Tag: IrwinFoto365
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Highway Tunnel | Chelan, WA | October 2019 The tunnel appears as a little blemish on the side of the mountain’s huge, rocky face. Like a freckle, hardly noticed. It’s definitely big enough for cement trucks, but also smaller than some boulders on the cliffs above. Once or twice a month we zip through the…
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Quonset Hut | Orondo, WA | October 2019 Autumn Orchard #4 | A bit of history on the ubiquitous hut: During World War II, the U.S. Navy required a lightweight all-purpose building that was easily shipped and assembled by unskilled labor. Military engineers modified a decades-old British design and built a prototype in the naval…
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Windbreak | Orondo, WA | October 2019 Autumn Orchard #3 | Poplar windbreaks, this one ablaze at sunset, have long been part of the fruit industry’s old-tech toolbox, along with pickers’ ladders, human sorters and hand-packed shipping crates. My guess is that new trellised orchards and hybrid varietals are less susceptible to wind damage, which…
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New Ag | Orondo, WA | October 2019 Autumn Orchard #2 | The image of Grandpa and Little Timmy ambling back to the farmhouse with a bucket of Braeburns has always seemed more fantasy than fact. So today’s new-fangled fruit farms — industrialized, computerized, optimized — don’t stir my yearning for the good ol’ days.…
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Leaf Carpet | Orondo, WA | October 2019 Autumn Orchard #1 | Orchardists talk passionately about fruit color and quality, irrigation and pesticides, difficulties in hiring and keeping workers. But I’ve never been privy to a fruit farmer exclaiming over an orchard’s autumn colors. “It’s so darn beautiful,” the grower might say. “Those golden leaves,…
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Aquarium | East Wenatchee, WA | October 2019 How are this fish and my ego alike? The alluring bala shark, a favorite of home aquariums, grows too large too fast. First a minnow, then a monster. Also, its arrogance often propels the darned thing over the tank’s edge — from what it knows (a cozy…
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Water Tank | East Wenatchee, WA | October 2019 About 55 years ago a priest led us Catholic kids into the schoolyard and pointed to the town’s water tower. “That could be you,” he told us. “Standing straight, reaching for the sky, able to quench a thirst most people don’t know they have.” (Yes, I’m…
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Perspective | Ephrata, WA | October 2019 It feels like we’re overdue for a mental breakthrough that changes the course of humanity. We’ve previously seen such revelations about, say, the speed of light, radio waves, manned flight and lens optics. One remarkable gain was the development of perspective in art (c. 1420), a mind trick…
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Old Mural | Soap Lake, WA | October 2019 We strive daily to decipher the universe. Has the grass grown enough to mow? Do those dark clouds hint at rain? Does “hmmm” mean your spouse likes the chicken casserole? After detection of gravity waves in 2015, scientists hoped the space-time ripples would help decipher distant…
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