Thanksgiving Day: social relations "thanks" to a turkey....

Thanksgiving Day is about to end and people have celebrated it or are currently enjoying a big and fantastic dinner with family and friends. This being the second time I am experiencing this celebration, it offers me a unique opportunity through which to manage a variety of relations: with our friends and neighbours, with my family at home, friends at home, as a reader and recipient of messages, as a producer of messages. Food and drinks become the means through which to reach and engage with people thus enhancing or adding value to relations.

First comes the co-ordination in preparations and mutual agreement on who cooks what and who brings what to to the table. This is not easy to achieve, as my neighbour states. Not all people are willing to cook. It takes a good and strong relation in order to be able to ask for  particular contributions and be sure that people will carry them out.

Next comes a full commitment to the fulfillment of the cooking contribution to the celebration. This is the spinal cord of the issue, as far as I have lived it and this is my own interpretation of the celebration. Such a commitment is based on a successful negotiation between one's "resources" and peoples' expectations on high quality food both in taste and in appearance. To be more precise, I here mean that one has to make do with whatever is available in terms of cooking utensils, instructions,  cooking facilities and potential mal- or under functioning, with time and most of all, with experience. On the other hand, one has to be aware of the recipients of this message- cooked food. So, a good background- a sound knowledge of tastes and preferences or allergies is a sine qua non to this cooking experience. The variable here is that of experience. Lack of experience becomes an impediment to this negotiation , adding anxiety and nervousness to the person.  I found myself in such a position this very day and struggling to master the kitchen and all that comes with this notion.

Detailed instructions and a thorough study ahead of time are the best predicament to this impediment. This is easy to imagine. Yet, detailed instructions that will sound and appeal to the person are hard to find. One has to match himself with them. Here is then the result to all these moments shortly before taking it out of the oven and while standing on the buffet, waiting for hungry people to appreciate it!



                                    

 

 

The other side to this celebration regards first look comments upon receiving cooked food, opening the lid and checking the turkey: praise and encouragement for more similar achievements are implicitly accompanied by eagerness to taste so that the test is complete. The senses are working towards  evaluation and  the person can look forward to enjoying a good face among friends as a cook.  Conviviality, in other words, needs this kind of solid base: a highly evaluated person and  his cooking skills. Now all people can enjoy each other's food and trust that there will be more moments in the future! The tender moment comes when people with special preferences set themselves to " have a bite" , just as promised and come up with happy faces. This is a ramification of the whole set of relations which I particularly enjoy: I see such people as a difficult audience to win, so even this small engagement with my cooking is a big step forward.

Photographs are indispensable to this celebration, given that I am not familiar with all kinds of food included in this special meal. On the one hand, I want to treasure such moments and, on the other, I want to transmit them to my family at home. Most of all, they need to look at my own accomplishment lining up with other peoples' cooking and inspire them to more comments. Evaluation , appreciation, admiration,  and further challenges are part of the game of photograph interpretation by those who have never seen this side of myself nor tasted my food. I, too, am re-interpreted and placed in new contexts and new places.

While celebrating this very day and rising glasses of red wine, feeling grateful for being alive, for having good friends and neighbours, I feel grateful for being given and grasping the opportunity to read through a roasted turkey and interpret it under a new light....

 

 

                                 

The shaking man: Art in Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco (2)

 The second ,exciting piece of art to see in Yerba Buena Gardens stands on a different spot and is more open to public inspection and interaction. The Shaking Man,  as its name has it can spark illusions to people, as happened in my case. Looking at the statue from a small distance, I initially thought of a street performer standing and ready to engage with children or other curious audience. I was expecting to see him move hands or legs but to no vain. The shaking man stood there in silence while people walked past him, others took photographs or glanced at him. Just a few steps before the exit of the park, he embodies urbanites rushing, shaking, feeling stressed. The contrast with the serenity the gardens give on to visitors cannot but be striking....



To the top of the world I shall climb: art in Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco (1)

I had never seen a carousel so big as in Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. It stood silent, closed for maintenance and making a plea to people: This carousel is 100 years old. Let us help it live another 100 years. I walked around it, observing horses, camels and lions, I imagined it moving full of happy children and could feel the aura. Childrens' world is a point of reference for Yerba Buena Gardens. Yet, in wandering under early November noon sunshine all around this park, I could not but stop, stand, feel and interpret things in front of two pieces of art.

The title of my post comes from a Greek verse: I will climb all the way up to the top of the world (στην κορφή του κόσμου θ΄ανέβω ψηλά). It was my first reaction to the first piece of art. It is called: URGE. The visitor comes across the globe with all continents on it. On top of the globe, literally speaking, there stands a man.  Both hands leaning forward, all fingers are so bent as  to face the palms and his whole body too. It is the gesture of urge: come, join me to the top of the world.

The whole piece of art is made of different materials and stands by a tree. Light and shadow interplay is magnificent at noon time- early afternoon. The composure of the surrounding area contributes to the promotion of the message and it captures all attention. One can easily forget that he walks in San Francisco and is surrounded by amorphous buildings....



Cable cars (3): photographic evidence: cables, grips and sheaves: from the museum to the road...

The following photographs  show  parts of the Cable car museum in San Francisco: it is the "museumised" part which, at the same time, is the "real thing" for moving cable cars. There are also photographs showing the cable, the sheaves, the grip. Last photographs come from a cable car serving the line Powell- Hyde.

 

Cable cars: photographic evidence (2): communication channels and messages

The following photographs refer to road signs signaling stops for cable cars. One of them is in Chinese. There is also a photograph on safety rules. Last, but not least, there is a photograph showing part of the interior of the cable car. Note the chord that runs along the top of the vehicle: it is exclusively used by drivers to communicate between themselves. Pulling the chord twice is a request for a stop. Pulling it once is a signal for moving on.

