Morocco 8

One of the famous industries of Morocco is their leather work. In both Fez and Marrakesh, there are large tanneries where leather is made by hand in what appears to be a backbreaking process of washing hides in noxious substances and scraping and dying and such. There is also a small industry of guys trying to get you to go see their tannery and then demand a sizable "tip" afterwards. Your correspondent was half-way shopping for a briefcase and was fished in by one of the more clever (I like to think) of these faux guides, but the extended tour of the tannery that resulted actually turned out to be pretty worthwhile. So it wasn't a "scam" other than that the promised price "free, just come look and see if you want to buy something at the leather shop" changed by the end of the trip "I spent a long time showing you around the tannery, so give me some money." The price I paid was what I thought the tour was worth, so I didn't feel financially ripped off, but one still feels a little silly at the point of realization that you've fallen for a line.

It can be a little hard visiting a country as a tourist when you want to be open to experiences and talk with locals but avoid being taken advantage of. Perhaps some amount of getting scammed is worth it for the value of not spending your whole vacation avoiding conversation in an attempt to avoid being taken. Your correspondent did, in fact visit a couple workshops where friendly people were happy to just show him what they were doing, but it's hard to know which is which before hand. I suppose that is all to say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Anyway, above and below, hides drying on the roofs of the tannery buildings.

Morocco 7

One of the more impressive things in Fez was the number of beautiful tile-work fountains scattered throughout the old town, many of them still used by the residents fetching water. Also: cats.

Morocco 6

Also seen in Fez. One of the big famous mosques buildings was being restored and had blue tarp covering much of the facade. But someone made sure this little slot was still accessible, presumably for small donations.

Morocco 5

After our brief time in Casablanca, our first destination was Fez. (The last couple days' pictures were also from Fez, actually.) We had heard from a friend who had been there that people in Morocco don't actually wear fezzes. Not true! We did not see many youngsters running around in fezzes but we definitely saw a number of the oldsters fully fezzed up. We saw even more of the brimless caps seen above, especially the one in the middle just above the "patente" sign. They basically seem like a felt fez without the tassel. We can't say if that technically qualifies as a fez or not.

Morocco 4

Did we not, just yesterday, tell you there would be more jellabas? And yet, we're not sure which is more interesting here, the guy in his jawa robe, or the contraption he has set up for displaying candy for sale. Also of note, this was the first of several subjects that we did our best to communicate, "Do you mind if I take your picture? Un foto, s'il vous plait?" And got an affirmative answer, and yet then they looked kind of annoyed that we were taking their picture. Which I guess one can understand in a heavily touristed place like Morocco: Perhaps they know which side the bread is buttered on, but they don't have to be real excited about that buttering job they are stuck with.

Morocco 3

It must be said: One of the most striking features of Morocco is the widespread use of the jellaba, which is Arabic for "Jawa robe." The Jawas* limited themselves to a plain brown robe, which Moroccans also use but not to the exclusion of a variety of patterns and colors, such as this light striped number. Do not/not worry that this will be the last picture of a jellaba-clad Moroccan we will present here. Not by a long shot.

* Follow this link if you don't know what a Jawa is in the science-fiction sense, or if you want to be shocked by the amount of time that fans have put into a wikipedia page dedicated to a minor character from Star Wars. Did you know, for example, that "The Jawas were originally descendants of the Kumumgah species which used to live on Tatooine long before the formation of the Galactic Republic and long before the planet was even a desert." Criminy, people.

Morocco 2

The only real site of touristic interest we went to in Casablanca was the Hassan II Mosque. This huge structure, built at the edge of the sea, is the third biggest mosque in the world. We expected something very gaudy and ostentatious. While it was intricate and huge and therefore to some extent ostentatious, it was not gaudy at all. It was a beautiful building, actually, particularly the interior. We took a bunch of pictures of the beautiful tile work and carved columns and plaster and such, but this shot of a guy washing the windows facing the ocean beat them all.

