My friend Nick has been on a trip to Rwanda in Africa and doing stuff like going to meet the gorillas. He’s been updating his blog on the trip, which makes it fun for those of us back home.
Category: People
Tea With Warriors — Niagara
My friend John Neumann recently released a new record album as Tea With Warriors. This follow-up to Quiet Revolution is called Niagara, and it’s sort of a concept album, a set or related instrumental tracks inspired by the famous river. Trancelike, moody and evocative, the songs feature lots fretless bass, ethereal synthesizers, exotic percussion, and John’s haunting violin playing. I’ve really been enjoying listening to it; I’ve had it on in a loop the whole weekend. You can learn more at teawithwarriors.com.
New Mexico Trip
We recently got back from a trip New Mexico, visiting my brother Jim and his family. They live in the rugged and storied town of Los Alamos. It was a great time, good to see them and catch up, and we did some sightseeing and lots of hiking in the north-central part of the state. I’ve never been to that part of the country before and I must say the landscapes are spectacular. Very different from California, Nevada or Arizona. Incredible color palettes between the rocks and sky and vegetation. Also lots of layers of history and culture, and some really good food to boot.
Despite the fact that you can get to the other side of the world from New York City in just a few hours, there is no real convenient way to get to Los Alamos. The best you can do is two flights and then a two-hour drive. So Friday was travel day. We got up super early but the kids did alright. Got to the airport. Stood in line. Waited. Flew to Denver. Waited. Flew to Albuquerque. Got a car. Drove off thru the desert, where things started to get interesting. Up to Santa Fe and then across the Rio Grande for the climb up to Los Alamos. Lots of mind-blowing scenery on the way. Total travel time was just about twelve hours, which the same as it takes to get to India.
One you get there, you get a sense of why it’s so hard to reach, why there are so few roads. Geography is the crucial factor. The town is situated on an outcropping of finger-like mesas separated by deep gorges, halfway up a much larger structure — the remains of a supervolcano that erupted 100,000 years ago and is roughly 100 miles in circumference. The town of course grew out of the Manhattan Project, and most of the houses there were built in the 50’s, and there’s really no new places to build, so it has the feeling of an island. Alot of houses are hanging right off the edges of the cliffs. Friday afternoon we took a little walk around their neighborhood, and Sunday we took a longer hike down into the local canyons. Los Alamos is the only town I’ve ever been to where they give you a combination street map and trail map.
We spent the weekend mainly hanging out at Jim & Una’s house. There was fresh snow Saturday morning and again on Easter Sunday, although it got considerably warmer both afternoons. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. We all built a big tower out of Duplos together. After a while we thought it was too tall and wobbly so we separated it into two towers. Which we then connected with a bridge. Then this grew too unstable and we took the whole thing down and built a massive train track setup that ran from the living room thru the dining room, front hall, side hall and down into the kid’s room, where it turned around. The thing had multiple stations, buildings and vehicles. It was so big we actually used lego trains to transport legos from one end of the thing to the other.
Friday night we went out to an excellent local restaurant, the Blue Window. The rest of the weekend Jim made some fantastic dinners. We also had alot of great southwestern food on the trip, all kinds of burritos other things with red and green chili sauce.
Saturday we went for a swim at the local aquatic center, which was really nice and the kids enjoyed. We also went to the Bradbury Science Museum, which is a cool public display of the history and continuing research of the Lab. They have replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man, the first two a-bombs. I felt kinda like the place needed a Slim Pickens style mechanical rodeo horse in the shape of a bomb that you could ride for a quarter.
Jim works in a part of the lab that has nothing to do with weapons and explosions or reverse-engineering crashed alien spaceships, but rather with genetics and protenomics, as a software developer doing informatics and scientific visualization of data. Pretty cool stuff. He showed me a book which he worked on that lists the genomes of various strains of the HIV virus along with the protein sequences they encode, and from that a sort of family tree and history of mutations of the virus. The purpose of this research is to help other medical researches working on a cure for HIV. At home he built his own TiVo using a Linux box that looked like a piece of stereo equipment, running a bit of software call mythTV. We watched a few episodes of the classic 60’s show Star Trek, which I haven’t seen in well over twenty years. I’d forgotten how good (in a cheesy way) that original series was.
