When last I wrote, Chris and I were in Verona, Italy. Four months later, and here we are back in NJ, where we arrived at the beginning of March.  However, since then we’ve driven north – and then south – and then north again, visiting family, doing research, working on projects … the time goes by before you realize it.

But I have some news: I have finally launched my Photographs, Pistols & Parasols podcast! This is part of the project on early women photographers I’ve been  working on since the end of 2015. Technical challenges were bigger than I’d hoped, but I’ve finally sorted out enough of them to get the podcast off the ground. Yay!

On the podcast, I share the stories of early women artisan photographers, celebrating the accomplishments of women whose professional photography careers began between 1840-1930.

BTW, you might be wondering, what’s a podcast?  Essentially, it’s a free radio show on the Internet. Two episodes are available now; new episodes will be posted on the 1st and the 15th of the month.

There are two ways to listen to the podcast:

Option 1: You can subscribe  (for free) using applications like iTunes or Google Play or others; the advantage to subscribing is that you automatically get alerted when there’s a new episode.  To subscribe to Photographs, Pistols & Parasols, you can find it listed on  iTunes, Google Play Music or wherever you look for podcasts.   If you subscribe and like it, I’d appreciate it if you would leave a rating (and optionally a review) – that will help it get boosted up on the rankings on the podcast sites, which in turn will help me potentially attract sponsors.

Option 2: If all that sounds confusing – i.e., you don’t know what  a podcast is and/or if you’ve never listened to one, and don’t already use an audio app to listen to podcasts — you can listen to it directly from my new website:  p3photographers.net.  You’ll just need to check back there periodically for the new episodes (posted on the 1st and the 15th of every month).   There are two there now.

Whichever way you choose, I hope you enjoy Photographs, Pistols & Parasols!

————-
Links
Subscribe to Photographs, Pistols & Parasols now on iTunes or Google Play Music  or wherever you find your podcasts
More info at p3photographers.net

Each year the “host” of the festival is Papa Gnocco, who looks more like Santa, if santa wore a colorful outfit:

Papa Gnocco, 2017

There’s a parade …

.. plus a tradition to eat gnocchi (potato dumplings) for lunch. As usual when we make it here for this festival, we willingly followed tradition:

gnocchi with ragu d’asino

Gnocci with marascapone cheese and sausage

With a few cornmeal and raised fried doughballs through in for a traditional Veronese Carnival season dessert:

Corn meal fried dough with currants

Today’s weather wasn’t perfect parade weather, but at least the rain only sprinkled, it never came down in a deluge. However, the gray skies were not as festive or as photogenic as the bright, sunny day that greeted us in February 2009 when we came to Verona on  venerdì gnocolar for the very first time. Here’s a link to an old video montage of the 2009 parade I made (with a special soundtrack added) from footage Chris shot that day.

If you want still more photos/videos from the parade on sunnier days in the past, you can check out the links below.

1. Post from 2011 about Papa del Gnoco, the “leader’ of the celebrations
2. Post from 2011 about the Verona Carnival celebration in general
3. Videos from Verona’s 2009VenerdìGnoccolar parade:
   1. Floats
   2. Marching bands
   3. Scenes and Sounds

Enjoy and Buona Feste!

Egyptian statue (copy), Turin, Italy

Yes, that’s an Egyptian statue on the right-hand side of this street.  Why? Well, you might think that it’s outside the Egyptian museum — but it’s not. It’s several blocks away from the museum, and there’s no sign on the statue to tell you that or to even indicate that there is a big Egyptian museum in town. Odd.

There’s also little bit of a mystery to share about the following photo from Turin as well:

Mole Antonelliana Tower with “UFO”, Turin

I say it’s a UFO, Chris claims it was just an unusual lens flare. You can decide. Here’s another photo, without the “UFO”:

Mole Antonelliana Tower, Turin

There’s nothing mysterious about that building, though. Built in the 1800s, that building was originally intended to be a synagogue. However, the architect/developer kept running up the costs, and after the estimate had more than doubled, the Jewish congregation said enough. They built a different synagogue in a different part of town instead:

Synagogue, Turin, Italy

The city of Turin took over the construction of the Mole, and today it houses a film museum, as well as an elevator to the top. The elevator has windows on all sides, so you can see that you’re approaching the dome as you go up in the elevator, which is a little bit odd, even though you know that there is an opening that the elevator can go through.  It’s kind of like the scene at the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory where the elevator goes up and out through the roof of the factory. At least that’s what I thought of as our elevator approached the inside of the Mole’s dome; I’m happy to report that although we didn’t fly over the town, we also didn’t actually crash through the glass like in the movie.