Morocco 1

Your intrepid correspondents went to Morocco. It was only two weeks (or less for some of your correspondents), but we still managed to take a million pictures and a thousand of them turned out ok. So, over the next month and maybe more, some pictures and maybe some stories and probably some fun facts from Morocco. Above, to start us off, sunset in Marrakesh.

Dogtown 4

While visiting Gloucester recently (but not that recently), we had the opportunity to go on a nice walk through Dogtown. Cape Ann, North of Boston, features a few towns such as Gloucester and Rockport. In the center of the Cape is some higher ground that apparently was once settled to some extent and known as Dogtown. The town has long since been abandoned, and is forested with the kind of scrubby secondary growth you find in most natural areas on the East Coast. The most interesting feature of the area are the 30-odd boulders, strategically placed in basically the middle of the woods, carved with pro-values messages. These were funded essentially as a make-work project by a local tycoon during the Depression. Most of the boulders we found were limited to a single inspiring word, but there are several with somewhat more elaborate phrases.

On the downside, the woods also feature some really mean bald-faced hornets, which we learned the hard way.

Dogtown 3

More words soon. Like, we'll write more, not just more pictures of words on rocks.

Dogtown 2

Of Dogtown

Trying to get back into this after our extended break due to technical difficulties.

Coming over the next few days, some pictures we took in the fall in Dogtown, Gloucester, MA. Above, a marker for Dog Town Square, long since abandoned.

Aaaaaand... we're back!

Our long national nightmare has come to an end. The Holla computer found its way home, with all its precious photographic cargo intact. That actually happened a week or so ago, but we just haven't managed to get back into the rhythm of publishing, so your long national nightmare of not having a near-daily piece of Holla journalism to brighten up your day lasted unnecessarily long.

Anyway, consider this post an official bit of throat-clearing. We hope to have some pictures for you soon. Of course, we're still in Washington, so it won't be too Foreign Service-y, but it will have some nice holiday snapshots.

For the moment, accept this snapshot of an undisclosed location in Washington, where most of the apartment buildings are graced with quasi-regal-sounding names. We did not, however knock on the door at Columbia House to see if it was just another name for an apartment building, or if in fact they were perhaps still offering 12 cassettes for a penny.

Please Stand By

We are undergoing severe technical difficulties. So, we will offer a friendly reminder to readers to back up your computer now if it has been a while; a promise to be back with more as soon as we are able; and this positively ancient picture of a palm from Guatemala that we can't find any record of having posted here before, although that seems unlikely.

Pinball 10

This was at the Pacific Pinball Museum. It was not, technically, we admit, a pinball machine. But how many pictures of pinball machines were you hoping for?

Coming next, if things go according to plan: Travel photography from exotic destinations abroad!

Pinball 9

So after so many Pacific Pinball Museum pictures, I will say: I don't see why pinball is fun. Why do people spend the time to become good at pinball? If you are a pinball fan who happened upon here through a google image search, feel free to elucidate. Thanks!

Pinball 8

One more funny pinball machine theme. "Cover Girls" obviously appealing to the prurient interest of the potential pinball player with a quarter (or probably back in the day, a nickel? Penny?) in his pocket. And some hot cover girls, indeed. I, for one, think it's wonderful that the combination of the illustrator's style, the fashions of the day, and the limitations of pinball machine printing combine to make all the "cover girls" here look somewhat matronly - fit, but matronly. But if that wasn't enough, who could resist the magnetic attraction of a hot Cover Girl Drum Major? If there is one thing sexier than archery, it's definitely drum majoring.

Pinball 7

Not totally sure what this game was. There was apparently an open space in the middle of a room at the Pacific Pinball Museum and that doesn't really work for pinball machines. It looks like it would be good for betting on. Further investigation will have to wait for some future visit.

Pinball 6

We didn't really mean to do a second week of Pacific Pinball Museum pictures, but that's all we've got fully set to go at this point. We've got plenty of other stuff but it's all in various jumbles on various hard drives. So, here you go: More pinball machines! Actually, they're not bad pictures, just a bit same-y with some of our other recent entries.

