Photography: Tribute in Light

The 9th anniversary of 9/11 took place over the weekend.  Every year, the city  has set up the Tribute in Light to mark the date.  It consists of a series of powerful searchlights resulting in twin columns of blue light shooting to the heavens from Ground Zero.  It's a mute but powerful memorial to the losses of that day.

We were in the city to pick up my mother-in-law visiting from Hong Kong from JFK airport (in a sign that the people of New York have moved on, the city was packed and there was a huge traffic jam going to the airport---people aren't afraid of flying anymore).  When the sun set, we headed to Brooklyn Bridge Park to view the tribute.  Luckily, I had my tripod with me and was able to shoot some pictures.

World Trade Center Tribute in Light

 

 World Trade Center Tribute in Light

Brooklyn Bridge with the Empire State Building lit up in red, white, and blue

Panorama of Manhattan

Moonrise over the Statue of Liberty

Playing with black and white, cyanotype toning

The light is even more amazing and inspiring in person.  It's not overwrought or tacky---it's a very classy, minimalistic tribute to the lives that were lost.  The park was packed with people who came to see the memorial and pay their respects.  The photos can be seen at my Flickr site.

The Process of the Present

I saw that Google has a new application brewing in their labs:  Google Scribe.  This apparently uses the power of Google to help autocomplete not just your searches but also anything that you write.  This is one small step for helping grad students write their dissertations and one giant leap for monkeys writing Shakespeare.  Presumably it uses the cumulative text of the Internet to decide the best word for you to use---I'm guessing after several iterations, you could quite possibly get the finest distillation of the collective writings of humanity ever conceived (or is that the lowest common denominator...?)

I decided to give this a spin and got the following result.  I only entered the first word of each sentence and then let Google suggest the rest of the sentence word by word:

Hello world.  Hi there I am in the process of the present.  It is a very good job.  I'm not sure if it is not a valid stream resource in C minor for Piano and Orchestra.  Dennis Hopper allegedly smokes pot in front of the domain name you entered.  He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Company and the Company shall be entitled to a refund.

This is a great way to get a good deal of the day and night to make sure that the following conditions are met.  The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive.  These are the most common causes of death in the United States.  Hmm, I wonder if the same is true for the Front Range of Colorado.

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So maybe it's not quite Shakespeare, but perhaps a little Dada.

Dust to Dust

We received the remains of our lemon kitty Marquis this week.  It felt a little unreal to drive down to the animal hospital we had been so often, only this time without the uncertainty of what was going to happen.  We had his remains individually cremated---we had discussed burying him, but since we live in a condo with no outdoor area, we had no good spot.  And if we eventually end up moving away, we could always keep him with us.  Plus, he was never an outdoor cat to begin with.  They placed his ashes in a nice wooden box that we can keep with us forever.

 Marquis sitting in his favorite spot one last time

I miss his charm and good lucks.  Everyone who's met him has mentioned what a beautiful and sweet cat he was.  I miss his big blue eyes and his big paws with six toes on each foot.

I miss how he would follow us everywhere.  He never liked being alone and always wanted to be near people.

I miss how he used to come up and wake us up every morning to play.  I miss how he used to come down the stairs and greet us when he heard us come home from work.  I miss how he would then climb halfway up the stairs, stop, and look back and wait for us to follow him up.  If we didn't, he would come back down and nudge us forward.

I miss how he would twist, turn, and twitch in pleasure as you pet him.  I miss how he used to roll over for a belly scratch and then grab our hands with both paws to lick them all over.

I miss how he used to go crazy playing with rubber bands.

I miss how he loved car rides.  He loved to sit up and stare out the window as we drove.

I miss how he enjoyed water and even let us wash him in the shower.  I miss how he would chase his tail in the bathtub.

I miss how we could clip his claws with no fuss.  He would just sit there politely until it was done.

I miss how he would sit in the sink and wait for us to turn on the tapwater to drink from.

I miss how he would lie on us and knead us with his front paws all night.  If I would call him, he would come sit on me.  Then if my wife called him, he would jump over and sit on her.  We could keep doing this over and over again until he would get dizzy.

I miss how no matter what time of the day, you would always find him sleeping in a sunny spot.  I miss his yawns after a long nap.  I miss how he stretched first his front legs and then his back legs when he got up.

I miss his quiet, polite meow voice.  He was never whining or demanding.  He wouldn't complain if he was hungry---he would just sit patiently in front of us food bowl.

I miss how he quietly sat and begged us for food when we were eating dinner. Although he could, he never jumped on the table while we were eating.  He just waited until we were done (except the one time he swiped away my wife's chicken wing with neither of us noticing).

I miss how sweet he was.  He didn't have an aggressive bone in his body and he never hissed or striked out at anyone, even strangers.

I miss our kitty.

Food: Buffalo Wings

Buffalo wings are a weakness of ours but they tend to be obscenely overpriced.  We've tried making them at home, but we've usually chickened out and just gone with a simple (although likely healthier) oven baked or broiled method.  This time, however, we were craving the real thing so we decided to go all in.

