My most current blog entry:
Entries from December 1, 2010 - December 31, 2010
2010 Christmas/New Years: Seattle/Portland/San Francisco
Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 1:19PM 
Pike Market, Seattle.
Seattle: 'Tis the season for . . . . . . cheese fries?
A perfect day to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge! Too bad I left my CF card reader at home in Bangkok! I will upload the good stuff in Portland in a few days.
Nice (from my wife's camera).
Sail boats out on San Francisco Bay on a crisp cold December day.
The Golden Gate Bridge partially shrouded in fog.
Fog banks swept across San Francisco Bay.
Dr. Jeff Harper
San Francisco:
I made my pilgrimage to City Lights Books in San Francisco to purchase a copy of 'Howl' and 'A Coney Island of the Mind' . . . . I was last at City Lights in 1969!
The alley next to City Lights Books is a kind of "walk of the poets" . . . . .
Yes.
The famous Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco is actually a wharf!
I had the opportunity to visit my birthplace, Monterey, California on a beautiful day.
I spotted this fuzzy bud in Monterey.
Dr. Jeff Harper
Oregon: Oregon is my favorite place on the planet for natural beauty . . . just barely beating out New Zealand.
It was a very cold December in Western Oregon but that did not stop my friend Jeff Milligan and I from our search for magical textures, patterns, and landscapes.
This old fence and aging wall makes an even better photo without me. Willamette Valley, Oregon.
On our drive around the country roads outside of Woodburn, Oregon we happened across an old railroad trestle . . . well . . . that had photogenic nuts.
Trestle nut.
The entire railroad structure was bolted together.
Railway bolts.
Weathered, corroded, rusted.
The Willamette Valley of Oregon is a wet and damp place most of the year and moss grows on any south surface.
Nature making art of bolts.
A winter sunset in the foothills of the Oregon Cascades near Silver Creek Falls.
Sunset snow and cloud on Oregon field furrows.
We ended our Oregon stay with a GREAT New Years' party at the Hilton Hotel in Portland.
Dr. Jeff Harper
A few more pics from last Christmas' wonderful trip to the American West Coast.
The San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog.
My wonderful wife, Yoo, and I not shrouded in fog on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.
Another in the Oregon Trestle Nuts Series. This one is "Nut J."
Hua Hin in Flowers
Monday, December 6, 2010 at 6:31PM Beautiful Flowers Abound in Hua Hin, Thailand:
Sweet.
Sweet Buds . . .
The tiniest of flowers.
Bees pollinate Lotus flowers.
I just can't seem to keep away from photographing these wonderful scenes.
This raggedy orange Hyacinth was simply fantastic.
The orange Hyacinth stamen.
This is the only orange Hyacynth I have ever seen in this 'raggedy' configuration. Fascinating.
Not flowers, but Koi. I loved the reflections on the surface of this pool beneath a Frangipani tree.
Dr. Jeff Harper
The ocean level in the Gulf of Siam at Hua Hin was the highest I had ever seen. There was ample evidence of new coastal erosion.
High tide in Hua Hin, Thailand.
Young Jackfruit Study
Monday, December 6, 2010 at 6:07PM I spent last week-end in Hua Hin, Thailand. While walking about the grounds of the Dusit Resort & Hotel with my 70mm Sigma macro lens, I spotted a Jackfruit tree fruiting. Wonderful.
The Jackfruit, I believe, arrived on this planet in the lunch boxes of Visiting Alien Creatures (VAC). They are extremely difficult to handle, and even more difficult to extract the bubble-gum-flavored bright yellow succulent interior fruit meat. Obviously, they spat (if spitting happened to be an anatomical option for the VACs) the Jackfruit seeds out, eventually spreading about the hills and lagoons of the Earthen tropics. The Durian shares this same extraterrestrial, transpermatic origin.
Jackfruit begin as a thumb-sized main trunk protrusion.
This very young fruit shows surface organization. I have no idea what these would look like on the inside at this point in their development.
As they grow, they begin to form their characteristic spinney surface.
The spines eventually become quite large and frightening, a common feature of fruit with extra-terrestrial origins. There is NO WAY you can convince me that this organism came up through some kind of Darwinian selection process on THIS PLANET . . . . NO WAY!
A fully mature Jackfruit is the size of a Grizzly Bear's head and can weigh up to 30 kilos (70 pounds). It grows right out of the tree trunk on its own stem, not hanging from a branch, another common feature of non-Earth fruit origination. The leaves do not look like they would be featured in a dendrological field manual either.
