My son Matt 
had one of his photographs selected for a collective exhibit, Photography Exposed, by dcist. There were over 600 entries by 200 photographers and 60-some photos were finally chosen. The exhibit opened last night.
Matt's been working with photography for a couple of years and he's taken a couple of courses. It's become one of his creative outlets, and he's invested a lot of time, thought and money into it. For his birthday two weeks ago, we (including Stephanie) gave him a Nikon lens. This is the first time that he submitted his work for public viewing. You can see more of work at Flickr.
The opening took place at the Civilian Art Projects, just off the DC Mall. The place was packed, and there was a line that went down two flights of stairs and around the corner in the rain because the gallery could only hold so many people. I suspect that not all of them came to see Matt's work. When you have several scores of aficianados showing their works, they tend to invite a lot of friends and family. Stephanie and her steady squeeze Ron showed up as did several of Matt's house mates.
The exhibit will be shown until March 15, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Wednesday to Saturday. If anyone is interested, you can buy the photo for $135. The selected photo is below. All rights reserved.
Andrea Franchini was my first yoga teacher at Tranquilspace and then she moved to Flow Yoga Center and I soon joined her. I introduced my daughter to Andrea and we took classes with her together. Stephanie and Andy struck some common vibes and kept in contack over time. I was really fortunately to find a teacher like Andy. She has a nurturing, therapeutic approach to yoga, typically of the Anusara tradition, so she helped put to rest a lot of my early nerves about doing yoga in a classroom setting. She's always been a kind of marker in my practice
Two years ago, Andy decided she wanted a change of scene and moved to San Francisco, but once or twice a year she comes back to Washington to give a workshop or a master class. Stephanie, Teresa and I joined her this time around at Flow Yoga. Of course, I was going in part because of the ego trip — I wanted to hear her tell my how far my practice has come in two years. For instance, I realized that I had to use a bolster under my hips and back to get into reclining hero's supta virasana pose when Andy was teaching me, and now I can get by with just a folded blanket. But that was only a sidebar in the rush of mat-focused learning that took place in those five hours. Workshops allow me to push through a lot of artificial barriers that I erect in my mind.
This Saturday-Sunday workshop was back in January and I'm just now getting around to writing about it so I am playing catch up. My yoga practice and its internal processes has pretty much overwhelmed my capacity to digest it through writing, either in a journal or a blog. Blasting off a quick entry about a news item on yoga, a website or my trip to St. Thomas is just a gesture to pacify my angst.
I have not been posting much recently because I had so much to say backlogged in my head that I did not know where to start — so I did not. There's a personal contradiction for you.
My skin is as white as the sands on Salomon Bay beach, St. John, US Virgin Islands.
My wife and I also took a quick trip to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, for four days so I was out of circulation for a week. A couple of days getting ready, and then a couple of days to recover. There's another layer of overwhelm that can get in the way of writing. And I get all tied up in knots when I travel so there's another issue to deal with. But sandwiched between the prep and the flying were two days spent chilling on the beaches, Magens Bay on St. Thomas and Salomon Bay on St. John. When we lived in Peru, the Pacific Ocean beaches were something that we took for granted and enjoyed every summer; now residing in the States, beaches are out of easy reach. The Caribbean is just a world apart. There is nothing as mellow as the sound of the surf against the shore. Lots of sun screen to keep from being burned to a crisp, and keeping covered up when not on the beach. During the day, St. Thomas tends to be overrun by day visits from the cruise ships that dock every day in Charlotte Amalie, but the rest of the time, a visitor has plenty of room to enjoy the place. We took a 45-minute ferry to St. John on the second day and came back in the evening. It was worth the trip because more than half of St. John is a US National Park and contains one pristine beach after the other. According to National Geographic magazine, we were told, Magens Bay beach is the number 3 beach in the world. If that's the case, then, there are a dozen other VI beaches that deserve a similar ranking.
For the past two weeks, I've been thrown out of my normal routine of work, yoga and blogging. For the past week, I took a vacation with my wife going to Canada and visiting my old home town in Niagara Falls, New York. In Ontario, we were staying at a resort that was 90 minutes north of Toronto, in the north woods, so there were no studios nearby. We had only limited access to Internet, just enough to check the e-mail and our bank balance. There was a fitness center, swimming pools, jacuzzi and sauna so we did take advantage of the facilities. Even though it was supposed to be the peak season for the foliage, the extended dry summer weather meant that few trees had changed colors. That was a disappointment. While we were there, the weather broke a record for warmest day by over 10 degrees. We made a quick, two-day excursion to Quebec, which required too much time behind the wheel driving, but allowed us to see the picturesque wonders of Ville de Quebec and Montreal. If I were to recommend one place to see in Canada, it would be Quebec. Canada has become a lot more expensive than it used to be because of the falling value of the US dollar.
I had not been back to Niagara Falls in 43 years so practically no one that I knew from those days is still around. I wouldn't even know how to contact them. The city has fallen onto hard times, with its old industrial base (chemicals) gone obsolete, the Air Force base closed and nothing has moved in to provide a solid economic foundation for the area. There's a lot of urban rot in the city, despite the need to keep the area neat and clean to attract tourists. I visited my old home and was struck by how small it all seemed. I remember my yard being huge; in my childhood, I organized infantry charges across its expanse. My elementary school had been demolished so that piece of my memory is gone. My junior high (Gaskill) is now a private prep school; it still looks the same. The church where my dad pastored is now home to another denomination. I was expecting to have a bout of nostalgia, but it all seems so remote because I left the town when I was 14 years old.
Teresa and I spent a full day taking in the sights on the American side of the Falls. We went on the Maid of the Mist boat outing below the falls where you really feel the force of nature all around you. We visited the museums and historical displays because I wanted Teresa to understand the cultural context in which I grew up; I loved to study the history of the region. Even though it was a weekend, we did not have to fight crowds. I know that I never spent that much time sightseeing when I lived there in the 1950s and 60s. We hit the Canadian side of the falls, which has a much better view of the Falls than the American side, when we came back from Ontario on the following Saturday.
The week before, I had a flare-up of my sinus infection that left me voiceless and groggy. It felt as if needles and pins were piercing my throat any time I tried to swallow. I got to see my doctor quickly and was prescribed another two-week round of antibiotics. Within three days, I was feeling a lot better, but by then I was packing bags for Canada. I have a sneaking suspicion that the repeat was due to my sinus not being completely cleared up the first time, that having my sinus infected so long made it especially hard to clean out all the infection.
I've started going to yoga classes with my wife, Teresa, on weekends. For a long while, she was content with taking classes at Bally Fitness on Sundays, but that just did not get it done, and maybe pick up the odd class somewhere else. I bought her a 10-class pass at Thrive Yoga for Christmas, but she immediately came down with a bad cold and other health complications. She was just able to use up for pass, in March when she started going weekdays, when she does not have to worry about her Spanish teaching. On her own, last week, she bought an unlimited month pass.
Teresa has been dabbling in yoga almost as long as I have, since we both began taking classes at Bally Fitness, but she has never taken it as seriously or consistently as I have. Now she still needs to work a lot on her fundamentals and she refuses to take a basics course because she sees it as a watered-down version of a full vinyasa class. So every once in a while, I will shift an eye over to her mat to see how she's doing. She also needs to work on muscle strength and flexibility, the deficiencies of most beginners.
Between my daughter, Stephanie, and me, we've more or less convinced Teresa of the dividends of a steady yoga practice, and she does not want to be left behind.