Monday we started touring around the state, mainly hiking and looking at rocks. In the morning Una took us to meet her horse Whitney in a horse park out on another mesa, and the girls got to go for a ride. Then we drove up to the rim of the supervolcano and down into the caldera, which is a massive crater miles across, with smaller volcanoes (actually full-sized mountains) dotting the high plain. Everything was still covered with snow, and we saw a herd of elk off grazing in the distance, a bunch of tiny specks. On the way down, we drove by a local ski place that looked pretty fun and challenging.
That afternoon we drove down, first to White Rock, where a scenic overlook offers spectacular if a bit scary views for miles in every direction, including into the valley of the Rio Grande (still over a mile above see level at this point). Then is was on to Bandelier National Monument, home of ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings. They’re set in a valley canyon like those of Los Alamos, but around the crater a few miles to the southwest. The cave dwellings were built into to soft rock of the cliffside 500 to 1000 years ago and have been remarkably well preserved and/or restored. The kids had a blast checking out the and climbing up and down ladders, and we all got a good sense of that life here must have been like in pre-Spanish times. Una is very knowledgeable out the local geography and history and was a terrific guide.
That evening the train Duplos were replaced by a Rube Goldberg style marble rolling system.
Tuesday Jim and Una were both busy, so they lent us their truck and we struck out on our own. Our first stop was another area of Bandelier. This one was right at the bottom of the canyon from town. It was a hike up and across the on top of a mesa and then back along the cliffside on a narrow snaking trail. I had Michelle hold my hand pretty much the whole second half of the trip. This site was much less excavated but perhaps more interesting because in addition to ruins of round villages and a bunch of caves there were some good petroglyphs and the views were spectacular. Around 11:15 AM we heard a big explosion echo across the countryside. Una says they blow stuff up at the lab from to time.
Then we drove north a good hour to Ghost Ranch, our main stop of the day. The place is famous for being the site of a famous dinosaur dig in the 1940’s, the discovery of Ceolphysis, a small carnivore. They had a neat little dinosaur museum and an anthropology museum full of pottery, blankets and arrowheads. The geography is pretty different up there but also very beautiful. We went for a hike up towards the very improbable-looking Chimney Rock. Then we drove up the road a piece to this little open-air museum that had a bunch of cool stuff about the geology and the ages of the various layers of multicolored rock. It turns out this was also right near where Georgia O’Keefe lived and did a lot of paintings, so the were a gallery of her art, including some great semi-abstract landscapes. The last place for the day was Echo Amphitheatre. This is a natural rock amphitheatre at the top end of a canyon inlet with really cool echoes. The kids really loved it.
On way back I got pulled over bogus traffic stop, a blatant trap where the cop claimed I failed to observe a no-passing sign for going around a car making a left in the second lane. This was on an Indian Reservation, and there were a few weird things about it. The cop claimed he could bring up my license in his SCMODS, but since he was such a nice guy he wouldn’t write me up for that. Gee thanks. As he was going thru his spiel, a wind came up so strong he ran back to his SUV. At least we got to see some real tumbleweeds rolling by. He came back with an abbreviated rap, and told me to sign the ticket without explaining it, which I’m pretty sure is not legit. When I read it later it said sighing it is an admission of guilt and I waive my right to trail, just go ahead send a check. Hurm. Well if I signed the other place that would’ve meant I agree to wait in jail at the reservation until a Judge happens to come along. Yeesh. Literally highway robbery.
Wednesday the whole lot of us rode on down to Albuquerque. We checked out a couple more sights on the way. The first was a place called Tent Rock National Monument, which was another canyon valley, this one full of rocks shaped like Kremlinesque domes and cones. This one was really in the middle of nowhere and getting there involved a long dirt road. We stopped for lunch at a casino truckstop diner. Chicken fried steak with green chili. Yum. Closer to Albuquerque was Petrogylph National Monument, a series of hillsides of black tumbled rocks full of ancient drawings and carvings. The edge of town was right at the bottom of the park, and you could look out at the vast sprawl of the town.
After this we checked into our hotel, and old style casita in the heart of the Old Town district. The place was quaint and cozy with a quiet little courtyard. Within walking distance was the original 18th century church and town square and bunch of buildings of similar age that are now mostly shops and restaurants. Also running right thru this neighborhood was the historic Route 66. We had dinner at a great place. Most everyone else had steak or other red meat, but I had a red chili pasta that was our of this world. Also excellent Margaritas.
