photography

Listen Under the Overpass

overpass listen

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Under glazed hazel, fibrous tissue tugs, fixing eyes to matching four inch screens. Father and son synchronize strides along the cement path. Colorless injection molded earbuds drown cardinal song, eddies whispering rivulet secrets, and eighteen wheelers thumping down the concrete and steel bypass twenty feet above. Stopping, the boy slaps dad on the shoulder, points, then shouts, “Listen!” The irony of exclamation from self-induced deafness is lost when curiosity focuses on two syllables yanking son and father from oblivion for a few minutes.

Listen…

Rural Psychogeography

Bison

Random horned bovinae and a derelict timber mill are but two curiosities greeting the (intentionally) lost along Madison County’s rural backroads.

Bull

Madison County Cattle Farm

Listen to four minutes, thirty-three seconds:

Weyerhaeuser Mill

Closed Weyerhaeuser Mill

After the crash, Weyerhaeuser closed its Colbert facility. From the 2008 press release:

“Demand for engineered wood products continues to decline due to a slowdown in the housing market.  As a result of these challenging market conditions, the Colbert facility will close for an indefinite period of time while we continue to balance supply with demand.”

Madison County Creek

Let’s hear it for the trees!

True Opposites

Watson Mill Bridge Mirror 1

“The true opposite of obedience is not disobedience but independence. The true opposite of order is not disorder but freedom. Most profoundly, the true opposite of control is not chaos but self control.”

-Jay Griffiths

Click here to read Jay Griffith’s Orion magazine article entitled The Politics of Play, Seeking Adventure in a Risk-Averse Society.

Concrete Ingredient 1

“The first three ingredients of concrete – sand, ocean creatures, and water – create the solidity of pipes and pilings and sidewalks and walls.  Reinforced with rebar, pressed between bricks, the concrete hardens, but only with time, which is the fourth ingredient of concrete.”

-Kathleen Dean Moore

A Call For More “Untutored Savages”

David Sobel’s books Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, Mapmaking With Children, and Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities, were three of the most influential, nonrequired readings while slogging through tired ed courses. Now once in awhile, similar literature surfaces as a healthy reminder to allow and urge spontaneous natural wonder and play.

Look, Don’t Touch, in the July/August edition of Orion Magazine, is Sobel’s comprehensive critique of environmental education pitfalls prevalent among well-intended households, classrooms, and camps.  He quotes “untutored savage” naturalist superheroes John Muir and E.O. Wilson, discussing unscripted, unsupervised childhood adventures, juxtaposed with ubiquitous rules within current environmental education programs and summer camps restricting kids to designated trails, PowerPoint introductions, and policies forbidding fort building and tree climbing in the name of conservation.

Muir remembers, “One late afternoon I brought home a coachwhip snake nearly as long as I was tall and walked into the house with it wrapped around my neck.”  While living in rural Ponchatoula, Louisiana, I had a similar experience at age eight.  Biking home for lunch from morning adventures in pinewoods that go on forever (dressed in a black ninja outfit), mom shrieked as I appeared in the kitchen with a pair of matching lime green anoles dangling from my earlobes.

A child discovers a way to capture a huge, black snake, or that some lizards won’t let go.  It’s this sort of experiential outdoor play that develops into lifelong respect for, and connection to, a world from which far too many children are estranged.

Read more…

Nurturing Graphicacy

100 Seconds of Solitude

A Sense of Place

Mindful of the Ocoee

Around 3:30, the Ocoee recedes over the course of a couple hours as the Tennessee Valley Authority’s dam no. 3 diverts millions of gallons of water from a four mile stretch engineered in 1996 for “the world’s first Olympic whitewater event on a natural river” (USDA Forest Service).  This isn’t what they had in mind.

Honeydew Trampolines

Last year’s melons were suspended in the air, each wrapped in pantyhose hammocks hung from the bamboo trellis.  This year, they’ll stay on the ground, slightly elevated on improvised hosiery trampolines.

Six wicker baskets cost a dollar at the Habitat Re-Store down the street, and the queen size hose are less than two bucks.  Family Dollar didn’t have large sizes, but the lady was kind enough to pull a pair out to get a better idea of how to stretch them, then she recommended the beauty supply place (Joy Joy) around the corner.

First, cut the feet.

Next, cut lengths that’ll suit the basket’s diameter.

Pull the length of hosiery around as shown.

Stretch taught, then tie both ends.

Some don’t need to be tied, yet remain tight.

The original plan was to use ceramic bowls, but baskets let water through, preventing pooling (and mosquitoes).  The heavier fruit sags pretty close to the bottom of the basket, so as they swell in size, they might need an additional layer of support to remain resting mid air.

White Dam and Eastern Bloc Blues

Remnants of incapacitated industry bring to mind contemporary interpretations of Eastern Bloc sounds.  This first sample, produced by the Polish nu jazz duo Skalpel, offers hip hop beats occupied by Polish jazz samples scrubbed from the archives.

“Sculpture”

Igor Boxx, 1/2 of Skalpel, recently went solo with the debut album Breslau.  Compared to the lush, polished sound of Skalpel, his tracks have a colder resonance.

“Russian Percussian”

“Fear of a Red Planet”

Aaron Funk is a Canadian electronic artist known as Venetian Snares.  During a 2005 trip to Hungary, he produced the album Rossz Csillag Alatt Született.

The concept of the album came when Aaron Funk imagined himself as a pigeon on Budapest’s Királyi Palota (Royal Palace).  Its third track, “Öngyilkos vasárnap” is a cover of the song “Szomorú vasárnap” (“Gloomy Sunday”) by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress, which has been referred to as the Hungarian suicide song. According to urban legend, Seress’s song has inspired the suicide of multiple persons, including his fiancée. The song was reportedly banned in Hungary. It has also been covered by many artists. Billie Holiday’s vocals are sampled in this track.

-Wikepedia

“Öngyilkos Vasárnap”

Moss Terrariums

This first go at moss terrariums follows a tutorial by a Brooklyn based terrarium store.  Inspired, I hiked along a stretch of railroad that runs through Whitehall Forest, harvesting verdant rugs, small chunks of pink and greyscale granite,  and parched epiphytic aliens.

The simple tutorial fails to include instructions and tips for anyone interested in creating lasting enclosed microenvironments.  After a week, the apothecary terrarium above is growing a white, moldy beard from the sphagnum layer.  While troubleshooting, I discovered some comprehensive websites dedicated to the natural art beyond home decor trends.  These are the best so far:

The Fern and Mossery

The Terrarium Man

The next batch will include a layer of activated charcoal to absorb any toxins, cleanse the water as it travels up and down, and (hopefully) stem mold growth.