Pancake and Pizza Breakfast

May 13, 2014, 8:33 am

Tommy Bartlett's Pancake and Pizza Restaurant, Lake Delton, Wisconsin. Photographer's general caption: "Near the town of Wisconsin Dells the Wisconsin River channels through deep, soft sandstone cliffs, cutting rock into fantastic shapes. These natural splendors have given rise to a booming tourist industry. People come in droves, often in campers and trailers. Boat trips, shops, bars, and diversions of every kind vie for patronage in an amusement complex extending 2 or 3 miles beyond the town.": photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Yellow Olds with 1970 Iowa plates so bilious you put me in mind of adventure

seeking back in the lost time

when all it took to inspire the heart with a prolonged rush of expectation

was the idea of a deranged weekend at the Dells

Near the town of Wisconsin Dells the Wisconsin River channels through deep, soft sandstone cliffs, cutting rock into fantastic shapes. These natural splendors have given rise to a booming tourist industry. People come in droves, often in campers and trailers. Boat trips, shops, bars, and diversions of every kind vie for patronage in an amusement complex extending 2 or 3 miles beyond the town: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Boating on the Wisconsin River at Wisconsin Dells: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Boating on the Wisconsin River at Wisconsin Dells: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Youngsters fishing at Wisconsin Dells on the Wisconsin River: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

Canoeing on the Wisconsin River at Wisconsin Dells: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, September 1973 (US National Archives)

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Grey Wolf Reappears

May 14, 2014, 8:45 am

≫ Next: Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Of My Mother, 92, with Alzheimer's

≪ Previous: Pancake and Pizza Breakfast

White female wolf in the Atigun Valley, Alaska. This wolf dens in the riverbank of the Atigun inside the main valley about five miles south of Galbraith Camp. She roams at least twenty miles a day in search of food, from the main valley den into the gorge and then back to the valley proper: photo by Dennis Cowals (1945-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, August 1973 (US National Archives)

Grey wolf appears in Iowa for first time in 89 years -– and is shot dead

Hunter mistook animal for a coyote and escapes being cited despite wolves being a protected species in the state

Grey wolves have been confirmed as far west as California and Oregon and as far east as Michigan

Grey Wolf (Canis lupus): photo by Associated Press, via The Guardian, 12 May 2014

DNA testing has confirmed that an animal shot in February in Iowa's Buchanan County was in fact a wolf, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. This is the first confirmed grey wolf (Canis lupus) in the US state since 1925.

Experts believe the wolf likely travelled south from Wisconsin or Minnesota, the latter of which has the largest wolf population in the lower 48.

The Iowa wolf, which was a 65-70 pound healthy female, was shot and killed in February of this year by a hunter who mistook it for a coyote. Although wolves remain a protected species in Iowa, the hunter was not cited, because he believed the animal to be a coyote and has cooperated with authorities, including bringing the wolf to them in the first place.

"I was surprised but not that surprised," DNA specialist Vince Evelsizer told the Gazette. "Large animals can cover great distances, and state lines mean nothing to them."

After being nearly exterminated across the continental US, grey wolves have returned to many states in the last two decades, both due to reintroductions and populations migrating from Canada. Grey wolves have been confirmed as far west as California and Oregon and as far east as Michigan.

During the same time wolves have been vindicated by science as key ecological species. As top predators, wolves not only manage prey populations of animals such as deer and elk, but also change their behavior, curbing unhindered grazing. For example, the wolf's return to Yellowstone National Park led to a resurgence in young forest and a subsequent explosion in biodiversity.

But in many states wolves are now actively hunted and trapped. A legislative rider stripped wolves of protection from the Endangered Species Act in 2011, the only animal to ever lose its protection in this way.

As of January this year, hunters and trappers have killed 2,567 grey wolves in the US's lower 48 states since 2011. In all, around 6,000 wolves are thought to inhabit the lower 48 now, up from a nadir of 300 before the grey wolf gained protection in 1974.

Jeremy Hance, GuardianEnvironmental Network, 12 May 2014

Adara (Canis lupus), alpha female of the high country wolves. Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, West Yellowstone, Montana: photo by Nomadic Lass, 18 May 2011

McKinley (Canis lupus), Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, West Yellowstone, Montana: photo by Nomadic Lass, 18 May 2011

Grey Wolf (Canis lupus), seen by the side of Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park: photo by GlacierNPS, 10 April 2012

An endangered Grey Wolf (Canis lupus) peers out from a snow-covered shelter: photo by Tracy Brooks, 2002 (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Arctic Wolf (Canis lupus family canidae or plains tundra or timber wolf): photographer unknown, 25 February 2013 (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Gray wolf (Canis lupus) lying in grass: photo by John and Karen Hollingsworth, 2002 (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Gray wolf (Canis lupus), Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald, Deutschland: photo by Martin Mecnarowski, November 2008

Canis lupus at Bialowieza: photo by Przykuta, 2007

Black and grey female wolf (Canis lupus), in road near Lamar River bridge: photo by Jim Peaco, December 2003 (U.S. National Park Service)

Canis lupus, seen before hunt, Quebec: photo by Peupleloup, 2004

Grey Wolf puppy (Canis lupus), dreaming, Alpenzoo, Innsbruck: photo by btristan, 13 July 2007

Grey Wolves (Canis lupus), Rotterdam Zoo: photo by Sander van der Wel, 15 January 2010

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Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Of My Mother, 92, with Alzheimer's

May 15, 2014, 8:50 am

≫ Next: A Door in the Wall

≪ Previous: Grey Wolf Reappears

Bay Bridge Hills [Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, see from near old Hills Brothers Coffee Factory on the Embarcadero]: photo by K Hardy, 14 June 2007

I hate to think she may no longer dream of me.

She lies on her couch and stares at the ceiling
like a bird. Blinks and keeps
staring. Her arthritic fingers like bird claws.
But her face also reminds me of a cat’s,
looking completely with seemingly unseeing
eyes. Then comprehending. Then
not comprehending. Her

frail, cold form, cheeks sunken, hair so usually
carefully kempt, now spreading out white and
lank and long behind her head on the
pillow, hair I’d never seen not in some
beauty shop cut, now left to
nature, oblivious to fashion. Ancient.
Crone hair. Mother, my dear affectionate
mother, a crone. But a

sweet crone. “Should I be here? Is this
where I’m supposed to be?”

Blinks. Recognizes. Loses the
thread.
There on her perch in a kind of
silvery nowhere. Who

took me downtown to the movies, by bus, later by
car, who dressed me warmly, snapping the
leather strap of my
cap under my chin, who

took me across the Bay Bridge to
San Francisco on the train (the span under the
automobile level above), and I

remember so pungently the smell of the
Hills Brother Coffee factory on the
San Francisco side, and the
coffee cup up-tilted ecstatic
Arab in yellow robe and white turban bigger than
life on the billboard. That was my

mother who took me there, who tilted her
head and smiled, and flirted, and hated her
round gray mother for flirting, and she even

now flirts on the bed, face up at me, winking,

frowning, opening eyes wide, pulling down her
mouth, then smiling that heartbreaking

mother’s smile. My

mother’s smile.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Part I, in Of My Mother, 92, with Alzheimer's (1 April 1998), from You Open a Door and It’s a Starry Night, Ecstatic Exchange, 2009

Bay Bridge #1: photo by Jim Rohan, 20 March 2014

↧

A Door in the Wall

May 16, 2014, 8:08 am

≫ Next: After the Flood

≪ Previous: Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Of My Mother, 92, with Alzheimer's

Along I-80 outside Reno, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Who's looking out?

