Well, the short answer is that the project — and the idea for the podcast — continues on track, even though actually getting the actual podcast up and running got slightly derailed by all the travelling Chris and I have been doing this past year. On the up side, though, much of the travel has been directly related to gathering material for the project, and Chris and I have been uncovering lots of interesting stories to be included on the podcast.

That includes material gathered during 8 weeks we stayed in Arcata, CA this past summer.

I bring this up today because over the weekend, due to our Arcata landlady’s network of contacts (thanks, Bella!), my project and I were featured in an article in the Times-Standard newspaper in Eureka, the next town over from Arcata.  Click here to read the article. Fun!

One advantage of staying put here in Verona for a little while is that it gives me some time to put a new website together, as well as work on the podcast. The name of the podcast, and its tagline, are now

Photographs, Pistols, and Parasols
Early Artisan Women Photographers

That’s all a bit long to translate directly into theaURL for a new website, of course, and also a bit cumbersome for a social media hashtag.  So, those things will instead use a shorter form, p3artisans.

BTW, in case you don’t feel like reading the article, or the old blog post, here’s a quick recap of what I mean by “photographic artisans,” in order to explain what this podcast is going to be all about:

Women began photography careers as early as the 1840s, but the accomplishments of these early women photographers rarely rate a mention in the history books. Even the few woman who are occasionally included — e.g., Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Dorothea Lange, and several others — are generally not well-known beyond a few specialists in the history of photography. 

Further, there is an implicit bias for photography that is seen as either artistically or socially relevant, and this bias extends to work by this canon of women photographers.  Although these women also had careers as studio and/or commercial photographers, that aspect of their work is rarely discussed.

It is not surprising, then, that the remarkable careers of other early women photographers also get left out of standard history of photography books. These photographic artisans were entrepreneurs who ran thriving photography businesses. They mastered cutting-edge technology to produce photos with ever-changing equipment. They spent their careers recording everyday life, photographing babies, families, weddings, businesses, buildings, events, etc. While a few examples occasionally survive of additional experimental or artistic work by some of these women, it is the everyday photography done by professional women photographers that takes center stage in Coming into Focus: Female Photographic Entrepreneurs 1840-1930.

 Neither the new website nor the podcast is finished … but soon, very soon.

Stay tuned.

It’s not a view in  a puddle …  but it is an upside-down view. Enjoy.

Marsh View #1, Arcata, CA

Marsh View #2, Arcata, CA

The area was originally a sewage treatment plant, but a while back (20 years ago? 15?) they converted the area to a fancy waste-water treatment swamp/marsh. It is rather scenic on a sunny day, particularly since there were more flowers than I’d expected.

Below are a few photos I took a couple of weeks ago.  See what you think.

Purple marsh flowers, Arcata, CA

More purple marsh flowers, Arcata, CA

“Snowflake” flower, Arcata, CA

Marsh Flower, Arcata, CA

Sunlight sparkle #1, Arcata, CA

Sunlight sparkle #2, Arcata, CA

Sunlight sparkle #3, Arcata, CA

Hint of red on a white marsh flower

McKinleyville is a town a few miles north of Arcata, CA, where we’re currently staying. For a town that’s not very big, it has a very tall totem pole at one edge of a Safeway parking lot.

I know, that doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is: a very tall totem pole in a Safeway parking lot.

Totem Pole, Safeway Lot, McKinleyville, CA

The sign on the base doesn’t tell you much more than that, except to claim it is the world’s largest totem pole:

Sign on Totem Pole, McKinleyville, CA

Note it does not claim to be the world’s tallest totem pole, however.

Oddly, the totem pole has its own Facebook page, as it turns out, but I didn’t find it that useful in figuring out what the heck this totem pole is doing in an urban parking lot.

However, if you click here you can read an article that explains that it was originally erected to garner publicity for the small strip-mall connected to the Safeway – the idea was that if they put the world’s largest totem pole there, people would come to shop at the stores there.

Or something.

That article has more information about the carvers, and a video of them re-carving a “new” one when the old one started to fall apart. However, there’s no explanation of how they came to carve a totem pole for something in this part of the country.  I mean, I don’t believe there is any tradition of totem poles among the Native American groups in this area; the main totem pole building people are in Northern Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. But since I haven’t looked that up, I might not be right about that.

But if there is a tradition of Native American totem poles in this area, you’d think a mention of that would have made it on to the sign.  Of course, the sign is busy giving you the size information about the pole: note that it’s the largest in the world. Not the tallest, just the largest.

Ah well. Today’s Monday Mystery has some loose ends that need to be solved, but I’ll leave our tall totem tale here, with the knowledge that there is really big totem pole in a Safeway parking lot in McKinleyville, CA.

—————

BTW, the people interviewed in the article make a big deal about how “biggest” is — well,  if not “better”, at least as good as “tallest”.  But size doesn’t matter — at least not to this 5′ tall-when-I-round-up blog poster.

Nor does it matter in the following related-to-Broadway songs…

First, from the musical Barnum, we have Tom Thumb singing Bigger isn’t Better:

Next, watch as the 4’11” Kristen Chenoweth celebrates how size doesn’t matter to the Drama Desk awards:

Enjoy.

