Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Shining (soft) Light on the Prairie


Meteorological Summer

Considering these last three days we've kissed 90 degrees Fahrenheit, science would seem to have it about right, this time.



Except a week ago when on a soggy morning I went land looking at a local prairie remnant, sustenance for summer's pollinators proved scant.



What I found instead on a soft morning before the rains returned was leftover brown being overwhelmed by spring green.



Resolute green, even...



All manner of green.



Sigh.

Early bees and butterflies are out & about around our garden, where lupine rage in full bloom and the chives are lavender bolted.

Yet out on the remnant just a few days ago, seasonal abundance remained reticent.




Pending.



Impressionistic.



If such a thing can be said about real life.



While walking, I spotted nary a butterfly nor a bee. 1st of the year mosquitoes however, were abundant.

I'll take that as a sure sign.




Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Swiss Street Scene


Old World/New World, red state/blue state…

Some powers that be always look the same.

The male gaze:




Friday, May 20, 2022

The old, Old World



Twenty-five years ago, Heather & I had the opportunity to visit Switzerland. We made the most of it.



While there, I pushed a hundred and twenty sheets of 4x5 transparency film through the Linhof and dozens of rolls of 35mm as well, always keeping the Nikon handy.



This week, just a month or so short of a full quarter century later, I finally finished working my way through all the scans I made from that film.

Seems a shame to just let the whole of it slumber on in the dark because it's 'off topic' here. What does that mean these days anyway, in our defiantly discursive new world?

Besides, it's about respecting the work. We're taught we must. So here we are.



Born to the mid 20th Century, the thing that struck me most about the Old World is that it's really, really old. Seems obvious I know, but we're talking Roman walls.

As in built by actual Romans. That's what some call call 'Biblical times'.



I mean even in 'modern' times, 1677 was smack dab in the middle of King Philip's War on the dispensable folk who were here first and four years prior to William Penn receiving from the King a charter for to create Pennsylvania in his name.

In Chur they built hotels that hosted Kings. And eventually, us.



Saying the United States of America and everything that's gone on to mean wasn't even a gleam in the Enlightenment's eye is rank understatement.



As a true blue separation of church and state kinda guy, I recall being struck that religious iconography was routine on the everyday public square. Previously, I'd seen stuff like this only in werewolf movies and the like.



Today it wouldn't surprise me in Texas.



In any event, this still strikes me as quite the ways to go, just to go to church…



A week after returning home, I got my eyes on the giant pile of finished film. That's when I first felt with justified conviction, I can do this.



Now I'm reminded that despite those peers who scoffed, it really was possible to shoot 4x5 trans in the field at a success rate of better than 2:1, because I absolutely did.



So take that, incredulous swine of my personally distant past…



And hard as it is now to believe, 35mm film was once a pro medium.



Hell, National Geographic made its nut from that stuff for decades on end.



It was only after I learned how much film those guys (they were mostly guys) burnt through to earn a single placement in the magazine that I understood why some pro shooters I knew refused to believe me. Seemed axiomatic to them that I couldn't, I'm sure.

Little did they know how hungry the future is and was, even then.



Waste not want not, right?

Speaking of axioms, when the fastest route to the top of the world proves unpalatable…



…take the train.



I'd hope (but didn't really expect) that today, this view would be much the same:



No such luck. It isn't. I checked.

And to think I used to believe it was only cultures and their construct that collapsed.



In that same vein, it occurs to me that memorials built to our honored dead, no matter how noble the human sacrifice at the time, inevitably end up covered with shit.



All that said, for me the Old World had its charms.



I even got along famously with the natives.



But in the end, it was no place at all like home.



For instance, our tallgrass doesn't also make beer.



And Baroque art was friggin' insane. That is all.



For now.

Friday, May 6, 2022

Marking Time...

 


On the prairie this year, April was notably chill, dark and wet.



Now it's rained on five of May's first 6 days.



Currently, it's 47 degrees. And raining. Tolerable weather, I suppose. For March.



