Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
to life
I had a chance to pick 20 slides and put them to music. I worked it the other way around, picked the music and found twenty images.
The song is Mama Told Me So by Malcolm Holcombe.
It's a Quick Time movie, big download, 3.0 MB.
Monday, August 29, 2005
weatherman poetry
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION...UPDATED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
452 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
.UPDATE...TO ADD TORNADO WATCH #752.
.DISCUSSION...
SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA SEEMS POISED FOR A DATE WITH DESTINY AS CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO KEEP A BEAD ON BARATARIA BAY AND THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS AREA. THE GFS MODEL CONTINUES TO BE SUPERIOR IN ITS HANDLING OF THE SYSTEM INASMUCH AS TO BASE THE CONVENTIONAL FORECAST PARAMETERS WITH GOOD INTEGRITY AND IN AGREEMENT WITH NHC ADVISORIES.
NEEDLESS TO SAY...THE WORST CAN BE ANTICIPATED AND URGENCY IS BEING STRESSED IN ALL PRODUCTS AS A WORST CASE HURRICANE SCENARIO FOR THIS VERY FRAGILE AND VULNERABLE STRETCH OF U.S. COASTLINE. THE EYE IS EMERGING ON THE KLIX LONG RANGE LOOP AND BANDS ARE EXTENDING TO LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN AT THIS TIME. THINGS WILL BE DETIORATING STEADILY FROM THIS POINT FORWARD FOR THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
WILL MAINTAIN ALL WARNINGS AS ALREADY POSTED AS WELL AS THE FLASH FLOOD WATCH. STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS ADVISED THAT THE FIRST TORNADO WATCH OF THE EVENT WILL LIKELY BE ISSUED FOR THE REGION EARLY THIS EVENING...PROBABLY RIGHT AFTER SUNSET.
MOST ATTENTION WITH THIS PACKAGE WAS DAY 1-2 WITH LITTLE IF ANY CHANGES MADE BEYOND DAY 3. GOOD LUCK AND GODSPEED TO ALL IN THE PATH OF THIS STORM.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
vulpes vulpes
in·at·ten·tion Lack of attention, notice, or regard.
Attention required on the line.
Labels: stilllife
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
what me worry?
The avian medical examiners, where are they now?
One is between Mawenzi and Kibo, one is on the side of the Nairobi-Moshi road, one is in Beantown.
Labels: sisters
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
bright red thing
Her parents gave her a carving knife, imagining wood block prints and whittled figurines as products of the blade.
She found a dead bird and with her friends set out to determine "cause of death."
They split the bird down its breast, separated organs, checked stomach contents.
In the bird they found a bright red thing. Too bright, too red, they showed it saying-
this is why the bird is dead.
She found a dead bird and with her friends set out to determine "cause of death."
They split the bird down its breast, separated organs, checked stomach contents.
In the bird they found a bright red thing. Too bright, too red, they showed it saying-
this is why the bird is dead.
Monday, August 22, 2005
logistics
Scariest bike rides I've made in this life:
1) U.S. 17 in Georgia before the completion of Interstate 95 (Melissa Fay Greene's Praying For Sheetrock sets the scene).
2) 1st Avenue, NYC, rush hour.
A bike ride through rural Virginia is absolute joy. No traffic, good people, the one thing that requires planning is hydration. We queried these guys in King and Queen County, trying to find a country store. We'd traveled thirty five miles without seeing a retail establishment, running low on fluids.
They directed us to Kino, VA, 12 miles away.
Labels: virginia
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Saturday, August 20, 2005
industrial silvaculture
I am used to seeing pulpwood cutters working with rolled up sleeves, chain-saws and pickup trucks.
Biking through the Mattaponi watershed, saw my first tree snipper. I wonder what the silvaculture industry calls this item? The Annihilator?
Looks like a mechanized Hercules beetle.
The Anni grabs a tree with clamps, guillotines its subject at ground level, then loads the log on a truck. One two three.
There are laws that govern resource extraction.
C. If the State Forester finds that any owner or operator is conducting any silvicultural activity in a manner that is causing or is likely to cause an alteration of the physical, chemical or biological properties of any state waters resulting from sediment deposition presenting an imminent and substantial danger to (i) the public health, safety or welfare, or the health of animals, fish or aquatic life; (ii) a public water supply; or (iii) recreational, commercial, industrial, agricultural or other reasonable uses, the State Forester may issue, without advance notice or hearing, an emergency order directing the owner or operator, or both, to cease immediately all or part of the silvicultural activities on the site, and to implement specified corrective measures within a stated period of time.
Has this law ever been applied?
Labels: damage, environment
Friday, August 19, 2005
resource extraction
Tucked away in the coastal plain of Virginia is a pristine freshwater river, the Mattaponi. Doesn't look like much here where it runs under Burke's Bridge Road.
Shad run in the Mattaponi, Virginia's first people have lived in this neighborhood for eons. The river goes tidal further downstream, joins the Pamunkey River at West Point to form the York River.
The City of Newport News wants this water. Hey! Whose going to miss 75 million gallons a day? The people who live close to this river don't have much clout, they are rural people. Newport News has plenty of clout.
"the project would result in the largest authorized wetland loss in Virginia, and in the mid-Atlantic region, in the history of the Clean Water Act section 404 program."
