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.

words are wind

Market Street plan
Meetings I remember. Huge category. This the meeting that laid out improvements to Market Street east of Meade Avenue. Plantings, stormwater BMPs, profile changes. I’d been canvassing residents of the street the day before (9/7/2008), encouraging their attendance at the meeting. Charles said he wasn’t coming, a waste of time: “the City will never do this for us, it’s all about the money, the river will rise up and wash us away.” I tried to persuade him, encouraging him to be more sanguine.
Hey Charles! You were right. The improvements weren’t forthcoming.

railroaded

Marchant Street closed
For 150 years, people have walked from the President’s house to Woolen Mills Road (E Market) via Marchant Street. Earlier this month the street was cut off, severing the connection between the northern and southern portions of the Woolen Mills Neighborhood, without process, without advance notice. Hey Woolen Mills Neighborhood!
It sucks to be you.
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funerary practice

Futenma
Much custom involved with how to treat the dead. I can’t read hiragana. Found out months later the sign reads:
“If you trash garbage here, you are sentenced to five years’ penal servitude or
pay a fine of ten million yen under the law.
Moushi Hanashiro Family”


Arlington Cemetery
There are no signs in Arlington dictating behavior. We were dressed down by grave police for our behavior. The self appointed monitor accused us of being disrespectful. On the contrary, this is how we honor our dead.

in praise of the dead

snag in Cook forest
Standing dead trees are an important resource for the living.

But a dead tree, contrary to popular perception, has a plus side. Called a snag, it plays host to a variety of insects, fungi, spiders, and other small native creatures of the woodland; a variety of mammals, including flying and gray squirrels, raccoons, and others; and, surprisingly, about eight-five species of birds in North America. In a forest, at least, maturity and deadwood are relative terms.–Robert Halma, “The Lehigh Valley: A Natural and Environmental History”

 
Excellent article on dead trees, see: “Praise the Dead: The Ecological Values of Dead Trees” by George Wuerthner

Cook Forest

white pine?
Cook Forest State Park is known for some of America’s finest virgin white pine and hemlock timber stands and was once called the “Black Forest” due to the preponderance of evergreen tree coverage.–Wikipedia

Lagerstroemia

pruned
Lagerstroemia, commonly known as crape myrtle or crepe myrtle, is a genus of around 50 species of deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs native to the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, northern Australia and parts of Oceania, cultivated in warmer climates around the world.–wikipedia
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March 18, Adrian Higgins at the Washington Post published a column “How to avoid hacking at your crape myrtle this spring“,

The crape myrtle has always brought out the inner butcher in certain people —
there is something about those smooth, sinewy branches that screams “amputate me”.–A. Higgins