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Nick football photos

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Sarah and Nick try to open a car door iced shut (click on the picture for a larger version):

Sarah looks pretty darn cold:

Icicles hanging from car grilles isn’t common in Texas:

Even the tires are covered in ice:

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Mary right after the ceremony:

Mary posing for the photographer taking a picture from above:

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While searching through my father’s closet for the right shirt and suit for his burial, I realized yet again how lucky I have been that my Dad let me get to know him as a man in addition to being my father.

Going through another man’s closet reveals a lot about his small habits and idiosyncrasies, and today instead of being filled with sadness and regret during my search, I was happy to learn more about my father as I shuffled the clothing around and chose the right tie and belt for him.

I had no unresolved issues with my Dad, and I have no regrets, other than we did not have the time to spend together as father and son in the retirement that for him never came.

I will write a fitting memorial to him soon, when I’m not completely occupied with the details that modern life imposes even upon death, but until then, music from my favorite artist will serve to convey my loss:

Father, Son by Peter Gabriel

This is an MP3 file that should open your default player. Please don’t save the file, but instead buy the album from Amazon if you like it.

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At 11:20PM on 25 December 2005, I signed the do-not-resuscitate order.

At 4:25AM on 26 December 2005, William Martin Grant, my father and the best man I will ever have the honor to know, died.

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Despite the deep concern and warnings the ER doctor gave us, my father survived the night. Given that repeatedly we are told that except for the problems caused by the cancer, he has the appearance and health associated with a 50 year-old man instead of one who is 63, perhaps this should not be a surprise, but the gravity with which the doctor described the situation last night tells me that it is the stubborn will of my Dad more than anything else that is keeping him going.

Regardless of how frustrating it is for those who know me, at least I can say I come by the stubbornness honestly. My Mom is stubborn about small things, my Dad waits until it is critical, then he doesn’t quit.

We are far from out of the woods. While my father is stable, he is still in the Intensive Care Unit critically ill with yet another blockage in his intestines, fluid around and inside one of his lungs, and a host of other problems that while not immediately deadly need to be resolved before he could even be described as at the point where he is recovering from this latest setback.

Realistically, I doubt he will gain enough strength to start the second round of chemotherapy that the oncologist says ins the best option to treat the recurrent cancer. I have made sure my Dad is aware of what I see of the situation, and he also knows I will support anything he decides. His decision right now is to fight for any chance, and I will support that until he tells me differently.

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While checking on the dog at my parents’ house, I received an urgent call from my mother to return to the hospital.

Without going into the grim details, the emergency room doctor reviewed with me a two page list of everything that was failing or otherwise wrong in my father’s body. The doctor was very compassionate while still being straightforward, telling me that my father was the most ill person he had seen in a very long time, and that there was a strong possibility that he would not last the night.

To say that the oncologist we visited on Thursday was a bit too cavalier with the maladies that we described my father suffering in the days before the visit is putting it more than mildly.

At 4:00AM, they finished stabilizing my Dad to the point where he could be moved to the Intensive Care Unit.

Now, I am back at my parents’ house, retrieving the medication that my mom must take, checking on the dog, and making a small breakfast for my mother. The first time we can visit my father in the ICU is at 9:00AM.

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I have just returned from the emergency room, where my father is now, receiving saline and blood to increase his blood pressure. We called an ambulance after he passed out twice this evening.

I don’t know if he will ever get strong enough to receive the chemotherapy, but he did say “yes” when asked if he wanted to be resuscitated if his heart stopped or put on a respirator if he stopped breathing, so he hasn’t given up hope.

Short of a miracle, I don’t see much hope beyond a few months, and those spent in pain. Whatever he decides, though, I’m behind him 100%, regardless of what anyone else wants. It is his life, and I will defend at all costs his right to decide how it ends.

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My father is much weaker than I was expecting, and after our visit to the oncologist today I have an idea of what to expect, especially after my private conversation with the doctor in the hallway out of earshot of my parents. While there is a possibility that the altered chemotherapy program that my father will start in two or three weeks once he has regained at least some strength may attack the cancer and possibly induce a remission, the gestures the doctor used to indicate the extent of the cancer covered the entire abdomen, despite the indirect way he was giving this news to my parents.

