Author: WmX

I stumbled off the track to success in 1968, started chasing shadows that summer. Since then, In addition to farm-laborer and newspaper photographer my occupational incarnations include dishwasher, janitor, retail photo clerk, plumber, HVAC repairman, auto mechanic, CAT scan technologist, computer worker and politico (whatever it takes to buy a camera.) I am on the road to understanding black and white photography.

pinus taeda

flowering
There goes the neighborhood…
Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), also called Arkansas pine, North Carolina pine, and oldfield pine, is the most commercially important forest species in the southern United States.–Silvics

Prunus × yedoensis

snap
D.C. packed above and below with tourists filling phone memory with cherry blossoms.

civility instruction
In a ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two of these trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park.–Wikipedia
(March 26, 2016, Mr. Beaver’s call for civility was ignored. At least one tree was broken by climbers and stripped of flowers for personal adornment.)

grey and green touristinfrastructure
Republicans were once interested in the Environment, witness Teddy Roosevelt and National Parks, Dick Nixon and the EPA. What happened?
In 1965 Democrat Lady Bird Johnson accepted a bunch more Yoshino trees from the Japanese Government. They were planted on the grounds of the Washington Monument.

Couple on the tidal pool.
Many many selfie sticks in action on the perimeter of the Tidal Basin..

much of a muchness

swamp
Bennett’s Creek, the water later runs into the Chowan River then to Albemarle Sound. It is south and west of the Dismal Swamp

swamp
Merchants Mill Pond. via two-lane roads, south and east, skirting the Nottoway River, Courtland Road, Jerusalem Plank Road, Plank Road, through the town of Courtland, bypassing Franklin, crossing the Blackwater River, directly south to North Carolina on the Gates Road, rt.666, through Reynoldson, Wileyton. The Park is near Gatesville NC

open water
Much of a muchness? These clearly baldcypress, but upstream on Bennett’s creek, seemed that there were red maple and tupelo in the mix.

Slow way home

schoolchildren in Okinawa
saw a movie yesterday written by UVA professor Leonard Shoppa,

poster
  In Japan, 98 percent of children walk to school every day, unaccompanied by a parent.  In the United States, just 13 percent of children walk or bike to school, and most are driven to school by a parent.

smart cae
The Slow Way Home explores this divergence, examining how American families have largely given up on keeping our streets and public spaces safe enough for children, while Japanese communities have mobilized to keep their streets safe and walkable, not only for children but for everyone in society.