The say this time next week it'll be more like summer, with hot days and sultry nights.



We'll see. First, it must stop raining.



Until then, quality light's in short supply. Much less anything resembling perfect.




So until further notice, dreaming of springs past will have to do.



This last image was captured in May, 2018. Four hundred and fifty friggin' miles north of here.

Years. Go figure.




Sunday, May 1, 2022

May Day Miscellany

 


Last year I explained why May Day is important to me. You can read my brief on the day's history here.



This year I thought of just saying I'm cleaning out my closet and taking it easy from there, the Zion triptych was a heavy lift. But I could make posts like this one through to next year and my photographic closet would still be full.

Forty plus years of active fieldwork, you end up with all sorts of stuff. True fact, that.

For instance, I'm still wondering what "Homade" pizza is, exactly…



So here's a variably pertinent mix of May Day thoughts and images, there're a whole lot more where these came from.



I'm reminded that after Heather brought the Topcon home from Europe, my first ambition after I stole it from her was to become a wildlife photographer.



Then history shot me a sideways glance and I've never yet been able to look away.



That doesn't mean I didn't take the odd wildlife opportunity when it came…



Since 2004, the corporate tax rate's down from 39 to 21 percent. Meanwhile if you make 41k this year, yours is 22. Yet still these Corporate Masters of our Universe are paying little to nothing of their fair share and getting away with it.


(Stats are for illustrative purposes only. Your performance may vary.)


When in my teens, I thought/hoped my spirit animal was an eagle. Who doesn't want to soar, right? As a young adult I believed maybe a wolf, because sometimes I definitely was.

Now I know it's been a bear all along.



Finishing off the Kingston Plains files confirmed that the all-time favorite working hours of my life occurred June 10th, 2016 as I furiously stalked a previously blasted landscape, stunningly revealed as bursting with life.

Now that was a day. You can read about it here.

Thinking back on it, I'm half surprised the Nikon didn't simply burst into flames.




Once upon a time, along the the main drag through Mercer was a big assed sign next to this fiberglass critter declaring Mercer the "Loon Capital of the World."

Knowing Wisconsin, invariably we'd snicker.



Giant size fiberglass critters are so WI. You know, like homade pizza.

Besides, nearly all the loons I've ever seen in real life were well over the State line in Michigan, where true (if 2nd and 3rd growth) wilderness resides.

Just sayin'.



My maternal grandfather fought for his adopted America during WW1. He was at both Verdun and the Argonne. That means he twice survived literal hell on earth, so here I am.



After The Great War ended, they called it "The war to end all wars."

As is so often the case, they were dead wrong.



Used to be, the world's largest piece of float copper took pride of place near the entrance of Presque Isle Park, in Marquette.



In 2016, it was sold to a private collector. I don't know where that famous hunk of Copper Country copper is now. At least the Ontonagon Boulder is still in the Smithsonian.

Or so they say.

At one time, Hibbing MN was up on a hill.



In the 1920's, they moved the town before progress could eat it.



I captured the clip below on June 2nd 2012, while in the splendid rotunda of Wisconsin's state capitol building for an art show. I missed the 1st verse, but if you stick it out you'll see how this individual standing alone for what's right might just have changed a young girl's life.

At any rate, I bet she's not forgotten…



Of course, that was before then Gov. Walker summarily ended a long tradition in the People's House and changed the rules so the Capital cops could put a stop to such nonsense before it began.



How things stand now as regards people's protests is fraught.

And it occurs to me that if you're looking at this on your phone, you'll likely never spot the flying sheep, amongst all those that sleep.




Lest the present seem too grim, I'll end with a shout out to the indomitable Claire Hintz.



Claire's Elsewhere Farm is far enough north that it's not really Wisconsin, but rather a Superior world apart.

And should you like a glimpse of what a more locally sustainable future might look like, including all the hard work and dedication necessary to that cause, Farmer Claire is up there laboring mightily to help show the rest of us a better way.

In any event, happy May Day. A new day.



Here's history looking at you, kids.



#mayday2022