"Find the Americans" They're the ones who eat. So, anyway, Nicki, Miles, and I are off to the home planet to be debriefed. It's time for the annual report. I don't know if I'll be able to post on any kind of regular basis or not. I travel light: no laptop, no blackberry, to dvd player, no cell phone, no mp3 player, no electronic crap of any kind. No sherpa, no worries. A change of underwear, a wrist watch, my passport and ID to entertain the security staff, good shoes, a good book, ear plugs, an apple and a bottle of water spiked with Pernod. Works for me. I will try to find an Internet Cafe in Hilo or the public library, but they usually frown on sending files over their networks. So, we do the best we can, then we move on. Am I right? So, if not now, when? Well, after 20 August. That's when we will be detailed back to Alphaville and the blogging will continue in earnest. If there's nothing new to look at you could always try reviewing the old stuff. There are many secrets hidden there. You might even win the prize. Someone has to. Why shouldn't it be you? What do you want us to bring you back?

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Sometimes there's just nothing good to watch.

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As with anything, it's not important where you start from, but rather where you end up.

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This is what Industry used to look like in America. This is the legacy of the Industrial Revolution on a small town scale. I don't know what was made or stored or transformed here, but the remaining abandoned buildings are heroic and visually interesting as they slowly rust away. The weeds and flowers are gradually absorbing the whole place. This is a time scale of different proportions than we are generally aware of. It�s funny, but when I pass these places, I can't help but think: "What a great studio space that would make!"

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Summer, the way it should be.

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For me, every photo is an abstraction. It's a representation of something that isn't there. Just a small part of a much bigger story. It's the thing that you see, but don't understand. It's the shadow in the night. It means no more than a single piece of a puzzle does. It is out of context, and as such, every viewer must make sense of it independently and without knowing what surrounds it. For most, I suppose, an image is about what you can see. For me, it is about what you can't.

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The traffic at this intersection is rough in the morning. Everyone wants to get to work. They're all going someplace in any event. No matter where you look, there are cars waiting for their turn to do something: go, turn, pass, whatever. The everywhereness of automobiles is demonstrated by this image. Mostly I sit there, like a lot of others, idling, blowing greenhouse gasses into the morning air, waiting with the air conditioning on for my chance to go. There are better ways to spend a life. The light is nice, though, at 7AM.

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Monterey, California: Accidental beach art. Driftwood. There one day. Gone the next.

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It's Summer and it's hot and it's humid and it's more like Louisiana than Maine and I think that it is so cool that air conditioners can be made to fit like a glove into existing window holes. And I also like how these three window holes are all different on this building in Rock Hall, MD. One has an A.C. sticking out. One is red with a vertical divider. The last one is plain. God, as I learn more and more every day, is in the details.

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It's morning in America, by golly. And what should be peeking up above the shrubbery looking like large yellow bunny ears, but the Golden Arches being violated by a street light poll. It's were America goes to eat Breakfast. Which at some time in the not so distant future will tell us a lot about ourselves. Or maybe not.

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Rock Hall, MD: There's a restaurant here that is on the water. During one of the hurricanes that came through a few years ago, the water got so high that it picked the whole place up and then set it down somewhere else. The somewhere else didn't have anything to support the restaurant, so it sank into the bay. But, it's back now. Looks about the same as far as I can remember. I'm told that the crabs are from Vietnam, not the Chesapeake. If that's true, it's a shame. It's still fun to go there and watch and bay and people and have some seafood. If you were to look over the railing on one side of place, this is what you'd see: a ramp leading down to where the boats are tied up.

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The sun comes up pretty early here in America. It starts getting light by about 5:40AM or so. I realize that in some places it never sets this time of year but, to me, 5:30AM is a bit early for the day to begin. Little by little my neighborhood is revealed as the sun climbs up over the horizon. And little by little my neighborhood wakes up, except for those who haven't gone to sleep yet. I like the morning light. It's warm, but not harsh. And it reveals instead of bakes. This is my 'hood.

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Every time I see a photo of pre-9/11 lower Manhattan, I experience the same sadness. Sadness at how much we've lost. Not just the buildings, not only the people who died there, but everything else that we, as a nation, have lost. The skyline of New York will continue to be impressive, no matter what is built on the site. And we have found a way to "go on". But there will always be a divide between what we were before the attacks, and what we became afterwards. And it pains me to be on this side of it.

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Let Freedom ring!

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The Bunny watched over her while she slept at the house at night. It made sure that nothing bad happened and that all monsters were kept away. She would dream of the Bunny and saw it, in her sleep, watching over her. During the daylight hours, the Bunny became just a bunny again. With black, plastic eyes and white synthetic fur and nylon whiskers. But everyone knew that things would change at night time.

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I'm not certain what the deal is with the polls. They may have held up a walkway that was removed by a summer storm spawned by one of the several hurricanes that swept up the East Coast last year or so. Or they may have been something else. A place to tie up your boat? I just liked the way they reflected themselves in the water.

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Trenton, NJ, circa 1975: The woman standing is my mom, the one sitting is her mom, my grandmom. They are in grandmom's living room on Home Avenue. I always liked the name of where she lived. Home Avenue. It sounds like someplace that you'd want to be. Someplace filled with goodness and light. Someplace safe. Someplace where there might be something strange, like a pair of chicken feet, boiling in a big pot of water on the stove. A good place in a neighborhood filled with cousins and aunts and uncles and the people who knew them. A place that was instantly familiar. A good place to be in the Summer, say, of 1962. Or 1963. Or 1964. In 1975 I knew that if I were going to take a picture of these two women together, I had better not wait any longer. Mom died the year after this. Gran died the year after that.

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Washington, DC: circa 1975. My friend, Jan, in her attic room, wearing an antique lace dress and looking very much last century. There was a time when it was fun to "dress up". For some, it still is.

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Washington, DC: circa 1970. People of all walks of life used to be against the war and they made sure that the authorities in Washington, D.C. knew about it. People, many of them young students, used to care about unnecessary blood shed. This is my friend Chris who came down to D.C. for an anti-war demo.

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Vermont, circa 1969: I seem to be much less interested in photographing people now than when I was a student. Perhaps it's because people don't look as interesting now as they did then.

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This is San Francisco, circa 1970. Young people used to look like this.

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This is Bridgeport, Connecticut circa 1970. Young people once looked this way.

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This truck isn't going anywhere soon. From the look of it, it hasn't been anywhere for a long time. Like many things here, it looks like it died in place and was left there to slowly rust or be taken over by the grasses which appear to thrive here. This is my 'hood.

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For the 4th. The Revolution starts here!

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This is a snap of some Icelandic horses. They have to be the friendliest horses I've ever had contact with. We didn't even have apples to give them. They came right up to us to find out what we had to say for ourselves. I thought they kinda looked like The Beatles or, maybe even better, The Kinks. The only one who could get a clear look at us was the white one. He stayed the furthest back. Hmmm. What's up with that?

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