Monthly Archives: December 2021
Security Dog
You know how sometimes you go to an unfamiliar town and it feels comfortable and happy and friendly and you say to yourself, “I think I could live in a place like this!” and then you spend a happy few minutes imagining your new life in this magical place?
This was not that kind of town.
Bridgeport, Oklahoma
photographed 11.27.2021
Vast + Beautiful
“There’s nothing to see on the Plains.” – a falsehood
Here are a couple of iPhone panoramas that may help dispel that line of thinking. The top one is a highway rest area along Interstate 40. (That smudgy grey thing on the horizon on the right side is wildfire smoke.)
The bottom image is from a rest area on a back road in Briscoe County, taken about an hour after the first one.
Gray County, Texas
Briscoe County, Texas
photographed 11.27.2021
Dead Blade
I am not sure what happened to this turbine blade. All I know is that I stopped by there to photograph it on November 21; I wasn’t happy with those shots. So I stopped by there again a week later to give it another try. That might indicate a great level of dedication. Or it might indicate a complete lapse in photographic skills on the 21st.
(It might also indicate a lapse in photographic skills on November 27th, as far as that goes.)
Floyd County, Texas
photographed 11.27.2021
9:03 (the recovery begins)
The Oklahoma City bombing memorial is carefully and thoughtfully designed place. In addition to the Field of Empty Chairs, it includes the element called the Gates of Time, which are described this way:
Monumental twin bronze gates frame the moment of destruction – 9:02 – and mark the formal entrances to the memorial. On the eastern gate, 9:01 represents the last moments of peace, while its opposite on the western gate, 9:03, represents the first moments of recovery. Both time stamps are inscribed on the interior of the monument, facing each other and the reflecting pool. The outside of each gate bears this inscription: We come here to remember those who were kind, those who survived, and those changes forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope, and serenity. –Wikipedia
Oklahoma City National Memorial
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
photographed 11.25.2021
168 empty chairs
Calm and peace and innocence were shattered at 9:02 am on April 19, 1995. It was a Wednesday. Employees, and children who attended the on-site daycare center, inside the Alfred Murrah Federal Building were surely busy doing their Wednesday things, right up until the moment an explosive-filled truck exploded just outside the building.
One hundred sixty eight people were killed; 19 of them were children at the daycare center.
The Oklahoma City National Memorial is on the site of the attack, and the Field of Chairs commemorates those lost that day. The chair here, in the foreground, represents Carol Louise Bowers; she was 55 years old and was on operations supervisor at the Social Security Administration. Accounts state that she would always answer the phone with “a happy voice” and her relative recounted that she was the “kind of person who …spread joy everywhere she went.”
(I would encourage you to go to the Field of Empty Chairs page to learn more about Carol and to see the layout of the chairs in this thoughtful and well-designed memorial.)
Oklahoma City National Memorial
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
photographed 11.25.2021
One Day | One Image 