The Updated Web Site : Coming Soonish to a Browser Near You

The last few days have seen our dining room become Web Site Update Central as Debbie has been ceaselessly updating our web site in preparation for the next 'edition'. We've now moved to Paint Shop Pro 7 as our photo-editing tool of choice, and Debbie's now become so proficient at HTML that she prefers to enter our web pages directly rather than use MS Frontpage. So, the last few days have seen 3am bedtimes ...

We've hit a potential snag though : our site now exceeds the 12MB free allowance from Freeservers. So, we either archive - read 'delete' - some of the existing site (currently the preferred solution), find another free host with a more generous allowance of free hosted space (and suffer the pain of updating any links that refer to Freeservers), or fork out cash each month to Freeservers to host our site. Ah, the digital life ...

Before I launch into details of the next daytrip, let me suggest a couple of web sites worthy of a visit :

• Worth1000
• Random Website
• Movie Trailers
  (The original site, www.movie-trailers.com, is no longer available but there are many other sites available - Deb 2011)
• Photography
• Online TV

So, onto today's installment :

Mission District - Mural Tour - Jan 19

The Mission District of San Francisco is simultaneously famous and infamous. Its infamy stems from its record for crime, usually petty but occasionally violent, and currently the subject of concerted abatement efforts by residents. More positively, its fame derives from the plethora of colourful murals that adorn its shops, alleys, parks and just about anything else that doesn't much move. Lazy dogs exhibit a nervous air in the Mission District, lest they find their hindquarters adorned with the acrylic paint of a passing muralist's latest endeavours.

Debs identified a guided tour of the Mission murals, conducted by City Guides volunteers on the second Saturday of each month. Glenn, our tour guide for this Saturday, was dressed seemingly for a spot of fishing rather than tour-leading. He was initially a little disconcerting, reading somewhat haltingly from his notes, but he gained in confidence as the day progressed and clearly knew and loved his subject. His only enduring quirk was a tendency to cease his commentary extraordinarily abruptly, almost as if it were a complete surprise to him too that he had finished speaking.

The entire tour took a little over an hour and a half, starting with a mural in front of the local school, painted by art students and including images of many of the local residents, and finishing in a park just off the main street. In between, we saw murals on the wall of the swimming pool complex, in an alley (more of which are below), and on shops and on churches. It takes a little getting used to taking photos as you walk through someone's local downtown, but we eventually came to ignore the incongruousness of it.

It's a bit hard to choose just a couple of photos from the day as any of about 15 seem equally worthy. At left is a shot of the mural Our Lady of Guadalupe by Patricia Rose, located in Balmy Alley. It's one of about 20 murals in the alley, each distinct in colour and style, but somehow unified in approach and content. Quite simply, the murals are stunning and they address a very broad range of topics : AIDS, Resistance Fighting, Persecution, Religion, The Past, and the Future.

The shot at right is of another mural in Balmy Alley, this one of assassinated Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero. It's a great example of the range of colours that appear in many of the murals, and it's also just a good example of the murals generally.(I've scoured the web looking for the name of the artist who created this mural so I can give proper attribution, but, to this point, I've been unsuccessful).

The location of these murals - on outdoor walls and in an alley - makes them subject to some unique 'environmental' factors. One resident found that her mural seemed to attract drunken and evidently incontinent men. When illuminating the mural each night had no effect, she struck on the especially lateral idea of adding an image of Our Lady to the mural. Apparently it's one thing to risk incurring the wrath of a fellow-resident, but another thing altogether to risk repercussions in the afterlife : since she amended the mural, the drunks have found somewhere else to sleep and to relieve themselves.

Originally posted by TC