Who's out there
looking in from the road

on which the world is passing by,

always growing larger
stranger and richer
or poorer and less strange

or older and narrower

in the rearview, as you
catch yourself looking

always away, off to

one side?

Spring roundup of Paiute-owned cattle begins at Sutcliffe, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Spring roundup of Paiute-owned cattle begins at Sutcliffe, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada. Corralling and branding is done in five stages around Pyramid lake. Unbranded calves are allowed to seek their mothers. Then they are roped and branded: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Spring roundup of Paiute-owned cattle begins at Sutcliffe, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada. Corralling and branding is done in five stages around Pyramid Lake. Roped calf: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Paiute Indian woman at the laundromat in Nixon, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Outdoor advertising seen from I-80, approaching Reno from the east: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

On a Reno street: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Paiute Indian children outside grocery store in Nixon, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Paiute Indian children in schoolyard in Wadsworth, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas (1939-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Nixon -- a small Paiute Indian settlement near the south end of Pyramid Lake, on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Reno suburb: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Reno expanding to surrounding meadows off I-80. Continued growth strains the water supply and threatens Pyramid Lake: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Along I-80, outside Reno. Continued growth strains the water supply and threatens Pyramid Lake: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Urban sprawl outside Reno: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Entertainment round-the-clock is a Reno attraction: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Reno motel: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Signs on route 95 near Fernley, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Pyramid Lake Beach on Memorial Day Weekend, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Washoe, Nevada: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Avery Winnemucca is one of several Paiute Indians who run the dock at Sutcliffe's Landing, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Floyd Flores and one of his children on his biannual visit to Nixon to lay flowers at his parents' graves, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Pyramid Lake, the largest natural lake in Nevada, lies within the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. The island for which the lake is named rises 475 feet abpve the surface of the water. It is called Fremont's Pyramid after Captain John Fremont, who named the lake. View shows desert setting for which the lake is noted: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

The Pinnacles at Pyramid Lake, south side. Beyond are the Virginia Mountains: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Aerial view of campers on a beach at Pyramid Lake: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Algae growth in one of the shallow bays of Pyramid Lake, Nevada's largest natural lake: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Bentonite formation along the Truckee River near Wadswoth. Buddy Vidovich, farmer, electrician, and former Paiute Indian tribal chairman, is driving his John Deere seeder, followed by his daughter in a pick-up truck: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

A field of young alfalfa and oats on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. Field is irrigated by mechanical flooding: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

Paiute Indian fishermen at Pyramid Lake, center of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, May 1973 (US National Archives)

Man-painted rock, found on a rise at the south end of Pyramid Lake, blends into the natural landscape: photo byJonas Dovydenas for the Environmental Protection Agency Project DOCUMERICA, June 1973 (US National Archives)

↧

After the Flood

May 17, 2014, 7:48 am

≫ Next: Charles O'Rear: Land of Dust and Plenty

≪ Previous: A Door in the Wall

Lake Lyndon Johnson, Travis County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Into ripples fanning

circles in the freshet

that lapped
the field of flowers

that bathed
the white horse

after the flood

light poured

Field of flowers, Inks Lake Reservoir, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Flower meadow, Llano, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Cactus flower along Devil's Backbone Ranch Road, San Marcos, Hays County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Flowers. Commelina erecta (Commelina), San Marcos, Hays County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Sunflowers, Ingram, Kerr County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Flower. Cirsium texanum (Texas Thistle), Lake Austin, Matagorda County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Texas -- Near Lake Austin, Matagorda County: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Wildflowers. Helenium (Sneezeweed). Near Lake Austin, Matagorda County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Wildflowers. Near Lake Austin, Matagorda County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Flowers. Lantana camara (Lantana), Lake Austin, Matagorda County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Lake Buchanan, Llano County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Central Texas. Near Lake Travis, Travis County: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

South Central Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Detail of havoc caused by flooding of Guadalupe River, New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

River flood damage, New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, May 1972 (US National Archives)

Guadalupe River flood damage, New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas: photo by Bill Reaves (1934-) for the Environmental Protection Agency Project Documerica, 1972 (US National Archives)

↧

Charles O'Rear: Land of Dust and Plenty

May 18, 2014, 8:53 am

≫ Next: Huuklye 'n Cinquor: L7th Heaven: Circling the Square, or, A Self-Referential Reading of "Self-Reference"

≪ Previous: After the Flood

Sunset over fertilizer plant near El Centro in the Imperial Valley

Imperial County has ten unincorporated towns the size of Seeley and its sister community Heber, and 59 other smaller “colonias” or settlements.

Having light posts and a water fountain on the field make it more attractive to kids with little to do in this small community. But these basic amenities only scratch the surface of the problems faced by youth and other residents in Seeley.

Across the street from the local elementary school sits an abandoned house that has come to be known as “the graffiti house.” There, the local mota smokers and mainliners get together and party, leaving beer bottles and even syringes lying on the empty floors. Huge holes have been punched through walls covered in graffiti. Electrical conduits have been pulled out and ripped open, in search of copper wire to sell for scrap.
Being a teenager in Seeley has its dangers. But an even worse one isn't visible at all. It's in the air.

As Joahn Molena sits in his back yard, hugging his pit bull in front of his henhouse, dust coats everything outside his home. Molena's proud of his white Honda Civic, with its mag wheels. It's a few years old, but still in primo condition. Of course, he has to wash it almost every day because dust in Seeley is everywhere.

It blows in from the fields that surround the unincorporated communities. In Heber, that dust comes from the empty expanses at the edge of town that previously housed corrals for the El Toro Land and Cattle Company. The hooves of the cattle housed there ground animal waste into the earth in those empty lots. Neighbors worry now about what the dust might contain. Manuel Gonzalez (who is retired, but asked that his real name not be used) lives at the end of the street, where it meets the field. "Every day my wife vacuums up the dust in the house, but an hour later it's back."

And just across Fawcett Road are El Toro's current feedlots. Hundreds, even thousands of cattle are housed in dense pens, eating their way to eventual slaughter. In the furnace-like heat of the Imperial Valley summer, the smell of cattle waste wafts across the town, giving neighbors a good idea of what the dust is made of. So many feedlots cover the valley that the smell gets to Seeley as well.

Other air pollutants also come with the industrial agriculture that has dominated the Imperial Valley since the All-American Canal, and the Alamo Canal before it, brought Colorado River water to the desert in 1900. Seeley and Heber themselves were the products of the land boom that followed. The post office in Seeley, named for developer Henry Seeley, opened in 1909. Heber is even older, and was founded by the Imperial Valley Land Company in 1903, and named for developer A.H. Heber.

Today, the land surrounding the two towns is farmed in huge tracts of hundreds of acres. To make the desert productive, ranchers not only built the world's largest irrigation canal, but also developed farming methods dependent on chemical fertilizers and strong pesticides. Even with the recent advance of some large-scale organic operations, it's still common to drive a local highway and see a small airplane called a cropduster make circular swoops and passes over the green crops. From the nozzles on its wings, a fine spray of pesticide coats the leaves below. Air moves, however, and with it, the chemical spray from the plane -- what's called pesticide drift.

Communities like Seeley and Heber, located in the middle of the fields, can get that drift, even diluted by breezes and wind.

In other fields, tractors pull a rig with tanks of chemicals, and spray nozzles that release them just inches from the plants. Less drift, perhaps, but after many years, powerful pesticides and fertilizers are omnipresent, not just in the fields, but in the small communities they surround as well.

Then, when the crops are in, Imperial Valley farmers are notorious for burning. Big mowers cut and collect the stalks left from crops after they're harvested. Piles of dry plants are then set alight next to local fields and highways. The smoke is often so intense that roads are blocked to traffic, or at least they're supposed to be.

