A Leslie Wong Blog

The great jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died yesterday in California. Peter Keepnews wrote an obituary at the New York Times.

Wikipedia has Freddie Hubbard’s discography.

Over the past 35 years, I was fortunate to see Freddie Hubbard perform many times. The first was in the early ’70s, when I took this photograph at a concert in San Francisco.

I was always partial to the trumpet, maybe because two of my friends, Bruce Baxley and Eugene Madsen, both played. I took lessons with a rental trumpet when I was a kid, but at Christmas, it came down to a trumpet or a bike, and the bike won.

When I moved to the mecca of jazz, New York City, the first thing I bought when I sold a photograph was a Yamaha Flugelhorn, a YFH-631 (now the 631G). My friend, Tim Luey (I think mistakenly), told me a fluegelhorn was easier to play than a trumpet. One year, while attending Comdex in Las Vegas, I bought a Bach Stradivarius at a pawn shop. Both of them are in the closet.

I walked over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and photographed some new rainbow trout in the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit. The aquarium trout don’t fit into the angling category but there are a few freshwater opportunities here – you’d just have to work at it.

In Monterey, there might be a few hatchery trout left in Lake El Estero, located near the bay off Del Monte Avenue and managed by Monterey City Parks and Recreation Department. The California Department of Fish and Game used to mention fish plants there but the last mention of planting in their publication, Fishing California’s Central Coast Region (PDF), was in 2004. I used to see people fishing Lake El Estero but it’s been a while. A couple of years ago, when I inquired at the recreation center at the lake about fishing, a woman asked me, “Why would anyone want to fish here?”

[Dec. 27, 2008: I found that the California DFG has plans to stock Lake El Estero sometime between 11/24/2008 through 1/1/2010]

When I first moved here, I found a nice, friendly fly fishing store in Carmel – Central Coast Fly Fishing. They seemed to be the most informed about trout fishing in Monterey county. They describe some local opportunities, but you don’t just drive to the stream and get out of your car.

According to the California DFG, “Most Monterey County streams have their headwaters in the Los Padres National Forest. These headwater streams provide good trout angling for hikers.”

I applied the NXE (New Xbox Experience) update last month to Chris’ Xbox 360 and created my new avatar. I tried to photograph it with our Nikon D70 but the moire was so bad, I didn’t want to take the time to try to fix it in Photoshop.

I went to xbox.com and did a PrtSc of my gamer profile (leapingmonkeys) page to capture my avatar.

The sad thing is, this is what I actually look like.

When your professional life involves the study of microorganisms – microbiology – at some point the more creative thinker may start wondering what kind of conversations are going on in these teeny populations.

Expand that examination to the conversations of bakery rolls, shifting desert sand grains, bowling balls, underwear, ogres, hooligans, philologists, armpits, clocks and mountaineers and you will arrive at Parade of Unconventional Voices: Cartoons of art, humor, and philosophy, a 30 year collection of the hitherto unknown thoughts of what we once considered inanimate objects.

While Antonie van Leeuwenhoek‘s lenses magnified before unseen microorganisms, Eugene L. Madsen‘s pen and ink cartoons extend our vision to a humorous, more thoughtful world. We may need to be reminded of Dr. Madsen’s characters’ humanity and sense of humor -maybe that’s why he sends them out every year around the holidays.

At the International Convention of Mosaic Tiles: “So fellow mosaics, I think you will agree that violent clashes occur only when designs force hard edges where they do not fit. Rigid edges and myopic designs are the sources of strife; while soft edges and flexible designs are the cure. By blending with one another, we create new designs. Remember, mosaics of the world, fitness is really measured by readiness for peace, not war. Fitness is gauged by the tolerance of our edges, not by muscle tone and cholesterol readings. Your patterns are bold, your beauty is alive. Enjoy the NEW YEAR.”