A few days ago I stopped in at the Roadster Shop in Mundelein. This business builds custom street roads for customers all over the United States. They have been kind over the years to allow me to shoot photos of their work parked on the showroom floor. I can hardly remember a time when…
Today promises to be gray and chilly. Rain and snow is predicted, — spring in the Midwest. I plan to be out and about, walking with my camera. This is the time of birth in the cycle of the seasons. Who would not wish to be on hand when new life is emerging to…
For reality is an illusion, and any thought must first try to unmask it. For this purpose, reality itself must remain masked and must shape itself as a decoy, without even thinking or caring about its own truth. Reality must place its pride in never being an instrument of analysis, or a critical instrument,…
Yesterday we took a rare day-trip to Ottowa, Illinois. Ottowa is about an hour and a half south of Batavia, where the Fox River and the Illinois River meet. It is a once prosperous town in the middle of farming country. We enjoyed the drive, leaving behind the last of the tony suburbs with…
One week ago was the first day of Spring. That’s an arbitrary date of course. The term “spring” is an arbitrary label, a sign that we have agreed means that days are longer, there is more light, vegetation shows signs of new life, birds and mammals move about, a sign that mating season is…
Anything written by Nietzsche is approached with apprehension. By reputation Friedrich Nietzsche is a “bomb thrower,” a nihilist who is responsible for the death of God. On a ‘reputation scale’ from high to low, that would be on the low side. Unaccountably in my late 20s I read Nietzsche’s writing with an open mind, overcoming…
Yesterday with a strong grip upon duty, tedious but necessary, I began moving the 2020 photo files from the flash memory chip in my camera to appropriately labeled folders in my laptop. The work entails several hours of peering at this laptop screen. Photo organization is important if there is to be a…
Winter is a season for contemplation. Time spent before a fireplace, is time well spent. Single digit cold bewitches the mind, compelling a still spirit. Focus is demanded by the elements of a near zero day. A footfall is announced by a sharp note of compacted ice, exposed skin serrated by a chill wind….
Today I awakened before dawn intent on walking into nearby Almond Marsh before sunrise. I enjoy taking a walk with camera in hand. Predictably the camera is an aid to careful observation. A camera is a mechanical device that records only what the lens captures, without the distractions of a human mind. Are we…
I want to do things that I did when I was sixteen. I would spend hours walking in the woods, in any season. I carried a Mars Chocolate Bar in one pocket, my hunting knife on my belt, my 22 rifle in my hand, and a box of 50 shells in the other pocket. …
