time machine-scode lake

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.--Coleridge
On the road to the lake, I am searching for the real lake name and lat/lon. It was in Franklin County or Henry County. This back when hauling people in the pickup was legal. Back when American kids were skinny. Oh lost!

cedrus libani

After walking around at Montpelier, everything else is kind of a let down. Few places have the benefit of a meticulous renovation to an already lovely home, set on an expansive open piece of land, gracefully surrounded and contained by gorgeous old denizens of the plant kingdom. It has expanse and view, tasteful modest architecture and is beautifully maintained. It's spring and the air is clear and cool. What more could a person conjure to improve Montpelier today?--ATL

Massive Resistance

April 23, 1951 - Under the leadership of Barbara Johns, fellow students at the all-black Robert Russa Moton High School in the town of Farmville in Prince Edward County, Virginia, walk out of their school to protest the unequal conditions of their education as compared to those of the white students in nearby Farmville High School.--Encyclopedia Virginia

escape route

near Lake Anna nuclear power plant, sirens in the trees

dawn

Washington burying ground, Popes Creek, Virginia

George Washington was born on February 11, 1731 of the Julian calendar, in use before England's calendar reformation in September 1752. His birthday is equivalent to February 22, 1732 in the Gregorian calendar used since 1752. Later in life, Washington himself considered February 22 to be his birthday.- Wikipedia

holy city

down the street from the apostate's house

century farm

six horses, September

Clore

four horses

back back back

my thanks to Historian/photographer John Mason for finding this image in an old scrapbook and providing me with a reason to dive into 30 year old contact sheets, to find and scan...

Saul Bellow wins the Nobel Prize, Roots the #2 nonfiction book, Stevie Wonder awarded a Grammy for Songs in the Key of Life, Chairman Mao dies.

Bovinae

bos taurus

Rain has paused here, still in the forecast, 40% chance. Eight inches of rain.

More cows

subtropical

six inches of rain so far. Flash flood warnings in effect.

Crozet Virginia

Left the Woolen Mills Village for a few hours Wednesday. The Charlottesville Planning Commission gave me a twenty four hour hall pass. Carried some of Jinx Kern's WMV barbeque and went to check in with Central Virginia photographer Charlie Shoffner.
Charlie is my age and makes images that are too beautiful to look at on the Internet. At the moment Charlie is speechless, a stroke grabbed his language. He communicates a lot with no words. We drove around his Crozet neighborhood.
Charlie pointed out some shots for me to take, I tried, but I do not have his color mojo.

Richmond Virginia skyline

first roll of 35mm b&w film, 1968

PUD free

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.
The OD folk say I take pictures of "Scenes, and people from rural lifestyles. Old buildings, interiors, and candid portraits."
Dogs too!

The farmhouse above on Washington family lands near Pope's Creek.
Doing what I am supposed to do...

not bisquit run

You have 900 acres of land? What will you leave behind? 5000 houses? A park? Maybe put the land under a conservation easement?

singular herb

Senator J Brandon Bell II breaks bad on the plant that founded Virginia

a lone man's companion
a hungry man's food
a sad man's cordial
a wakeful man's sleep, and a chilly man's fire,
there's no herb like unto it under the
canopy of heaven
(anon)

Pope's Creek

38 10 970N 76 55 154W

Visited Geo. Washington's natal home yesterday, about the time the geese woke up. No tourists around, too early, too cold.

The Park Service maintains the location as a National Monument, the only way to keep it free of pavement, crackers, MacMansions and private enterprise.

Washington's people lived at Pope's Creek for three generations before he was born.

The gentry had problems in the 1600 and 1700's. Lots of them died. In addition to owning hogs, geese, horses and cows they owned humans. Problematic.

The thing that seems sweet about that time was the ignorance. A person lived in and focused on their own patch of earth. Ambition and its effects were local. No global village. No images of the Prophet, no airplanes carrying gas lasers.

road to hell

Had a party for Sophie. Emma and Helen came over, walked the 'hood. Happiness is numbers for Soph, in a pack and roaming.

Broccoli, bread and burgers for dinner.

It's a serious undertaking, sponsoring creatures in the world.

Lorraine

slabtown

tourists come to the rappahannock/potomac peninsula to visit stratford and the birthplace of geo. washington.
a few of the people visit slabtown.

catalpa bignonioides

spent the day with doug and telisha williams, they have a cd slated for release in the beginning of '06, hoping to come up with useful images for the disc.
but it raises a question, how do you take a photograph of music? how, in a couple of hours, do you come up with visuals that rise to the level of music?

dock of the bay

Jeb and Pelham

We have two perfect weeks of weather in Virginia per year. We had a couple of the good hours of one of our good days today. There are blood-sucking ticks, poisonous snakes and poisonous plants here, if you are elsewhere in the USA or Mexico, THIS IS NOT A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE. BAD PLACE, BAD PLACE!

I enjoyed California. That place is perfect. Light perfect, weather perfect. Just one problem, it's fixing to do a Pakistan.

Back in the Mutual Assured Destruction days people talked about "mental numbing". That necessary process for avoiding thoughts of the danger inherent to sitting on top of a nuke-u-lar arsenal.

"Looks like nothings gonna change, everything still remain the same."

-Otis Redding

ineluctable visuality

fog at dawn over the Rapidan River

Left Sophie in the care of my neighbor and spent 24 hours in the last best place in America.
Can't say last best place, the wannabe trademark holder might sue.
The house sits on the rim of a natural ampitheater in the Piedmont of Virginia. A river runs through it, cows and horses graze around it. Sitting on the porch at night there is a sky above, fields below, chorus of frogs and cicadas, 360 degree beauty and no "security" lights.
The ineluctable visuality of the house and surrounding countryside beats me senseless. My plan was to photograph for 36 to 48 hours. Couldn't live up to the plan, I was overwhelmed after a single rotation. Twenty four hours all the unmitigated beauty I could handle.
The photo method was to shoot first with digital (check placement and balance of rented lights). If the scene was good enough, shoot next with 35mm film. If the composition was still looking good shoot 120mm film with a rented lens (Hasselblad 40mm).
The plan worked fine inside, none of the furniture or windows moved while I was watching.
The panorama outside made a fool of me, beauty in flux. Much of the outside was shot with digital, should have gone straight to film.

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.

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.