But I digress.  When you get to the top on a sunny day like last Monday, you are afforded with a view of the surrounding mountains:

Mountains near Turin Italy

No mystery, just truly spectacular.

—-

P.S. Also not really a mystery, but the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where the kids step into the chocolate garden — where everything is edible! — is magical. Here’ s the clip, with the wonderful Gene Wilder singing Pure Imagination.

Trivia point: I have tagged this post as one containing a Broadway song. However, technically, the clip is from the version of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made in the 1970s which was not on Broadway prior to the movie being made.  However, it is coming to Broadway in 2017. So, technically, this is now about to be a Broadway song).

Chris and I were in Turin, Italy, last week, and we spent a day at the Egyptian Archeology museum there.  Very interesting – I highly recommend it, even if you have only a passing interest in Ancient Egypt.

For all that I was a Classics major, my area was Ancient Rome and Greece, so I’m not really that conversant with Ancient Egypt.  There were many interesting things we ran across at the museum, but, one small symbol was particularly intriguing. It  kept popping up in all shapes and sizes in various paintings, sculptures, tablets, drawings, across centuries of Egyptian artifacts.  The symbol that caught our eye is the Wadjet, aka the Eye of Horus.  We had fun making this our little museum mission, trying to spot the Eye of Horus in all its different forms:

1. By itself

Single Eye of Horus – right

2. As a pair

Two Eyes of Horus

3. By itself pointed the other way

Single Eye of Horus – left

4. Not just painted, but also carved:

Eye of Horus – tablet

We spotted it all over, in many different eras of art. After many hours of looking for it, we even saw it when we took at break at the cafeteria in the museum shared an order of tiramisu. The cocoa patterns after we were done were oddly like the Eye:

Eye of Horus on a Tiramisu Plate

Anyway, I found it unusual that this symbol looks like it has “legs”, but is taken to be an eye. So, when we got back I looked it up online. Doing that revealed quite a lot of legends associated with this symbol. To summarize one of the basic stories, the god Horus, god of the moon, got into a fight and had one of his eyes torn out. It was miraculously restored later, though, and it now is taken to have been used (by the Ancient Egyptians)  to  symbolize health, or power, or the waxing/waning of the moon. One version of the legend says that only his left eye was ripped out, so when you see the right eye, that signifies the other phase of the moon.   Or something.

But then, in another story, the Wadjet part of the legend is that Wadjet means “green one”, and it is taken to refer is a goddess. Here’s my artistic homage to that myth, using our tiramisu “eye” as a starting point:

Artistic homage to Wadjet

Anyway, I was trying to sort it all out for this post, but ran out of time. But you can check out the information at this link or at this other link or at yet another link. And then you can decide for yourself what the real solution is to today’s Monday Mystery…

One side note:  The museum’s labels on a lot of these artifacts explained that one tends see a face whenever the Eye of Horus appears.  Ironically,  though, I — who can see faces in just about anything — mostly did NOT see a face when the Eye of Horus appeared, primarily because I didn’t really see it as an eye.

However, I do see a face in the following image — but only because of the accidental gash in the side of the box that now appears near the bottom  looks (to me) like a mouth;  combined with the two Eyes of Horus above, the whole thing does look like a face. To me, at least.

“Face” of Horus

But then again, I usually do see a face in just about anything.

I have set up a website at

re.chrisculy.net

Each of the 500+ letters between RB and EBB will be posted on the day that corresponds to the original date in 1845 or 1846 that the letter was originally mailed. The first letter is tomorrow, January 10, 2017. More will follow regularly through May 2017, after which the letters come very frequently (almost one a day on average after that).

On the website, on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll see a way to sign up to get the letters in your email inbox as they are posted.

BTW, yes, this is similar to a website I did several years ago for these letters, but note that it is NOT the same website, so you’ll have to sign up again. This time around I think I’ve conquered some technical issues that kept the last batch of letters from arriving on time. Fingers-crossed the “post” works better now.

