Beset By The Moon

That is the moon setting early this morning. The reflection comes from the bare ice of a skating rink. Here it is later in the day:

And here is the moon set again but with the exposure amped up:

Changes: Seasonal and Phase

Morning ski trails on a local lake: 

The newer path diverging left is incuse while the older path on the right appears in relief. This effect is from snow melting around the compacted tracks; the relief tracks will indeed be some of the last traces of winter as the snow reverts to its liquid state. 

Another view under different light:

incuse right; relief left

Some tracks were pocked by leaf prints:

Closer up:

The leaves were not passively revealed by melting; rather, they blew in from shore the previous day and due to their darker color they melted in place, actively boring through snow and ice. In this small way the old season hastens the new. 

Split Rock Lighthouse

photo by Ron Winch

What good is a lighthouse in broad daylight?
Who needs such enlightenment in an age of modern communications?
The lighthouse is just an icon to admire--a quaint beacon of a bygone era.
_________________
I bought that print many years ago on eBay, perhaps from the photographer. I'd like to contact him to get his permission to use here, but I can't seem to find an address on the Web.

The photo reminds me of my father and the times we spent together along the Minnesota North Shore which I blogged about in a series called Revisiting Highway 61.

The photo juxtaposes many opposite compositional elements.  Here are a few that I see:

Black vs. white
Vertical cliff vs. plane of water
Wet vs. dry
Deep unknown vs. known clarity
Living trees vs. inorganic rock
Chaos (rubble) vs. order (monolithic cliff)
Near vs. far.
Darkness vs. lightness
Soft vs. hard
Edge/boundary vs. continuity

[As a comment, MamaM added: Two different cloud types. High cirrus in foreground and low cumulus close to horizon. Changing weather perhaps?

Two opposite diagonals. Tree trunks slanting one direction, cloud lines another.]

Summer's Almost Gone...



San Onofre Beach

Photo taken from the cliffs above San Onofre Beach.  The beach was immortalized by The Beach Boys in "Surfin' USA"

Fathoming Good and Evil

Photo negative of a pool taken underwater by my father ca. 1975

We humans look bilaterally symmetric, but inside we are not. Our hearts and stomachs are not symmetrically balanced, nor is our digestive tract. Bilateral (and higher) symmetry is common in nature and also appears unseen in right and left-handed versions of the same molecules.* We even speak of left and right in politics.

Then there is the symmetry of matter and anti-matter. And the symmetry of good and bad. This is something different altogether. Though the symmetry of matter and anti-matter is as symmetric as a number line, with plus and minus arrayed symmetrically about zero, only one side prevails in the world we know.  I asked a while back:

Who broke the mirror so long ago?

Who can fathom why matter prevails while the equal and opposite realm of anti-matter remains all but unrealized? 

__________________
*Right and left handed versions of the same molecules are chiral, a word which stems from a Greek word meaning handedness.

Il Ponte Rotto (Cleveland)

A photo I took of a broken bridge across (or near) the Cuyahoga river in 1984:

A photo of the original Ponte Rotto in Rome along with its history can be found here.

Update:  I found some recent photographs of the Jefferson Avenue Bridge here and here

And: This is my favorite photo of the Ponte Rotto:

Notice how close the modern trastevere travesity comes to the old Ponte Rotto.

Nothing Is Cooler Than Ice Diving

A favorite old family photo of mine.  My wife had it framed and gave it to me several years ago. That is my late father (seated) and a dive buddy of his getting ready to go under the ice in Lake Monona in Madison sometime during the '60s.

I remember the guy standing. My dad taught him how to dive. He was deaf and mute and he worked as a printer with my dad at the newspaper. He'd come over to hang out and they'd communicate using sign language. That guy might had been deaf and mute but he sure wasn't dumb. And sign language was obviously handy underwater.

Wish I knew who took the photo and what year it was from but there it is.

The Pail And Shovel Party

Sorting through old negatives the other day, I came across this one.  That is Leon Varjian (l) and Jim Mallon (r), VP and President of the Wisconsin Student Association, posing for me ca. 1979-80.  Varjian and Mallon were the clowns who first brought the Statue of Liberty to Madison and also the pink flamingos to Bascom Hill.

They're Fixing A Hole Where The Rain Gets Out

Somewhere east of Cleveland, OH (1984)