Does anyone still read this?

Go west, foolish man.

Doubtful.

But if so, read this too:

Walking Far From Home.

Thanks, and see you again a few years.

In which love overcomes the need to not sell one's soul.

Claudia Wilburn, artist, and her art work : http://claudiawilburn.tumblr.com/.

Happy new year.

Time passes slowly.

It's a big world out there.

I've still only seen a small part of it...

Still a bit lost...

...but not ready to return just yet.

Not with a whimper, but a click.

Acclaimed nature photographer Michio Hoshino who specialized in Alaskan wildlife images, was killed by a brown bear in Russia on assignment in 1996.
This was his last photo.

I'm going to be signing off for a little while. There shall be more later, maybe.

On travel...

I've been making copious use of Google maps lately. Some of that has been for its "intended" use, namely getting directions from once place to another, but I've also been using the street view to look at houses for rent, and inspect neighborhoods, and even to virtually revisit scenes from my past.


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Maybe it's because I'm pulling up roots yet again, but every one of those views pulls up a very specific time in my mind. Coincdentally, they all involve water, and bridges or causeways.


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There's something about the conversion of crossing water that appeals to me. While some borders are nebulous things, crossing a river or creek marks a real boundary. This side and that side. That was there, and this is here.

And so. I head off to a new town, new bridges and new water. Here. And there. Then. And now.


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Healing Springs, Blackville, SC in Polaroid

location: Healings Springs, near Blackville, SC

Healing Springs, Blackville, SC

location: Healings Springs, near Blackville, SC

On the wind.

I often wonder what it's like to really smell the wind...

It is over yet?

This year, is it done? Can I go now?

All that rises shall converge.

Flickr

The daze of summer.

Here in the south, we love our sports, and it would take a natural disaster to keep us away from them, or maybe something extra...

The following story was published in the Chicago Herald after the 1886 Charleston earthquake (pictured above).

"I was down in South Carolina during all of the earthquake troubles," said a commercial traveler, "and I never again want to be a witness of such scenes as I saw there. I'll not attempt to describe the incidents to you—they have already been sufficiently touched upon in the daily papers. But there is one little phase of the thing which the newspapers have not even mentioned. You know business was suspended in Charleston. All of the stores excepting grocery and provision stores were closed. The banks were not open. The theaters closed their doors. Even the newspapers suspended publication for an issue or two. But the day after the first terrible quake I happened out by the baseball grounds, and I'll be durned if there wasn't two clubs in there a playing, and quite a crowd sitting on the benches cheering the players. I looked through a crack in the fence , and just then another earthquake shock came. The umpire motioned to the players to go right along, but the pitcher, who was then in the box, asked to have the game called for a few minutes because the home plate was wobbling so he couldn't put the ball in straight. The umpire acceded to this reasonable request, and after a delay of ten minutes I heard the umpire call out, 'play ball—batter up.' Then I left, satisfied that baseball is the one American institution which even an earthquake can't knock out."

Small bonus:
The same view today:

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Photo from: U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library
Newspaper column via: Baseball Researcher

I haz a press pass!