Also, this new website is now connected to Chris’ website, because he’ll be sharing some of his visualizations and research related to the letters from time-to-time. Plus some other fun stuff, too!

So head over to the website, subscribe if you want to get the letters in email,  and stay-tuned. Truly, EBB and RB are unmatched when it comes to letter writing – enjoy!

The flame wasn’t because it was a Friday, though. Rather, today is January 6th, which is the Epiphany holiday. It’s the end of the Christmas holiday season here in Verona, and it’s marked by a very particular event.

Now, before I get to that, I should first mention that in Italy, the (good) witch Befana roams around on the evening  of January 5th, trying to catch up with the wise men on their way to see the Christ child.  She brings toys to the kids as she roams around — like I said, she’s a good witch.

But in addition to that part of the legend, she’s also the symbol of the year that’s just ended. Which is unfortunate for her, since in order to wipe the slate clean of all the bad stuff from the old year, and to insure good luck in the new year, there is a tradition in some parts of Italy —including Verona — to burn a towering effigy of Befana to ring — er burn — in the new year.

Befana Effigy before the blaze

Befana Effigy – head detail

Befana Effigy – hand detail

In Verona this takes place in Piazza Bra,  near the Stella Cometa, the Christmas star that marks the spot of the manger with the Chris child. That is, of course, where the wise men were headed, arriving on January 6th.  According to the legend, Befana never actually finds that spot. But in modern times, at least here in Verona, she does at least see it, since the effigy of Befana is set up just opposite the Stella, in front of city hall. You can see the relative positioning of the Stella and the city hall in photos in the Holiday on Ice post.)

Now, during the past couple of weeks the weather has been unseasonably warm – until yesterday the lows were in the upper 40°s F/~5° C.  However,  just in time for gathering out in Piazza Bra today to watch the festivities, the weather turned colder, and it was below freezing. A bit cool for standing around waiting for Befana to burn.  But since we’ve never been in Verona for this event before, Chris and I braved the cold and froze our tootsies so I could get a few photos of this interesting, and very different, holiday celebration.

Of course, once the fire got going, it was very, very, very warm to be standing nearby.

Anyway, I’ve posted a little gallery of photos below to show the progression of the bonfire. Before you look at the photos, be sure to click on the following link to play the  the theme from Rocky in the background.  That’s what was playing on the loudspeaker as the fire burned. Seriously.

Don’t ask why – just play the music, and enjoy this glimpse of the 2017 Befana Bonfire in Verona.

It’s not the oddity of there being one there – we remembered a temporary one being set up during this time of year several years ago in the same spot in Piazza Bra.

Ice rink (foreground), L’Arena, the Stella Cometa, and City hall beyond

We happened to be walking by that morning as a crowd was starting to gather, awaiting the official opening of the rink:

Kids waiting for the rink to open

Now, this rink is not very big. Here’s a panorama view, which is distorted, so that it looks like it is curved. It’s not – it’s just a rectangle:

View from the other side of the rink (panorama effect; in reality, the rink is not curved)

I get why the kids are excited to skate – I liked skating on the river when I was a kid. But what I didn’t get was why all the fuss with the big opening. Take another look to the far right in that photo with the little girl above. Do you see the yellow and blue ribbon? Yes, it was a ribbon stretched across  the entrance — there was an official ribbon-cutting ceremony to “open” the open-air ice rink.

Ribbon cutting scissors on a velvet pillow

This is the mystery for today’s post: why does this tiny little temporary rink in Verona rate such a big to-do about it’s opening? I mean, there were a half-dozen dignitaries on hand to address the crowd:

Dignitaries gathered waiting for the mayor to arrive

Actually, those men had to wait for the mayor to arrive before they could get the ceremony underway. Now, look back up at the first photo. City hall is the big building in the background.  As you can see, to get from there to the rink the mayor had to go such a long way across that plaza.

I’m kidding, of course. You can walk across it in under a minute if you just go from point A to point B.  But it took the mayor 10xs that long. Or more. He stopped to shake hands and chat with people he knew all along the way. Then he was stopped by reporters who wanted sound bites for their TV or radio shows. Then he posed for additional photos with parents and children.

Not, though, with the little boy standing near me who had 10 minutes earlier asked his father why they had to wait for the mayor, couldn’t they just get on with it already?

