Dick Davis:  

May 16, 2017 Running out of space...my last note's gone...so...have you been to Cuba? Our world! Back to the 50s! Google: Dick Davis Cuba Photo Journal. It will take you to Amazon. Then click: Look Inside. Dick Driving Like a Teenager: From the Journal June 28, 2016 I'm in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, familiar with the roads and escorting two women, artists, north to Real de Catorce via Matehuala, the cut off. Day 7.... began on the wrong foot, took the Santiago River Route.... expected a left, but the road, a new extension, continued and as I passed a small traffic circle (a glorieta).... going too fast.... my brain said, "That's the turn,"..... Bye-bye. Crap.... The Santiago extension is a beauty...walled in, a corridor...how to get off, turn around...I take an exit and we're headed into some nowhere neighborhood.... I stop, ask, get partial directions, I'm to turn around, but how to cross the 4-lane divided Rio Santiago highway? Action.... I see a bridge, one-way, not my way, but like Frank Sinatra I make it my way... I hit the gas, the Grand Marquis lurches, women screaming, hahahahhaaaa cross my fingers.... nearly get across when I startle a VW entering. I ignore him.... hey he stopped I can get around.... and we're now on the right side. I follow the frontage road to a washboard on-ramp. The highway is perfect but some work needs to be done.... like on-ramps...bouncing up we go west, find the turn off I missed, turn right north and we've on our way to Matehuala. Women are quiet and wondering about near death experiences. April 18, 2016 London Reflections: My grandson Richard, 14, suggested Spring Break in London and his dad kicked in Frequent Flyer miles to get rid of us. My daughter Nena outlined a schedule and I followed Richard, he had the map. I kept a journal, and here are highlights....at least in my view. Stratford-upon-Avon Richard and I lunched at Mida's restaurant, the real highlight of our trip to Stratford. I could get Shakespeare on Wikipedia, but not Mida, a gracious host and proprietor of Mida's Mediterranean Cafe. "Where you from?" I asked Mida. "Oh, it's a long story," he said. "I'd like to hear it," was my reply...and so.... Mida, a Moroccan Berber, told me his story, at least in part. He said that he spoke French, Spanish, Arabic, but not English and was working on a fishing trawler, but times were not so good. A friend said, "You need to learn English," so Mida headed for England, got some help via Spain and applied for a waiter's position (having never been one) through a recruitment center (a friend filled out the application). Mida said, "Waiter seemed easy to me." His languages helped, no one asked if he spoke English! He received a ticket and contract to work at Gleneagles, a very posh 5 star hotel and golf resort in Scotland. He said, "Sean Connery was a steady customer." Mida took my hand acting like Sean, "Sean would put a 5 pound note in my palm, squeeze my fingers around it and say, 'Don't share this with the headwaiter.'" It was noontime but as I had skipped breakfast, I ordered a Full English Breakfast. Richard ordered a bacon, avocado, Brie sandwich. I would have liked to have heard more of Mida's story, but a family entered the small cafe and Mida went to serve them. London: Tate Britain---Google Tracey Emin "My Bed" ....yep....it's art, Big Time. Arriving at Tate Britain I asked direction to Tracey Emin's "My Bed," an installation, which I could understand as satire or dystopia, but not as "The heartache of the breakdown of a relationship." Anyone in their right mind would flee that relationship. My Bed seemed like a movie prop from Jailbait, or Reefer Madness. The description of My Bed claimed, My Bed inspires various narratives. If one is inspired to contemplate, the thoughts are likely to exclude beauty or anything positive. Empty vodka bottles, a mountain of cigarette butts piled in an ashtray as a chain smoker might, random trash, unattractive stains, made me think of a magpie's nest. Two Francis Bacon paintings selected by Tracey hung in the same room and I used them as props, photographing My Bed reflected in Bacon's Study of Dog, which seemed to be a whimsical effort to capture movement of a dog chasing his tail. "Narration," I thought. "Who would want to get into Tracey's bed? Hope not Richard. Leave her bed? Yes, I think that was the point, someone left." I wondered, "Is it for the viewer to create the scene rather than the artist, a reversal, a personal narration not Tracey's?" I also wondered how Albert Barnes would have responded to Tracey's bed. March 2, 2016 The Road to Yesterday, crossing the USA from Ocean Beach, San Francisco to Ocean City, Maryland took 19 days following Highway 50. Per any adventure road trip there were surprises....there is more salt under Kansas than in the Pacific Ocean...well there is a lot...Hutchinson Salt Mine Museum takes