A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
For the past three days the history departments of Furman and Clemson Universities have hosted a conference on the history of Upstate South Carolina entitled "Our Past Before Us." Work prevented me from attending the majority of the workshops, but I was able to get to a couple of the sessions on Saturday. The first … Read More “Our Past Before Us” »
Laura has a meeting, and I’ve got a new restaurant. I was feeling adventurous, so I decided to try Pho #1 around the corner from our house. This place started as a Pizza Hut, and retains that distinctive architecture. In the intervening years, the building has housed Mexican and Italian restaurants. A couple of years … Read More “Pho #1” »
One of my school tech folks forwarded a message to me that she had received from a teacher at her school… http://maps.google.com/maps This is a new, annoying, and popular site for the kids. Can you block it? She was just as appalled as I was that someone would actually want to block this site. This … Read More “You want me to block what???” »
If you can bear with me until I get through next week’s workshops I’m going for SCETV, I’ll get off of this Google Earth/geotagging kick. I promise. Until then, here are a couple more Google Earth resources I stumbled upon while preparing my materials for these workshops. First, when one thinks of geotagging, it’s usually … Read More “Recent Google Earth Discoveries” »
Tonight we started working on a concert version of Bizet’s Carmen. It’s a Spanish tale, sung in French by an American Choir, conducted by a Russian. It will be a real international affair with all the songs you know by heart. Of course, I know very different words to these tunes. My knowledge of Carmen … Read More “Harold Hecuba Presents…” »
After watching last night’s documentary on the Tomb of Jesus, I got to thinking about those that would dismiss everything simply because it doesn’t fit in with their faith. The convenient phrase would be that it is a "lie of the Devil." I find that to be a highly useful phrase. If you don’t agree … Read More “Lie of the Devil” »
That was one of the terms used by a panelist on the discussion program following Discovery’s "The Tomb of Jesus Revealed" to describe the program. We watched the entire two hour program and found the ideas intriguing, albeit not "compelling" as Simcha Jacobovici, the filmmaker, contends. I found it to be about as intriguing as … Read More “Archeoporn” »
By the time the moon rose over the Eastern Seaboard, it was emerging from totality. I set up the Celestron C90 with my Nikon and snapped a few shots as it came up.
While growing up, my father would often load our large family into the car and go on a drive. These drives would often involve dirt roads and somewhere along the way, a rickety wooden bridge. We explored just about every road we could in Laurens County, sometimes extending to the surrounding counties. I think it … Read More “Roaming to Aiken” »
Laura and I had given each other tickets to a performance of Camelot at the Peace Center for Valentine’s Day. Friday night was the show, and it was fantastic. Michael York starred as Arthur, Rachel York as Guinevere (no relation to Michael), and James Barbour was Lancelot. All three were excellent, as were the supporting … Read More “I Know It Sounds a Bit Bizaare” »