Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

Okay, the saying is old, 1742, or thereabouts, but sometimes it’s not bliss, it’s just damned embarrassing.

Monday a couple weeks back I made the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in town, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, for a “Behind The Scenes Tour” of the Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution exhibit.

So here’s the thing. I, like an awful lot of people I’ve talked to since, had very little knowledge of this critter, and, as I discovered, most of what I knew was wrong. The reality is one heck of a lot more fascinating and fun.

So… the first of several shots I’m going to post from the evening.

David Temple, Associate Curator of Paleontology (also occasional tour guide, Canon shooter, and generally nice guy) fronts for a coelacanth fossil from a Jurassic-period limestone quarry in Solnhofen, Germany. All the fossils in the exhibit, most of which I didn’t photograph for various reasons involving not wanting to hold up the tour, are from Solnhofen.

More pix to follow, including something unique, something SyFy, and, of course, Archaeopteryx! (Plus things I learned during and since, some of which are in their own ways just about as mindblowing.)

And, for Donna The Dragonfly Lady…

This one’s a bit older than most – something on the order of 150 million years. or so.

Enjoy. Weekend approaches. Go shoot.

NOT the way I’d want to spend my midday in a Houston August…

Yeah, that’s a rip saw he’s playing; it’s a kind of odd eerie ethereal sound. He said he does this every so often, but before I could get anything about who he is or why he does this, the light went green and the guy behind me leaned on the horn. There’s a story here though.

Almost recovered from White Linen Night, so… a few pix. Nothing serious, mostly just wandering and eyeballing, visiting friends. Oh, and buying a new coffee mug from John Delafield. (I think he meant it to be a beer stein but it’s just the right size for mornings after… like this one.)

(Few more shots behind this one. Haz Click en photo.)

Another in the series of photographs that just crawled into the camera…

Okay… the economy’s trashed and all, but it looks to me like the guys at the cloud factory are putting in a bit of overtime here…

I’m not really given to shooting still life shots, but once in a while one just reaches out and batters me about the head and shoulders until I have no options.

This is inside Nino’s, one of a trio of Italian restaurants run by a lovely couple whom I got to photograph for the paper.

REALLY nice light in those places. They’re a little out of my budget, what with the crashing newspaper business and all, but if I skip a few meals now and then I can probably afford both the cash and the calories once in a while.

This is why it’s important to keep a camera handy… because you just never know.

Lock and load… there’s some pretty light out there this evening, too.

After covering a Memorial Day butterfly release at a local seniors home, I stopped to chat with some of the residents. We were all most intrigued when some of the recently emancipated decided to join us for a late lunch…

This is a Painted Lady, but I’m not expert enough to determine which variety (there are apparently four different flavors). Apparently it found the juice of my table-mates’ watermelon tasty enough to ignore a camera four or five inches away.

Didn’t have a lot of time this evening but did wander past the Cinco De Mayo festival at Miller Theatre and caught a little bit of folklorico from Mexico en Danzas….

I wasn’t the only one that thought this was a good idea. The theatre seats were packed solid, and the hill was a couple of steps past SRO….

Much fun was had by all…

New day coming… Lock and load…