Imperial Valley Residents Must Fight for Right to Breathe Clean Air: David Bacon, New America Media, 3 March 2012

On state highway near Plaster City, California. The white dust is from a gypsum plant.

Gypsum plant at Plaster City, California. White dust from the plant is part of the atmosphere
.

Moving cattle raise dust along the highway -- near Calpatria in the Imperial Valley

Dry heat and high winds equal eye-stinging, nose itching dust storm, Imperial Valley

Crop duster plane over Imperial Valley farm

Crop duster in the Imperial Valley

Imperial Valley

Imperial Valley. Interstate highway (I-8) slices through green croplands
.

Fertilizing a field, Imperial Valley

Spraying fertilizer near El Centro, California

Fertilizing, Imperial Valley

Fertilizing fields, Imperial Valley

Fertilizing, Imperial Valley

Fertilizing near El Centro, California

Special precautions must be taken for disposing of hazardous materials, as in this area near El Centro in the Imperial Valley

Farmland of the Imperial Valley, and the Salton Sea (infrared film)

Pickers in field near El Centro, California

Irrigated field in the Imperial Valley

Irrigated fields of the Imperial Valley

Cracked earth -- a result of irrigation and intense dry heat

Sand dunes in the western part of the Imperial Valley

A hundred-mile ribbon of sand dunes separates the Chocolate Mountains of southern California from the Imperial Valley, which stretches from the Salton Sea into Mexico

Parker Dam on the Colorado River forms the eastern end of the 150-mile metropolitan aqueduct which supplies drinking water to Los Angeles and intermediate cities

The All-American Canal transformed the Imperial Valley from desert to farm land with water from the Colorado River

The Colorado River feeds crops and irrigation (dark areas). Town of Needles, California in foreground.

The All-American Canal feeding the thirsty Imperial Valley. Mexico on the left.

Imperial Dam takes last of Colorado River water for the United States. It diverts water into All-American Canal. Desilting basins in center background.

Shrunken Colorado River winds between onetime flood banks. This is all that's left after Imperial Dam (background) has diverted four-fifths of the river into the All-American Canal.

Colorado River at the Mexican border, Yuma County, Arizona

Colorado River on the Mexican side of the border

Las Vegas street scene

Signboards in Las Vegas

Light patterns created by multi-colored displays at Las Vegas casinos

Night lights, Las Vegas

Las Vegas shopping center

Laboratory technician at EPA's Las Vegas National Research Center holds up an air filter

Auto dump, Henderson, Nevada

Funeral home, Henderson, Nevada

Desert real estate

Housing in Las Vegas

Housing, Lake Havasu City, Arizona

Housing, Lake Havasu City

London Bridge crosses Havasu Lake at Lake Havasu City, Yuma County, Arizona. Rescued from demolition by an American buyer, the famous old span was transplanted here in 1971.

London Bridge, transplanted here in 1971, crosses arm of Havasu Lake, which is fed by the Colorado River, Yuma County, Arizona

Golf club at Lake Havasu City

Bird in farmland bush, Imperial Valley

American Egrets roosting and nesting on the Colorado River Indian Reservation near Parker, Yuma County, Arizona

Egret in flight over the Colorado River Indian Reservation

Marshland and migratory birds at Lake Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, which is about equally divided between California and Arizona. The lake is fed by the Colorado River.

Marshland birds at Lake Havasu National Wildlife Refuge

Marshland fowl at Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge

This entire field of straw west of El Centro in the Imperial Valley, burned off in less than half an hour. Smoke was visible for 20 miles. Owner wished to clear field quickly for planting another crop.

Photos by Charles O'Rear for the Environmental Protection Agency's Project DOCUMERICA, May 1972 (US National Archives)

↧

Huuklye 'n Cinquor: L7th Heaven: Circling the Square, or, A Self-Referential Reading of "Self-Reference"

May 20, 2014, 8:14 am

≫ Next: Edwin Markham: In Death Valley

≪ Previous: Charles O'Rear: Land of Dust and Plenty

L7 105 mm tank gun, cut model. On display at the Deutsches Panzermuseum, Munster: photo by baku13, 7 August 2005

To start with, to defend this

poem from its own attack, in my shot in

the departmental photo gallery I guess I’ll just

look off to one side, with a mopey expression

as if to say I couldn't care less

about being a professor, I'll wear

my San Francisco sweatshirt to proclaim

I was there then, but in a non-persona

kind of way that convinces me

I can write something certain other

members of the herd at the trough

will have no trouble recognizing as the self-referential

circling of the square that announces

immediate ascension into L7th Heaven

never forgetting that both the flush left

and irregular right margins constantly loom

as significant events, often interrupting what

I thought I was about to

write and making me write something

so unbelievably boring even the champion

bores of the marginal subset of boring poetry

since they identify themselves as poets

through style and publication context

will wish they could call their own

in a quite literal sense

and I could go on, but oh -- prose poems

are another matter, so,

in other words, doubly marginal,

thus heroic, making the birth of post-

industrial code-splicing from a shoal of

territorial barks appear minuscule

in comparison -- but not to put a fine point on it

so much as to put on display the poet

as engaged, oppositional intellectual going

back and rewriting, but discovering

the problem still infuriatingly

or maybe, who knows, conveniently

reappearing anyway even after the pieces

dislodged from the hidden pockets

of the "relaxed" conferencing outfit have fallen

by the wayside, into the margins

of this page, as it were, where any passing graduate

student on the way to a meeting

could easily find them, pick them up,

piece them together and experience

that unique Eureka! sensation which comes

with the knowledge the bounty reaped

for such a remarkable self-referential

performance, stacked up, assessed, and then again broken

down into pieces, will still add up to something

greater than the sum of its parts --

all the king's horses are fuming impatiently

down the corridor now, though, so

I'd better get my casual throw-away

brilliance hat on, and put all this into

that row of small portable hermetically-sealed

boxes, which are already somewhat crowded

as they contain gnomic and often completely

undecipherable sentences handwritten

on separate slips of paper, grafitti-like scrawls

that dramatize in a particularly problematic

fashion the tautological narrative

by which the "living hand" of the contingent

author (yours truly!) becomes imbued, after

the fact, with eternal potency; and once

having said this, I am overcome as always

by the need to say a bit more

on the subject of the considerable history

of my deployment of antiabsorptive

techniques (nontransparent or

nonnaturalizing elements) (artifice)

for absorptive ends... In my poems, as

everyone who is reading these words knows, I

bury certain hidden opaque and

nonabsorbable elements, digressions,

interruptions, non sequiturs, and the like,

potentially explosive elements

somewhat like WMDs

stashed in unexpected places, like

at the site of the traditional caesura, or in

the candy bowl on the desk in my office,

as part of a technological arsenal

to create a more powerful (“souped-up”)

absorption than possible with traditional,

blander, two-ply absorptive techniques

such as pretending to have feelings,

or a soul, for example, though let's not

go there before the afterparty

blows up, or comes crashing down

in such a way as to problematize

if not also foreground, the scale and complexity

of what I am trying to bring down

simply because I don't have the power

to shut up, or to crap on a fig-wort

without the necessary supply of text

to clean up after, or at least clarify

a conundrum whose social geometry

is similar to the physical geometry

that ultimately contains a bomb blast:

whatever I destroy tends to shield

contiguous and remote areas

so I really don't have to feel too bad

about once again airing out

the now fabled battlecry -- “absorption!”

