Office cleaning resulted in this backup tape drive's place of retirement being moved from mothballs to a landfill. Before the unit was sent out in a garbage bag, I took a photograph. Quick successions of modern electronics give us the opportunity to chuckle at ourselves and the way we once worked — the further back, the funnier — but the actual utility of old machinery can't be overlooked. Forty megabytes once amounted to a lot, and this beige box was worth the price paid, or near enough. Apposite to this as to history: context, context, context.
Though a little incongruent, sunshine and snow make for a paired characteristic of winter's that elevates the season.
Construction proceeds. I have deliberately avoided showing pictures out of sequential context, but this horizon's appeal was stronger than any discipline.
The steeple is presently unlit, but, for now, the bell tower will do.
For a few months I have been taking semiweekly photographs of the rugged construction site occupying the place where an indoor shopping complex, Westgate Mall, once stood. Work at the site through autumn was peripheral when it wasn't imperceptible, the west view from my office commanded by a great hill of earth, as if a motte for a wooden keep.
Yesterday, the hill had been drawn flat and today, construction crews are swarming about newly arrived steel building frames. I haven't taken photographs as regularly as I might have hoped, but at the current pace, differences between photographs — in the record I hope to complete — will be less a consequence of time than determination of the contractor.
Loss. That I am returning here: I know the darkness, Churchill's "black dog," well.
That I am returning here: I know that I can surmount.
UP THE ESCARPMENT: One must climb but friends may help with a belay. My thanks — you know who you are.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
— Luke 2:8-14
Two days till, the heavens oblige.
If two Olympus digital cameras are the wisest, successive leisure investments I have ever made, a tiny bag in my satchel, which I carry nearly everywhere, was the most practical place to put the one I currently own.
Some sights are worth more than memory, and I wish to be prepared.
El Nino ascendant, winds have been blowing across the United States more strictly west to east than a familiar winter would require — so December, with just one exception early on, has been mild. Fifteen-day forecasts show a few signs of arctic air by Christmas. If that doesn't turn out, we look to a pair of truths: there is still much to see, and, even if there weren't, the twenty-fifth of the month is about more than traditions of northern climes.
