Questions On Being Street Viewed

On my way to the library yesterday, I turned right in front of the Googlemobile waiting at the intersection. Boom! There they were, just past the police radar trap. Since that was the street I was turning onto, I looked them straight in the camera lens. It was a beautiful, warm day and I had my windows down and everything.

The current Street View for that intersection is four years old. I will now check that spot on Google Maps every day for the answers to two questions. How long does it take Google to put up new views once the pictures have been taken? Assuming the camera is running constantly and their car was stopped for a minute or two due to cross traffic, will they select me (and others) out of the scene in favor of shots without traffic if possible? And, if they do use a shot with me in it, how will I look making my turn all pixelated?

O.K. Three. Three questions.

And did they catch the radar trap on camera?

Four.

Paris 1951: Three Photographs

I've taken a closer look at the three photos that came in the envelope with the postcards and business cards.

All of the photos are black and white, printed on the standard glossy-front matte-back commercial photo development stock with scalloped edges, lighter but similar to the postcards.

One is of the Eiffel Tower taken from the Trocadero, the standard tourist shot except there are no people on the plaza and only three way off in the distance.

The other two, which I originally believed to be aerial shots, were, in fact, taken from the very summit of the tower itself. One is centered on the Arc de Triomphe, and the other is centered on Le Grand Palais with Sacre Coeur on the horizon. The back of the last one has "Eglise Sacre Coeur" handwritten in pen. The back of the Arc de Triomphe shot simply says "arch" in the same hand, and the one of the tower is blank.

I presume there was a whole roll (at least) taken in and around the city but these are the only ones in the envelope and there are no negatives to be found.

None of these additional landmarks are included in the postcard "tour" although La Madeleine is distinctly visible beyond Le Grand Palais and both Place Vendome and La Bourse (positively) and L'Arc du Carroussel (possibly) are within the span of the image if not discernible.

Hmmm. I just noticed that this last photo also encompasses the neighborhoods from the two business cards which, from this perspective, would be just below Montmartre and Sacre Coeur.

So, is it simple tourism that ties these all together? The handwriting on the photos and the business cards is different. I don't know who "Georges" is nor "M. Presse" (both from the business cards). And who was staying at the now defunct Hotel Metropole?

The Spring Rush

So, last week a small bulldozer came and scraped half of the empty field across from us.

A couple days later some strange fencing went up. Actually, it was less like fencing and more like random fence gates separated by invisible fencing. I think it marks off the area in which the builders will be working but does not inhibit access in any way.

Yesterday, a cement mixer drove by and several construction guys showed up. At first I thought they were going to lay down the foundation slab even though the ground, despite being scraped, had not been leveled. When I came home, however, I discovered they had put in a short (one foot or so) retaining wall outlining the intended floor plan. Presumably, a slab will come later.

Today there's a crew out there with cinder blocks.

Our county assesses impact fees to cover the cost of new infrastructure caused by increased development. When the recession hit, they slashed the impact fees down to near-nothing to try easing the burden on a crashing building industry. Last month, now the economy's back on track, the county commissioners voted to restore about half the fees. There are fewer than 60 days left before the new fees go into effect so there is a scramble to get permits issued before then.

It would seem our builder across the way got his approvals.

Signs of Spring

The mango tree has blossomed, is still blossoming, produced so many blossoms we caught birds nibbling on them and yet the tree is still full of little mango fruits.

The jasmine is blossoming and the warm night air, clear and calm and full of bright, sharp, glittering stars smells like a Persian garden.

The green parrots are back, as are the ibis, the hawks and the vultures. And the blacksnake. And the toads which have been clinging to the glass doors of the lanai and driving the cats crazy with frustration.

All of the doors and windows have been open for over a month now, at least the ones with screens to keep the bugs out and the cats in. Somehow, the occasional lizard still manages to find its way in, though.

The bulldozer arrived bright and early and spent three hours scraping the topsoil off half the open field across the road in preparation for someone building a house there.

