sheep, donkeys, and camels; I also saw llamas, bullocks, and goats. I love how various societies adapt the visual illustration of the Bible story into what is familiar to them.

Here are some animals I noticed. Please excuse the photos’ quality – the light is low in the display rooms.

Here is a fluffy sheep – from Russia, I think.

These animals were from the very large elaborate scene in the first photo of the display rooms.

Camels from two different scenes. I love camels. These made me smile.

All the animals in this scene had the little heart-shaped spot on their foreheads.

 

Sheep carved from wood with burned details, along with their scene. I loved their little eyelashes.

More sheep…

and a sheep and a donkey. I like the donkey’s expression.

I spent a lot of time examining these scenes. In each one, the figures (including the animals) all have expressions and postures that give clues to what they might be thinking or feeling. I imagine the scene as the Bible story tells it, filling in the details of noise and smells and excitement and voices speaking and a baby crying. The animals, meanwhile, take it in their stride, doing the things they usually do, oblivious to the event – just being themselves. I enjoyed thinking about it from their perspective.

And I also marveled at the artists’ ability to capture the essence of the animals, whether the figure was done very realistically or not.

I look forward to seeing the scenes again next year. There are always new ones on display and some old favorites.

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Here are other posts I have written on the general topic of Glencairn and its surroundings:

In 2018

Bryn Athyn Cathedral

 

A Quick Drop-Off at Montco 1/10/20

I was at Montco today for Poetry Marathon and I thought I’d leave a tile in the outdoors there.

School is still not in session yet but you never know who might happen by. I decided I’d set it on this concrete barrier near the parking on the walkway into the quad.

The tile is small but bright:

Here it is in place.

I set it out in the morning. It was still there when I left for the day. I’ll check next week. The tile I left last week in the vestibule:

is not there this week! Fantastic!

Art Drop-Off 1/3/20

Here is the first art drop-off of 2020! I left this small clay quarter-circle face tile at Montco (Montgomery County Community College) in the vestibule of College Hall, where I was in the library today for Poetry Marathon.

It’s been a little time since a drop-off took place, though I’ve been carrying this fellow around in my purse for some time. Let’s blame the end of year and its rush of routine changes.

Anyway, here we go.

Here is College Hall and the vestibule I refer to is the glass projection at the front of the building.

 

 

I set the tile on the ledge of this planter/bench:

 

 

It’s located to the right as you go in the vestibule:

 

 

on the front side of the structure.

 

 

If you hurry you may be able to grab it!

 

 

Quick Art Drop-off in a cozy warm library on a very cold day in December

I was at Montgomery County Community College today for Poetry Marathon and I left two tiny clay portraits on the shelves there. These are the last two little faces like these I have left. Time to make some more!

Here is one little face near the audio books (excuse the blurriness).

And the other one just a few feet to the left.

All the ones I left here in the summer have moved on. To somewhere. How do I know that? Because I left them in the DVD section and the library has moved that whole collection to the next floor. The shelves are empty. That’s the only way I know – because to be honest, I have lost track of where I left who in this building!