untitled (United baggage carousel, LAX) 2004

Obviously we had some time on our hands after disembarking in L.A. this evening.

We drove around Sauvie Island this afternoon, just outside the city of Portland. These two photographs are of landscapes approximately two miles from the city limits, and only twelve miles fom the very center of town. They are totally representative of an island which has no gas stations and no visible commercial life outside of its pick-them-yourself farms.

Dreamy. Even Gerhard Richter would be impressed.

Actually, much of the island looks like the kind of arcadia which could have inspired Capability Brown. See Bloggy for more beautiful images.

untitled (Grand Ferry Park sunset)

It's just a slip of a thing right now, but some day the site which once saw ferries, loaded with farm produce and passengers, crossing to Manhattan every few minutes from downtown Williamsburg may be a real destination once again. Meanwhile the small park is a modest delight for a neighborhood cut off from its great river and hungry for park

A red brick smokestack rising above a circular pattern of cobblestones was part of a molasses plant that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals used in the early 20th century for work that led, eventually, to the large-scale production of penicillin. The cobblestones were salvaged from the section of Grand Street where the park was constructed.

untitled (West 24th Street thus) 2004

untitled (West 24th Street and thus) 2004