There's been an active For Sale sign on that field for a few months now. I can't tell if someone bought the whole field and intends to build on half of it or if only half of it sold. I'm sure it's zoned for two lots. In either case, a house on that site will severely cramp available parking for next Hallowe'en. But that's still several seasons (Spring, High, Summer, Rainy and Fall, at least) away for now.

Paris 1951: Connecting the Dots

So far I've been concentrating on the two business cards and trying to learn something of the businesses they represented, but there are also a number of postcards in the envelope labelled Paris 1951. Ten of them, to be exact. And three photos, one of the Eiffel tower and two aerial shots.

All of the postcards seem to have been manufactured between the wars judging from the models of the cars and buses. They appear to be black and white photos, hand colored and printed on card stock
varnished on the illustrated side published by "E. R." with the notification "Paris" and "Reproduction Interdite." Most have a one-line description/title on the front, the rest have it on the back. Some are numbered.

La Madeleine - Present Day

Place Vendome - c.1900

From west to east we start with the first card at the front portico of La Madeleine, the Greek style temple in the 8th arrondissement, facing east toward Boulevard des Capucines. The second card is Place Vendome, facing north looking directly at Napoleon on his column and, past him, up the Rue de la Paix. Both those streets meet at Place de l'Opera.

Le Louvre - c.1900

 

La Bourse - Present Day

Traveling east from Place de l'Opera along Rue Reaumer we come to the third card, La Bourse, seen from the southeast corner. Turning 180 degrees and heading toward the river leads to the fourth card, Le Louvre and what appears to be a low aerial view of the courtyard from behind and above the Arc de triomphe du Carrousel. (Honestly, I think I like the old view better, with all the gardens and trees rather than the paved over courtyard of today, even with the pyramid.)

L'Hotel-de-Ville - Back Then (Even the trees are the same now)

Continuing up the river we come to the fifth card, L'Hotel-de-Ville, although the photograph was taken from across the Pont d'Arcole on Ile de la Cite just outside the front door of the Hotel Dieu.

Card number six is a general view of Paris looking down the Seine. Aside from a background of low, gray, smoggy, obscuring haze worthy of 19th Century London (which the colorist has rendered in full lung-choking grit), the most notable feature of this card is not the seven bridges of the title but the fact that it looks west from just above L'Hotel-de-Ville to the location of the seventh card which is the only one that is no longer identifiable from its title.

Le Palais de Justice (5 Quai Horloge) - Present Day

The seventh card is titled Le Palais de Justice. The building itself, although cleaned up nicely, has no signage or any indication of its function other than flying both the French and EU flags over a small, plain black door and a couple of serious security cameras, merely the number 5 Quai Horloge on the side shown in the postcard, mostly because the grand main entrance worthy of a national supreme court is around the corner. The facade shown in the view does have a few impressive medieval towers, though.

Pantheon looking up Rue Soufflot - Today

The tour now continues across the river and south down Boulevard Saint-Michel to Place Edmond Rostand where the next photograph was taken from just behind the fountain at the base of Rue Soufflot looking east to the Pantheon. The scene today looks pretty much as it did then except for the increased numbers of people and cars and the fact the corner tobacconist has been replaced by a McDonald's.

Les Invalides

The last two postcards are linked together and require a trip westward, still on the Left Bank, to a spot almost due south of where we started: Les Invalides. The first view is looking north at the exterior and dome. Once again the gardens in the card have been paved over although the building itself has been cleaned. The last card is Napoleon's Tomb.

If one traces this path on a map, starting at La Madelaine and proceeding generally in the shortest direction to the next card (La Bourse being the major exception), it forms a circuit around central Paris less than ten miles long, a kind of open sack with the Sorbonne at its bottom and Place de la Concorde and Quai D'Orsay in the open mouth.

Is there a story to go with this tour beyond a simple afternoon walkabout? Perhaps the three original photographs might help clarify.

