Outta' Here!

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I'm away until October 7th. Taking a vacation on Cape Cod. Pity I won't be around to see the Championship Series. Yep, the Lancaster Barnstomers clinched the Division Title and the Atlantic League series starts tonight, I think. Big Time in Lancaster. The kids play their hearts out, they're evenly matched and our new Clipper Stadium's a joy.

I think of the baseball experience a lot like other guys thing about a lake. They'll sit staring at it for hours and recharge themselves from the solace that laps at the shore. I get that kind of recharge from peering out at that beautiful diamond, see the players hustle around, eat the ballpark food, drink some beer, and laugh with friends. It might get better than that, but not often. Oh yea... Speakin' of "Outta' Here!".... Well then there's Cylo...

Here's my take in this season's baseball experience... It'd be cool to read what you think...

Ted On Baseball

Have a great week.... Go Stormers, er... Barnies... Wuddever... Just "GO!"

The Love Shack

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Is that an egg? A great big egg there to the right of the step? Who's Hank? Did he find love here? If not love, then what?

Do you wonder at all wha't inside of Hank's Love Shack? That door was open. Yeah, I went in. Would you believe it is an entire dimensional shift? That inside of that door is a wonderworld of bizzaro habits that would make a field rodent blush? Would you believe that the inside is in fact a vast space crammed full up with the product of Hank's libidinous fantasies?

Maybe.... maybe. I'd tell you what I found behind that door, but maybe your ideas are richer than that... or meaner... or fuller... and who am I to deny you? Odd isn't it, how the next guy's fantasies seem suspiciously like perversions?

Long day... I'm bushed. Signing off. Perhaps I'll take you inside some other time. Or tell you about that great big egg.

The Cape

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If you've lived in much of the Northeastern part of the United States, it's known by just those two words.
"Hey, where y'going?"
"The Cape."
"Ahhhhhh..."

Then you'll get questions like: Ocean or bay? How far out? What part? Or from those who love it... "Where 'bouts?"

We're going about half way out on the Bay side. That's where I took this snapshot last year in the Fall. The color could be nice next week, but it doesn't much matter. In a lot of ways, even the weather doesn't matter a lot. Oh, it'll be cool to see them harvesting cranberries (I don't think I missed that). And the beaches will be nicely empty now that the kids are back in school. And you know what? For miles and miles, whether you look out at the water, or in at the shore... the view will be the same one that my parents and grandparents saw. See that house up there. I could snatch you from anywhere in the world, whip off your blindfold and one look at it and you'd figure where you were.

The Cape.

Porta Grit!

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I figure the band that owns this van can make a buck renting it out. Say you've got a small, bricks & shutter historical town like Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You know, one of those places that's steeped in history the way trendy-types are steeping themselves in green tea.

Well anyway, you've got this place, and you want to heat it up on weekends. Ramp up the urban grit so it will rock. No problemo... you rent a fleet of these vans. Park them all over the streets. Even get the city to bag the meters to encourage the owners to drop them for fortyeight or seventytwo hours. And when the weekend or holiday's over... FWOOOM! Drive the suckers away and you're back to a working city. Cool huh? I call them, "Porta-Grit". And at night, yoa - they be HOT!

Raucus

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Cylo's a cow. She's the Lancaster Barnstormer's mascot. Problem with Cylo, is a lot like the problem with most of us... Just too laid back and mellow. You know what I'm sayin' here?

Incidentally, Cylo and her Barnstormers are in their second year. And they've made the league playoffs. Wonder what they'll do for an encore in 2007?

Enjoy... Lots of rules broken for this image. But Cylo's a gal who makes you want to break some rules. Won't make any sense posting the data for this thing. I used my wide angle lens. The ISO was in the 400 range. Beyond that... you guess, and you'll probably be correct.

On Leaping

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Too corny? I came upon these strangers at the ballpark Friday night. Son was up on a trash can where he'd been peering through the netting at the game. And Daddy asked him to leap. Then there was that look.

How many times, or places will things make you want to leap? Or at least not care about leaping? When's the last time you just turned when asked, and leapt? Can you imagine the absolutely safest leap possible? The one you've not only made, but you'd do it right now? Where you'd turn and just... fly? As I peered through that lens, for just the teeniest moment... I think I got a look on my face... like his. And sort of wished my Dad could put his hands out... just one more time.

The boy giggled. And leapt.

Friday, 9/22/06-8:07 pm:Canon EOS 20D, Meter Mode Auto,Exposure Program: Shutter Priority, ISO 1600, Lens Canon EFS 17-85, Focal Length 38 mm, Exposure Bias:-0.33, RAW

Thing!

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Beside the rotting slaughterhouse's walls a wind-burst swirled dust around this device. Once someone poured that concrete base, and built… I don’t know? A ramp? Yet there is nothing behind it. It’s an unyielding step into an eerie gap. To where?

And those boards across the portal. Did they force climbing necks to bend? Things to crouch? Did they enforce some macabre final bow before… before… What? Once this place in Lancaster was the largest stockyard east of Chicago, now it’s ruins, posing for conjecture. Now it is food for the imagination to digest.