While I hope for better, I doubt that my father will live to see the end of this summer, and that life will not be comfortable.

I also fear I may have to play the “bad cop” role in a family drama that will be unnecessary, but will occur anyway.

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The latest news I have is this:

The tumors found near my Dad’s gastro-intestinal tract apparently originated from the bladder cancer that my father was diagnosed with in March of 2004 and had surgically removed (along with his prostate) in March of that year.

Given that he had six months of chemotherapy after the original surgery (which incidentally showed cancer in his prostate, which was also removed as a prophylactic measure), yet NONE of the scans he had since he was declared “cancer free” have shown any indication of the “new” growths in his abdomen, I must question the efficacy of the detection methods.

Perhaps I am too much involved with matters scientific and have a better than desirable understanding of the nature of statistics, but the current situation does not warm my heart.

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I decided I wanted some quiet instead of the noise and activity in the center of town, so I walked to the municipal graveyard, a huge affair with very closely spaced plots.

There were a larger number of people than I was expecting for a work-day out tending their family plots, adding flowerpots, watering the flowers already there, raking the gravel level, and other work.

For the photos I’ve posted here, there are color and a black-and-white versions. I’m up in the air on some of them as to which makes the better picture.

One of the first sights I encountered was one of several areas they have with arrays of the dead from World War I (click on any photo for a larger image in a new window):

Another plot nearby had another World War I fatality, someone who had been decorated for their service (the engravings of the medals are dimly visible in the circle of the horn scribed in the marble):

There were some rather large monuments and crypts present as well. Here is the top of one:

This is the same dome, but zoomed in on the cross at the cap of the dome:

This is the interior of the domed monument that you can see above. I liked how the iron gate mirrored the marble cross inside the monument:

Some monuments were literally dissolving. I was not able to get a photo of one of them that looked to be centuries old and resembled in no small part the 13th century church close to my apartment. I plan to return to photograph it.

Other, more recent plots also were in ruins:

There was one plot against one of the exterior walls of the graveyard that had no marble headstones, but instead had metal nameplates scattered around on the ground:

Finally, a slightly more contemporary monument had in addition to a bronze relief of the deceased in the black marble back, a full statue beneath a black marble roof:

It was actually a very well done statue. I need to see if it is a copy of a more famous work, or if it is an original. I wouldn’t mind having a copy of it.

I have a few more photos, but these should be sufficient to tax those on dial-up for now.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photography, photos, photos of Europe, pictures

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Last Saturday I took a walk around Grenoble with my camera. Here are a few photos (click on any image to see a larger version).

This is from the square that is near my apartment. The building is the old Palais de Justice for Grenoble. I’m not sure how old the building is, but it dates back to at least the Renaissance. I liked the way the shadows fell on the complex carved stone.

I found this sign amusing. It reminded me of the Church Lady skits on the old Saturday Night Live (strangely relevant now given that appellation has been pinned to Harriet Miers). The caption for this photo - “Could it be… Satan?!?!”

I haven’t been able to adjust the contrast on this photo to my satisfaction yet, but I liked the juxtaposition of a city street and the buildings lining it framing a view of a centuries old fortification wall.

The cliff between the (relatively) new building below and the fort above caught my eye.

Another contrast, the 13th century church steeple against the architectural monstrosities of some 1960s vintage apartment buildings.