at one level, viewed from an oblique angle,

becomes “anti-absorption!” at another

and vice-versa, all the livelong,

textually liberated, totally engagé L7 day

on which I grant myself as usual any liberties

and/or privileges that may obtain

for an academic industrialist of my standing

or bending over, as the case may be -- I accept

full political agency for my anti-response

as a political tool, paratactically

intact, and not forgetting

the subsidiary aim of radically

reconfiguring the pre-existent categories

of literary status, naturally -- though "nature"

will necessarily have to remain

another category entirely, for now,

even though I’m once again going

back and rewriting (look at me, mom!), the problem

still maddeningly

reappears every six words or so -- so this,

and every poem like it, if I may say so, is a marginal

work in a world entirely without margins

but with direct deposit to be counted upon

at the beginning of every month, as

a result of which I feel empowered, so that

I am going to make an argument, that

there is such a thing as a sentence, and that it occurs

more or less exclusively wherever

I and/or my fellow ambitious hirelings happen to be

on any given beautiful L7 day, within a given

narrative frame, or else thrown together at random

but not really, say at an MLA convention

where parataxis is elevated to the level

of shop talk, in the meet 'n greet

booths, where, to express our difference,

we wear our nametags in a rakish

sort of way, either with the label facing

inward, or, in an ultimate gesture in the direction

of tangential relevance, with one of those corny

I-heart thingies prominent, as in

heraldry, on a coat of arms, just so

you know I identify with ordinary

people in this new, autonomous, conditional

sort of way, so that the meaning of a sentence when I use it

is heightened, dissipated, weakened,

broken down, disintegrated, reintegrated,

shored up, torn down, reordered into units

small enough to fit into the tiniest

broom closet in the doll-house, or else

strengthened, questioned, or changed

by the degree of separation or connection

that the reader perceives with regard

to the surrounding sentences, so that s/he may feel free

to linguistically innovate

in master-texts like this one

created by the disruption of lexical tactics

imposed upon us by traditions

like the anachronistic desire to communicate

across the broadening gulf

between islands whose populations

retain no knowledge or awareness

that a world exists outside

their strictly defined geographical boundaries

and now I wish we had more time to spend together

but they're locking up, so let's grab

a couple pops, after office hours, let down our hair,

if we still have any, and try

"making sense" in that ordinary oldfashioned way

until the firing squad shows up

just so long as no one's taping all this

and if they're not, in other words, why not?

Venice Banner: doodle by Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 16: Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 16: Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 1: Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 2: Tom Raworth, n.d.

Cocteau and Eliot: doodle by Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 12: Tom Raworth, n.d.

from Breakfast Comix 18: Tom Raworth, n.d.

Painter Paul Nash Pauses: doodle by Tom Raworth, n.d.

↧

Edwin Markham: In Death Valley

May 21, 2014, 7:18 am

≫ Next: Walter Benjamin: The Destructive Character

≪ Previous: Huuklye 'n Cinquor: L7th Heaven: Circling the Square, or, A Self-Referential Reading of "Self-Reference"

Mesquite dunes, seen from Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley: photo by Jody Miller, 22 April 2014

There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,

Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill

Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.

Around were heaps of ruins piled between

The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care;

And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls

One pillar rose up dark against the moon.

There was a nameless Presence everywhere;

In the gray soil there was a purple stain,

And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood --

Blood of a vast unknown Calamity.

It was the mark of some ancestral grief --

Grief that began before the ancient Flood.

EdwinMarkham (Charles Edward Anson Markham, b. Oregon City, Oregon, 23 April 1852 -- d. Staten Island, New York, 7 March 1940): In Death Valley, from The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899)

Zabriskie Point sunrise, Death Valley: photo by Jody Miller, 22 April 2014

Black volcanic sand, Death Valley. Near the Ubehebe Crater. The light has an unearthly glow: photo by Jody Miller, 21 April 2014

Mesquite dunes at sunset, Death Valley: photo by Jody Miller, 21 April 2014

Mesquite dunes, early morning light, Death Valley National Park: photo by Jody Miller, 22 April 2014

↧

Walter Benjamin: The Destructive Character

May 22, 2014, 7:49 am

≫ Next: Chaste

≪ Previous: Edwin Markham: In Death Valley

Demolition, Deaconess Hospital, Oakland Avenue, Dogtown (St. Louis) ('...the feeling of the familiar moving rapidly into the past, which is certainly the case with this hospital which has stood in my neighborhood for decades"): photo by chalkdog, 16 April 2014

It could happen to someone looking back over his life that he realized that almost all the deeper obligations he had endured in its course originated in people who everyone agreed had the traits of a “destructivecharacter.” He would stumble on this fact one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavier the shock dealt to him, the better his chances of representing thedestructivecharacter.

Thedestructivecharacter knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.

Thedestructivecharacter is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, out of his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radically the world is simplified when tested for its worthiness for destruction leads to such an Apollonian image of the destroyer. This is the great bond embracing and unifying all that exists. It is a sight that affords thedestructivecharactera spectacle of deepest harmony.

NYC -- Queens -- LIC: 5 Pointz -- Dutch Master Rembrandt -- spray painting by etui (Elmer Tuinstra): photo by Wally Gobetz, 11 August 2007

Thedestructivecharacter is always blithely at work. It is Nature that dictates his tempo, indirectly at least, for he must forestall her. Otherwise she will take over thedestruction herself.

Thedestructivecharacter sees no image hovering before him. He has few needs, and the least of them is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First of all, for a moment at least, empty space -- the place where the thing stood or thevictim lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without occupying it.

Thedestructivecharacter does his work; the only work he avoids is creative. Just as the creator seeks solitude, the destroyer must be constantly surrounded by people, witnesses to his efficacy.

Thedestructivecharacter is a signal. Just as a trigonometric sign is exposed on all sides to the wind, so he is exposed to idle talk. To protect him from it is pointless.

Thedestructivecharacter has no interest in being understood. Attempts in this direction he regards as superficial. Being misunderstood cannot harm him. On the contrary, he provokes it, just as oracles, those destructive institutions of the state, provoked it. The most petty bourgeois of all phenomena, gossip, comes about only because people do not wish to be misunderstood. Thedestructivecharacter tolerates misunderstanding; he does not promote gossip.

étui: photo by Michael McIlvaney, 7 April 2014

Thedestructivecharacter is the enemy of theétui-man. Theétui-man looks for comfort, and the case is its quintessence. The inside of the case is thevelvet-lined trace that he has imprinted on the world. Thedestructivecharacter obliterates even the traces of destruction.

Thedestructivecharacter stands in the front line of traditionalists. Some people pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations, by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. The latter are called thedestructive.

Thedestructivecharacter has the consciousness of historical man, whose deepest emotion is an insuperable mistrust of the course of things and a readiness at all times to recognize that everything can go wrong. Therefore, thedestructivecharacter is reliability itself.

Thedestructivecharacter sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble -- not for the sake of rubble, but for that of the way leading through it.

Thedestructivecharacter lives from the feeling not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

WalterBenjamin (1892-1940): TheDestructiveCharacter, from Frankfurter Zeitung, 20 November 1931, translated by Edmund Jephcott in Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 (1999)

Collapsing building, Deaconess Hospital, Dogtown (St. Louis): photo by chalkdog, 22 April 2014

↧

Chaste

May 23, 2014, 8:38 am

≫ Next: They dropped like Flakes -- They dropped like Stars --

≪ Previous: Walter Benjamin: The Destructive Character

Exhibition "Purity", Malmo. Photographer David Magnusson's portraits offer a nuanced look at the Purity Ball phenomenon in the United States. During a Purity Ball young girls promise to "live pure lives before God" and remain virgins until marriage. In return, the fathers sign a commitment promising to protect their daughters chastity: photo by David Magnusson, image by Helena Stam, 27 April 2013

Purity: photo by David Magnusson, instagram image by Henrik Ismarker, 5 March 2014

David Magnusson: "Purity" Vernissage, Malmo: photo by Christer, 27 April 2013

↧

They dropped like Flakes -- They dropped like Stars --

May 24, 2014, 7:57 am

≫ Next: The 49th Law of Power: A Dystopian Reality Event Game

≪ Previous: Chaste

Flag Store, Lowell, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 14 May 2014

They dropped like Flakes —
They dropped like Stars —
Like Petals from a Rose —
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers — goes —

They perished in the Seamless Grass —
No eye could find the place —
But God can summon every face
Of his Repealless — List.

