The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (Dec 11, 2022)

A lot happens in 5 years. Kero and I enjoyed the snows of more Iowa winters. More miles have been accrued to my frequent flier account, and more destinations that have been ticked off my list. Chile, the Caribbean, various cities in Europe, the Canary Islands, places all around the US, including Hawaii. Then the long hiatus of no travel at all due to a certain nasty bug that stopped the entire world in its tracks and caused untold suffering. But, most important of all, my daughter was born just a little over 5 years ago, and life has never been the same since.

During all these time more and more photos have been accumulating on my hard drive, itching to find their way on this dormant photoblog. So be it, at the beginning of a new year, and almost 6 years after the last post, it is time to start again updating this digital scrapbook with old and new images.

I will begin with the big news: we have moved. After 12 years at Iowa State University we have accepted new positions at the Department of Physics of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. We have traded the snowy midwest landscapes of Iowa, with the subtropical urban forests of the Florida Panhandle. About one hour drive from the gulf coast, Tallahassee sits in the only hilly region of Florida. Even though it is the state capital, it has the feel of a campus town, and is large enough to have plenty of things to do (and excellent dining) while avoiding the stress and traffic of a big city. Expect to see more photos and posts about Tallahassee and its environments soon.

The move to Florida happened quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and in just a month we had to sell our old house in Iowa, buy a new one in Tallahassee, and organize the move. But on July 30 we hit the road, for a ~2,000 km road trip through 7 US states. We originally planned to take it easy and split the drive in three days, but of course we ended up being late and left Ames in the afternoon of our first trip day. All in all we ended up doing the whole trip in less than 48 hours, with only two stops.

The first stop was in St. Louis. There, we made a point of seeing the Gateway Arch, but rather than navigating the city traffic we found an excellent viewing point from the Malcom W. Martin Memorial Park. As you can see from the photo below, the park offers one of the best views of the arch, from across the Mississippi. A raised platform allows a clear view of the arch and the uninterrupted St. Louis skyline, while large barges lazily float along the river.

The second stop was in Atlanta, close enough to our destination that we could make some appointments we had for the next day. In between, a lot of driving across the midwest cornfields, then the southern end of the Appalachians in western Tennessee and north Georgia, and finally the very rural plains of South Georgia. The mist-veiled mountains, seen in the distance when we were driving down towards Chattanooga, were beautiful. Pity it was raining and getting dark, it would have been great to make a detour and take some pictures. That will deserve a future trip of its own.

St. Louis Gateway Arch from the Malcom W. Martin Memorial Park (July 31, 2022)

The Art of Stealing Souls

Jennifer at Crane Beach (April 14, 2007)

It is said that ancient Maya cultures revered mirrors as magical objects, capable of opening portals between this world and the plane of their ancestors. As such they kept mirrors hanging in front of their sacred statues, to reflect back their images and allow the spirit of gods and saints to return. The dark art of photography, now capable of trapping the living souls in the one-way mirror of the camera obscura, is still strictly forbidden in the churches of some traditional areas in the highlands of Chiapas.

Martin Harwit

At Juan Antonio restaurant

I rarely do steal souls, however, these days. Mostly for lack of willing subjects, I would say, if you don't count the furry companion of my morning walks (also unwilling to pose still for more than a few seconds, regarding the abundant rabbit more interesting that my "stay"). In the end the portraits I steal belong to the occasional friend, like Jennifer in the photo above, that shared with me many photowalks on the sandy expanse of Crane beach. Or sometimes a colleague or two, in the sparse occasions when I am asked to document the speakers in a symposium, temporarily shedding the astronomer's hat for my camera bag. The photo on the left portraits Martin Harwit talking at the 2009 Symposium in honor of my mentor Giovanni Fazio. Harwit is a Cornell University astronomer that from 1987 to 1995 was also director of the National Air and Space museum, and promoted a famous exhibit on the Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima) including for the first time testimony and photographs of the Japanese victims (the controversy that ensued led to his resignation). And then of course there is family, like the photo on the right showing our cousin Juan Antonio and the wonderful cook that was working with him in 2004 at his restaurant, in the Andes in Venezuela.

A final note: the title of this post belongs to the name of the website of Kaya Fesci, a fine art photographer that definitely deserves your visit.