Apparently, for some in town, Saturday is wash day.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photography, photos, photos of Europe

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This past Sunday, I strolled around the center of Grenoble taking photos. Here are a two that show the river that is the heart of the town (if not the geographic center, the first has my apartment building in it, although it is in the distance):

(click on any image for a larger photo in a separate window)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I ran into a brocante, which is a sort of giant flea market/garage sale, where I bought a portfolio of old prints (a few are posted here). Below is a photo that gives an indication of what the brocante looks like:

Here are two “artsy” photos, the second of which is one of my attempts to turn digital color photos into black and white images. Strangely, I find it easier to work with black and white film than I do with color digital images that I use software to convert to black and white. Perhaps I should consider using the black and white option on my camera.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photos, photos of Europe

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Never let it be said there are no Frenchmen with senses of humor:

(From a marking on the side of a bridge showing the pedestrian walkway, click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

Technorati Tags: humor, letters from Europe, photos, photos of Europe

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Some from today, some from earlier.

Perhaps I should start a new category.

The first is a black-and-white version of a photo I posted earlier. I’m still not entirely happy with how it turned out, even after a lot of work in Photoshop, but here it is (as is usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger photo to pop up):

I have been posting the photos of a few ads that I felt would never appear on street side displays in the US, here are two more.

The first is for the ladies to appreciate, the caption says, in a literal translation, “Lesson 1: To fly him the star,” but I think it means in English, “Lesson 1: Fly him to the stars.”

For the men to appreciate, here is the female version of the advertisement, with the caption (much easier for me to translate), “Lesson 67: Succumb to temptation.”

I think I need to take the photos of the roadside advertisements at night to avoid the reflections, despite the inadvertent art that can sometimes result.

I have many more photos taken especially this Sunday when I was out searching for good images. I will post more later.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photos, photos of Europe

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Here are two photos I’ve been meaning to post. The first is part of a set that I’ll post in entirety one day soon. It is another streetside ad that I found intriguing (and unlikely to be seen on the side of a street in the US):

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

The second is of the 13th century church within about 100 yards of my apartment. One of my co-workers has suggested those of us interested in photography go out and take photos on a certain subject and then get together and compare. The subject he chose was “the nature of the city” (translated from French) with the word he used for “nature” meaning “natural world”, not nature as in characteristics or tendencies. I’m interested in finding out if the nature I saw is visible to others:

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

I was planning on converting the above photo to black-and-white (and may still do so), but I was not satisfied with the initial results after the conversion. I’m still working on tweaking other photos to post, perhaps I’ll have a few more ready this weekend.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photos, photos of Europe

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…a photograph is completely inadequate to capture a sight. Somehow the filtering of a mind is needed to convey everything associated with what is seen from a particular vantage point, even when the influences of sound and smell are removed and the image alone is all that the mind focuses upon.

This inadequacy applies for a sight from my recent visit to Lyon, where the sight of an illuminated fountain/artificial waterfall on the hill below a prominent. also illuminated church thanking the Virgin Mary for her divine intervention in saving the city from an epidemic combined to make a striking image that I could not capture in a camera.

Below is my attempt (click on the image for a larger photo):

No matter how sophisticated the equipment, no matter how much you play with the image in the software, sometimes the view created within and by the mind with its own eloquent “software” cannot be conveyed.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, Lyon, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Lyon, photography

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As always, click on the thumbnail to get a larger image.

Here is another angle of the church where the sunlight was shining through the stained glass windows:

In older times (pre-indoor plumbing), the small courtyards between the buildings had wells that the inhabitants used for their water. I had a photo showing one of the courtyards in the last post of photos. Here is one of the remaining wells, but it is filled in now:

In the last post of photos, I also mentioned the poetically named escalier escargot, or “snail stairs”. I had a photo of the exterior of one of these staircases. Here is a photo I took through a window that shows the spiral staircase from below:

Lyon was a major regional capitol in the Roman Empire, and there are ruins of two ampitheaters which have been refurbished and are used for concerts. This is from the upper levels, where it has not been refurbished:

Here is another photo of the two churches that I posted the other day. In this photo, I was trying to get the silhouette of the cross that was at the peak of one of the towers on the lower church against the lighted upper church. The composition isn’t as successful as I had hoped, perhaps after some cropping (which I’ll do later):

I have more photos that I may post once I’ve finished cleaning them up.