Emily Dickinson (b. Amherst, Massachusetts, 10 December 1830, d. Amherst, Massachusetts,15 May 1886): The Battle-field, as first published, 1891

Red, White and Bluejeans, Boston, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 2 October 2010

Memorial Day, Boston, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 9 June 2010

Memorial Day #2, Boston, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 10 June 2010

Prayer Flags, Wakefield, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 1 July 2010

Prayer Flags #2, Wakefield, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 19 May 2011

Flag #2, New York City, New York: photo by Jim Rohan, 25 March 2013

Serenade, Melrose, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 27 May 2013

Flag, Waltham, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 23 April 2013

Storage Yard, Everett, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 7 January 2011

Patriots of the Walking Dead, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 4 November 2009

Mermaid with a Burger, Rusticoville, Prince Edward Island: photo by Jim Rohan, 25 July 2009

Low Flying Aircraft, Lopez, Pennsylvania: photo by Jim Rohan, 13 June 2009

Doves on a fence, Revere, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 30 November 2009

Kellys Cross, Kelly's Cross, Prince Edward Island: photo by Jim Rohan, 4 January 2014

Church and State, Allston, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 22 December 2013

Carved in Stone, Wakefield, Massachusetts: photo by Jim Rohan, 18 February 2014

↧

The 49th Law of Power: A Dystopian Reality Event Game

May 25, 2014, 8:57 am

≫ Next: Robert Creeley: America

≪ Previous: They dropped like Flakes -- They dropped like Stars --

Police investigate a scene after a series of shootings in Isla Vista, California: photo by Associated Press / KEYT-TV / Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2014

A Killer Story: An Interview with Suzanne Collins, Author of ‘The Hunger Games’

What inspired you to write it?

One night, I was lying in bed, and I was channel surfing between reality TV programs and actual war coverage. On one channel, there’s a group of young people competing for I don’t even know [what]; and on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting in an actual war. I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way. That’s the moment when Katniss’s story came to me.

Why did those programs speak to you so deeply?

When I was a kid, my dad fought in Vietnam. He was gone for a year. Even though my mom tried to protect us -- I’m the youngest of four -- sometimes the TV would be on, and I would see footage from the war zone. I was little, but I would hear them say “Vietnam,” and I knew my dad was there, and it was very frightening. I’m sure that a lot of people today experience that same thing. But there is so much programming, and I worry that we’re all getting a little desensitized to the images on our televisions. If you’re watching a sitcom, that’s fine. But if there’s a real-life tragedy unfolding, you should not be thinking of yourself as an audience member. Because those are real people on the screen, and they’re not going away when the commercials start to roll.

What was the most difficult part of writing the story?

When you’re going to write a story like The Hunger Games, you have to accept from the beginning that you’re going to kill characters. It’s a horrible thing to do, and it’s a horrible thing to write, particularly when you have to take out a character that is vulnerable or young or someone you’ve grown to love when you were writing them.

from A Killer Story: An Interview with Suzanne Collins, Author of ‘The Hunger Games’: Rick Margolis,School Library Journal, 1 September 2008

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: photo by Murray Close/Lionsgate, viaNew York Times, 22 March 2012

At 'Hunger Games' camp, children want to fight to the 'death'

Largo, Florida

The first day of camp brought girls with lunchbags and suntans and swimsuit strings hanging down the backs of their shirts. They smiled and jumped up and down, excited to see each other; many were classmates at Country Day School, the host of the summer camp. It was this friendship that made Rylee Miller, 12, feel a little conflicted. "I don't want to kill you," she told Julianna Pettey. Julianna, also 12, looked her in the eye. "I will probably kill you first," she said. She put her hands on Rylee's shoulders. "I might stab you."

The boys had gathered away from the girls, across the room. Eli Hunter cocked an elbow and pointed the fingers on his other hand, explaining that he was a sniper in a tree. He gunned down Liam Cadzow, a tiny blond boy in a bucket hat.

"What are we going to do first?" shouted 14-year-old Sidney Martenfeld. "Are we going to kill each other first?"

*

"If I have to die, I want to die by an arrow," Joey Royals mused to no one in particular. "Don't kill me with a sword. I'd rather be shot."

•

The Hunger Games trilogy is wildly popular: The first movie grossed nearly $700 million worldwide. More than 36 million copies of the books have been sold in the United States.
One of the girls at the camp can recite the first chapter by memory.

While it's difficult to think of a children's phenomenon that doesn't involve violence, The Hunger Games might take the prize. As punishment for a failed rebellion, 12 districts have to send a boy and girl to fight to the death in a televised tournament.

•

"What's your specialty? Ours is primarily weapons," said Frances Pool-Crane, the youngest camper at 10 years old.

"Ours is, like, half weapons," said Briana Craig, 12. "Alliance?"

"Sure," Frances said. The girls were decorating posters for the Games. "LOSING MEANS CERTAIN DEATH," Frances wrote.

Next door to the Hunger Games camp, about two dozen kids in another camp played a computer game where they built structures to protect their lives from monsters. Kids can fake-die in nearly any game these days, counselor Simon Bosés said.

"But if you actually sit down and talk to them and they say, 'I'm going to kill you,' they don't understand what they're saying. Death for this age isn't a final thing. It's a reset."

Susan Toler, a clinical psychologist specializing in children's issues and an assistant dean at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, called the camp idea "unthinkable."
When children read books or watch movies, they're observers, removed from the killing. "But when they start thinking and owning and adopting and assuming the roles, it becomes closer to them," Toler said. "The violence becomes less egregious."

-- from At 'Hunger Games' camp, children want to fight to the 'death': Lisa Gartner,Tampa Bay Times, 2 August 2013

At least one bicyclist was struck by a car driven by the alleged gunman who killed six people in a Friday night rampage in Isla Vista. (Urban Hikers photo)

At least one bicyclist was struck by a car driven by the alleged gunman who killed six people in a Friday night rampage in Isla Vista: photo by Urban Hikers via Noozhawk, 23 May 2014)

Elliot Rodger, left, on the red carpet for The Hunger Games, is believed to be the son of assistant director Peter Rodger: photographer unknown, viaThe Telegraph, 24 May 2014

The 48 Laws of Power. DNF. Machiavelli on steroids: photo by Mark Larson, 24 March 2012

(On his Facebook page, Elliot Rodger "favorites" four books, with The 48 Laws of Power at the top of the list, followed by Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire and The Success Principles)

Third eyed spy [from Robert Greene: The 48 Laws of Power]: photo by Jamel Alatise, 21 November 2012

A body is covered on the street next to a BMW sedan crashed on an Isla Vista, California sidewalk. The driver is suspected in a shooting rampage that killed six people Friday night in Isla Vista: photo by Urban Hikers / Noozhawk via Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2014

Elliot Rodger in his BMW: photo from Elliot Rodger's Facebook page, as posted at the time of his death

↧

Robert Creeley: America

May 26, 2014, 8:23 am

≫ Next: A Day in the Sun

≪ Previous: The 49th Law of Power: A Dystopian Reality Event Game

porchflag (Des Moines, Iowa): photo by greg (It'sGreg), 6 April 2014

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.

