I was up at 4:00 a.m. this morning. Carol had an early business flight to Boston. After she had gone and I had a couple of cups of coffee, I decided to walk down to the lake.
At 5:15 no one else was on the sidewalk and only a few cars passed.
I reached the lakefront just as the sun was rising. The photos are in sequence.
At about 5:30 the world began to come awake. A man jogged along the beach. Two more jogged past on the path behind me. A woman came out of an apartment building across the street to walk her dog.
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When I was young THE FAMILY OF MAN which is still called the greatest photographic exhibit ever was presented by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art. I don’t recall how I heard of it, but I owned a paperback copy of the exhibit whose photos I studied time and again. The theme is that people are alike all over the world, and that pretty much has been my experience.
Some of the work of the Brazilian photographer, Sebastiao Salgado, the subject of a current documentary, THE SALT OF THE EARTH, is an Anti-Family of Man. Not because he does not care about people, but because he cares and has witnessed too much man made suffering and death: genocides in Africa and the former Yugoslavia; famines caused by governments withholding food from their own people. I’m not sure I have the above quote word for word, but it is true to what Sebastiao Salgado says he felt about our species at one time. He found redemption in restoring the rain forest on his family land and in a several year project of photographing the parts of the worlds and the people least affected by what poses as civilization, which resulted in a book, GENESIS, about which I have written here before.
Sebastiao Salgado is an original. Once seen his photographs, some beautiful, some terrible, remain indelibly in the mind.
I rented THE SALT OF THE EARTH from iTunes, but as soon as I finished watching, I bought the film because I know I will want to watch it often again.
Having made the connection to THE FAMILY OF MAN, I checked and found that it can still be bought through Amazon. Many of those photos, too, have remained in my mind. I’d like to see them again and ordered a copy.
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My face cracked and fell off.
The new skin is not baby smooth.
Carol says I look ten years younger. She is being facetious. I do not look ten days younger. Nor do I want to.
I am a little less spotty.
That people go through something like this purely for cosmetic reasons would be unbelievable if we did not have Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to provide perspective on human intelligence.
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I’ve ordered several things in the past few days to take back to GANNET: new jib sheets of New England Ropes salsa line which I have been using as the main sheet and like very much because it does not kink and is easy on hands; two new Blue Performance sheet bags; sailmaker needles and thread; and a Raymarine Tacktick wireless wind system.
The last probably should be filled under “Hope springs eternal.”
Some readers may recall that I had a Tacktick system on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA and that I went through three masthead wind units. This was before the company was bought by Raymarine which makes such reliable tiller pilots.
Both masthead unit and display are solar powered and, with no wires in the mast, easily installed. Even easier when I pay Northland Riggers to go up the mast. One of the advantages of being an old man is that you can pay young men to do things you don’t want to.
Obviously I don’t need an electronic readout of wind speed and angle; but it will be nice to have—if it works.
At least I’ve learned to keep my proof of purchase for warranty claims.