And It Rained, Too

Complete failure at the hospital yesterday.

I went in for my monthly platelet donation. The guy who took my blood pressure always gets a high reading (within acceptable range but always on the high side). I always joke/complain so this time he took another reading and the diastolic came in six points lower than the first try. He blames it on the machine but others have tested me on the same machine and he has tested me on the other machine more than once.

I had a premonition something wasn't right when the "pinch" of the needle insertion continued after the draw had started but that can happen sometimes if there is any moisture on the skin at the insertion point that then gets carried along with the tip of the needle. However, the draw started O.K. so the nurse stepped out to get lunch leaving me with the tech who did the blood pressure test.

No sooner was she gone than I felt fluttering in the vein and the machine started beeping. The fluttering usually means the tip of the needle is touching a valve in the vein which can randomly restrict its intake. The tech could feel it, too, and did his best to attend the machine but he wasn't comfortable trying to adjust either the machine or the needle in the vein. So we waited, rebooting the machine every few minutes as the poor draw caused beeping alarms.

When the nurse returned, we explained the situation and she reduced both the draw and return rates on the machine which made the fluttering go away but otherwise did no good. She then tried adjusting the needle and ended up holding it in her hand propping it against the inside of my elbow for a minute or so which was untenable in the long run.

She tried moving the needle into a stable position where she could leave it alone but, instead, hit the vein wall and punctured it. She realized what happened even before I felt the pain. She had the needle out and gauze on the site while I was still saying, "Ow!"

They had less than a half unit of platelets so that was useless. Because if the immediate removal of the needle none of the blood in the machine could be returned leaving me too low (according to SOP) to donate again before my next scheduled time in order to try making up for this one. All of the tubing and the half bag of platelets were disposed of (which would have happened anyway, for the tubing). And we all lost a good two hours of time. Plus, a lot of other donors have been calling in sick so the hospital isn't exactly swimming in platelets right now as it is.

I ended up with two cookies, some apple juice and a subdural hematoma which, while a pretty purple right now, will soon turn sickly green and then yellow before it fades.

Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution

I've mentioned before my theory that the reason redneck properties end up looking like redneck properties is the subjects' congenital inability to complete any project. I hold to that premise.

Just a few recent items of note in passing:

My brother has a power wash machine that's been sitting in the garage for a couple years now. (I think the last time it was used was when Mom died and he blasted (most of) the outside of the house before the cousins came over for her wake.) A couple months ago he took it out and discovered just how easy it was to clean the driveway of twenty-odd years of weather, dirt and grime. He would do a smallish section at a time a couple times a week and we moved the vehicles around accordingly to accommodate.

Except he's apparently become bored with that now. The last 20-25% of the driveway, down by the street, hasn't been touched in weeks and there is no indication he intends to go any further. And it's not an even break between completed/untouched sections where he can pretend that it's a different color concrete or anything. It's just obviously not done.

The Christmas tree, at least, came down a week after I removed the last of the ornaments. He insists there is one proper way to assemble and disassemble the tree and he knows what that is. So it's in its box . . . which is still sitting in the hallway two weeks later. I do not know the location of his storage unit, neither do I have a key.

Meanwhile, though, he suddenly had the urge last evening to clean out the roll-top desk. It needed it desperately, having accumulated probably a decade's worth of holiday cards, utility bills, batteries (dead and alive), pens (dead and alive), address books (mostly alive), insurance calendars (assuredly dead), and other assorted ephemera and impedimenta. He had apparently finished by the time I came home since he was in his room watching TV having left the chair he was using blocking the doorway and all the drawers and top of the desk wide open. Do you want cats in your roll-top desk? Because that's how you get cats in your roll-top desk. They'd climb on it occasionally even when it was shut. I closed everything up.

I believe he honestly does not see finishing detail. And certainly does not see it as part of the project. The project was to take down the tree. It's down. The project was to clean out the desk. It's clean. End of story.

I don't know what the deal is with the driveway.