Pinball 5

As noted yesterday, the olden days pinball machines had themes that tracked other pop cultural currents. Apparently, at some point in the middle of the last century, marbles were something kids were really into. So who wouldn't want to play a pinball game with a "marbles" theme? But just to up the ante, the clever marketing team at Gottlieb's wanted to add drawings of sexy ladies. The solution? A pinball machine with the theme that perhaps there are back-alley locations where lithe young ladies play marbles in swimsuits. Or maybe that was just the way things were done back then.

Pinball 4

From some highly politically correct Native American-theme pinball game. The variety of themes for the olden-days games was quite impressive, although it's clear that they followed pretty closely with whatever trend someone thought teenage boys might be into at the time, whether surfing or science fiction, or I guess, Native Americans.

Pinball 3

Colorado vs. Nebraska, pinball edition.

Pinball 2

More Pinball Machine Pictures!

Pinball machines are tough to photograph because they have glass over the colorful bumpers and chutes and such, which glass reflects the lighted backboard/scoreboard (not to mention overhead lights). The one above emerged mostly unscathed. The one below, by contrast, did not.

Pinball 1

So some time ago we published this picture and promised more to come. Well, here's the more. This week: More pictures from the Pacific Pinball Museum. "Foreign Service" content will be holding steady at zero for March - but we promise a triumphant return of the more Foreign-y stuff in April, if that's what keeps you coming back.

So, the Pacific Pinball Museum is clearly the beating heart of Alameda. This fine cultural institution features dozens of pinball machines, ranging from antique pinball precursors to the latest stupid talking machine advertising Iron Man movies. It's kind of more expensive than you want it to be, but once you've paid to get in, you can play unlimited pinball on all but the very oldest machines. Your correspondent played maybe two games of pinball. I've never really thought it was that much fun... but the old machines are fun to look at.

Gettysburg 4

Sunsets are a terribly cliche photo topic, but they're hard to resist, especially with foreground material like this.

In all, we highly recommend a day trip to Gettysburg for anyone stuck in Washington for a while.

Gettysburg 3

Further to yesterday's talk of monuments, the most impressive pieces are the monuments built by each state involved in the war. These take the form of huge sculptures of soldiers and horsemen and angels and such, wrought of massive amounts of bronze and stone, dedicated to the soldiers of that state who died at Gettysburg. These are sculptures of a scope that would be appropriate as the centerpiece of a town square or city park, plopped down on some rural grassy knoll of military-historical significance. Above, a detail of Virginia's monument. Five hundred dollars seems a bit cheap, actually.

Gettysburg 2

Your correspondents are far from being Civil War buffs, so pretty much any information we attempt to provide here should be taken with some grains of salt. The only other Civil War battlefield we have visited is Manassas, or Bull Run, which is nice and all, but is mostly just an open field with a few old cannons. We knew that being relatively close, Gettysburg was something we ought to do, but we didn't know what to expect. We were quite surprised.

First of all, the visitors' center features a very good museum with a history of the entire war and a crazy "cyclorama" which is apparently a word for a room with a giant 360-degree painting wrapped all around.

Second, and more surprising, were the monuments. There are over a thousand monuments ranging from modest stone markers to huge equestrian sculptures. From the best information we can gather, as Gettysburg was contemporaneously recognized and preserved as a historic location, many of the survivors of the battle decided to put up monuments there. This must have somehow fed on itself because there are monuments to every unit that fought in the battle, tributes to many prominent individuals, and memorials from each state involved. It creates a landscape unlike any other I have seen. It is sort of like a sprawling, low-density cemetery, creeping across miles of land, working around hills, forests, human development, and any other obstacle it may find.

Gettysburg 1

So, to review, we were in Afghanistan. We returned to America and spent Home Leave in Alaska and California and Colorado. We have been back at our assignment in Washington since August, some seven months ago(!), and, in an attempt to keep publishing without ranging too into "what we had for breakfast" territory, been slowly shuffling through photos from leave ever since. But we're almost pretty close to being done with those pictures.