In the past we've eyed some deep fryers but we've always been skeptical of their small size---the biggest mistake when deep frying is not maintaining a constant temperature, especially once you add the food.  The small deep fryers just don't seem like they have enough heat capacity to avoid a sudden and disastrous drop in temperature.  The problem is that you get greasy food if you don't maintain the right frying temperature---at lower temperatures, the oil can soak into the food.  If you can keep it hot, the oil fries the food surface and doesn't have time to seep in, resulting in surprisingly non-greasy food.  It may not be healthy, but at least it's healthier.  So instead of buying a deep fryer, we've started using our Dutch oven.  It takes a while to heat up, but the cast iron helps retain the heat even when you add in cold food.  Plus, it feels like you have better control over the heat using your gas stove.

We dried the wings as much as we could (any residual water can result in soggy skin, as well as dangerous steam causing the oil to pop) and then deep fried them in two shifts---first at 250 'C for five minutes to cook the meat and then at 350 'C for five minutes to crisp up the skin.   We then removed the wings, drained the oil, and then tossed them in some buffalo sauce (1/2 cup melted butter with 1 cup Franks hot sauce with some Tobasco to taste).

Dutch oven deep frying with candy thermometer

 Best invention ever:  an oil splash guard

 Before:  mmm...wings...

 After:  we went with a lighter Belgian Hoegaarden to wash down hot sauce

It was our first time making home-made buffalo wings and they turned out pretty good.  The only problem was that we didn't make enough...

Food: Broiled Kabobs

We weren't really in the mood to do a lot of cooking or go out over the weekend, so we turned to a quick and easy yet tasty dinner---shish kabobs.  We use a recipe found here.  It's essentially a rosemary balsamic steak marinade and a citrus thyme marinade for the chicken (thyme being an easy substitute for tarragon).  The nice thing is that the marinades are extremely easy to make.  You can then cube your meat, pour the marinade over them, and stick them in the fridge overnight.

Kabobs are made to be grilled, but unfortunately it was storming outside most of the weekend.  As a result, I didn't think it would be wise to stand outside next to a large metal object, let alone one that was connected to a large flammable propane source.  So instead we turned to the forgotten, unsung hero of the kitchen---the broiler.  Broilers are essentially inverted grills, having the intense heat source radiating above the food.  Ours consists of a gas burner mounted on the top of our oven.  On the one hand, it's generally not as powerful as a grill, but on the other hand your oven is generally more insulated than a grill so it can retain more heat.  We placed the kabobs on a wire rack to let the juices drip down and broiled them.  We were pretty pleased with the results---we were still able to get some nice charring of the meat and caramelization of the cherry tomatoes.  The whole procedure took less than half an hour.  And it was delicious.

Chicken kabobs

 

Steak and mushroom kabobs

Cleaning

We spent the weekend thoroughly cleaning our house.  Part of the reason is that a sick cat is not really a clean cat and, as a result, does not make for a clean house.  Part of the reason is that the new cat Bumper has always been scared of our old lemon kitty Marquis, so we thought by removing his scent she would be more comfortable.  Part of it was to give us something to do, a project, anything to take our minds off of what had happened.

At least those were the reasons we told ourselves.  I wonder if deep down this was a coping mechanism and that the real reason was that we were trying to remove all traces of him.  We put away all of his things---his toys, his bed, his brush.  We cleaned and put away his litter box.  There is nothing left to remind us of him except for a few pictures on the wall.  If he never existed, then we wouldn't be hurting, right?  If we could clean our minds of him, it might scrub away the pain and help us move on.

The house does feel emptier now and more dark.  But clean and perhaps antiseptic.

Love is Watching Someone Die

August 20, 2010 was when our world changed.  We came home early from work to take our lemon kitty Marquis to the animal hospital to finally end his suffering.  He was too weak to stand and we couldn't ignore what was happening.  There was nothing left that we could do.  The car ride was a quiet one, neither of us saying too much while the cat was sleeping on the floor.  He used to love car rides and would sit and stare out the window, but this time he just lay there.

At the animal hospital, they brought us into a room and we stayed with him for a while, gently holding and petting him.  As weak as he was, he still rubbed his head against our hands and even started weakly purring.  He couldn't eat or stand, but the last thing he would do is reach for us.  The doctor came to take him away briefly to put in a catheter---as the doctor picked him up, Marquis' eyes became wide and he stared at us when we didn't follow.  It broke our hearts.  Why weren't we following him?  Why were we abandoning him?  After several minutes, the doctor returned with our cat's leg bandaged and with a syringe attached.  He asked us how long we needed, but after caressing the cat, we told him we were ready.

It was over so fast.  My wife was kneeling down and looking into his eyes as the doctor pushed the syringe in.  I was gently cradling his head in my hands.  In seconds, his head dropped and then lay still.  He didn't cry out or move---he just rested his head and stopped breathing.  The doctor checked him with a stethoscope and told him that he was gone.

My wife was crying the whole time.  I tried to stay strong, but when the doctor's voice started cracking as well, that's when I couldn't help myself.  I couldn't see through my tears and I started choking.  The doctor left us and we stayed with the body.  Our kitty lay still.  His eyes had never closed the entire time.  His tail was large and bushy.  Was he scared at the end?  Was he in pain?  Should we have stayed and comforted him longer?  Should we have done more?  Those are questions that will never be answered and doubts that we will always have.  My wife picked up his body and held him.  His body was like a rag doll and it was heartbreaking to feel how fast it had turned cold.

When we were ready, the doctor came to take the body away for individual cremation.  After about a week, his ashes will be returned to us.  It took us a while before we were ready to go back home.  The drive was a quiet one.

Marquis, our snowshoe kitty:  2000 - August 20, 2010.  Rest in peace.