Don't know whether to cry or wind my watch

A "genre" of landscape photography that is, fortunately, a little harder (but, unfortunately, not impossible) to come by. I have no idea what my wife was searching for on the web last night when she found this little number - a photograph of our sleepy little hamlet, Au Sable Forks, NY. Now, I knew as a mental construct that this exists - fortunately, now deactivated and converted into an underground residence (I think it was for sale on eBay a while back) - but this photograph just reached out and grabbed me where I live, literally and figuratively.

As a child of the cold war era, I certainly carry a bit of "duck and cover" baggage, but I am struggling mightily to form a mental construct of my hamlet in the Adirondacks as a primary target of cold war era Soviet ICBMs. At first glance, I got that tingly hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thing going and there is still an aspect of that that I can't shake just yet. For me, this photograph is an excellent example of a photograph with studium (a general cultural connection) and an extremely personal punctum.

PS - that's Whiteface Mt. in the background to the left of the "deterent".

See the official US Government Duck and Cover video. (Movie choices are on the left, a good choice under "Streaming" is 256k MPEG4) - an exemplary example of government "truthiness" (and outright insanity) if ever there was one. Even though the duck and cover drill was billed as a way to save your ass, it was really nothing more than, as one viewer expressed it, the time tested "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" maneuver.

Comments

[aaron]

I just got the same feeling I get when watching Koyanasqatsi after too many brownies... not good.