November 2nd is Día de los Muertos. The Day of The Dead. The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. All Souls’ Day. Or whatever you want or don’t want to call it.
Like Phoenix rising
From the ashes of lost souls?
Or all souls today?
Cloudy, mostly gray sunset.
Clear Dawn
“Where’d ya get the hat?”
Spunku
Renaissance? I go
Medieval on your hiney
Lay terms? “Kick Your Butt”
Well before dawn, protodawn, predawn
Dawn
The Moom on September 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21.
*I have no idea if either of the dancers is named Dakota, but their dancing and the Faire reminded me of the line “Dance, dance, Dokato dance…” in Dakota the Dancing Bear, Part II by David Allen Coe. It’s a great song, well worth a listen.
I don’t suppose these young Renaissance enthusiasts changed the fonts in their instant messengers to Carolingian minuscule for texting while in character. Carolingian minuscule was developed in the middle ages (the “Dark Ages” to the Renaissance humanists) during the reign of Charlemagne, but those very humanists thought that the Carolingian minuscule script was so beautiful that it had come from their beloved Roman Empire. So much so, that the humanists mistook old Carolingian manuscripts from the 8th and 9th centuries as original ancient Roman manuscripts. Since the humanists failed in their backward quest to restore the glory of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance didn’t happen as it was supposed to. Scientific inquiry, experimentation, and observation, theology, economics, education, etc. of the time proved that so many things from the Roman Empire were wrong, “the Renaissance” is the high middle ages and the early modern period. However, it seems to me young people in costume, on their phones texting at a Renaissance Faire is true to the Renaissance.
Protodawn, predawn, dawn
Photo of the Day, Etc for the week of March 23rd — 29th includes:
March 30th: Spring flowers and wild boar macaroni — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/3/flowers-food
March 31st: Spunk in the window — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/3/screened
April 1st: Construction — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/4/construction-progress
April 2nd: Spunk gets his kitty prints — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/4/kitty-prints
April 3rd: Moonrise and Lola — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/4/moonrise-lola-and-the-neon-tulip
April 4th: A snaky lick and wild turkey — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/4/snake-tulips-wild-turkey
April 5th: Flower girl — http://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2015/4/i-love-the-flower-girl
Spunk has started watching Italian music videos. His current favorites are Anna Tatangelo’s “Sensi” (Feelings) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB6QA7snWqk, and Litfiba’s “Squalo” (Shark) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbcYNU71JOo.
In “Squalo” there are a couple of women painted up as skeletons who dance in the darkness for a few seconds at various times throughout the video. Spunk would start pawing at the skeleton figures every time they came on screen. I wonder how he sees the figures that makes him want to touch them.
I put on another Italian music video, but Spunk lost interest soon after it began, jumped down and started playing with his toys on the floor. When I replayed “Sensi”, he bounded across the room, slid up to the computer and intently watched the video again — he seemed to be enamored by Anna.
The lyrics to “Sensi” in Italian and English are available at http://lyricstranslate.com/en/sensi-feelings.html. I did not find an English translation for “Squalo”.
I went to Gears and Glamour on Saturday night at Thunderbird Harley Davidson. The event was a fundraiser for Ability Connection New Mexico, an organization that provides services for people with disabilities to help them achieve their highest level of independence. The event included live music, a runway fashion show, and the morning show hosts from Coyote 102.5, Erica Viking and the Hoff. It was an interesting and fun event, the problem was, most of the event was in the dark, including the runway fashion show that had one bank of spotlights lighting the runway from behind, backlighting the models on the main runway. I was up for the challenge of shooting in the dark. Since I didn’t have a flash with me, I didn’t want to photograph the models backlit on the main runway, so I stood by the band to get the models lighted from the side and front on the side runway, and then lighted again from the front on their way back down the main runway. I set my ISO to 3200, lens wide open and my shutter on 1/60 of a sec, which underexposed each shot from 2 to 4 stops. With a lot of post processing, I got the photos to work pretty well. The models in the lead photo asked me to photograph them on the bike, but the only light was from the sign behind them. The photo was almost completely black, besides the sign, so I simply over processed it to give a vintage look.
¡Feliz Dia de los Muertos! Happy Day of the Dead! May all souls past and present be at peace.
Off Center & Not Even 