Bookmark Project - Fountain Photographers (people)

A few posts ago I featured Allison at the Williams Tower fountain here in Houston.  Evidently this is a very popular spot for others to do the same with their kinfolk (and/or clients)...

Bookmark Project - Beachcomber Through Reeds (people)

If you've followed me at all in this blog you know I like to take pictures of things through things.  A little more bokeh would have been nice, but was satisfied with this shot of Allison through the reeds doing her thing on the beach.

And she would have done a lot more of this growing up, as she loves the beach, but alas...neither her mother nor I like the beach at all.  (same goes for her brother Andrew, I think)

Bookmark Project - Navasota Sandstone (landscapes)

This almost qualifies as an abstract, but is part of a riverbank so here it is in the landscape category.  The picture was captured alongside the Navasota River here in Texas, on a Girl Scout kayaking adventure.

Bookmark Project - Wavy English Driveway (landscapes)

You've seen the larger version of this picture if you followed my series on the Lake District in England.  I certainly hadn't anticipated making it into a bookmark, but knew it was a keeper as soon as the shutter was snapped.

So interesting that in this part of England landowners are required by law to keep a path open through their property for the walking culture.  A sign is commonly posted requesting respect when you're about to cross over a property line.  And sometimes the path leads a walker very close to the house.  Andrew and I ended up in this fellow's back yard before realizing that we might have missed a turn somewhere.

Must say that of all the places in the world we've been, this one tops the list.  After having enjoyed it with my son for the first time, planned to take the wife there this year but the pesky pandemic got in the way...

Bookmark Project - Allison at Williams Tower (fountains)

This one is officially in the People category, but it's so fountain-y and I like it so much decided to include it here.  Captured at the Williams (formerly Transco) Tower with the Fujifilm 7000, I wanted to crop in to make Allison bigger but the technical quality just wasn't there.  Even so, think it makes an ideal bookmark and memento of our afternoon jaunt there back in September of 2008.

Bookmark Project - Bayou Bend Fountain (fountains) / Bob and the Lemon Tree

We took a walk on the "Azalea Trail" here in Houston this past March, a few weeks before the COVID pandemic hit.  This is a familiar sight to anyone that's been to Bayou Bend.

Can't come here without thinking about our church friend Bob Ross, who was the administrator and head gardener of this property.  He was regularly on Channel 8 as a gardening expert, and was invited to go to England on several occasions to share his horticultural expertise there.

He and his wife Polly were friends of ours for several years.  They moved to Arizona and Polly has since passed on, but Bob's legacy lives on in our lives because of a lemon tree in the back yard of a previous home we owned.  I told him that I wished we could grow a lemon tree just like another one we knew about in the neighborhood.  Bob said No problem, just show me where it's at.  So he and I walked up the driveway of that home where the tree was and snipped off part of one of the branches (we knew the homeowners and got permission beforehand).  When we got it home Bob did something with some sphagnum and foil to graft it onto a lemon tree we already had in the back yard.  After giving it time for the roots to grow into the sphagnum we planted it as a new tree and away we went...a genetically identical twin to the one we'd cut from before.  Though we no longer live in that house, when we pass by and see it over the fence on our walking route I think of Bob.

Bookmark Project - Bamboo Stand (fog shots)

Even fog created by man can be kinda neat.  This was captured with my trusty Fujifilm Finepix 3800 at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans (2002).  The camera only had 3MP, but at the time was quite advanced.  And as I've said many times, the sensor on the Fuji products were something special; if they'd had a decent DSLR when I was in the market for one the choice would have been a no-brainer...

Bookmark Project - Taiping Suspension Bridge (fog shots)

Next to silhouettes my favorite type of picture is fog shots.  This has to rank as a favorite among those, but can think of several not yet developed into bookmarks that would outrank it.

Another one that's been posted before, this is of the Taiping suspension bridge up the mountain from the town of Zhuqi.  As stated in that series of posts, many would be disappointed at not being able to see the ground below, but it was a bonus in my eyes because of the opportunity for shots like this.

Bookmark Project - Red Hibiscus Stamen (flowers and blooms) / A Final Thought about the Slaughterhouse

This picture in its entirety was posted recently, but because it's my all-time favorite of the flowers and blooms decided to post it again as a bookmark.  I've printed this one a dozen times for family and friends.

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 10/20]

So how do I conclude this series of slaughterhouse stories.  Probably with the question/comment I get most, which is, "I'll bet you couldn't stand to eat meat after working there!"

Actually the opposite is true.  I saw first-hand how standards of cleanliness were enforced by the FDA.  The floor had at least six of them roaming around at all times, scrutinizing every move we made to ensure that we followed all the rules: no picking anything up off the floor; use the (steam-heated) hand sterilizers between every carcass processed; return and exchange a knife it it's been dropped, etc. etc.  They would also look for unsanitary conditions everywhere, even ensuring that the brick floor was squeaky clean.  And they would diligently check product for things that shouldn't be there, such as strands of hair or stomach contents.  We all got nervous when an inspector ordered a box to be opened in our work area, which could happen anywhere at any time, then examine closely whatever was in there.  I once got dinged because two strands of hair were found in a box of my lips, and a couple of guys had to work overtime during the A shift to open every single box in the pallet and get all the hairs out.  This was not an uncommon sight on the floor.  Very tedious work, but some were glad for the opportunity to earn a little extra dough.

I remember one of the inspectors very well...in fact he was the head of the inspection team on B shift.  He was a little guy - all of about 4'10" tall - but was mean enough to strike fear if he wandered into your work area.

It's one thing to get a reprimand from the feds on meat that wasn't up to standard, but an absolutely fireable offense was consuming product on the floor.  Here we were surrounded by meat, and what could be more fresh?  It was the practice of some workers to take the little salt and pepper packets out of the cafeteria during break and bring them out on the floor to season meat that was clandestinely cooked in the hand sterilizers.  I did this but once, for some heart meat, and thought it was great.  But only once, as my conscience wouldn't allow it to become a habit; I bought heart meat at the supermarket thereafter.  And if I saw an IBP logo on a box in the back through a door, wondered if I was the one that packed it in the first place.

So this ends the series on my experiences at IBP.  Of course there is much, much more but it's all out there somewhere, and we'll just let it rest for now...

Bookmark Project - New Taipei Flower (flowers and blooms) / The Gut Table

My gosh, flowers and blooms.  Where do I start?  As of this writing I've created seventy bookmarks featuring flowers and blooms.  Guess I'll post a couple of the more popular ones...

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 10/20]

The fourth and last job I did at IBP was during the summer and fall of 1981.  At the end of the gut table, once the parts intended for human consumption were taken out for processing, the leftovers were carried by the conveyor to be dumped into the basement below.  Just before that, however, as the last job on the gut table, I was stationed to do two jobs.

One of those jobs was to use my knife to cut the trachea from the lungs.  Don't know what they did with those things, but it was my job to separate them before the churning conveyor conveyed them over the edge into the basement.

The other part of that job was much more interesting.  The gall bladders came my way either by themselves (if the liver was good enough to use for human consumption and taken off the line to be skinned) or attached to the liver (if it was diseased and/or otherwise deemed not fit for human consumption).  Either way, I would grab it at the proximal end and slice it open, allowing the bile to drain into a 55-gallon plastic barrel.  Naturally I was curious as to why they saved the stuff, and was told that it was sold to the perfume industry!  What?  Sure enough, I stuck my head in the barrel and took a good sniff, discovering that it actually smells pretty good!  They used the gall from cow guts, drained by a college kid on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse, so that people could smell better...