So, for this week only, some notes from the Washington area, or at least from a day trip away from Washington to Gettysburg. Starting with this picture, from the sprawling cemetery with row upon row of graves of unknown Union soldiers, generally buried by regiment.

This was also the site of the Gettysburg Address - which I guess is why some visitors leave pennies on the grave markers. The Lincoln connection is clear but the exact significance still escapes me.

Colorado 16

Ok, I think that's all from Colorado for now. Next week, something else. For now, two versions of the same picture. If you're feeling motivated, feel free to let us know which one you like better, star trails or stars standing still.

Colorado 15

One more from the same abandoned gas station. Different angle, more flowers. I'm hopeless with flower names. I guess these are just daisies, but they have such an extreme sloped-petal shape, not unlike a shuttlecock, maybe they're some sub-type like "Badminton Daisies." Although modest internet research suggests maybe it's chamomile, which can't possibly be right.

Colorado 14

We're back from vacation! It was great. Let's finish out the week with the last few pictures from Colorado and then on to new topics next week. This gas station, abandoned and attractively overrun by nature, can be found just outside of Leadville.

Colorado 13

The star trails wheeling around the North Star trick is one of our favorites, if you haven't noticed. We also did some "light painting" (which I think is kind of a stupid term but oh, well) with the fallen tree in the middle ground there to distinguish this from previous star trails photos.

Colorado 12

Happy Leap Day! In celebration, here's another picture of star trails! Taken in the Eagle's Nest Wilderness in this case, if you're going to track down which stars are which based on declension or whatever.

Colorado 11

This handsome picture of the North Star would probably be nicer if you didn't know that the funny little hut there is the outhouse at the Lake Cowdrey recreation area. We should have thought of that before we camped south of the outhouse. Actually, just forget I said anything. Thanks.

Colorado 10

Same cabin, different day. Sorry for the less-than-aggressive editing there.

Colorado 9

A detail from the same old abandoned cabin as the last picture.

Colorado 8

We're away. For the next little bit, some pictures from in or just outside the Mount Massive Wilderness area. We were there to climb Mount Elbert, highest mountain in Colorado and second highest in the Lower 48. But we had some photo time to cool our heels the evening before the climb.

Colorado 7

Spotted somewhere outside Leadville, an old barn and slanting light that begged -- nay, demanded! -- that we stop the car and take a picture.

We're off on leave today. It's been hard working for six months in a row (well, mostly, except for Christmas week), after all those vacations from Afghanistan. Of course, it's also nice to get two days off every weekend. As always, we'll try to keep posting, but usually that doesn't work.

Colorado 6

Hey look! It's a bright yellow tractor! I wonder if it works.

Colorado 5

While we're showing shots of varied conditions at the same photo location, as we have the last couple days, we might as well throw in this picture, from basically the same spot as our very first welcome-back-from-Afghanistan-photo, posted exactly six months ago.

Colorado 4

Capturing lightning on film is not easy. Capturing lightning on digital camera is slightly easier, mostly because the cost of film drops to essentially zero so one can keep trying until he or she succeeds. The lightning storm that came in over Cowdrey Lake while we were camping on the eastern shore made it pretty easy, in that it was lightning-ing a lot. We managed to get several good lightning shots, of which this was the best -- even though the main strike is not as strong as in other shots, the offshoot heading to the right (more visible should you care to click on the picture above to see the embiggened version, which we take great pains not to suggest too frequently due to our severe aversion to self-promotion, but which is nevertheless always an option) is fantastic, stretching more than halfway across the frame.

Also shot at the same spot as yesterday's photo.

Colorado 3

We're suddenly wracked with guilt for the lack of Foreign Service-y content here. Well, maybe not wracked with guilt, but it's been months since we posted anything about living in a foreign country, perhaps because it's been months since we lived in a foreign country. If you are an American person who happened upon this blog because you are thinking of joining the Foreign Service, just remember that you will spend some time in Washington, a town that is not without its charms, but being exotic and foreign and such is not one of them.

So anyway, here is a different view from pretty much this exact place.

