Photography

A hot tip led us to Madison’s Yahara River for the annual Fools’ Flotilla. This boat parade flowed down the river between Madison’s two lakes on a beautiful Sunday morning. The end destination was the Marquette Neighborhood Association’s Waterfront Festival. Good zany fun. Click any picture for bigger images

In May 2024, our family converged in the mile-high city of Denver for a beautiful spring weekend. Mom, Paul, and Karen flew in from New Jersey; Audrey from California; and Jacob lives and teaches in Denver. I was already there for a business trip. First stop was Colorado College, Jacob’s alma mater, pictured above. Did you know Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, composed America the Beautiful here in 1882? We asked Mom to put her Wellesley degree to work composing an update. Alas the road to Pike’s Peak was snow-covered, and thus the next verse about “purple mountain majesty” would have to await another day. ...

The spring rains and cool weather yielded the most abundant flowers I’ve ever seen in Edgewood Park, near Redwood City. I hiked the Serpentine Loop. Serpentine is a California rock formation that has the beneficial property of killing non-native grasses, and thereby allowing the local wildflowers to thrive. It’s a greenish rock. In my first photo, of the poppies on the rock, note the lizard. Redwood City was so-named because it was a port from which redwoods were shipped. you can see the channel to the seaport in the distance. To see the pictures larger, click any photo. ...

We went out looking for life in Death Valley. We found long vistas of wide valleys and dry mountains;lakebeds that haven’t seen water in ages; and, ghost towns with tales to tell. We crossed the Tehachapi Pass and found some Golden State dreamscapes. Here’s our trip: Mojave Desert We first struck gold in the Mojave Desert, when we came across huge superblooms of “Desert Gold” flowers covering the sandy basin. The air was clear and the views were vast. Behind us, we could see the micro-burst storm clouds that had pelted our car with rain in the Tehachapi Pass. Ahead of us, an AirBnB awaited in sunny Ridgecrest, California. ...

Upon arriving in Vancouver for the AAAI Conference, I took a photo walk and water taxi to False Creek. In two hours it was misty, then sunny, then it hailed, then sunny, then gale force winds. Welcome to Vancouver! There is a wonderful public market on Granville Island, and I found smoked salmon, some rice paper rolls, and a little soup for lunch. Granville Island was an industrial area and became an art gallery area, perhaps best illustrated by the “Giants” painted onto cement towers. The final photo is from the conference site, the next morning. ...