Mysti

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Back in the primitive years of slides and negatives and waiting at the mailbox, we had this problem. We had to wonder what 36, 72 or more shots would look like when the mail arrived. And we'd pour through things we felt were sure masterpieces, only to feel our hopes go flaccid. But then, in that small yellow box, if we were really lucky there'd be something like this.

Now the only way to go back to that place at low tide is to pull out the fading Kodachromes. They are like tiny colored portals to a time that was thirty years ago. And any poetry that the moment made, is turning golden and darkening just a certainly as the old mages.

Fleedom

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Is civilization stronger than concrete? As our stoops go... izzat the way we go as well? Do we need to maintain? To preserve? Or to replace? Maybe what we need to do is flee.

But that assumes that there is a place to which fleedom can be found. Are we a flee people? It's clear that with some new concrete we can flee in place. There are cultures of concrete. Cultures that preserve, rebuild, and repair. And there are cultures of crumbling. Cities, more than anywhere else, seem to be places where cultures collide. Incidentally, three weeks after I took this picture, the residents of this building rebuilt these steps, repointed their bricks, and reapainted their home. Crumbling is now in remission.

Multi-Tasking

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So you're at work, or maybe in a meeting. And you want to concentrate. There are even great big issues to focus on. Things that nobody could ever miss. Gordo concepts... They're gyrating around and zapping off colors in the glare of lights.

Then "POP!" You're ten years old at the ball game and something rings way up there in the distance. And... and... no matter how tempting and teasing and down right important the thing that brought you to that spot is... You're pulled to the ringing. And it's a phone. And you're supposed to answer it. But you're supposed to pay attention to the BIG IDEA in lights. Yet no, the phone. But no... the gyrating idea. And.. and... You're pulled all ways at once. And that's your work day. And maybe your meetings. And you wonder... Why isn't it as much fun as it used to be. And then, something else rings.... Way up there. Up high... and you can't help looking and wondering just what you're there for anymore...

Dissonance

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It's possible for people to live together, yet not live together. Huh? Look at these houses. They last played in harmony when the builder found buyers in the late 1800s. Do you think the owners speak-friendly?

Why aren't cultures always wobbling apart the way these people, who live right next door (same demographics, same wash of daily news, sports and climactic caprice) the way these people wobble away. It's as if society tries to stick the wrong ends of a whole bunch of tiny magnetic bars together. And they keep popping apart in their storm-windowed, cement-colored, down-spouted, weird-wired, sidewall-painted passions. People can live together without becoming neighbors. Maybe these greens and reds are the pulse beat of the city? Or are they the dissonant notes of urban jazz?

Award Winner 2006: GrannyBall

Note: Accepted as one of the world's finest Sports Images of 2006 for Canon POTN Book published in the Fall of 2007.

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Why is the sunset such a harsh metaphor for finality? Most species come alive at night. I wonder if cheetahs, when they evolve into sentient beings, will see resolution in the sunrise? For that matter, semi-sentient beings like Paris Hilton, probably greet the sunrise with dread. Hmmmm….. Speaking of metaphors… never noticed that similarity between Hilton and vampires before… But I digress.

There are summer-folk who celebrate the sunset. By the oceans, people hold parties and applaud the solar show as the globe turns colors and splashes into the sea. But Lancaster is an inland city. We lack the gorgeous reflective options of setting sun upon water that artists have captured. So, what to do? Where to find a vista? Is the ball park a scenic? Are people an even stronger setting than undulating waves to reinforce the finality of a day’s end? Or the rising of night?

Meta: (Lancaster, 8-12-06) Canon EOS 20D, RGB color, EF-S 10-22mm, 20mm, ISO 400, 1/100 at f/7.1

Closeted

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How secure could this place be? Why that lock on a flimsy door? Were there pantry things hidden here from thieving domestics? Were there adult things behind that knob that the kids shouldn't see? How easily a determined burglar could rip his way in. So these secrets can't be hidden from the determined.

I wonder how many things we hide away that, with a tad of effort, anyone might pry into? We probably all have stuff in our memories that romp and play about behind flimsy locks. Locks that are on mental doors which sit there plainly lit for everyone to see. Yet we expect that the knob won't pull open too easily. That whatever we cherish enough to hold private will at least withstand the scrutiny of strangers... or thieving domestics.

Meta: (Lancaster, 8-31-06) Canon EOS 20D, RGB color, EF-S 17-85mm, 20mm, ISO 1600, 1/125 at f/8

Drizzle

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Through the spattering rain I wondered how different was this place today from the way some other guy found it in say 1926 or 1976? The wet reflections hide Lancaster's age stains and wash down colors in ways that reveal patterns which have barely changed in eighty years - or a lot longer. We have neighbors in their mid eighties who could overlay this place with a tranparency of their memories. Maybe a ventilator or air conditioner might poke an unexpected jot onto the comparison - but what else?

When cable news is littered with names as ancient as Baghdad and Tigris, what're eighty or a hundred years? Is what I saw this morning in this alleyway behind the Farmer's Market just a resilient packaging around the culture du-jure? Or could a family from 1926 find themselves as familiar with the way we now think and act, as they might with the bricks, and walks and hues of this place in the Saturday Morning rain?