Robert Creelety: America, from Pieces (1969)

Killer blob (Los Angeles): photo by anotherswede ON A BREAK, 7 July 2013

Surprised (Los Angeles): photo by anotherswede ON A BREAK, 31 January 2014

↧

A Day in the Sun

May 27, 2014, 9:40 am

≫ Next: Taking the El to Work

≪ Previous: Robert Creeley: America

Umbrella (Alameda, California): photo by efo, 6 April 2014

A day in the sun under a parasol of protective nostalgia
Would be pleasant, were it not for what actually happened

On any given yesterday.

Prices will go up soon (El Cerrito, California): photo by efo, 20 April 2014

↧

Taking the El to Work

May 28, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: Walter Benjamin: Theological-Political Fragment (the rhythm of messianic nature is happiness)

≪ Previous: A Day in the Sun

58th on the South Side 'L'. A moment of everyday life out in front of an 'L' station. 58th, a former station on the South Side Main Line (just three blocks south of Garfield on today's Green Line), had a rare island platform (the line was mostly built with side platforms, as it is today). Note the distinct station house -- with its round bay and a half-cone roof: photographer unknown, 1946 (CTA Collection / CTA Web)

I make it out the door to the El station.
It's a hot summer day in 1955.
Heat waves jump off the El tracks.

From the train you can see down into the backyards

Where angels live in dejection.

Ragged wash hangs there: grey t-shirts without arms.

Next come vistas of wrecked cars and the bolt factory.

Downtown I change trains for the North Side

Or the South Side. One night late
I'm walking down 35th Street toward the El
When out of the double doors of a bar

Explodes a woman screaming as if escaped
From hell, her torso a red streaming suture.

I decide I am unsuited for this line of work
But the next night I'm back on the train to the ballpark.

63rd and Cottage Grove. Pedestrian traffic and CTA buses under the 'L' at 63rd and Cottage Grove. Streetcar tracks can be seen in the street; overhead are remnants of trolley wire hung for streetcars that ran beneath the structure: photographer unknown, 1955 (CTA Web)

State Street Subway Entrance. The northwest stairs to what appears to be the Madison-Monroe mezzanine of the Monroe station on the State Street Subway. Before a change in routing that led to today's Red and Green Lines, the "North-South" service went from the North Side Mainline (Red North) to the South Side 'L' (Green South) via the subway, thus trains to Howard, Englewood (the branch that terminates at Ashland/63rd) and Jackson Park (the branch that now terminates at Cottage Grove): photographer unknown, 1970 (CTA Web)

Passengers at Chicago Avenue station. On a late winter Thursday, 'L' riders exit a Loop-bound Ravenswood "B" train at Chicago. The rear cars are among the first four cars in a series of single-unit rail cars built for CTA by the St. Louis Car Company in 1959. These cars were painted in a distinctive maroon and silver gray color scheme: photographer unknown, March 1962 (CTA Web)

Tech-35th during 1959 World Series (White Sox vs Dodgers). Trains handled massive numbers of people at the Tech-35th station on the South Side 'L' for a World Series game at Comiskey Park. Today, the station in this location is called 35th-Bronzeville-IIT and is served by Green Line trains: photographer unknown, October 1959 (CTA Web)

South Side 'L' at 33rd. On June 6, 1892, the first 'L' line, South Side 'L' began service from Congress St. just south of what is now the Loop (which didn't fully open for another five years) and 39th St. (now Pershing Rd.). This 121-year-old elevated railway is still in service as part of today's Green Line from near the S-curve at Harrison to just before the Indiana stop on Chicago's South Side. Like those that would follow, the South Side 'L', was in direct competition for passengers with surface transit in the decades before consolidation into CTA. Although the 'L', with its separated right-of-way, was inherently faster than surface transit, streetcar stops were often closer to people's homes, so 'L' lines had to build stops that were spaced closely enough to attract more walk-up traffic. This photo is taken from the former station at 33rd, looking south toward 35th. In 1949, a service revision was implemented which streamlined and simplified operations, and reduced travel times at all hours by eliminating some intermediate stops, including 33rd. It also established Howard-Englewood and Howard-Jackson Park through-service via the State Street Subway. As a convenience to riders coming from north of 35th, a walkway was built so people could still enter at 33rd, then proceed at track level to the inbound platform at 35th, for service into downtown. In this photo the walkway, seen at left, has only lately opened. Later, around 1960, CTA would rebuild the station at 35th and add an entrance at 34th to more directly serve people coming to the 'L' from the north (and eliminating the blocks-long track-level walkway): photographer unknown, 1949 (CTA Web)

Lake Street 'L'. A two-car train of all-steel 4000-series cars, near St. Louis Avenue, on the Lake Street 'L'. This train has trolley poles because, west of Laramie, the Lake St. 'L' would descend down to street level and ride along Lake, Corcoran and South Blvd through Austin and Oak Park, and trains would draw power from trolley wires rather than from third rail. If you look closely, you can see a number of 'L' cars also sitting, stored on a third (center) track that once ran through this area: photographer unknown, c. 1940 (CTA Web)

Douglas Trains Passing. Two Douglas trains pass each other at Paulina Junction -- the train in the background consists of wooden 'L' cars and the train in the foreground is one of CTA's 6000-series rapid transit cars; seen just after this track connection between the former Logan Square branch of the Metropolitan West Side 'L' lines and the Lake St. 'L’ was added. The view here is looking east down Lake, and the Chicago Board of Trade is the tall building toward the center-right on the horizon. The station just in the background is the original station at Ashland, opened in 1893, recently re-opened at the time this photograph was taken. It had been closed for years due to there being a station just a block away, which was added to allow transfers between the Metropolitan 'L' to Logan Square and the Lake St ‘L’: photographer unknown, c. 1954 (CTA Web)

Loomis/63rd. The Englewood Branch, in its early years, had been built out to Loomis/63rd and ended there for much of its life (before being extended to Ashland/63rd in 1969, now part of the Green Line). As can be seen in this south-facing view from just north of 63rd Street, the tracks ended unceremoniously over the street. The location was a busy interchange for Englewood residents (as the Ashland/63rd terminal is today). An 'L' train is visible in the terminal and a "Blue Goose" streetcar is in the foreground. The paint scheme on this particular car is atypical for these cars, as it's one of several that received experimental livery modifications for better visibility on the road: photographer unknown, c. 1944 (CTA Web)

Stock Yards Loop. A two-car train of wooden 'L' cars makes its way around the single track loop of the Stock Yards Branch. This branch connected to the rest of the 'L' at Indiana on the South Side Elevated (now part of the Green Line) and largely ran as a shuttle throughout its life. Elevated track structure snaked its way west into The Yards at around 41st and split into a single-track loop to serve the area where the major packing houses existed, with a handful of stations to connect people with jobs there. Trains operated counterclockwise around the Stock Yards loop: photographer unknown, c. 1946 (CTA Web)

Wilson. The Arthur Gerber-designed Uptown Station building is seen here, looking westward on Wilson and north on Broadway: photographer unknown, 1959 (CTA Web)