Anyway, the mayor finally got to the rink, only about 15 minutes behind schedule.

Speechifying – the mayor is the one with the microphone

Note that yes, that is Santa Claus who is photo bombing the dignitaries in this photo. He’s standing in the background with the skaters who are behind the wall.  Santa Claus is called Babbo Natale here in Italy; one little girl was just sooo excited to see him while we were waiting for the mayor, she excitedly called out “Babbo Natale!, Babbo Natale!” over and over. Very cute.  Even though we’ve always been told that Santa Lucia is really the bigger deal here in Verona over the holidays, clearly some kids here are still excited at the sight of Babbo Natale.

There were bunch of speeches; most of the men had a turn. I believe I heard the mayor say that this rink was back this year after not being there last year, and maybe that’s why it’s such a big deal? I think he said something about budget cuts, etc. — but it was in Italian, and I was busy taking photos, so I only sort of caught the gist. Like the little boy next to me, I was getting cold and also ready for them to get on with it already.

But finally, there was a scrum around the mayor as he took those fancy scissors and cut the ribbon to open the rink officially. At least, I assume that’s what happened; from my angle I couldn’t actually see it, but the mayor did make people move back to allow the guy on the ice to get a good shot of the ribbon cutting, so it seems likely that it went OK.

Anyway, finally, it was time to skate:

Let the skating begin!

Babbo Natale got in on the action, too.

Babbo Natale on skates

But how he had time to skate on Christmas Eve is another mystery … even if it’s not the main Monday mystery for today.

First, a photo:

Tortellini with Onion Cream Sauce

BTW, that’s freshly made, meat-filled tortellini. Freshly made not by me,  you understand. Rather, it was freshly purchased by me (and Chris) at a bakery here in Verona that is famous for making that kind of thing. I did make the sauce from scratch, though: it’s cream and sautéed onions, where the onions were sautéed in a little olive oil and a tad of butter, and then the cream was mixed in.

It’s a recipe that a Greek-German woman who ran a little deli told me about years ago when we lived in Tübingen. The deli sold tortellini,  and the owner once recommended this dish as something quick and easy, but a little bit more special than serving the pasta with just a basic tomato sauce.

Anyway, fast forward a few years to two weeks ago. Chris and I are standing in line at a butcher shop here in Verona; we’re behind two little old ladies dressed to the nines in fur jackets and hats. It’s still more than a week before Christmas, but these two women are in the midst of a debate about what is the proper traditional meal to make on Christmas Eve. One is lamenting that she needs to run all over the place to find the necessary “7 fishes” makings for the traditional fish dinner on  Christmas Eve. However, the woman who is standing nearest to me is exasperated, arguing emphatically that one does NOT need to do that whole fish dinner on Christmas Eve.  Rather, she says, a simple meat-filled tortellini, served in a quick cream and onion sauces, is all you need.

And then she turns to me for support, saying, “Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?”

Yes, well. I rapidly consider:

1. I have heard about there being some 7 fish traditional meal  on Christmas Eve, but I don’t really know what that is exactly.

2. I actually have made that tortellini dish with cream and onion that she just described, and it was indeed good, and it was indeed easy to make. And it certainly does sound easier than having to track down 7 of anything, particularly fish — which, btw, the store we’re in doesn’t even sell. I’m not even sure why the issue of fish has come up between them as they are standing in this butcher shop, actually.

3. I realize that no good can come from getting dragged into the middle of a debate that is being conducted in Italian between two little old ladies at a butcher shop in Verona.  I haven’t actually followed 100% of their argument, and I realize at that moment that they might not actually be speaking in Italian — which I speak somewhat — but rather in Veronese, the local dialect — which I don’t speak at all.   But then, I do realize that I did actually understand the whole tortellini part of the discussion, so maybe they are speaking in Italian after all.

Anyway, what to do, what to do. The woman advocating for the tortellini waits for my support.  I smile and nod sympathetically at her,  but then try to cover my bases by also trying to nod sympathetically at the other woman, too.  Smile and nod, smile and nod.

I don’t think either one was completely satisfied, but they went on with their debate without me, which was just as well. FWIW, their discussion appeared to be set to continue even after Chris and I got what we’d come for and left the store.

