Month: August 2016
rDay Five-Hundred-Four
Shade-Dog the Recalcitrant passively asserts himself again. And he keeps his eye on local Chevy classics and other wildlife. In the meantime, we walk around the elementary school and watch the sunset from the sports field.
How to Throw Your Vote Away
Here’s a medium.com piece that should debunk a myth …
Crows Do It
There are so darn many of the creatures around here. That’s why they occasionally show up in my walkabout photographs. Seems that they — at least some species — are tool-makers, according to this BBC report today.
In A Kansas Cemetery, 1974
In September 1974, I was slowly wending my way on a solo cross-country road trip with my faithful Land Rover, purposely avoiding interstate highways so as to discover off-the-beaten track photographic opportunities and lessen the frustration of driving a vehicle that maxxed out at 60 mph. Stopping to see old acquaintances in cities like Denver and Kansas City and Omaha, it was a childhood friend settled in small-town Kansas who told me about the Davis Memorial in a cemetery outside nearby Hiawatha, a village of about two or three thousand residents.
After the death of his wife, Sarah, in the 1930s a wealthy farmer named John Milburn Davis commissioned an Italian marble tomb in her memory, taking several years and something like $100,000-200,000 of his Depression-era fortune to complete. Ten or twelve statues of the couple depict different stages of their lives, with the final representing Davis seated beside “The Vacant Chair” after her passing. Following are some of the photographs from that session (strictly speaking, not all of these images are newly-(re)discovered, as I did publish two in an art journal in the mid-seventies and one was included in a Los Angeles gallery exhibit). Following that are some links and videos with more information on this strange and haunting edifice.
And some found information, just tonight unearthed from the Internet …
rDay Five-Hundred-Three
We leave Char-Less behind while we go to Farmers Market (but other dogs get to go!) and Janet receives a flower from a friend.
Journalism, The Oregonian and John Oliver
Brother Dennis, once upon a time a reporter for the major newspaper in the “Quad-Cities” Mississippi River intersection of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois, sends along this recent video’s link. Well worth the just-under twenty minutes worth of viewing …
Nobody Loves Joel Romeo
This comes to us by way of Kim via Chika (one of our favorite family Seattlites), documenting a local Seattle personality.
Nobody Loves Joel Romeo from Mike Skoptsov on Vimeo.
Natural Sounds Online
Brother Dennis points me in the direction of the “world’s largest natural sound archive” from Cornell University. Mostly birds, but lots more.
http://cornelluniversity.tumblr.com/post/40770771576/worlds-largest-natural-sound-archive-now-fully
President Ford Pardons Nixon
September 8, 1974
… With little discernible effect on Long Beach, California …
… or my Land Rover.
Who knew then that politics would reach their present depths?
[The above are photographs taken on September 8, 1974. This begins a project to seek out images unwittingly made on days of particular historical interest.]