However (or, that written), there are, in fact, vast stretches of inland Nova Scotia which are remarkably similar to the Adirondacks (without the mountains) and parts of central NYS. Those similarities have caused the wife to remark on several occasions, "We've traveled 850 miles so we can vacation where we live" ... then we arrive at the seaside and it ain't anything like where we live.

Apparently, RON wants you to add a RON deck chair to your life.

We're currently staying in Lunenberg but I'm also hoping to see Sidney Crosby's mom's dryer (in Halifax).

Today's picture is a down and dirty iPad processed picture. I'll post the highlight blended final when I get back home.

the audience reaction to the idea/concept was a resounding and/or collective shrug, or so the absence of comments would seem to indicate.

Which in turn instigated this response from Paul Bradforth:

Have you considered that they might not have understood any of it, as I didn't? I read those words that you put together with your pictures and couldn't for the life of me see any association OR dissociation. And I have to say that I find your second paragraph* above to be opaque

I don't mean to judge too harshly, but when you write (a paragraph) like that, I don't think you can expect to be understood too widely ....

my response: As a matter of fact, while I was hoping for a few comments / questions about the concept / idea, I have entered into this pictures+words project knowing full well that it will not be easily understood much less appreciated (much like my pictures as well). The undertaking is not meant to be "easy" or "understood" (in the definitive sense). Rather, it is meant to be a lyrical exercise from which many meanings / understandings / experiences might be gleaned or intuited.

Some will "get it", most will not. My intention is not to pander, preach, or pleasure. Instead, it is to proffer a concept / idea comprised of pictures and words which I hope, for those who "get it" (or want to try to get it), will engender thoughtful and imaginative contemplation which extends beyond the visual and literal document.

All of that written (sorry, Paul), as I develop and refine my approach to the pictures+words project, I have considered this from James Agee (from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men):

As a matter of fact, nothing I might write (picture) could make any difference whatever. It would only be a “book” ("picture") at best. If it were a safely dangerous one it would be “scientific” or “political” or “revolutionary.” If it were really dangerous it would be “literature” or “religion” or “mysticism” or “art,” and under one such name or another might in time achieve the emasculation of acceptance. If it were dangerous enough to be of any remote use to the human race it would be merely “frivolous” or “pathological,” and that would be the end of that. Wiser and more capable men than I shall ever be have put their findings before you, findings so rich and so full of anger, serenity, murder, healing, truth, and love that it seems incredible the world were not destroyed and fulfilled in the instant, but you are too much for them: .... one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all your poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration; Swift loved individuals but hated the human race; Kafka is a fad; Blake is in the Modern Library: Freud is a Modern Library Giant; Dovschenko's Frontier is disliked by those who demand that it fit the Eisenstein esthetic; nobody reads Joyce any more; Céline is a madman who has incurred the hearty dislike of Alfred Kazin, reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune book section, and is, moreover, a fascist; I hope I need not mention Jesus Christ, of whom you have managed to make a dirty gentile. (ed., I have added the parenthesized word "picture")

Now, to be perfectly clear, my humble little project is not undertaken with the aspiration of achieving either the importance or the notoriety of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Evans+Agee's picture+words critically praised opus. Nevertheless, my project - much like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - does aspire to combine factual / true pictures with passages of lyrical / poetic beauty.

Whether or not it achieves the "emasculation of acceptance" is anyone's guess.

*As a clue to what my intentions were, re: putting those words with my picture(s), I titled the entry associative disassociation, which on hindsight should have read (or maybe not) as disassociated association. In either case, what I was driving at was the idea that the words and picture(s) were simultaneously connected yet seemingly not - while the words were literally disassociated (to separate) from the picture(s), in fact (to my eye and sensibilities), figuratively speaking they are associated (the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.).

As a clue to what my intentions were, re: putting those words with my picture(s), I titled the entry associative disassociation, which on hindsight should have read (or maybe not) as disassociated association. In either case, what I was driving at was the idea that the words and picture(s) were simultaneously connected yet seemingly not - while the words were literally disassociated (to separate) from the picture(s), in fact (to my eye and sensibilities), figuratively speaking they are associated (the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.).

In any event, the audience reaction to the idea/concept was a resounding and/or collective shrug, or so the absence of comments would seem to indicate. Nevertheless, the last entry and this explanatory followup entry are an indication of what is to come, both on this blog and as the focus of a joint project involving me and the writer of those words.

That project is based on the words of James Agee taken from his preface in his and Walker Evans' collaborative book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ...

The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are co-equal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative. By their fewness, and by the impotence of the viewer's eye, this will be misunderstood by most of that minority which does not wholly ignore it. In the interests, however, of the history and future of photography, that risk seems irrelevant, and this flat statement necessary.

I had a moment with the sand last week when I was walking to work. There were weeds in the wind with their unpretentious grace, and grass, and thinning grass, and sand and road, and humans in car suits. And I thought of the sand creeping blindly from the balding grass, as if to stretch itself to the surf, and how it almost looked as if it could span that unknown distance if only I could block out the road. Then I thought about reading at the beach. And then I thought about reading in the sand a foot from the highway.

Think about it.

Tatertots ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

I have never considered Swing to be Jazz. I always thought it was just plain ol' Swing. In defense of my consideration, consider this from Louis Armstrong when he was asked, by Bing Crosby, "to tell what swing music is":

"Ah, swing, well, we used to call it syncopation—then they called it ragtime, then blues—then jazz. Now, it's swing. White folks yo'all sho is a mess."

Having purchased tickets for the event on Monday, before the marathon bombing, I was in Boston with Hugo expressly for the Pens / Bruins hockey game. We left for Boston Friday AM and as we came closer to Boston in the early afternoon, it became apparent that the game might canceled or postponed due to the manhunt mandated lockdown / shelter-in restrictions in place. Nevertheless, we motored on with the intent to check into our hotel 20 miles outside of Boston and wait to learn about the fate of the game.

Due to my inattention, we bypassed our hotel exit and it wasn't until downtown Boston came into view that I realized my mistake. One thing and another, we ended up on the mostly deserted streets of downtown Boston. It was more than a bit eerie and a little surreal.

Eventually, despite our extreme visual conspicuousness, we did get out of the city without any run-ins with the law. We ended up at our hotel and we learned latter that the game had been postponed until 12:30PM the next day.

So, we stayed around and went to the game. Everything worked out well for us - as opposed to the Boston fans inasmuch as the Pens beat the Bruins - and all is now right with the (hockey) world. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for those in Boston who were killed, maimed, or otherwise impacted by the events of last week.