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
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