This week’s photo challenge is (Extra)Ordinary. So it’s the perfect moment for a reposting of some pictures of the bottom of the Mopac Bridge in Austin, Texas, USA.
I have a thing for the bottoms of bridges, and the Mopac Bridge is one of my favorites. Mopac is actually Highway 1, but in Austin we call it Mopac after the Missouri-Pacific Railroad that runs parallel to it for a while. Continue reading
Posted in Austin, Bottoms of Bridges, Photography
Tagged Austin, bridge bottoms, bridges, Mopac Bridge, photo challenge, photography
T and I took a little overnight trip to San Antonio. It’s the perfect time of year to visit. Relatively cool (although I managed to find it muggy even at 60 degrees) and after Thanksgiving the holiday lighting is up. Long strands of colored lights in the towering cypress trees and along all the restaurant balconies certainly put me in the spirit. Continue reading
This post is in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge. I’m recycling a photo here. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I have a thing for the bottoms of bridges, and this photo represents “inside” for me. It’s taken under the Barton Creek Bridge in Austin, Texas.
Posted in Bottoms of Bridges, Photography
Tagged Austin, Barton Creek Bridge, bottoms of bridges, bridges, weekly photo challenge
Okay, high time for some more bottoms of bridges. This time the Congress Avenue Bridge. The bottom of this bridge is actually not much to see at all. It’s what lives there. The Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin is home to one and a half million Mexican free-tailed bats during spring, summer and fall. It’s the largest urban bat community in North America. Continue reading
It’s high time for the bottom of another bridge. This time the small bridge across Barton Springs Road.
I’ve been keeping this one and I find it hard to give it up. I don’t know when I’ll come across anything I like as much. Because it’s short and low above the water, and even lower above the path, it’s almost cozy, intimate even, in a concrete bridge-bottom kind of way.
(Image from forum.dallasmetropolis.com)
Time for another bridge post. And no, this one isn’t about the Mopac bridge. For the first time ever, I present to you the bottom of a different bridge. The Lamar Boulevard Bridge, the one east of the Mopac Bridge across Town Lake in Austin, Texas, the United States of America. Continue reading
Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while know by now of my weird fascination with the underbelly of Austin’s Mopac Bridge. Every now and then I just have to spend an entire post on this butt-ugly structure that I somehow cannot get enough of.
Posted in Austin, Austin photos, Bottoms of Bridges, Nature
Tagged Austin, Austin bridges, bird poop, bottoms of bridges, bridge bottoms, bridges, bruggen, fotografie, Mopac Bridge, nature, natuur, photography, spiderwebs, swallow nests, vines, wasp nests
I thought you might like something nice, after the last post. This morning, after dropping the kids off at school early (their math teacher has office hours at 7:30 am), I went on a brief walk around Town Lake here in Austin. The sun was only just up when I started, and it was slightly misty. I only had my phone with me, but I’m always amazed that the pictures aren’t half bad.
Posted in Austin, Austin photos, Bottoms of Bridges, Nature, Photography
Tagged Austin, bottoms of bridges, bridge bottoms, bridges, fotografie, Mopac Bridge, nature, photography, Town Lake
I am absolutely crazy about Austin. One of my favorite things, which I don’t do nearly enough, is walking a big oval around Town Lake, the wide part of the Colorado River that runs along downtown.
I take the kids to school, going north on Mopac and then into town. After Continue reading
In the late 60s Richard Proenneke built his own cabin in the Alaskan wilderness with only a few simple tools. He spent most of the rest of his life there. Sam Keith fleshed out Proenneke's diary of his first 16 months, when he was making his home by a lake. I love these kinds of books!
An old Oji-Cree healer and her nephew canoe down a river in Canada, away from the world of white people. They both have to come to terms with their past. The woman has lost most of her tribe and the young man is traumatized from his recent experience in the Belgian trenches of World War One. My second book by Boyden. Can't say enough about him.
An incredibly comprehensive history of everything related to slavery in the Southern United States, from the beginning of the colonies to the end of the Civil War. Over 700 pages and I took over 30 pages of notes. I will be sharing over many posts to come!
Hamid's debut novel. I love this author. A young man in Lahore, Pakistan, is the victim of love, drugs, obsession, the class system and his complete lack of self-awareness.
A golem, created in Poland and brought to life on a ship to America, and a jinni who was trapped in a flask a thousand years ago and released in New York -- the most unusual immigrants you'll ever meet.
The only part of her life a Korean woman can control is her body, so she withdraws into it. Harrowing.
Autobiography lightly disguised as a novel about the son of Southern migrants growing up on the streets of Harlem, New York City, in the 1940s and 50s. Written like you're hearing the whole story in a bar. Quite a feat.
The story of a man struggling to make a living in Morocco. No plot, no clearly defined characters, but fascinating in its authenticity.
Pakistani man tells an American about his experience as a college student and employee of an assessment firm in America years ago. Smart, nuanced and pretty darn honest considering the unreliable narrator.
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Seven short stories about life during the Kim Il-sung regime, by a writer who still lives and works in North Korea, were smuggled out of the country and translated. Mind-boggling stuff.
A 15-year-old autistic narrator wants to know who killed a neighbor's dog, and ends up much further out of his comfort zone than he planned. Wonderful read!
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Hey, don't laugh, at least I'm trying.
A Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with six other people on a tiny island off the coast of Maine all winter in 1873. A woman in the present researching the Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with three other people on a tiny sailboat. What could possibly go wrong?
A man stuck between two worlds in more ways than one. Fascinating!
Historical novel about early contacts between first nations and the French in Canada. Beautifully written story that doesn't pull any punches. I bought his other two novels right away.
Beautifully written. By my children's favorite English and Creative Writing teacher! It's got rave reviews and we're all very proud of her.
Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist. She poses as an evangelical Christian posing as an English teacher at a school for the sons of North Korea's elite. Her experience and the information she manages to get via writing assignments are incredible. Definitely a lot more eye-opening that any CNN special.
This. Explains. Everything!!!
Why has Islam not undergone a reformation like Christianity? Why is it so easy for Islamic extremist groups like IS to recruit young muslims? What would it take for Islam in fundamentalist Islamic countries to enter modernity? Does the West have a role to play?
Amazing! A man wanders endlessly through a dreamscape, becoming other people, himself in the past, everything is fluid. Kafkaesque disconnect between people and their different needs.
A multi-layered novel about the history of Libya. A fast read, but one you can repeat and find something new each time.
Twelve Americans go missing in Burma/Myanmar during a tour. Touching and hilarious, but mostly hilarious.
The most unusual murder mystery I've ever read. Incredible writing. It haunted me for days.
The quote on the front mentions that these stories are exhilerating. I couldn't disagree more. They are almost unbearably painful to read, and yet I couldn't put them down. Very well done, apart from the third story, which is written in the second tense. Please let me know if you know of ONE story that works in second tense.
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