In memoriam - Vaclav Havel 1936 - 2011

In memory of a truly great and brave man, Vaclav Havel:

Link to an article on the significance of November 17 to Czechs.

Abandoned phone booths

It's strange to call these things phone "booths" since there's very little that is "boothy" about them. They actually remind me of study carols from elementary school - three sides and the inability for someone to look at what you're doing straight on. Public phones seem to be disappearing. The cell phone has caused the demise of what was once a fairly ubiquitous convenience. It's unfortunate for those who don't have cell phones since they are left searching for a phone "booth" with an actual phone in it (Is this like a food desert in urban areas? A phone desert?). Many booths, few public phones. These pictures are companions to this one that I shot in Florida.

Puyallup

Edgewood

Crumpled structure

As you start to head north, away from Beverly, there is an old agricultural structure that looks like part of it was crumpled by a giant.

This is a satellite image of it and the flotsam surrounding it.

Gone

Not many things seem quite as forlorn as the remains of a house. This is a stark example of a "lost" home on the Lower Crab Creek Road near Beverly. There was a bit of detritus lying on the ground - a woman's shoe, tin cans, glass, rusty bits of things. Close to this was another foundation but it didn't have as much "structure" as this one did - just a few pieces of cement in a low-lying grid pattern. I don't know what the history of habitation on this road was - no one lives there now as far as I can tell.

Gone

At one point along the road I saw a "ghost house" in the distance, but it was too far away to photograph well. I did find the remains of a bridge but couldn't tell what lay on the other side through the brush.

Bridge remains, Lower Crab Creek Road

There are some farmed fields, birds and plenty of hunters on a November Saturday morning, but it's predominantly an empty, beautiful place.

What is this structure?

We saw two of these structures in central Washington. Both were collapsed in a similar way. One was in Cunningham but it was too dark to photograph. This one was in Starbuck. It had a small opening at the bottom that would allow a person to crawl inside it and it had a bit of hay inside. That's all the information I can give you about it. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks!

Collapsing structure - Starbuck, WA

Empty and uninhabitable

This Thanksgiving holiday we went for a long drive through the Washington scab lands. We clocked in over 700 miles over the course of three days driving from the western side of the Cascades to central Washington and back. I photographed this wreckage of a house in Beverly, which is at the terminus of the Lower Crab Creek Road. More photos to come from this trip (I shot over 200 digital images and around 8 or 9 rolls of film).

Beverly

Inclement days ahead

The weather has definitely turned itself toward winter...tremendous rainstorms earlier this week and snow dumping in the mountains (what joyful news to a skier!). Winter in the Pacific NW is generally a grey event that causes many to wax poetic about the brief outbursts of sunshine in August and September. In honor of the grey days ahead, here is a sunny little pinhole photo taken with my Zero Image camera. Take heart, friends. Miss Tomato is out there somewhere bathed in warm sun.

Miss Tomato