I have a camera too, you know.
This composition is called “Another Forecast Screw-up”. In it we see a local weatherman staring at the snow he didn’t predict. He is bent under the heavy guilt and curses of the TV viewers. The sculptor expressed heavy burden of being a failed meteorologist through the tense back muscles and a somber pose. Viewer could almost feel the weatherman thinking: “I should have listened to my parents and went to a law school”. Stone, snow, shuttlecocks. Author unknown.
The next composition is called “Flower Power Melts The Snow”. Rusted Car, Snow, Trees. Donated by D&C Scrapyards.
This photo is called “See a Man About A Horse”. In it we observe three major components: a group of submerged lights which signify the word “see”, a man and a horse. The lights are submerged in the vessels with water. The artist wanted to show how electric hazard affects the other components of the composition. Does it scare a man? A horse? We don’t know.The calmness reflects the thought that the man and the horse in the photo don’t know anything about electric safety. Maybe the horse actually knows something because it’s looking away. The man is clueless though.
Man, Horse, Electric Hazard. Donated by the Fire Department.
Lastly, I took this photo of a journal where visitors are encouraged to leave their thoughts. No Comment.
A weird side-effect of getting older is an ability to throw around time spans that used to seem like an eternity not so long ago. It’s hard to believe that thirty three years ago on this day I was standing in my brand new school uniform clutching a bouquet of flowers almost as tall as I was, in front of the building where I were to spend the next 8 years. Behind us, proud and worried parents who seemed so old, but were probably younger than I am today, were getting ready to see their kids enter the school for the first time in their life. I can’t say I remember much of that day, but looking at these photos I can tell that I was worried and probably scared of what was waiting for me behind the big school doors on September 1st, 1976.
Ahead of me were the years of learning and adventures, friendships, successes, disappointments, first love, pranks, great teachers, not-so-great teachers, and so much more; the best and the most care-free years of my life where just behind these doors.
I am always disappointed with how casual the first day of school is in this country, most of the time kids just show up whenever their school district decides is a good day to start. When I was growing up® all the school and college classes across the country started on September 1st, now known as the Knowledge Day. Everyone showed up dressed in the parade uniforms, with flowers, there were speeches and the obligatory “first bell” when a first-grader was paraded around ringing a huge school bell. Throughout the school years the reaction went from childish excitement, to playing it cool “been there – done that”, to a sentimental tear when hearing the bell for the last time upon entering the graduating class.
On September 1st I look at these photographs and think about so many September Firsts in my life. Today there is a First Bell ringing somewhere for some other little kid. I wonder what his life will be like…
“Sunset Over A Sea of Corn” would have been a title of a picture I should’ve taken but waited just long enough for the sun to finally dissolve in the eight-feet-tall waves of corn somewhere between Bowling Green and Laddonia.
Maybe I am compensating for not having a car for the first 23 years of my life and never taking a real road-trip until I was a grown man but I’ve been doing a double-duty putting some miles on my car driving around these here United States. It also helps me maintain a healthy-sized carbon footprint, adding my little share to the global warming and destroying the environment. Luckily my daughter doesn’t mind hours of driving as long as I don’t sing in the car, which is hard because the seemingly omnipresent country station is pumping out things like:
You should hear this stuff with the Russian accent, it will really “turn you on”.
Over the past weekend we added another 1,200 miles to my car’s odometer, going to Chicago and back. This time we took a different route cutting through the South-Central-Eastern Missouri and Central-Western Illinois in order to make a stop at Springfield,IL to check up on the Land Of Lincoln. Driving on the rural highways has a more intimate feel since you actually have to slow down in each little town on the way, you get to see people’s houses, rusted farm equipment, smell the manure, and pass a tractor or two on the way. Somewhere between the anti-abortion billboards, entertained by a single country radio station, another breed of American people goes on about their lives unconcerned by their standing in the social media.
We took our time driving through this area and if I actually stopped and took every photo I wanted to, we’d still be on the road. So here are a few I actually had a chance to take.
The General Store in Atlas,IL has this sign that is the most concise restaurant review I’ve ever seen: “Eat Here – Get Worms”.
Pike County Courthouse in Pittsfield,IL Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, IL.
Lincoln’s Home is just a part of a larger historic site which preserved Springfield as Lincoln would’ve experienced it, sans tourist crowds. In front of his home Lincoln Troubadours perform the period songs.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvshZW_Zfik
Next the Illinois State Capitol (compare to the Kansas State Capitol):
Chicago always has the neatest-looking sculptures. This one looks like alphabet soup on acid:
Chimpotle’s likeness scares customers away near some local bar:
Obligatory skyline shot:
I guess you can find peace and quiet even at the busiest corner in the middle of the busy city:
This could be Chicago’s mayor and his wife, or KC’s mayor and his wife (after skipping a dinner or two).
Lincoln’s body is still there, tourists disappointed by the lack of a souvenir shop wandering around the cemetery.
View of the Mississippi from Louisiana, MO.
Louisiana turned out to be a very nice small town with several streets lined with Victorian mansions overlooking the river. Some in better condition than others.
Health-care debate goes on here as well.
After watching the sunset we finally got back on I70 and the countryside disappeared in an unending strobe-lights of trucks and road construction cones. We were almost home.
We were driving on I-70 when my Mom saw the billboard for the Churchill Memorial in Fulton, MO. I told her what I knew about the “Iron Curtain” speech; the American experience during the Cold War; the radiation drills; famous videos of kids hiding under their desks; even the fallout shelters in Kansas City.