"The reservoir would destroy at least 437 acres of wetlands, and inundate 21 miles of free-flowing streams, wiping out the unique Cohoke Creek watershed. In addition, 187 acres of wetlands located below the dam would be severely degraded due to reduced flow in Cohoke Creek. The proposed reservoir would also threaten recovery efforts for the fragile shad fishery."
(quotes above from the Southern Environmental Law Center website)
Labels: riverine
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Mattaponi watershed
The 76 Bike trail isn't perfect, things change in 30 years.
In Louisa County the '76 route heads northeast on RT 605, the Shannon Hill Road. Must be a map for truckers that designates this as a route of choice, "boundless opportunities for flattening bikers!" Incessant flow of dump trucks and logging trucks, Louisa is a resource extraction area. The signature of the south, resource extraction, making money off the countryside.
Made it out of Louisa County in one piece, abandoned the '76 route. Hopscotching on backroads through Spotsylvania, Hanover and Caroline counties, finally got into the watershed of the Mattaponi River, Shumansville, Bagby, Gether, Helmet, Indian Neck, gets pretty here.
Labels: virginia
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
proposed signage for the Crawford ranch
Slabtown via car is antiseptic, I-64 and Rt 360. Not much to see.
Biked to Slabtown last August, via the TransAmerica Trail (Bike Centennial Route 76).
This sign was on the way.
Note Camp Casey is not located here.
Labels: signs
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
caged
For the past five years every summer Emma, Helen and I have managed to hike or bike somewhere off the daily path.
Not this year.
Labels: fauna
Monday, August 15, 2005
slabtown road
the nws weather gurus call it the three H's. Heat, humidity and haze.
This time of year Virginia goes grey and green.
The low contrast school of photography.
In the black cabinet.
Labels: slabtown
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Saturday, August 13, 2005
report
There are soldiers in the way of harm, a girl holds a baby in a blanket in her arms
A man with a flag leaves for work, a woman pulls a thread from the hem of her skirt
Another Saturday comes and goes, another south wind comes and blows
Another baseball field another pop fly, another bunch of boys another blue sky?Sam Baker
Friday, August 12, 2005
hope
I don't buy lottery tickets, but I am not immune to hope. I plant trees and imagine them succeeding, providing habitat for generations.
I am particularly susceptible to short-term hope. I look at an image and think, yes! It is good! I will eat, I will buy Sophie a new collar.
And so it was with this image. An author who I particularly admire was hunting for some live oak imagery, a row of oaks.
The Artists and Curators scoff, "it has already been done".
It's lucky the world wasn't created by an Artist?
"I am gonna to make Me some continents and put them in a vast sea of urine."
"I'm gonna make Me some animals and cut them up into sections."
In the end the job was killed.
Hope lives.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
clouds
The last few years I've been planting trees. This summer has been tough on the newest trees, no irrigation, temperatures as high as 105, voles eating their roots.
Yesterday we had some rain.
Labels: slabtown
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
in time
Went by the ferry to put a name to the dog, dog's name is Merry. OK, Merry on the ferry, really. Merry and Sophie got along but I couldn't snap the meeting, Sophie jumps off boats.
Morning glories are in the corn, the hallucinogenic variety, heavenly blue.
What did Bob Dylan say? Those that aren't busy born are busy dying?
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
merry point
This is the Merry Point, Virginia ferry. Runs six days a week, sunrise to sunset, weather and tides allowing. It is a cable ferry, capacity 2 cars, operated by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Didn't get the dog's name. She lives in a house on the north bank of the Corrotoman River. When the mood suits she comes down out of her house and rides back and forth.
Monday, August 08, 2005
god's megaphone
How long a wait? How much work?
My friend said "pain is God's megaphone." My friend is an optimist? How was God's purpose served when this dog sustained extensive orthopedic injuries, struck by a car? Things happen.
Nice to think that there is someone watching out for the powerless, the innocent, the infirm. The kindness of strangers might be God's megaphone.
Pain is just pain.
Labels: rx
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Saturday, August 06, 2005
storms of life
Listening to the "Storms of Life". released by Randy Travis in 1986, good then, good now.
Labels: weather
Friday, August 05, 2005
denatonium benzoate
Rita and Elaine
In April 2003 a bill was introduced in the Senate to add a bad taste to antifreeze. The bill is still kicking around DC.
Last month George Allen, chairman of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer affairs, invited dogs to a committee hearing (approximately 10,000 dogs die yearly from ingesting antifreeze, many are poisoned deliberately).
There you go, some good news about George Allen. Save the dogs!
Better life through chemistry.
Wish the subcommittee could add something to the water to make everyone happy.
Labels: photoshop
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Lake Talquin, Florida
For the past few years I've had a darkroom with running water and an exhaust fan. It's cramped, stuffy?a glorified closet, but it's my operating theater, vastly superior to the chicken coop I printed in '80-'85.
Pulled a ten hour session today. Had the print washer loaded with work product when the municipal water system started spitting chunks, bathing my fiber prints with swamp water. ARG!
Some fancy artists tone their photographs with tea.
Possibly I am being upgraded by circumstance.
Labels: elements
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
666
666 miles. eek. rode in the back seat, emma driving.
sophie copilot.
in the black cabinet making a 16x20" print, a commission. sooo easy in Photoshop, a challenge in the analog world, faces in deep shadow, hands and feet in bright light. It is a challenge to print and once finished it will be beautiful. old, graceful technology.