Above/featured: Headwaters of the Waimakariri River, near Bealey – 18 Jul 2012.
For LAPC’s first alphabet challenge, I began with a contribution about 3 German places whose names begin with the letter ‘A’. This follow-up is 3 locations in New Zealand (Aotearoa):
• Akaroa, on the South Island;
• Arthur’s Pass, on the South Island;
• Auckland, on the North Island.
Above/featured: “Welterbe” (World heritage): GreCon/Fagus, Alfeld – 28 Sep 2017.
For LAPC’s first alphabet challenge, I present three German locations whose names begin with ‘A’; all three are in the list of the nation’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS).
• Aachen, in North Rhine Westphalia (Nordrhein-Westfalen, NW),
• Alfeld, in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen, NI), and
• Augsburg, in Bavaria (Bayern, BY).
(I also created an A-3 post for Aotearoa/New Zealand.)
In Seattle, a friend in Ballard recommends a visit to their neighbourhood’s weekly farmers’ market. Despite the forecast for intermittent morning showers, I’m lured by any stroll through a market for bright harvest colours and freshly prepared food.
A slow meander through the stalls, letting curiosity be the guide. Fresh apples and pears here; ripe plump tomatoes there. From an assortment of red and yellow peppers; to an array of yellow and green gourds. Quickly, the appetite is on high alert. Quesadillas prepared fresh from the grill. Hot from the fryer, little donuts sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Happy dogs walking their humans; couples strolling with children; others sitting on the curb for a chat, nosh, and sip.
In the mid- to late-1970s, our parents took us to single-screen movie theatres with names like Olympia, Golden Harvest, and Shaw for cinema night to watch movies made in Hong Kong. There were dramas; some high on the melodrama and low on character. Some were historic-period pieces, and there were kung-fu movies for which Dad passed his love to me.
There’s nothing quite like seeing a kung-fu action sequence on a big screen. I was mesmerized the first time I laid eyes on a memorable fight scene set in Rome’s Colosseum, that epic scene observed by little stone dragons between “Little Dragon” himself, Bruce Lee, and Chuck Norris’ character in the 1972 film “The Way of the Dragon“. As a kid, I was proud to have had the same surname as this Bruce fellow, and memories of seeing his on-screen characters prevailing in fights have stuck over time (e.g., “Boards don’t hit back.”)
Tragically, Bruce and his son, Brandon, died too young. I’m certain when I was a teen that I asked where Bruce Lee was buried; my parents didn’t know and in pre-internet days, it was more of a challenge to find those answers. But the mystery has long been solved: Bruce Lee and his son, Brandon, lay side by side in Lake View Cemetery in Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
Despite multiple visits to the city in years past, this particular return trip to Seattle has been decades in the making for a chance to honour a part of my childhood and a part of my heritage. When I find the Lees, my arrival means another answer has been quietly realized. On a crisp bright autumn morning under blue skies, I feel my father’s spirit with me; he never had the chance to come to this cemetery. My lips move without voice, a prayer I utter into the ether, pushing for hope to reach him. Because I know now that this, is also for my Dad.
Above/featured: Northeast on US-60/AZ-77, through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, just outside of Show Low, AZ.
The following takes place entirely on travel day 16 in the American Southwest. Departing Tucson, Arizona, we headed north and east on AZ-77, US-60, and I-25 into New Mexico for Santa Fe, New Mexico. We drove through a variety of landscapes in east-central Arizona and west-central New Mexico for a total of 856 kilometres (532 miles).
Fotoeins Fotografie 