you 650 feet down and proves it....and shows off climate change...like Fossil Creek. Cincinnati converted the Union Railroad Terminal, an art deco building into 3 museums and an OMNIMAX Theater....really makes a museum visit an easy pleasure. Harper's Ferry....a crammed space, no ferry....and John Brown is still a-mouldering in the grave...but in New York. Washington D.C. must have the Guinness Record for flower pots....three feet by three feet, they are disguised barricades. There are 14 museums under Smithsonian rule, each a day's pleasure. Accidentally found the best hotel for location and value...The Harrington, family owned...you can walk virtually to all the major sites and it was across from E Street Cinema, which was perfect for catching up on films, seeing The Big Short, Where To Invade Next, and a number of shorts nominated for Academy Awards in the evening. January 4, 2016 Road to Yesterday (For current projects, Google: Dick W. Davis Projects) All I have are yesterdays! At age 75 there are few tomorrows. Best is to live in the present and do it now. Those were my thoughts as I contemplated a road trip from Ocean Beach, San Francisco to Ocean City, Maryland, from the Pacific to the Atlantic following Highway 50, "The Loneliest Road in America," at least the Nevada portion has been so named. I took my first road trip in late fall 1952. I was 12 when my mother's friend Judy Friedrich purchased a new Lincoln and wanted to visit her family in New York. We lived in Oakland, California. Judy had a small child, wanted company and to share expenses. It was October and Mom took me out of 7th grade for 6 weeks (I have lagged ever since) and we left Oakland and headed east on Highway 40. Mom and I would go only so far as Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1952 there were no Interstates. We saw the USA town by town. Pennsylvania was the only state I recall where a highway looked like what I'd know later to be a freeway, but it was a toll road lined with Howard Johnson restaurant-motels and ice cream flavors. I didn't know it then but I was on the same road, Highway 40, that Jack Kerouac took going west. In 1955 my mother remarried and on our move to Colorado we were on the road again, still mostly 2 lanes, slow behind trucks hauling freight, winding through the Sierras with few turnouts. When we reached Nevada we were occasionally delayed due to highway construction. The Interstate was a building and Mom filmed behemoths: Caterpillar earthmovers, cement trucks lined up ready to pour, land-levelers with huge scoops pulled by tractors and steamrollers compacting the roadway. Highway 40 is gone. It is Interstate 80 now, but there is still Highway 50, mostly intact, coast-to-coast, and I wanted the driving experience, the pleasure of a trip and the experience of stopping in towns where I might find a bit of history, certainly something better than a gas-restaurant-convenience store island. In the back of my mind was, "What is left of American towns after Walmart? "From sea to shining sea," we sing, but I pondered, "Do we?" We jump the land, we fly; we connect our oceans from above. We look out a window from 30,000 feet, what's below? Day Two...begins February 4, 2016 June 23, 2015 Well....one more photo-journal is up on Amazon. Classmates won't let you type in links, so if you wish to read the first chapter, go to Amazon, type Wales Is Still Wild by Dick Davis, then click on Look Inside. June 2, 2015 Sitting around I got to thinking, no one I know has ever traveled or even mentioned Wales, but having read George Borrow's Wild Wales, about his travels and adventures walking through Wales in 1854, I thought, hmmm whatever George could do walking I can do by bus! So i booked a flight and used George Borrow's general itinerary, following his basic route for a three week adventure. The highlight was an interview with Richard Booth, Coeur de Livre, King of Hay, who put Hay-on-Wye on the map as The Town of Books. Wilmette Arts Guild, Chicago published the interview. Wales is a nature lovers paradise, hike or walk, it's the most consistently scenic, picturesque country I've visited. "Consistently" is the key word. I wound up with 491 photos...darn digital camera and 34 journal pages. That's all for now, Dick August 5, 2014 I wonder who uses Classmates? It's Facebook that's the Social Network Center, yet I'm not a member! Then there is "my" Home Page...but I don't run it...a friend set it up and controls it. Life is funny. I don't think Classmates allows links, so you have to Google: dickwdavis...and it's all about projects, art and culture, mostly in Mexico....but fun and colorful! Who reads this? Occasionally, someone just stumbles on our Class of 1958 and out of general curiosity clicks on a few names. That's my guess. I'm not a current paying member so I can't see who's left a note or emailed. Travel is still my pursuit. Th...Expand for more