Details:
Meta: (Lancaster, 9-16-06) RGB color, EF-S 10-22mm, 17mm, ISO 400, 1/200 at f/10

Jiggle

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Institutions frequently come packaged in stone. It's supposed to show how substantial, how permanent, how ROCK SOLID they are. And when the stone's carved into shapes conceived thousands of years ago - well you're mixing antiquity with the legendary obstinacy of classic ideals. Look at Lancaster’s courthouse. Could the ancestors have built with more durability? Whoa, who’d a thought that a few lugnuts might cause the entire thing to wobble?

That’s what’s happening. All three county commissioners have taken a whacky string of … Stooge-like... whomps at the foundation of government. The commissioners have replaced Madonna. Remember when you could go anywhere in America… go up to any strangers, ask, “Howzabout that Madonna?” and BINK! Instantly animated conversation.

That’s what’s happened here in Lancaster County. After a score of senior administrators have left, after two grand juries, after hundreds of thousands of dollars have wizzed down a rat’s hole of litigation… Well, you go up to any group of strangers, anywhere in the county and ask, “Howzabout them commissioners?” and BINK!

We can feel the ground under that substantial county seat… jiggling like a bikini top full of Pamela Anderson. The building might be stone but its foundation, it turns out, is fragile as the three conversation-makers who now sit in the county seat.

An Unnatural Glow?

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They're cutting some fields early this year. A drought followed by winds and spot flooding tugged these Amish farmers out to grab what they could before rot came to visit. So here's an empty moonlit roughness with the city's glow sky-washing in a way that didn't happen a century back. Although it's certain that Amish were cutting some fields early then, right?

Look at that. Even late at night, "progress" is inescapable - it glimmers from the heavens.

In this recent series I seem heaven-obsessed. Maybe it'd be cool to come back to earth? But then again, except for the sky, and that harvest moon... this tiny colored melody is all about earth. Right?

BTW: Yes, this is a photograph. Sorta. Kinda. Mostly. Whuddever.

Looking Upward, Being Downward

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It lays there against the sky... Or possibly it pokes into it. Or maybe it's stretching, grasping, tickling, tasting... sky. Whatever it's doing up there, it gets noticed. It grabs your eye during the light hours, and your ear with its bells at night. And it's drawn that attention for about a century. Especially from almost anyone who's put color onto canvas here in Lancaster. So, it apparently has a need to be a part of the work of creative-types who are working at describing this city. And since that's me, okay, here's my busy take on the busy First Presbyterian steeple.

The thing is, while this illio describes a memory of the tower, it doesn't plug it into the culture. And since it's up there, and the culture's down here... maybe the idea it represents is a tad lofty with respect to the appetites that need to be fed. Of course, there's usually more sky space in cities than there is street space. Which might explain why it is parked up there, instead of down here. It's there perhaps, not because that's where it's needed, but because someone was able to put it there. Which explains a lot about things that happen, no?

Newmadicts of Bleumere Royo

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It poked from the earth – down in the borderland’s mists where even sunray darely visited. Here in Mythwerld where whisps hung like spells and The Meki had long since sunk into the dank bogs… It lay there, a last above ground clawing of the Pumpmaster’s madness… A still pneumatic threat to all who came too near.

Imagine, even my Bombi guide was terrified as I took this picture just an instant before we smelled the sound of…

META: 6/27/06, 12:31: Canon 20D, Camera Raw, ISO 400, 17-85 mm lens at 30 mm, 1/100 at f/8. Processed in PS CS2 v.9.

Monument

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Back in October of 2001 I created an illio commerating 9-11. I made two prints, and gave them to friends who asked. They were tiny things, done on an old Epson desk top printer with non-archival inks and papers. It depicted two arms poking upward through the smoldering rubble of the Twin Trade Towers... stretching.... reaching for the light breaking through the gloomy shroud of smog. I called it, "Flowers".

I wanted to post it here today. It's gone! Kaput... Pffft... Those two small prints are all that remain and they are not mine. Somehow I erased/trashed it. Perhaps that's a good thing. Maybe as those prints fade, and my memory of them weakens, things will heal. So instead here's another monument I pictured in an October. It was raised to a balloonist who owned our home until he died in an accident in the late 1800s. This monument sits some sixty feet from my front door. He perished reaching for the heavens. My "Flowers" were clutching for there as well.

Heavy On Metal

This it. Post #1! Welcome tomy ImageFiction . Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts, feelings, and suggestions. OK?

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These bikers see each other. Better believe it. The cop's looking at the rumbler on red. Envy? Is that just the tiniest touch of smug on the big guy's lips? There are strange imbalances here. Which one's got the most power? Power? What's that mean? And cities jumble stories like this together every instant. No wonder with that churning that there's so much grit around, eh?

Details:

Meta: (Lancaster, 9-07-06, 2:23 PM) RGB color, EF-S 10-22mm, 33mm, ISO 200, 1/60 at f/6.3