Thursday we decided to take a drive up the old mining trail in the mountains to the east of town. One mining museum was closed, although there was a large steam locomotive on display outside. Another one was very eclectic and featured all kinds of relics from over 100 years ago, including lots of blue glass bottles, as well as large collection of minerals including many grades of turquoise and its ore, and even a giant fossil femur from a Brontotherium, a prehistoric member of the rhinoceros family related to the Baluchitherium.
Then we drove up to Sandia peak, which looks down on the high plain of the Rio Grande valley from an elevation of 12,000 feet. We got lunch in right up there (green chili burger), with the observation deck view out the window. We walked around and checked out the various vistas, but it was too cold to stay long. That evening we walked around the old town some more, buying souvenirs and having another excellent dinner. This time chili rellenos for me.
Friday morning we got to the airport bright and early and said our goodbyes. We were a bit concerned because the Weather Channel called for a chance of snow in Denver, where we’d have to make our connection to NYC. Little did we know it would take us almost 36 hours to finally make it home.
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such extremes of weather in such a short period of time. There was snow a few time is in the trip, but since the elevation was so high, it got pretty mild in the day, at least down around five or six thousand feet. Now today back home summer has come early and it’s 96 degrees out. Luckily we finished off the bulk of our spring yardwork yesterday so right now I’m inside trying to stay cool until a bit later in the afternoon when the sun isn’t so strong. My main goal for today is to take my old ’67 Mustang out for a short ride. I tried last week to turn it over but the battery was dead. Today the battery is fully charged, so it’s time to give it a try, but it’s so hot out I might not bother. I’ll let you know what I decide and how it goes.
Coming soon: vacation pictures!
Montroll Polyhedra
When I first started designing my own origami models one of my areas of focus was creating polyhedra from a single square. At the time most polyhedral origami was modular, made from lots of little bits of paper folded (usually) into triangles with tabs that fit together. This was not so interesting to me as the single-sheet approach, which no one else was really doing.
When I met John Montroll it turned out he was doing it too, and in fact had just published a book of single-sheet origami polyhedra, the first of it’s kind. I’ve learned a lot from hanging out with John and my polyhedra concepts have advanced considerably. Now John is close to completing his third book on polyhedra, which take things to a whole nuther level. He recently asked me to fold a few of his designs to be used for photos in the book. Here are some pictures I took before I sent them off.
They are made of 12’” squares of Canson paper, which is a thickish art paper that has a really nice color and texture. I’ve been getting more an more into folding with thicker papers these days. For years the prevailing trend in origami has been to thinner and thinner papers for subjects like insects and stuff. But I like thicker papers because the model comes out stronger, more sculptable and more durable, especially if you work with larger sizes. This has also had an impact on my design sensibilities, as I tend to avoid designs that absolutely requite thin paper, such as using lots and lots of internal layers. This also leads to larger, more optimized designs. Of course thick is relative. A lot of these papers are barely thicker than standard office paper, but working on fine details it can feel as thick as cardboard.
John is always very elegant with his paper usage and most of polyhedra are just one layer thick on the facets. So although these are complex models, they came out really well, and very strong. You could probably play hackey-sack with some of them!
Winter Break
Well the holidays have come and gone and the tree is sitting by the curb, and it’s back to the ol’ grind in the new year. Getting up before dark and standing out in the cold waiting for the train is what I love best about January. But I don’t want to sound to grumpy. I had a really nice winter break. Got to see some friends and family and do a bunch of travelling and other things, and just as importantly, take some much needed time to rest. Of course the vacation was too short and there were people I wanted to see but didn’t get the chance to. Sorry John, John and Larry.
Here are a few assorted highlights:
Way back over two weeks ago, the Friday before Christmas was supposed to be the night of the kids’ big xmas concert at school, but nature had other plans. A big snowstorm meant school was cancelled so the concert was postponed until the following day prompting all kinds of frenzied reordering of plans. In the end the concert was a success. Lizzy had a Flute solo (the only solo in the band) and did very well.
