Happy 4th of July!

"Close enough," this girl seems to be saying to herself about the work of the artist outside Washington's National Cathedral.
This is the best I can do for a 4th of July picture. It's not a bad choice though - it's in the national capital, it's a building liberally festooned with gargoyles and it was taken during the summer. Well, truth is, it was mid-spring, but still...
More on the National Cathedral gargoyles later. In the meantime, Happy 4th!

Canada Day: The night before, the day after

These are not my proudest photographic moments, but I offer them in the spirit of Canada Day.
I've been in our nation's capital (Ottawa) for the last 10 days, covering a pediatrics conference for the Day Job and then visiting with my sister. We drove past Parliament Hill on the night before Canada Day (30 June would be the night before, and 1 July was the Big Day itself), and witnessed chanteuse Sarah McLachlan doing her sound check for the big show the next day.
I didn't have a tripod but got this picture of Sarah on the big screen, with a few adoring fans gathered below.
This is a blurry version of what the stage looked like:

And this is the overall view, with the Parliaments Buildings and Peace Tower providing the backdrop.

Next time I'll know to bring my tripod.
So that was Canada Day Eve, and because I was travelling back to Toronto on the day itself, I wasn't able to post until now. So a belated Happy Canada Day to everyone!

What is this man doing?

If there were no words, would this sign say "Hazardous bridge ahead" to you?
Or would it say "Watch the road when you ride your bike"?
I shot this while on a tram tour of Saguaro National Park outside Tucson in 2003. When I picked up the processed film (yes, it was in the olden, film days), the woman who had done the work pulled this picture out of the pack and said, "It looks like he's peeing!"
The picture could have been used to illustrate this story from Bloomington, Minn., last April about a man who was trying to pee off a bridge but fell to marshy area below. The awkward headline was "Man Falls Urinating Off Highway 77 Bridge."

Mayflower madam?

Another picture from last fall's visit to Washington, D.C., and more sculpture on the Mayflower Hotel. Although I doubt this lady is a "madam."

Wide-mouthed lion

Having just covered another pediatrics conference for the Day Job, I'm taking a few days off to turn our national holiday (Canada Day, formerly Dominion Day, July 1st), which falls on a Wednesday this year, into a long, long weekend.
So, another post from a past trip. This one is a lion mascaron from the Mayflower Hotel (yes, that Mayflower - as in Mayflower Madam, and home base for former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's downfall) in Washington, D.C. I shot this when I was at an infectious diseases conference there last fall.

They're everywhere!

Even airports have gargoyles!
This guy—one of a pair called, collectively, "Notre Denver" by Terry Allen—watches over the baggage claim area at the Denver International Airport. He... I mean, they... were installed as part of the then-new Denver airport's ambitious art programme in 1994.
("Notre Denver"... geddit? geddit? As in the gargoyles on Notre Dame in Paris?)

I actually shot this guy back in 2003, but I've recently been going through my boxes of prints (from back in the 35mm film days) and scanning some of them. So for the next week or so, while I'm covering yet another conference for the Day Job (about which, more later) I'll be posting some older pictures.
Which reminds me — Terry Allen has a freestanding bronze sculpture in San Francisco called "Shaking Man" which I also shot. When I find that print, I'll scan and post it here. It is very shaky. Even the guy's tie. You'll see...

Silly putti?

Not a chance. These putti ("cherubs" is really simpler and doesn't sound as pretentious) seem to take their job very seriously. Whatever their job is. I think they're merely decorative. Who would give a gargoyle's job to an out of shape boy? Certainly not the architect of the Burrage mansion!
The Burrage House was built in 1899 as the winter home for attorney, businessman, philanthropist and copper magnate Albert C. Burrage and his family, so says a report by the Boston Landmarks Commission.
It remained in the Burrage family until the death of Burrage’s widow Alice in 1947. Since then, it has been converted, in turn, into doctors' offices, a clinic, a nursing home and condominiums. (In fact, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady lived there until recently.)


Charles Brigham was the architect and Hugh Cairns is thought to have done most of the sculpture. Cairns was a Scottish artist who counted H.H. Richardson's Trinity Church in nearby Copley Square among his other significant projects.
With this mansion, Burrage and Brigham were hoping to achieve the opulence of New York's Fifth Avenue, where the Vanderbilt and Astor mansions were built in the chateau style. In fact, the Burrage House is said to be "the only fully executed chateau in Boston," inspired by Chenonceaux, a chateau built in the Loire Valley between 1513 and 1521.
A report by Otis & Ahearn Real Estate estimated that the house's exterior sports nearly 200 griffins, dragons, gargoyles and cherubs.


The American Institute of Architects' Guide to Boston called it "the one exception to Boston's avoidance of flamboyant architecture."
The Boston Landmarks Commission report also says it's apparent that for Brigham and Burrage, "complexity was favored above simplicity, magnificence above charm, and stimulation above peace."
However, this fellow seems to have found some peace and stimulation (of the intellectual variety).