Museo de Oro

The Gold Museum in Bogotá has one of the greatest collections of New World gold objects, excellently displayed.

Shadows cleverly cast to show how the ornaments were worn.

A reenactment of the ritual of throwing precious gold objects in the river, 

to be revealed to a new shaman.

Our museum guide, Victoria, who explained all this to us.

Another Side of Bogotá

So far I've shown mainly the attractive tourist side of Bogotá. But it's a huge city (more than 8 million people) in a country with many problems from drugs, violence, etc. So our tour went to a not-so-nice part of town, just below a favela on a steep hillside, to visit the "Los Niños de los Andes" Foundation, where homeless teen-age boys with drug problems (often living in the streets and sewers) are rescued and rehabilitated. This work is supported, in part, by the Road Scholar Foundation.

A small section of the favela

The electricity distribution system in the neighborhood.

Some of the boys, with whom we had a good Q&A about drugs and other issues 

in Colombia and the USA.

Non-Tourist Bogotá

On the second day of our tour we left the tourist-centered Candelaria district of Bogotá and drove across the city through less prosperous neighborhoods. A couple of shots from the bus window:

Evening Sky over Bogotá

From Monserrate Hill at dusk

Nature and Civilization

On/from Monserrate Hill, Bogotá

Bogotá Vendors

Brooding Skies over Bogotá

From Monserrate Hill.

Portland Scenes

A couple of photos that don't aspire to fine art, but rather show typical and/or quirky Portland scenes.

Layers from back to front: I-405 bridge over Willamette River, freight train, and The Fields Neighborhood Park with dog playground on a sunny February day

Yoga in Couch Park along NW Glisan Street

Pre-Spring Buds

Washington Park in Portland, near the Japanese Garden

Bogotá Murals

Bogota is rich in large, striking, finely executed murals. We passed many in our bus, but I got to photograph only a few.

Colorful Bogotá

Spring Comes Early to Portland

 Photos taken yesterday (February 16) within a couple of blocks in NW Portland. Quite an amazement to us transplanted Minnesotans.

Eggs

Paloquemao Market, Bogotá

One wonders how they keep track of the sell-by date.

Bogota Red Light District

Orlando Details

We' flew back to Portland this morning after Colombia and Orlando, Florida.  No chance to take pictures today, so here are a few images that intrigued me from Pointe Orlando.

Pointe Orlando Blues

Three photos at the Pointe Orlando outdoor mall near the Convention Center. Connection is the dominant blue color.

Convention Center Transformations

From yesterday's "square session": The Orange Country Convention Center, particularly its South Hall, is a strikingly intricate piece of architecture, all in brilliant white against the deep blue sky. I took the original color photo and converted it in a couple of ways to black and white.

Orlando Square

Today I walked outside near the hotel and Convention Center.  I decided to use only a square format for my pictures.

Wall of the Hyatt Regency Hotel

Sculpture on the grounds of the Convention Center. It's supposed to commemorate weathervane horses, but looks to me more like a hooded cobra.

Orlando WORLD

We've returned to the USA from Colombia, and are now at the WORLD Symposium in Orlando, Florida. WORLD stands for "We're organizing research on lysosomal diseases". My wife is a speaker and organizer of the meeting. I'm here as an onlooker with the assignment of photographing the award presentations at the banquet on Thursday.

According to the symposium website,:
"The goal of the 11th Annual WORLD Symposium™ is to provide an interdisciplinary forum to explore and discuss specific areas of interest, research and clinical applicability related to lysosomal diseases. This symposium is designed to help researchers and clinicians to better manage and understand diagnostic options for patients with storage diseases, identify areas requiring additional basic and clinical research, public policy and regulatory attention, and identify the latest findings in the natural history of lysosomal diseases."

A poster display of portraits of lysosomal disease patients, in the lobby outside the meeting rooms, dramatizes the personal side of the research being reported here.

In wandering the halls of the hotel where the meeting is held, I was struck by the luxuriousness and scale of the surroundings, which contrast with the generally drab and crowded labs and clinics where the research and testing are actually done.

Where much of the intellectual exchange takes place: over refreshments in the poster session exhibition hall.