But the following week, when we were trying to decide what to make on Christmas Eve,  I remembered that conversation. And decided that the tortellini woman was right — that tortellini dish with the cream and onions is a bit more special than my regular tomato sauce, but it’s also quick and easy to make. So, score one in the Christmas Eve wars for the tortellini woman.

So, to recap, Chris and I now have a new tradition for Christmas Eve:  an Italian tortellini dish made by an American according to a recipe provided by a Greek woman who runs a deli in Germany and endorsed by an Italian little old lady in a fur coat in Verona.

It would be hard to get a more multi-cultural food than that for a Food on Friday.

Good luck – and hope we all have the luck of the Italian tradition with us for 2017!

Of course, at this time of year, you get a photo not just of L’Arena, but also of the big Stella Cometa metal sculpture that represents the Christmas star.

On Christmas Day we walked down by the Stella Cometa and I snapped a photo that gives you a sense of the atmosphere: lots of families walking around after the big Christmas dinner, with all ages of folks wandering by, and lots of kids eager to try climbing up the “rays” of the star.

L’Arena and the Star, December 25th, 2016

Yesterday, December 26th, is also a holiday here: it was the feast of St. Stephen. As in “Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen… “.

We didn’t see any kings in the plaza yesterday morning, but there was one addition: a manger at the base of the Stella Cometa:

L’Arena, the Star, and the Manger, December 26, 2016

Manger near the Stella Cometa

Unfortunately I couldn’t get closer to get a better shot. The cows in the background are live, the baby in the manger is a doll. There was a sign saying it was going to be a living nativity scene, and we heard an announcement about something happening later in the day. However, we never did see Mary,  Joseph, or any of the kings. At the end of the day when we walked by again, the animals were gone and the manager was being loaded onto a truck.

But, fun to happen to see  it while it was up yesterday. You just never know what you’re going to find when you walk by L’Arena and the Star in Verona.

To celebrate, here are a couple of images for the season from Chris’s new “ND Series”  of artworks. Enjoy!

1. ND Series 25122016: one of Chris’ digital visualization art works ( I added the blue frame to create a virtual card to share):

ND25122016

2. AND Circles – an animated version of an ND artwork:

Although Osteria al Duomo has been our favorite restaurant in Verona for a number of years, I noticed today that I’ve really never mentioned it on the blog by name. There’s a reference to eating at a favorite place in this old post, and a reference to eating my favorite foods at our favorite place in Verona on my birthday in this post. But neither post names the place nor has photos from the meals we always have at  ‘al Duomo’.

I think over the years I’ve tended in general not to post much about Verona, because we come here a lot, and we do a lot of the same things every time. So, I guess it never occurs to me that I haven’t really posted about these simple things before.

But, since we’re been in Verona two weeks, and eaten at al Duomo twice already, you’re in luck: this time I have some photos of the meals.  Osteria al Duomo is a tiny little place that serves excellent examples of typical Veronese food, so the food is fairly basic, simple and very tasty.

For example, one of our favorites is a pasta dish with macaroni, sausage, and marscapone cheese uses the local tastasal sausage.  This is one of our typical go-to dishes in recent years; we had it at our first lunch two weeks ago, and again last week.  The funny thing was that I thought my photo from two weeks ago was blurry, but in the second photo below you can more clearly see it’s served hot and steaming, which can look like blur:

Macaroni with Tastasal sausage and marscapone

Steam rising off the macaroni dish

Here in Verona, as it the rest of Italy in general, a pasta dish is typically the first course, aka primo, and a meat dish is typically the second course, aka secondo. Chris and I don’t always have a secondo, although at al Duomo we typically get 2 primi and then split a secondo. We had different secondos on our two visits this month:

Cotechino with cabbage

Polenta with pastissada

 Cotechino is a type of cooked salami, often served with polenta or lentils, but on our visit weeks ago it came with a warm cabbage side dish that had a dash of cumin and was very tasty.

The other dish, pastissada is a traditional Veronese stew. It’s  made with horsemeat marinated — and then slow cooked — in a strong red wine.  Years ago I blogged about making this stew on year in Bolzano; my old post is about the oddity in our cookbook,  where it seemed like an automatic spell-checker had “corrected” pastissada to “pesticide” as the name of the dish. The real Italian name sounds a lot better, of course.

But I digress.

