St. Leo chapel-in-the-woods, Roberts Cove, LA

This was on the beginning of the black and white roll I shot in Galveston, I had forgotten about it until I got the photos back.

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Galveston, TX: Kodak Ektar in the Smena 8M

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Galveston, Texas

These are just the cell phone shots from my vacation last month, I should be getting the film back this week.

Old City Cemetery:

Bolivar Point Lighthouse:

Pleasure Pier:

Sacred Heart:

Bishop’s Palace:

Sacred Heart from one of the bedroom windows of Bishop’s Palace:

Art on the seawall:

The ruins of Jean Lafitte’s house:

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I took some photos this weekend FINALLY!

You guys! It was still 90 degrees all weekend but I decided I DID NOT CARE, summer should be OVER and maybe if I just act like it is I can end it WITH THE POWER OF MY MIND. Or maybe I was just super-bored and itching to get my finger on a shutter button after WEEKS AND WEEKS AND WEEKS of hiding from the horrible apocalyptic hellsummer of south Louisiana. I went somewhere close to home and got going as early in the day as possible (for a Saturday).

Roberts Cove is a community in Acadia Parish, technically part of the town of Rayne but quite rural. It’s one of many communities in south Louisiana with German heritage; France recruited for colonists pretty heavily in the Catholic areas Germany. Roberts Cove was actually predominantly German-speaking right into the 20th century, when WWI put a stop to that. But many buildings in town still bear distinctive Bavarian architectural details, such as the tiny “chapel in the woods” on the grounds of St. Leo. (Although in this case the “woods” is a single enormous live oak.)

These are just cell phone shots, but I shot some black and white, too (still trying to shoot my way through all of the Fuji Neopan that I hoarded).

Not an ambitious shoot, but a charming subject and a good one to ease back into the routine.

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treading water, not literally

We got very lucky in the recent flooding; or maybe “lucky” is not the right word: the first house my parents bought when they moved back to south Louisiana was twice destroyed in hurricanes. They had to strip it down to studs and rebuild it after Rita, and when the exact same thing happened in Ike, my mother went “eff this” and they moved. They looked at elevation very carefully when they looked for that 2nd house.

There was flooding all around us, including in town (we live outside the city limits of Abbeville) and we were kind of stuck in our immediate neighborhood during the weekend, and I couldn’t get to work on Monday or Tuesday because the bridges over the Vermilion were closed and LA-14 was under water. But we were fine, I’ve seen more water in the ditches and on the lawns during the average summer thunderstorm. The worst thing we had to deal with was a dog that hates to poop in the rain.

I spent most of the time watching movies on the MST3K YouTube channel and doing cross stitch, finishing two projects:

(The text is my own addition, I found the alphabet by Googling “backstitch alphabet”, here’s a link if you’re interested.)

And I got started on a big project, a copy of the original 1723 map of New Orleans, the pattern is by the same woman who did the hurricane tracking map of the Gulf of Mexico that I did for Mom a few years ago. I’m doing it on 18-count as opposed to over 2 squares of 28 count (so 14, essentially), so the finished project won’t be as large, but the pattern is just as big, so I expect that will occupy me for at least the rest of the year.

Other than that, I’m just waiting for summer to end. I have my October vacation all planned, I’m spending a week in Galveston and renting a studio apartment (via Airbnb) that’s a block from the beach. To say I’m looking forward to it is a massive understatement.

Fuji Neopan (3 of 3)

At the pow wow:

This Indian Mission schoolhouse (where my grandfather went to school) and Episcopal Church on Bear Mountain:

Fuji Neopan (2 of 3)

Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, VA:

Appomattox Court House, VA:

South River Friends Meetinghouse* Cemetery in Lynchburg, VA:

*Lynchburg was founded by John Lynch, a Quaker.