Merchandise Mart. This is Merchandise Mart -- although not the one you'd recognize today. These platforms from the original station opened in 1930 to serve the then-new Merchandise Mart. When the Merchandise Mart station was built, it had a transfer bridge that not only bridged the platforms for transfers, but also continued east to make a connection to an adjacent North Water Terminal (a "stub terminal" just east off the tracks), which some trains to/from the North Side used instead of continuing onto the then-at-capacity Loop 'L'. In the station is a 4-car Evanston Express train of CTA 4000-series cars to Linden in Wilmette (today it's the Purple Line Express): photographer unknown, 1970, courtesy Bruce G. Moffat (CTA Web)

Lake Street 'L' at Central, pre-elevation. A Lake Street 'L' train at Central, in Chicago's Austin neighborhood on the West Side, before the part of the route west of Laramie was elevated. At Laramie, train conductors would raise the trolley poles (the station had both third rail and overhead wire to make the transition to running along the street) and trains would descend to grade level where they'd travel alongside Lake Street and the Chicago and North Western railroad embankment, out to a terminal station in Forest Park, just west of Harlem. In 1962, trains were diverted onto the North Western's right-of-way (now Union Pacific), where they operate to the Harlem/Lake terminal, as part of the CTA Green Line, today. The line serves Oak Park, River Forest and Forest Park: photographer unknown, c.1960, courtesy Bruce G. Moffat (CTA Web)

Ice. A stark contrast to Chicago's hot summer weather, this photo shows a worker on the elevated structure at a signal with ice all around after what was likely spray from firefighters putting out a building fire. The location isn't marked, but this photo might be somewhere along the North Side Main Line, where the Red & Brown Lines run together. The side of a train of "Baldies" (a nickname given to early 4000-series cars with plain, arched roofs) is visible just behind the signal: photo by Acme Newspictures, c. 1950 (CTA Web)

↧

Walter Benjamin: Theological-Political Fragment (the rhythm of messianic nature is happiness)

May 30, 2014, 7:56 am

≫ Next: The Death of Pliny the Elder

≪ Previous: Taking the El to Work

Skeleton (female), Leinster Medical School, Dublin(photographer at left?): photo by John Joseph Clarke, c. 1897-1904 (Clarke Collection, National Library of Ireland)

Only the Messiah himself completes all history, in the sense that he alone redeems, completes and creates its relation to the messianic. For this reason, nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own ground, to anything messianic. Therefore, the Kingdom of God is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be established as a goal. From the standpoint of history, it is not the goal but the terminus [Ende]. Therefore, the secular order cannot be built on the idea of the Divine Kingdom, and theocracy has no political but only a religious meaning. To have repudiated with utmost vehemence the political significance of theocracy is the cardinal merit of Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia.

The secular order should be erected on the idea of happiness. The relation of this order to the messianic is one of the essential teachings of the philosophy of history. It is the precondition of a mystical conception of history, encompassing a problem that can be represented figuratively. If one arrow points to the goal toward which the secular dynamic acts, and another marks the direction of messianic intensity, then certainly the quest of free humanity for happiness runs counter to the messianic direction. But just as a force, by virtue of the path it is moving along, can augment another force on the opposite path, so the secular order -- because of its nature as secular -- promotes the coming of the Messianic Kingdom. The secular, therefore, though not itself a category of this kingdom, is a decisive category of its most unobtrusive approach. For in happiness all that is earthly seeks its downfall, and only in happiness is its downfall destined to find it. -- Whereas admittedly the immediate messianic intensity of the heart, of the inner man in isolation, passes through misfortune, as suffering. The spiritual restitutio in integrum, which introduces immortality, corresponds to a worldly restitution that leads to an eternity of downfall, and the rhythm of this eternally transient worldly existence, transient in its totality, in its spatial but also in its temporal totality, the rhythm of messianic nature, is happiness. For nature is messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away.

To strive for such a passing away -- even the passing away of those stages of man that are nature -- is the task of world politics, whose method must be called nihilism.

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940): Theological-Political Fragment, date uncertain (probably either 1920-1921 or 1937-1938), unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime, translated by Edmund Jephcott in Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 (1999)

Portrait of an articulated skeleton (male) on a hardwood chair: photographer unknown, c. 1900 (Powerhouse Museum, Gift of the Estate of Raymond W. Phillips)

All of early 20th century transport is here… well, with the possible exception of an early bi-plane spluttering across the façade of Trinity College, but we can't have everything! A lovely high angle view of the junction of Dame Street with College Green in Dublin: photographer unknown, 1930s (?) (Eason Collection, National Library of Ireland)

↧

The Death of Pliny the Elder

June 1, 2014, 8:49 am

≫ Next: John Clare: House or Window Flies

≪ Previous: Walter Benjamin: Theological-Political Fragment (the rhythm of messianic nature is happiness)

The Eruption of Vesuvius, 1813, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Musée des Augustins, Toulouse. Photo: Daniel Martin Today marks the 1933th eruptiversary. Coming up: The Last Days of Pompeii

The Eruption of Vesuvius, 24 August A.D. 79[showing the death of Pliny the Elder on the shore at Stabiae]: Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), 1813, oil on canvas, 147.5 x 195.5 cm; image by Daniel Martin (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)

Primo Levi: Pliny

Don't hold me back, friends, let me set out.
I won't go far; just to the other shore.
I want to observe at close hand that dark cloud,
Shaped like a pine tree, rising above Vesuvius,
And find the source of this strange light.
Nephew, you don't want to come along? Fine; stay here and study.
Recopy the notes I gave you yesterday.
You needn't fear the ash; ash on top of ash.
We're ash ourselves; remember Epicurus?
Quick, get the boat ready, it is already night:
Night at midday, a portent never seen before.
Don't worry, sister, I'm cautious and expert;
The years that bowed me haven't passed in vain.
Of course I'll come back quickly. Just give me time
To ferry across, observe the phenomena and return,
Draw a new chapter from them tomorrow
For my books, that will, I hope, still live
When for centuries my old body's atoms
Will be whirling, dissolved in the vortices of the universe,
Or live again in an eagle, a young girl, a flower.
Sailors, obey me: launch the boat into the sea.
................................................
................................................................................23 May 1978

Primo Levi (1919-1987): Pliny, translated by Ruth Feldman with Brian Swann, in Collected Poems, 1988

The Death of Pliny the Elder (reconstruction, according to the account of his nephew Pliny the Younger): Yan Dargent, 1870, illustration in Histoire des météores; image by LBE, 28 June 2013

Meanwhile broad flames shone out in several places from Mount Vesuvius, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still brighter and clearer. But my uncle, in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames: after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little disquieted as to fall into a sound sleep: for his breathing, which, on account of his corpulence, was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants outside. The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, it would have been impossible for him to have made his way out. So he was awoke and got up, and went to Pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were feeling too anxious to think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now rocked from side to side with frequent and violent concussions as though shaken from their very foundations; or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened destruction. In this choice of dangers they resolved for the fields: a resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins; and this was their whole defence against the storm of stones that fell round them. It was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night; which however was in some degree alleviated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go farther down upon the shore to see if they might safely put out to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high, and boisterous. There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sail cloth, which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulphur, dispersed the rest of the party, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapour, having always had a weak throat, which was often inflamed. As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.

Pliny the Younger to the historian Cornelius Tacitus, on the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, 79 AD; from The Letters of the Younger Pliny, translated by Betty Radice, 1976

Mount Vesuvius at Midnight, 1868. Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830–1902). Oil on canvas; 42.60 x 60.70 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of S. Livingstone Mather, Philip Richard Mather, Katherine Hoyt (Mather) Cross, Katherine Mather McLean, and Constance Mather Bishop 1949.541

Mount Vesuvius at Midnight: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), 1868, oil on canvas; 42.6 x 60.7 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art)

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John Clare: House or Window Flies

June 2, 2014, 7:38 am

≫ Next: School's Out -- A Hundred Years Ago

≪ Previous: The Death of Pliny the Elder

Morning mist at Fen Drayton, Cambridgeshire: photo by hspall, 24 March 2012

These little indoor dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all the summer long. They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong. In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves.