Colorado 2

Just outside Leadville, Colorado, on the road up to the campsite at the foot of Mount Elbert.

Colorado 1

For the next however long, but probably not every day, pictures we like from the greatest state in the union, Colorado. There will be mountains, there will be trees, there will be stars. Above, the Park Range across Cowdrey Lake.

Dangers of the Digital Age

There was a time when we cared about keeping our Flickr account clean. Pictures that we thought met some level of objective quality went to Flickr, and pictures that were just snapshots but were funny or illustrative or whatnot were hosted at a Flickr knockoff site called Zooomr. Why we ever trusted Zooomr with anything is a mystery, given that the reason we were using them was because they were free, and they were free because they sucked, which is not a very sustainable business model.

So now they've lost all the images anyone uploaded from 2009 and earlier, and have no plans to try to restore them or improve their service in any way. As a result, a bunch of the old posts on this blog have blank spots where there should be pictures that were hosted on Zooomr. We do get occasional people who find this blog by searching for some item that results in google pointing them to an old post, so if that's you, sorry. We barely find time to put up new content here, so I'm not sure when or if we will ever restore some of the older posts. Le sigh.

Anyway, if any reader should happen upon a post with a picture missing, we'd appreciate it if you'd tell us about it in the comments and we'll fix it. Of course, the odds that someone who found a problem would also find this post are pretty slim, but I suppose it can't hurt.

California Epilogue

One last thing, a teaser of one more sight from California, which we will present in greater detail some other time. Yeah, we were stretching on calling a lot of this California stuff worthy of publication, but this stuff will be worth it once we ever find time to edit it all...

California 24

OK, that's pretty much it from California. Here's a picture of a view of The City (as The Chronicle calls San Francisco) from The Suburb (as nobody calls Alameda). Perhaps coming soon, stuff from somewhere else!

California 23, or, Culinary Investigation Three of Three

Sorry we accidentally took some time off in the middle of January so our California posts are leaking into February and therefore ruining the nice monthly theme thing we had going for a few months there. C'est la vie.

So then, the A-number-one food item that is awesome in San Francisco and is crap in DC? The Burrito. DC has Chipotle, which I guess is mostly better than nothing. Mostly. But San Francisco has an embarrassment of burrito riches. That said, no matter how much we love Mission burritos (and I assure you, we like them a lot), unlike our Ice Cream Day and Muni-n-Sushi Day adventures we would probably die if we tried to eat three or more burritos in a day. Evolution just didn't prepare the human digestive tract for that kind of punishment. Maybe a hippo could do it. But a person? No. I beg you, do not try it. Please. For us.

So, we decided the next best thing was to have a double-blind Pepsi Challenge Mission burrito taste test. But we didn't want to put that much effort into it, so we did a not-even-really single-blind Mission burrito taste test.

The competitors, selected for their history in both winning "Best of San Francisco" Awards from the weekly alternative newspapers or for their history of being the burrito shop closest to where we used to live, were: Tacqueria Can-Cun, which won the Best of the Bay like twenty times; El Papalote, a relative newcomer that has usurped Can-Cun's weekly alternative rag title reign; and El Farolito, which has never won anything but has two convenient locations more or less on 24th Street.

We assembled a crack team of five taste-testers, and due to the particular tastes of some of the team, ordered a chicken burrito and a veggie burrito from each location. Chips were included as usual, but were not given any weight in the voting.

In the end, the clear winner with four votes of five was El Papalote, which is I suppose an indicator that if you get a bunch of yuppies in a room they're going to vote for the yuppie burrito place with the "fresh ingredients" and the fancy website with a statement of purpose that claims their taqueria is "based on memories of sunny Sunday afternoons spent in Chapultpec, in Mexico City." Bah. Your correspondent, not unlike that one dentist who does not prefer Trident gum, voted for El Farolito, which features "everything cooked in a vat of lard" and just barely has a website at all.

In any case, we hope that this information will help guide you to the right Mission Burrito for you should you ever visit the neighborhood.