Father Justin

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We went to a lecture by Father Justin of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai last night as part of the Medieval Studies lecture series. Father Justin is the Librarian at St. Catherine’s Monastery, which was built by Justinian in the sixth century, and is the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. His talk was on “Continuity and Change at Sinai from the Seventh to the Ninth Century: Insights from a Sinai Palimpsest.”  The palimpsest is a page from a set of manuscripts of the Epistles of St. Paul written in Greek with accompanying, parallel Arabic text from the 9th century. The manuscripts were left or forgotten in a room in the monastery where the roof collapsed and buried them. They were discovered in 1975 during renovations to the room. The manuscripts provide a great deal of information about the time when the Christian church in the Middle East was having to deal with the Islamic presence. Using modern photographic and digital technology, Father Justin has been able to not only study the writing that is currently on the manuscripts, but also enhance and make earlier text that had been erased legible so the previous writings can now be analyzed and studied, as well.

As we walked back to the car, I took a few photos of the buildings and features on campus. The architecture and lighting on UNM’s campus provide so many photo opts that I can’t recall setting foot on campus at night within the past four years without taking at least a half a dozen pictures.

Love & Manx

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Between nights in the low 20’s and day time temps reaching into the 70’s, the rose bushes have a variety of fresh to freeze dried blooms. Mama Manx was looking in the window hoping one of us would let her in. Laurie made note of how cute she looked, while I photographed her. The kitty was very patient staring through the glass and screen until we finally let her in.

We headed out early this morning, in sub-freezing temperatures, all bundled up,  with coffee and Kindles in hand, prepared to brave the line and elements to exercise out right to vote — but there was no line. The poll workers outnumbered the voters, so we ended up spending about as much time saying hi to an old friend attending the vote scanner as we did voting.

 

 

 

 

Roadrunner Art

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I hadn’t seen a roadrunner in our yard in several years. About 20 years ago we were infested with roadrunners. There would be a half dozen or more hanging around in the yard just about any time we went outside. When we were out working in the garden, the roadrunners would surround us, staying about 15 feet away, and walk circles around us, one direction then the other, cocking their heads as the eyed us up one side and down the other. I figured they were sizing us up to determine if they had sufficient numbers to take us down. One year they simply disappeared and I haven’t really seen roadrunners in the yard again until yesterday. I got the photo of the dogs in the back of the truck on our way home tonight.

El Dia de los Muertos

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We went to a live performance of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” last night (wonderful performance), then went to the Frontier Restaurant to eat and visit afterward, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight. Laurie reminded me that we set the clocks back an hour, so I set all our analog clocks to 11:20 thinking we were almost ready for bed. However, by the time I remember I needed to go outside and turn off the water to the drip system, did a kitty count, messed around on the computer some more, and finally herded the cats to the bedroom it was 12:20 again — I ended up staying up past midnight twice last night.

We went to the Marigold Parade and Festival as part of El Dia de los Muertos after choir practice this afternoon. The Marigold Parade was great fun and people from the various cultures in the Albuquerque area participated and showed off their creativity.

Classic Beauties

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The smoke from the latest controlled burn has just about put me down for the count — I really have cold symptoms from it.  The lovely sisters work at Lindy’s Diner downtown. They were gracious enough to pose with the coke pump in the diner. The turquoise GMC pickup is a really well restored 60’s model and the Boulevard C50 T is a modern classic in turquoise as well.

 

 

Inspirations

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We went to “Inspirations” by Nicole Larsen tonight at UNM’s Keller Hall. It was a mix of singing, dancing, and drama that was very well done and entertaining. The show offered great music, beautiful singing, stylish dancing and emotionally charged theatrics delivered with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.  The only problem was a pesky photographer who sat in the back of the theater taking photos during the first act; the clicking of the shutter and whirring of the lens stabilization system bothered his wife, who made him stop taking photos during most of the second act. Oh well! I need to figure when the dress rehearsals for show like this are and see if I could photograph the dress rehearsals, then people could go to the shows if they liked the photos and the review.

Halloween

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Liz, who works at Patrician Designs, was a paper boy for Halloween. Getting a good photo of her clicking her heels was not an easy task, but we finally got a great jump and click — although she jumped so high, she about jumped out the frame — I was impressed. I managed to get a photo of an angel playing the piano, which is a pleasant addition to the ghostly images a got walking around downtown this evening. The three celebrants in the last photo had wonderful costumes, very well done, and appropriate for Halloween.

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies of the Night

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What better thing to do on the second night of a full moon, and the night before Halloween, than to go out and interview a couple calavera and a scary madonna?  I asked the lady in the hat what her perspective on life was from a dead person’s point-of-view. She confirmed the dead wife’s observation in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” that “…you’re not so prejudiced when you are dead…” and she confided in me that her general lack of prejudice made it easy to acquire the great hat she was wearing from some woman she scared half to death.

The MonSat Girl has been hanging out in front of the Tijuana Bar.  I commented that she must have been a big fan of spaghetti westerns with her sarape and all, but she said “No I was the one the characters in the spaghetti westerns were modeled after! I was the woman with no name who roamed the prairies and fought for justice!” I asked her if she was the original, then why did they have men like Franco Nero and Clint Eastwood play the part of the “man with no name’?  She said “Dah! Look at me! What am I now? A Skeleton? Well? Skeletons ain’t got no boobs!”

I found the scary Madonna more difficult to interview. Unlike the calavera, she was serious — an unhappy spirit stuck in a plaster statue that was toppled over in the sand where she could only look at the stars in the heavens above. I told it that I thought it seemed appropriate for a praying madonna to be laying on her back facing the heavens. She simply bared her teeth and said “Puleeese!” I got her point and moved on.