Anyway, as I said, Chris and I typical share one secondo at al Duomo, but we always get two primi pasta dishes and split them.  We sometimes vary one of the pasta dishes that we order, but we always get an order of the bigoli con ragu d’asino, thick spaghetti with a sauce made with donkey meat.

Bigoli with Ragu d’Asino

Both horse and donkey are typical Veronese meats, and these meats feature prominently in many Veronese dishes.  Our favorite place to get them in Verona is Osteria al Duomo — we’ve been going there for years, the owners typically recognize us (and split the seondo for us, as you can see from the pastissada photo above.  It’s definitely one of the restaurants we seek out more than once on a typical visit, and we will vary the items we order there up to a point. But Osteria al Duomo is invariably our “first lunch in Verona” tradition – we look forward to it every time we come to Verona.

First and foremost is the Stella Cometa, the huge white, metal Christmas Star sculpture that “comes out of” the old Roman amphitheater, L’Arena.  It’s magnificent, day or night.

L’Arena and the Stella Cometa, Verona, 2016

L’Arena and the Stella Cometa at night, Verona, 2016

I love seeing this – it’s one of my favorite things about Verona at this time of year. The fact that I’ve posted a photo of this star already this year should convince you of that.  I have taken lots of photos of it every time we’ve been able to visit; heck, I even sell merchandise with a photo I took of it years ago.

Shameless plug, I know, but I’m carrying one of those tote bags with me here on this trip.

But the Stella Cometa isn’t the only beautiful holiday decoration in Verona.  Several of the main streets/areas in the center of the historic district have decorative lighting.  Here are a couple of examples:

Holiday lights, Corsa Porto Borsari, Verona 2016

Via Mazzini decorations, Verona 2016

Via Capello decorations (foreground), Piazza Erbe decorations beyond, Verona, 2016

The lights in Piazza Erbe — which are the lines hanging in the background – are in motion; they change, going from a straight “drip” of the lights (like a snowfall) to a sparkly display.  It’s enchanting when you see it in person. Here’s a video to  try to share a sense of that; (let me know if you have problems playing the video; be patient, as it might take a minute or so before the video starts playing):

Anyway, I love walking around and seeing all the decorations; hope you enjoy this bit of a Verona Christmas!

That was the day that Chris and I arrived back in the U.S. after years of living in Europe on our current Plan G adventure.

Plan G actually started a few months before that, on March 31, 2015, when we left Germany (where we’ been living for 3.5 years) and turned into “tourists” in the EU. (For more on the complexities of that, as well as why our current travel adventures are called Plan G, I refer you to old blog posts here and here and here and here.)

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of our Plan G travel so far:

Phase 1: March 31-2015-June 20, 2015 : Travels in Europe

Phase 2: June 20, 2015-January 7, 2016: Travels in North America, East to West

Phase 3: January 7, 2016-September 21, 2016: Travels in North America, West Coast

Phase 4: September 21, 2016-October 16, 2016: Travels Down Under

Phase 5: October 16, 2016-November 21, 2016: Travels in North America, West to East

Phase 6: November 21, 2016-present: Travels in Europe, again

A while back Chris wrote a lovely little interactive map program for me to use to plot our travels.  He made it back when we were in Phase 2 of the trip, but I never got around to actually populating the map with all our stops, and therefore never shared it.

But I  have now made the Phase 2 map:

Plan G Phase 2 Travels in North America, East to West

That’s a static screenshot of the interactive Phase 2 map. Click on that image, and a new window will open with the interactive map. You can can zoom in and out in the interactive map to see more details, plus you can click on the markers to get more information about the trip.

That Phase 2 map shows all the places we visited from the moment we arrived back in the U.S. (on June 20, 2015) until we got to Vancouver, BC on January 7, 2016. The means it represents more than 9,100 miles of driving around North America in the little Toyota Corolla that we bought (used) in Florida in August of 2015, as well as additional mileage for travel we did by plane, bus, and rental car during that same 6 month period. Seeing everything laid out on the map is kind of fun; while I knew we travelled a lot in a relatively short period of time, I hadn’t realized just how much until I saw it all on the map all at once.

Anyway, I encourage you to let me know if you have any feedback about working with or understanding the map. As a usability professional in another lifetime, I’d like to incorporate changes based on user feedback into the maps for the rest of the phases

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.