John Clare (1793-1864): House or Window Flies, n.d., from Asylum Poems, in Poems Chiefly from Manuscript, ed. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter, 1920

small house 1. possibly the smallist house/cottage i ever seen. taken on the road between guyhirn and peterborough (A47): photo by Glenn, 15 May 2007

small house, fenland: photo by Glenn, 15 May 2007

Morning mist at Fen Drayton Lakes, Cambridgeshire: photo by DS Williams, 24 February 2013

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School's Out -- A Hundred Years Ago

June 4, 2014, 10:55 am

≫ Next: Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

≪ Previous: John Clare: House or Window Flies

Public Schools Athletic League: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 May 1912 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

I went to School
But was not wiser
Globe did not teach it
Nor Logarithm Show

“How to forget”!
Say — some — Philosopher!
Ah, to be erudite
Enough to know!

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), from "Knows how to forget!", 1862 (?)

Public Schools Athletic League -- Central Park: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 May 1912 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Central Park -- Maypoles -- Public Schools Athletic League celebration: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 May 1912 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Midsummer Day Festival of the girls of Washington Irving High School, Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 June 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Krakoviak dance. Photo shows girls from the Washington Irving High Schools, New York City, doing a Krakowiak dance from Krakow, Poland, at the Midsummer Day Festival which was held at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 June 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Pass-ball relay. Midsummer Day Festival of the girls of Washington Irving High School, Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 June 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Carrying out a girl who fainted, pass-ball relay. Midsummer Day Festival of the girls of Washington Irving High School, Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 June 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Rings and poles. Midsummer Day Festival of the girls of Washington Irving High School, Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 23 June 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Deaf school children -- dancing: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Chinese school children -- Central Park: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Field Day -- B[rook]lyn Public Schools. ["Two Thousand Children in Various Athletic Exercises"]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 19 August 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Ring-toss race -- Brooklyn Public School Children's Field Day: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 19 August 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Wheelbarrow race -- Brooklyn Public School Children's Field Day: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 19 August 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

End of 100 yard final, Brooklyn Public School Children's Field Day: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 19 August 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Brooklyn Public School Children's Field Day: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 19 August 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Italian pupils -- New York schools: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Italian pupil -- New York school. ["Everytime I see an old picture like this I wonder what ever happened to the person. How was his life, where did he live, how old did he become? What's his story? We will never know..." -- Siebbi]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service,between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Italians -- New York schools: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Jewish pupil -- New York school. [""Love his expression -- verge of a laugh? trying to stay still for the camera? But even more compelling is how his hat is a little too big for him." -- antiquerain]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Children Planting in Thomas Jefferson Park, New York City. ["A children’s farm garden, one of many which flourished in parks in the first half of the 20th century, opened on May 20, 1911 with 1008 plots for children to grow flowers and vegetables. Designed as a place of respite for child laborers, the farm garden later hosted nature study classes and, during the World Wars, provided a lesson in self-sufficiency for local children...This view is looking from the East River, maybe from a recreational pier that was about there in the river, northwest across Jefferson Park to the corner of 113th St. and Pleasant Avenue." -- Art Siegel]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, c. 20 May 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Farm for school children, New York City: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, c. 20 May 1911 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Carlisle School -- printing shop. (United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Carlisle School -- tin shop. (United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania] ["Pretty likely a shot of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 'The so-called “noble experiment” was a failed attempt to forcibly assimilate Native American children into the culture of the United States. The United States Army War College now occupies the site of the former school.'" -- Randy Reiss]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Lincoln Agricultural School for Boys, Lincolndale, New York.Photo shows the Lincoln Agricultural School for Boys, a Catholic charity opened in 1912 for training orphans.On negative: [E]very cow is credited with the amount of milk [it produc]es. ["Lincolndale Agricultural School for Boys was a Catholic charity run under a Brother Barnabas, opened in 1912 for selected orphans to be trained for agricultural and industrial work. On 9 March 1913, Brother Barnabas was quoted in the New York Times, [speaking] at a conference on vocational schools... against profit-making in such institutions, saying "It is a step backwards when we take those who are not able to support themselves and make them support us. Surely if they are able to support others they are able to go out into the community where they can work for themselves. The minute that a boy is self-supporting his place is in society and in a good home." -- pennyrichardsca (now at ipernity)]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, sometime in 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Commissary school class for cooks, U.S. Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Scrub and wash clothes, U.S. Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island. ["As much as I love photography, I also hate it because we'll never get images like this again. People now are exposed to images of others and have become completely self-conscious and self-aware because of it. Most of these boys had probably only seen a handful of photos at this point. There's still such an easiness in front of the camera - they don't know that they "should" look a certain way. They just look the way they look and people accept them for it. There are a few looking at the camera, but I think it's more out of curiosity than anything else - maybe a feeling of "I can't believe someone's making a picture of me."-- Horse N. Buggy]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, c. 1910 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress): photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Class room, U.S. Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Physical training exercises, U.S. Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Dr. Hartman's Sunday School Method: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Model of a $10,000 Sunday School by Dr. Hartman: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Raja Yoga Sunbeams, a group of children of the Raja Yoga Academy, San Diego, California: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Roof, Lenox Hill Settlement, New York City: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, c. 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Chinese pupils -- New York school. ["This is likely a view of Mott Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan... The New York Chinese School was at 64 Mott Street -- just down the block -- as of 1929." -- Michael Deddino]: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 8 September 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Chinese pupils -- New York school: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 8 September 1913 [?](George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

New York schools -- opening: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 8 September 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Opening of schools, New York City: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, 8 September 1913 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

New York City playground: photographer unknown for Bain News Service, between 1910 and 1915 (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

↧

Joseph Ceravolo: What chemicals have we forgotten?

June 5, 2014, 8:04 am

≫ Next: Self-Reflection (In Geronimo's Eye)

≪ Previous: School's Out -- A Hundred Years Ago

Permanently Closed Container (Treasure Island) (panorama): photo by efo, 14 November 2010

The morning is warm. A fan whirling

the air. The calm force of tiredness
shows up in everyone's body

chewing, languidly talking.

What chemicals have we forgotten?

The air blows cold

down the northern corridor

the ink freezes in my fingers

no electronics can soothe love.

What chemicals have we forgotten?

...........................................May 18, 1987

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): The morning is warm. A fan whirling..., 18 May 1987, from Collected Poems (2012)

Treasure Island photo by efo, 1 November 2010

Bridge to nowhere (holgarama) (Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island/Bay Bridge): photo by efo, 9 February 2014

Pier 21 (Treasure island): photo by efo, 27 May 2005

Treasure island. Palm-lined drive on the east side of the island: photo by efo, 15 May 2005

Gen Plant, Treasure island (abandoned). What does this plant do?: photo by efo, 15 May 2005

Treasure Island steam generation plant (abandoned): photo by efo, 19 May 2005

Gasoline tank (Treasure Island): photo by efo, 28 May 2005

Gas pump, abandoned filling station, Treasure island: photo by efo, 15 May 2005

Bowl for Health (Treasure Island): photo by efo, 27 May 2005

Aircraft (B-17 Flying Fortress), seen from Treasure island: photo by efo, 15 May 2005

Bay Bridge under construction (Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island)(panorama): photo by efo, 2 May 2010

Treasure Island No. 9(panorama): photo by efo, 7 December 2010

Treasure Island No. 2(panorama): photo by efo, 31 October 2010

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