Technorati Tags: France, letters from Europe, Lyon, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Lyon

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One of the many things I find interesting in France (this may true of other countries in Europe, but I have the most experience with France) is the number of large churches and cathedrals in most cities, and even in many of the towns. For example, during my visit to Lyon this past weekend, I saw how there were two large churches (they could reasonably be called cathedrals) within sight of each other.

Here is the best photo I took of them (late in the evening, after dinner):

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

The upper church is fairly recent (late 19th century, I believe), built in commemoration of the Virgin Mary saving Lyon from an outbreak of cholera (I need to research the details, sorry for the incomplete story). I have no details on the lower church, other than it is much less ornate inside, but has its own features of interest.

Here is a photo taken inside the lower church, during the afternoon. I have some other images of the interesting light cast through the stained glass windows, but the photos need some serious cleaning up before posting.

(click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

Somehow, though, the very old, 13th century churches of Brugges (an old town in Belgium, once called “the Venice of the North”) hold more fascination for me, even though they are much rougher in appearance both inside and outside.

One of the other very interesting things about Lyon is the passages between buildings in the oldest quarters of town. The crazy-quilt pattern of building in the eras immediately before the Renaissance created a maze not only of streets, but of passageways that led both between streets and to small courtyards between the various buildings. The passageways were used by the Resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of France in the Second World War to avoid capture by the Gestapo. Again, I need to do some more research, but I believe the Gestapo had a major headquarters in Lyon to suppress the Partisans.

Here is a photo of one of the courtyards, showing one of the spiral staircases typical of the architecture of the region. Somewhat poetically they are called escalier escargot, the literal translation is “snail stairs”, with the spiral of the snail shell making reference to the spiral structure you can see in the arches in this photo. I haven’t had time to properly adjust the contrast of this photo yet, and I neglected to put on the polarizing filter before I took the shot, so it is not as nice a picture as I would prefer. It does not do the sight justice.

(again, click on the thumbnail for a larger image, email me if you are interested in seeing the full resolution photo)

I’ll try to post more photos later, once I’ve had time to make the images look a bit better.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, Lyon, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Lyon

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Although because of the narrow street I wasn’t able to get a good photo of it to truly do the sight justice, it seems that at least one restauranteur in Lyon has a good sense of humor:

Savage cuisine at the Pirate Restaurant…

Interesting. I like the crossed fork and knife.

By the way, the building you see there is at least 400 years old… which means it was 200 years old when the romanticized age of piracy reigned in the Caribbean.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe

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A while back I went to Lucerne, Switzerland. I did the tourist thing and took photos, a few of which are below. It was cloudy for most of the day, which provides a good light for photos in cases where you want to avoid high contrast, but it keeps the colors from being as vivid as they are in life. I have many other photos I may touch up a bit before posting them.

Click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger image.

Here was my first view of the center of town. The specks in the sky are not a defect of the camera, they are birds:

And here is looking in the other direction down the river, taken from the bridge that can be seen in the first photo:

The prominent building here that looks like a church may not be one. A plaque on the side (assuming my interpretation of the German is even close) says it is a school:

Many buildings had painted facades. This one has both German and French written on it:

This building was a little more flamboyant:

Despite being historically neutral, Switzerland does have a military history. One of the main sources of income for Lucerne from the 15th to at least the 18th century were from the “Swiss Guard” mercenaries they supplied for wars throughout Europe. Incidentally, these mercenaries were not volunteers. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a reminder of that martial past.

Another reminder of that past is in the remnants of the wall that protected Lucerne. Here is a tower in that wall, on the side that faces the city. I do not know if the clock was originally installed when the tower was built:

A view along the wall from inside one of the towers:

Here is how the wall descends down to the river as viewed from the last tower before the one at the riverside:

And here is how the town the wall was built to defend looks from the same tower:

There are two museums in Lucerne that have fairly extensive collections of works by Picasso. I was able to see them, but as is usual and expected in museums, photos were not allowed. We had some other, more “interesting” experiences in museums there that I’ll write about later, along with some other observations and possibly putting up a few more photos, after I clean them up a bit.

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Updating the first post to test the system.

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