Category: Cityscape
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Parking Space | Asheville, NC | April 2019 The old concrete sits cracked and crumbling. Fissures and stains criss-cross the slab — relaxing behind a warehouse built a century ago — and reveal designs carved through decades of use. Wagons and trucks unloaded here. Heavy machinery toppled here. Ice, rain, weather gnawed here. Perhaps like…
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House Boats | Kennewick, WA | April 2019 I sit and watch birds flap by, their wingbeats duplicated on the glassy river. Clouds scud east, their movement duly recorded by the mirror-like surface. A woman in a yellow robe waves to me from her house boat window, then disappears from sight. But wait … a…
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Flyby | Minneapolis, MN | April 2019 Consider from above the dynamic roil of traffic, trains and planes in one small portion of a bustling city. Within each blurred vector — a kinetic smudge — a person moves with purpose, each an “I want” in a mind-boggling swirl of desires. Me? I want the childhood…
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Theater Seats | Wenatchee,WA | February 2019 Velvet’s plushness results from using the same thread to weave two facing layers of fabric. When sliced apart, the fibers form a peach-fuzz surface that’s valued for its softness and durability. A year into retirement, I continue to shed my outer layer — the career veneer — to…
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Warehouse | Richland, WA | April 2019 In our get-it-done culture, an untethered day has to be one of life’s great luxuries. You know: The day as a blank canvas (sort of like the warehouse in photo) unblemished by appointments, errands, or social responsibilities. In other words, life free of clock and calendar. The only…
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Gowns | Vancouver, WA | March 2019 Can a wedding nowadays be simple? Ceremonies for even everyday folks are often drenched in drama and excess. Emotions run high over details of the ring, dress, shoes, cake, bouquet, seating charts and — what are we forgetting? — oh yeah, the groom. Brides want celebrity treatment (“This…
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Pyramid | Spokane, WA | March 2019 My Dad believed (somewhat) in the power of pyramids. He had a doctor — OK, a quack — who claimed pyramids had all sorts of healing properties. After all, didn’t the Egyptians build pyramid-shaped tombs? So the doctor had Dad sit under a dangling, um, monolith which supposedly…
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Thaw | Soap Lake, WA | March 2019 The snow began to recede when least expected — a cold, dreary afternoon seesawing between freeze and thaw. Next day, Spring claimed victory and melting commenced in earnest. Everything was soon at its ugliest
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Church | Douglas, WA | February 2019 In this picturesque hamlet on the high plateau, St. Paul’s Lutheran holds services only a few times a year. Yet the church continues to bind people together, one resident told me. Keeping the structure in
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Hillside | Wenatchee, WA | February 2019 A great emptiness rises above the crowded neighborhood. I scan the blank hill for signs of life — birds, deer, kids — but see nothing. Well, nothing but the