 

 

Cable cars: photographic evidence of an alive history....(1)

The following photographs illustrate my brief description of them.

Have you ever had a ride on a cable car? Well, do!!!!

Tourist guides working on "hop-on hop-off" buses usually speak a lot of information about the place. As such they can spark interest in other  ways of exploring a city. The blond lady who guided us through San Francisco city was a lively person: she interacted with people and things on the spot. Shortly before leaving the tour, I heard her asking each one of us: " have you tried cable cars?".  Two passengers had. The rest of us were new to the city so we had not tried this ride.

24 hours later, taking her suggestion seriously, I decided on a visit to the  Cable car museum.   As a pedestrian, I stopped in order to observe cable cars going up or down the road. I wanted to listen to the sound that preceded the car and the sound that lingered on the road after the cable car had passed.  was curious to see how people get on and off this means of transportation, how car drivers reacted, how frequent routes were.... And that is where my own fascination with cable cars started.

The museum itself is the implementation of an exciting idea: let people see how cable cars move, what kinds of tools technicians use, what are these cables, what sound they produce... The small, L shaped museum grabs the visitor by the ears: the sound is ongoing, monotonous and deafening... It is only because the visitor can bend over any spot of the L shape floor and look down to observe big wheels working endlessly and cables rolling. This is the source of energy for cable cars. No representations, no reflections but only real things. Reality is "museumised" as much as all objects related to cable cars and coming from the past. This museum is an excellent sample of the past sliding into present time and hence confirming continuity: The concise labels and descriptions can easily be observed right downwards: what moved cable cars some decades ago is still moving them.

As for cable cars themselves, the "surrounding discourse" is like magic to me: there are 3 routes left out of 8 nowadays.  Cable cars are very frequent and usually full of tourists, either sitting or standing or even holding tight from iron bars to the sides of the car.  Each car is operated by two "drivers" who communicate between themselves by pulling a cord once or twice, depending on the message.

It takes a special kind of art to push or pull the black and red handle, especially when going up or down the roads of San Francisco. This "art" as a passenger called it, is inextricably linked with drivers' sense of responsibility to passengers, pedestrians and other cars. Witnessing  drivers' extra care for passengers and strong reprimanding on careless pedestrians, I could not but be surprised.

Cable cars are obliged to go by the nature of the roads. This means that they can stop  at crossroads where the place is flat. They stop in the middle of the road. Taking these two together gives other car drivers a difficult time, as they have to drive their own vehicles to the right or the left of the stopped cable car so as to move on.  I enjoyed this moment when the dominant vehicle was a colorful cable car and traffic was channeled accordingly.  It is a sign of locals' relation to their "heritage" and to tourists.

Stop signs stand on pavement and contain useful information. Some of them are in Chinese.

When the cable car reaches the final destination, another "ritual" takes place: both drivers take it to a wooden round platform. They both come off the car and push it so as to turn it around. The platform moves along with the car until the cable car faces the way up.

Cable cars became the most exciting feature of San Francisco because of all these processes that I witnessed and photographed. What is the core essence however is an emotional turn to this tourist attraction: cable cars stand for locals' love for them and their struggle to preserve them from total extinction some time in 1947 and a further struggle to restore them in the 80s. Freidel Klussman, the lady who leaded efforts to reconstruct cable cars and reset them in locals' hearts- as the text puts it in the museum's display case- is a legacy: there is special reference to her in the museum and in peoples' hearts.

While browsing through the artifacts in that little peculiar museum, under the sounds of wheels and cables, another visitor remarked: " I have travelled all over the US. San Francisco is chaos but there is no other place like it. These guys are history".  Indeed so: history well and alive....

San Francisco: the past in the present...

Students at the department of public relations and communication at the Technological and Educational Institute of the Ionian Islands based in Cefalonia, Greece, are taught on public relations in tourism. When writing their undergraduate dissertations on tourism, they talk about the tourist package and include the whole experience from the moment one prepares and locks his front door until the moment he unlocks it having returned from his holidays. Still, an aspect of the emotional dimension involved in this package lingers and the enthusiastic tourist can cling on to his memories or bought artifacts for days after the holiday has ended.

I am here reflecting on my self and my most recent short visit-students are taught to call it city break- to San Francisco.

My status, that of a tourist, provided me with a variety of opportunities: things to taste, see, experience. In engaging in such tasks, I found myself  observing how the city is presented to tourists: what strategies and means people had employed in order to preserve and promote their "heritage". Here follow some of them, to the extent I could grasp them:

• Within this framework of preservation and promotion, I could see the extent to which locals complied with several rules which forwarded aspects of heritage and, quite often, presented them with obstacles. To be more specific and as I hope to show through my own photographs in the posts to follow, I am here talking about means of transportation which slow drivers down but nobody complains, as I could register.
• Whether moving or standing such strategies and means, better say: channels, are readily available to the senses. You can see and hear and touch, you can see and hear but keep off- limitations to the availability of sensory perception are dictated by safety and health rules. You can see, hear and imagine... There is no end to the combination of senses, only limits in certain cases, as I hope will become evident .
• Space is used in its open as well as in closed forms.  The boundary is not clear, given that small and big buildings exist side by side with open space and the display of objects of art or of the past. Still, this complex of open and closed space  signifies a special place, a transformed space and becomes highly important.

 

I see this as an introduction to what will follow and can guide us to view San Francisco from a fresh angle.

 

 

 



Photo essays on Halloween: the last moment: TRICK OR TREAT?

Halloween is just over. Children are left with a merry moment and a huge number of treats!

Here are my last photographs for this feast, bringing together decorations and sweeties.