It was a big xmas for legos. The kids had a lego advent calendar and they both some lego sets as presents, Jeannie set up her lego train from a few years ago around the tree, carrying presents and all. To I got a lego Avatar Air Temple set as a gift from the office. So we put ’em all together under the tree in a big ol’ explosion-at-the-genre-factory kind of legopalooza extravaganza.
We played a good amount of Nintendo after playing virtually none at all since last winter break. Up to 59 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, plus played a bunch of other games at various people’s houses.
I had some good Origami time. I finally got a chance to get back to working on my book. I finished diagramming and laying out my Elephant II, which weighs in at 33 steps, well down from my previous pachyderm with its 57 steps. Also closed in on my Moose, which will be about 70 steps — just the antlers to go — and am more than halfway done with my Adirondack chair. So I now have models diagrammed, and 2 more in striking distance. Not too far off the pace of one a month, which isn’t bad considering I did no origami at all the last month or so. Winter has always been my big origami time, being dark and cold outside and all, so I’m optimistic that I can continue in this groove. (Last year was a bit of an anomaly, as it was right a year ago I started a three-month marathon of working 7 day, 60+ hour weeks. Luckily I don’t have that sort of thing on the horizon now.)
Also my friend John Montroll asked me to fold some of his polyhedra for the cover photo of his forth coming book. I recently bought some Canson, which as an art paper normally used for pastels, thicker than regular kami. I thought it’d be perfect for these models. So far I’ve made 4 out of 5 of them in 12″ squares, and they’ve come out quite well. Nice look, good and very strong.
I also spent some more time on the continuing saga of fixing and upgrading my computer and music recording system. I will talk about that in a separate post, since I’m sure you’ll want all the tedious geeky details.
Lastly we took the girls for a day trip skiing. After staying up and sleeping late every day for more than a week, it was hard going getting up and out the door, and the mountain was the most packed I’ve ever seen it, but the snow was good and we all had a good time. Lizzy is doing quite well. She picked up right were she left off last year and got here groove after a run or two, and even went down a blue trail in the afternoon. Michelle is not a big or strong, and needed some coaxing. I spent a good deal of time with Michelle on the bunny hill, getting her used to basic sliding, turning, stopping, shifting and holding weight and skis. I think she progressed pretty well. I’m hoping she’ll be ready to get on a lift by the end of the season.
Congratulations and Welcome
Congratulations to Kathleen and Martin, and a big ol’ welcome to the Prime Material Plane to Charles Francis, their band new bouncing baby boy. Excellent choice of middle name, I must say.
And while we’re at it, Happy New Year to everyone.
Origami Blast From the Past
This was from a couple of weeks ago, but I was just writing it when my computer turned bad. So here you go.
Many years ago (1994 I think), before I joined the Origami Society I attended one of their annual conventions. It was just for the day and mostly just saw the exhibition and hung around the common area. I hadn’t really done much origami in a number of years but I remembered that OUSA was based in NYC, and had always been curious about it. It turned out to be a really cool experience and I was amazed at how origami far origami design had progressed since the 80’s. In fact it was in the midst of a revolution that is still playing out today. One model I remember well for it’s artistic impact was a fossil, a lizard skeleton rendered as a precise but random-looking set of wrinkles and creases in a torn up old paper bag.
I decided to contribute a model to the annual collection. It was my dragon, one of my first successful origami designs among only a handful of models at the time. It used a modified blintzed frog base, a variation on the base John Montroll used for his Pegasus in Origami for the Enthusiast. I diagrammed it using pen and ink and drawing board over the course of a few months and submitted it to OUSA. It was a tumultuous year for them as the founders (Lillian Oppenheimer and Alice Gray) had recently died and there was a turnover in the leadership. In any event I never heard back from them.
Years later I found out it had been accepted and published in the 1995 Origami
Marc also deserves credit and thanks for encouraging me to get serious and systematic about designing my own origami models. The year after I joined OUSA (2003 I think), I took a Monday class that he was teaching about design, and was inspired to invent a lizard. I realized then I had all the knowledge I needed, and I just had to go do it! It sparked the beginning of a creative streak which I am still mining for new ideas.
Origami Site Update
I just completed a major revision to my Origami web site at www.zingorigami.com (also www.zingman.com/origami). Attentive readers of this blog will recall that I started on this endeavor way back in September. I had to get around to a bunch of other projects first, but I’m happy to have completed phase one of the operation.
