I had been driving for hours when the sun finally clawed its way over the horizon. The endless black that had enveloped me since I had started out was replaced by endless sky and grasslands. And wind. Always the wind. Barbed wire fences suggested that cattle grazed on the land, somewhere. Windmills suggested that they […]
A cold wind whistled through the branches. The winter wind is different. Not simply frigid, though it is surely that, even the slightest breeze produces a haunting, lonely sound. I stand at the edge of a meadow listening to an arboreal death rattle, frozen branches creaking as dry air wheezes through a bronchial network of […]
Pause. Look around. Look closely. What have I not noticed every other time I’ve passed this spot. Whether mundane and dull or extraordinary and beautiful. Somewhere around me right now is a detail I’ve not seen before. Find it and add it to my “Museum of Overlooked Details.”
On a typical weekday afternoon, a line of cars stretches down to the stoplight at the bottom, often twenty or so of them stopped on their trip home. On the other side, cars that have recently come through the intersection careen home. Crossing, even in the marked crosswalk, is a risk. This afternoon, I enjoyed […]
Roll after roll. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, lie in fields waiting to be retrieved, moved, sold, or whatever. Judging by the hundreds piled around the edges of fields and along roadsides, many of these rolls will end up rotting, reminders of how difficult it is to correlate production and consumption. That day in […]
It was a chilly afternoon, weak sunlight scarcely warming the few people sitting in the square or those walking their dogs. At the corner, two men stood across from each other engaged in a sometimes frenetic sometimes contemplative game of chess. In a flurry of moves their hands nearly collided as pawns, rooks, and bishops […]
Singular photographs are fragments, or perhaps illustrations waiting for a story to give them context. But series of photographs seem to prompt a different kind of reflection. Collect together enough individual fragments and arrange them in some order, and the begin to reveal something you can’t see when looking at just one. The photographer engages […]
Linger for a moment to think about ruin and decay. What if ruin is not the result of neglect but is, instead, an expression of value? Ruin and decay are not accidents but choices, as is our fascination with them. The one, perhaps, creates the other. We live and wander amongst ruin. Ruin dots the […]
There by itself, in the weak sun that fall afternoon, The Aermotor windmill turned slowly in the breeze, marking time with a rhythmic scraping of the rotating axle. It was a sort of sentinel, standing watch over a barbed wired fence and wide open range. At some point, this windmill probably served some purpose, but […]
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from much closer to home. A maple I pass on my walk to and from work seemed to defy the monochrome of the world. Let me know if you want a copy. The last moments of red burn brightly in the otherwise monochrome world of […]