I should start by saying that there are some rather large slugs here in Arcata:

Our slug “neighbor”

That’s a photo of the slug that often shows up on the wall across from our outdoor tub/shower. In this photo it seems to be curled up – maybe it’s taking a nap? But it is more typically stretched out straight along the wall like this:

Our slug “neighbor” stretching out

Except, that is, when it is on the ground,  as it was earlier this week when Chris almost stepped on it. It later left a trail of slug slime as it slithered away, so we knew that it had survived the encounter. But oddly (or perhaps not) we then didn’t see it for days. But it appeared this evening – the second photo above was taken today.

But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post, since this was originally supposed to be a Food on Friday post.  You see, the Slug Slime I really want to talk about is a special condiment made by a bagel place in Arcata called Los Bagels:

Bottles of Slug Slime, Los Bagels, Arcata

Cucumbin Bagel, Los Bagels, Arcata

Another Slug Slime, seen in a local supermarket

OK, well, I can’t say for sure that these unusually hued vegetables are particular to Arcata, or even to Northern California. I do recall seeing purple carrots in Santa Barbara, for example, although I don’t seem to have a photo of them, even though I did buy some while we were there to try (they tasted like carrots but looked a little odd as they were purple). Unfortunately, though,  I can’t find any photos I might have taken of them. Ah well.

But down in Santa Barbara, it was just the carrots which were odd colors. Here in Arcata, though,  we have run into a couple of vegetables that are oddly not green, even though you would expect them to be.

First up,  purple broccoli:

Purple Broccoli or Cauliflower

Oddly green-purple cooking water from cooking that purple vegetable

Or maybe that’s purple cauliflower.  The sign said it was broccoli,  but then I asked the guy at the stand last week and he said it was really all colorful cauliflower. It also comes in green — which, when I thought it was broccoli didn’t seem odd, of course.  It comes in other colors, too, including gold:

Golden head of broccoli/cauliflower

The color of the water after cooking this one was just pale, with no green or gold or even yellow overtone.

FWIW,  both kinds tasted like regular white cauliflower. Well, except the purple one maybe tasted a little more like broccoli. Hmm, or maybe not.

Anyway, there was also a purple pepper:

Purple Pepper

It didn’t taste like much of anything, actually, it was crunchy but very bland. Perhaps if Peter Piper picked a peck of purple peppers to pickle, that would add a pinch of pizzazz.

OK, well, maybe not.  But at least it’s not purple prose — just a bit of purple produce for today’s Food on Friday.  

Now, it has WiFi (i.e. an Internet connection), which is our one non-negotiable go-to-requirement.  So that’s good. And, it has a full-sized, full-equipped kitchen, which means that we can easily prepare meals here, plus the queen-sized bed is pretty comfortable.

By far biggest quirk is that the bathtub/shower is … outside. Yup, outside.  There’s a sink and toilet (i.e. a half-bath) inside, but the shower is outside. Here’s a link to information about the place with some photos, so you can see the shower.  (BTW, ignore any prices you see; one of the reasons we decided to stay here is that the landlady cut us a super deal on the price since we are staying here for almost 8 weeks).

Now, taking a shower isn’t as cold as I’d feared, even thought the outdoor temps here don’t seem to regularly get above 70 at most. But the water stream is good and warm, and in addition to other furnishings the owners provided fluffy towels and bathrobes. So, all-in-all, not bad.

Of course, we’ve been here less than a week. Check back with me in 8 weeks, to see if my opinion has changed.

Anyway, that’s all really a digression from what prompted me to write this post. Another standard criteria for accommodations on the Plan G tour has been to rent a place that has a washer (and dryer, if a dryer is typical for the country. I.e., in Italy the places we rented had washers, but no dryers because typically people just don’t have dryers in Italy. Here in the U.S., though, if there’s a washer, there’s alway been a dryer).  An in-unit washer/dryer is a wonderful thing.  Truly.  Usually I reject places for our longer stays that don’t have a washer/dryer in the apartment, or at least have one available in a room on an adjacent floor in the same building.

However, this place in Arcata has no washer or dryer on-site. What it offers is just proximity to a local laundromat that’s a couple of miles away.

But … go back and read the note above about how  the landlady gave us a great deal on the price for this place for 8 weeks.  Let’s just say that the difference pays for a lot of loads of laundry.

So today I went off to the local laundromat and discovered that it’s not coin-operated, like most American ones. Nope, at this one you are supposed to buy a card from a machine on the wall using exactly four $1 bills (a fee that is refundable eventually). Then, you have to load money onto the card using the same machine, and then figure out how to operate the machines using the card. Using a machine on a wall  was highly reminiscent of aspects of my foray into the world of Italian laundromats years ago. This time, though, there was no family that needed my help. In fact,  there was even an attendant who sold me the card and loaded the money on it for me, bypassing the whole machine thing. Nice.

But now I feel like I’m an International Laundromat Pro.  If you know of anyone who wants to hire one, just let me know. My fees are very reasonable … although I will charge more than a mere four $1 bills.

——

P.S. BTW, for those who are new to the blog, here’s a shameless plug for my book: that story of my adventures as the “Local Laundromat Pro” is just one of the tales you’ll find in my book, Life on a Gelato Diet, available in paperback (and for Kindle) from Amazon, and in all other electronic formats from LeanPub.