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More Strangeness From the Streets
Continue ReadingWhen editing an image one occasionally makes extravagant changes — necessary I thought in this case to express the strangeness of our subject. Professional clowns cultivate oddness and dress routinely in garish, cobbled-together outfits. Their faces can only be described using hyperbole. This fellow had wrapped himself in balloons twisted into bizarre shapes. He […]
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Unexpected Scenes in the Arizona Desert
Continue ReadingThis is neither a movie set nor a palace grounds in the desert Middle East. Rather, it is an intricately designed and diligently maintained garden sanctuary at a Mediterranean-style monastery not too far south of Phoenix, Arizona.
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The Dinosaurs Are Everywhere
Continue ReadingThere are probably more dinosaur figures — ranging from modest statues to gigantic sculptures — now on display in our western states than total organisms of this kind who actually flourished and died throughout the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of deep history. The modern representations come in metal, plaster, stone, rubber, plastic and fiberglass […]
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Traces — Natural Or Sentient?
Continue ReadingI daydream and I am prone to conjecture about other worlds with atmospheres like ours, having wind and rain and erosion. I wonder who might exist there and how if I landed in an empty, uninhabited place I could tell whether any native organisms were gregarious or not, or even intelligent. Living creatures generally leave […]
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In the Old Church of Holy Wisdom
Continue ReadingThe floors are marble, worn smooth from human footsteps, billions of them made across one thousand four hundred years by worshipers and unbelieving visitors alike. Unconscious minutes pass while you orient yourself, then at once you recognize the enormity of the structure you have just entered. Under a massive dome space unrolls and widens around […]
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In Defense of Piranhas
Continue Reading“I have first to confess to a considerable dislike of photography as everyman practises it. I detest the sight of bands of tourists armed with cameras, and snapping everything into non-existence, like so many piranha-fish.” From An Essay by John Fowles in Land, containing a portfolio of photographs by Fay Godwin. Our photograph dates from a […]
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Sahara Rains
Continue ReadingIt rained in Cairo, Egypt on this day — a brief and not very satisfying shower — which passes for precipitation in the great desert. It was less than usual, barely enough to make splotches in the dust covering the neighborhood automobiles. As in most Cairo rains you had to be alert or you […]
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Portrait of a First Sergeant
Continue ReadingThe man is an actor. More precisely a re-enactor, part of an American tribe in whom history lives organically, the past daily inhabiting thoughts and feelings. He does a good job portraying an aging sergeant of the Civil War. Anyone holding that rank would have served prior duty, meaning the Mexican War, the sieges of […]
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Rustic Pickup — Symbol of a Culture
Continue ReadingIn my thirties I lived four years in a once-thriving Ohio River town, now with just 800 living souls whose numbers fall steadily. In a district of pine-covered hills extending 400 square miles, the burg and the territory had during my time just 4,000 inhabitants in total, major part living in backwoods enclaves, each claiming […]
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Mother of the World
Continue ReadingCairo they call Umm-i-dunya — Mother of the World, a massive, dirty, noisy and crowded place alive with kinetic energy — for the past thousand years a Muslim city, before that the site of layered kingdoms and monuments, and long before that it formed part of the ancient route for human migrations out of Africa. […]
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