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Not Me

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Daily writing prompt
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?
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I would much rather see something named after someone that matters or has mattered to me. Once I’m gone, I will be past caring for something named after me; but while I’m alive, it would warm my heart to commemorate my love for my mother, father, brother, or Martine.

Death in an Oasis

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The Canon PowerShot A1400

At high noon, as I was preparing to shoot more snapshots of the oasis at the Whitewater Preserve, I stubbed my toe on a rock and fell on my face. My skin bore a few scrapes, and it took my brother and a large bystander to stand me up on my feet; but the lens on my trusty A1400 rangefinder camera was shattered.

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to retrieve the pictures I had shot that day, but fortunately I had nothing to worry about. Even with a broken lens, I was able to copy the pictures to my hard drive and edit them for possible use in this blog. The following two photos were from my old camera.

The Oasis at Whitewater Preserve

Since Martine and I are scheduled for a trip to Tucson, Arizona the week after next, I wanted to replace the camera quickly. Fortunately, a lightly used A1400 was on sale at Amazon Marketplace. I jumped on it and received it promptly. I would rather deal with old technology at this point than spend great gobs of cash for something that would take at least a month to research.

Me at Whitewater

This picture was shot by my brother using my camera. (You can see his water bottle on the fence to my right.)

Whitewater

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The Whitewater River Near the Campground

On Sunday, my brother Dan suggested we visit the Whitewater Preserve. Now I was familiar with the desolate Whitewater exit off the I-10, all bleached rocky desert. But apparently, head uphill from the exit and one comes upon one of those little green paradises one often finds in desert canyons.

The altitude of the part of the Whitewater Preserve we visited was at 2,223 feet (678 meters). Whereas the floor of the desert was around 90° Fahrenheit (31° Celsius), the temperature at the visitor center was in the mid 70s (around 24° Celsius).

My brother took the above picture from his smartphone. The water is from the Whitewater River, which flows from Mount San Gorgonio and ends up, when not absorbed by the aquifer underlying the Coachella Valley, in the Salton Sea.

The Whitewater Preserve is part of the Sand-to-Snow National Monument, comprising parts of Southern San Bernardino County and Northern Riverside County.

Over the next few days, I will share with you some of the photographs I took there—the very last photographs from my trusty Canon PowerShot A1400 (R.I.P.).

Desert X 2025

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Sculpture “The Living Pyramid” by Dénes Ágnes

I returned today from a long weekend visiting my brother Dan in the Coachella Valley. Saturday began on a dubious note: We visited an installation of the Desert X 2025 art show at Summerlands in Rancho Mirage. Since the artist was the Hungarian-born Dénes Ágnes, we expected great things, being self-professed Hungarians ourselves.

What we saw was a plywood pyramid painted white, planted with native desert plants, that is on view at Summerlands until May 11, 2025. Ah, well, I guess not all Hungarian art works are great.

I was reminded of Maya pyramids in Yucatán that were not rebuilt by archeologists, such as this pyramid I photographed at Sayil in the Puuc Highlands in January 2020:

Maya Pyramid at Sayil

Another point of comparison is one of English artist Frederick Catherwood’s engravings in the 1841 classic by John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán:

The Castillo at Chichén Itzá Engraved by Frederick Catherwood

I guess I’m too much in love with the impressive Maya ruins in Mexico and Central America to accept Dénes’s “The Living Pyramid” with anything other than a shrug. Nice try, but no cigar.