I invented about ten new origami models this year, so the update was long overdue. Major features include reorganizing the collection of models into a series of pages according to a set of major categories. The index page now links into these pages and presents a comprehensive index of thumbnails. I also created a page of Adirondack Origami, to highlight the feature I did for Adirondack Life magazine earlier this year. Additionally I created a page for info about Origami commissions if you’re interested in having you own origami handmade by me the artist, and a page about my forthcoming book, mostly a placeholder for now.
The next step will be a new round of photographs. For many of the recent models I simply put up snapshots, but sometime over the winter I plan on folding exhibit level versions of all my models and doing a proper photo shoot of them. This will also be useful for the book.
Then phase three will be to make the pages served dynamically. I need to research some kind of lightweight CMS and template engine, or maybe make my own. That will be a pretty good project.
And in related news, my friend John has a new web site to showcase his origami: www.johnmontroll.com
Thanksgiving Weekend
We had a really wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. First of all, we’ve been working really hard on home improvements, software development and whatnot, so it was good to have a few days off to rest and enjoy family and feasting. I really feel blessed this year just to have an opportunity to have some good family time and appreciate my loved ones.
My Mum and Dad came down from upstate NY for a few day’s visit. They brought with them a dining room table and chairs, which came from my uncle, who inherited my grandmother’s dining room set. For years we’ve been using a folding card table in our dining room so this is a great improvement. The style is very much to our taste — minimalist mid-century Scandinavian hardwood — and goes with the rest of our furniture. So we really appreciate it. You can see us breaking it in enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner (the kids sat in the kitchen). Also it looks really nice in everyday mode (we put random stuff on it).
In addition to the furniture my Mum brought some traditional Hungarian folk motif pillows and some crystal and a few other random items that had been in my grandmother’s house so we have a few nice things to remember her by.
In the karma department, I recently got a new bed frame and dresser for Michelle, so I’m passing my old dresser on to Kathleen and Martin. My Dad has been very helpful to both of us hauling furniture all across the state.
Thanksgiving dinner was really nice. Jeannie did a great job cooking a huge variety of foods, including the turkey, most excellent stuffing, potatoes and gravy, home made cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and two pies. In addition to my folks, her folks came over, as well as Mary and Lou and KVAP. Everyone had a really nice time.
Friday we took it easy and I caught up on some random tasks such as covering the fig tree for the winter, fixing the screen door (broken by an enthusiastic kid at Lizzy’s birthday party), putting away all the supplies from the recent painting project and throwing out the packaging from Michelle’s new furniture. That evening Lizzy, my Dad and I played few games of chess. It’s been a long time since I played an opponent at his level, and with Lizzy I always start with a handicap of missing knights and bishops. So I’ve gotten used to opening aggressively with the Queen, which turned out to be a mistake every game. The best game between my Dad and me lasted over an hour and a half, a long slow war of attrition with lots of maneuvering punctuated by the occasional capture of a piece, always in an even trade. Eventually it was down to a king, a bishop and two pawns on each side, and I finally managed to get one of my pawns promoted to a queen, and that was the end of that.
Saturday my folks, Jeannie, the girls and myself all headed up to the Albany area for Martin and Kathleen’s baby shower at K’s parents’ house. They live out in the countryside to the south of our state’s capitol, not too far from Ski Wyndham and Hunter Mountain. The house is on a huge plot of woodland, so while the wimmen were in showering Kathleen, Martin, my Dad, K’s dad Charlie and I went of a hiking tour of the property, spotting deer tracks and birds and 200-year-old stone walls and millions-of-years-old fossilized seashells. Charlie is a really nice guy and it was a good day. Unfortunately on the way home we got stuck in some serious heavy traffic before the Tappan Zee bridge, so it was a two hour trip up and a four-hour trip home. Note to self: remember to take the bridge at Bear Mountain!!!
Sunday we played lots of Nintendo. Up to 38 stars in Super Mario Galaxy.
Blaine’s Tunes
My friend Blaine from work recently finished recording an EP of his songs. It’s nice stuff: bluesy, guitar oriented, kinda gritty and soulful, and he’s a good voice and singing style. Check it out at: