Red Chair on the River

[RSL]

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[petermfiore]

Now Russ, I could say why would post this picture...but I won't.


Peter

[RSL]

Thanks, Peter. You're right of course. Problem is that I haven't yet been able to get out among 'em. Until I can get over to St. Augustine I think I'd better just stop posting.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I think the chairs are really normally white, but they're blushing and sitting way back because everybody else around is so green.

(So it may not be Prime Russ, but I can still read a story into it.) 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I think I'd better just stop posting.

No need to. There is a great number of photographers who made a career of images like these. Just a matter of the right audience. As a minimum, the image is metaphorical.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I suggested that it may not be prime Russ, but that's just because it doesn't have people interacting ambiguously on a street.
A non-prime Russ is still much better than many "prime" shots from some others, IMHO.

[RSL]

Thanks Slobodan and Eric. The scene appealed to me, but I understand what Peter's saying. I've been on the street kick for so long I've associated myself with that almost to the exclusion of everything else. My web sites would show that I have a couple other oars in the water, but I haven't emphasized them on LuLa. Since I'm having a hard time getting to places where I can do street, maybe I need to spend some time branching out again. My other favorite is ghosts left behind by an earlier age, some of which, since I'm 84 and counting, I experienced myself. Unfortunately, they're disappearing at an accelerating rate.

[William Walker]

Hi Russ

Off topic, I'm afraid! Only to say I have just finished reading "The Ravens" based on your review on Amazon (thanks to your good mate "Isaac" mentioning some other review!!!) Really very good! Thank you. Great men.

(I notice you also read thrillers? Have you tried the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child? I would be interested to know what you think of them!)

I am afraid I am with Peter on this post - sorry!

Regards
William

[RSL]

Hi William, Yes, I agree that the Ravens were "great men," but I'd add that they mainly were guys who just enjoyed a challenge and loved to fly.

I had another friend who'd had a desk across from mine for a couple years at 25th Air Division headquarters outside Kansas City until I got shipped to Southeast Asia in 1964. He retired shortly after I left. Next thing I knew he was flying in to Can Tho airport with an Air America C-45, and calling me at my radar site on air-ground radio. He used to drop in from time to time and we'd have lunch at the crappy airport lunchroom. AA paid you well to put your ass on the line, and he was saving his money to buy an orange grove in Florida.

Eight years later I took over the remnants of the 505th Tactical Control Group at Udorn, the base in Thailand that included Air America's headquarters. I asked around about my friend and found out that he was in the right seat (co-piloting) a C-130 over Laos on one of his last flights before he retired and headed back to the states. He was hit and killed by what we used to call "the golden bb." Some guy on the ground with a rifle just taking a potshot at the airplane and getting lucky.

Thanks. I'll check out Lee Child. What I really like is courtroom drama, and I just found a first-class and often hilarious series starring a Scottish lawyer: the Best Defence (strange way to spell it) series by William H.S. McIntyre.

No need to be sorry about the picture. It's not my usual kind of thing. What can I say other than "Mea culpa?"

Regards,
Russell

[David Eckels]

My other favorite is ghosts left behind by an earlier age, some of which, since I'm 84 and counting, I experienced myself. Unfortunately, they're disappearing at an accelerating rate.

Yes! Please continue with this.

[RSL]

Hi David,

You can see my current collection of ghosts at http://www.fineartsnaps.com/Ghosts/index.html and especially at http://www.russ-lewis.com/photo_gallery/Ruins/index.html and http://www.russ-lewis.com/Voices/intro.html. Once I'm settled down in Florida I need to go back through my negative files and see what I've overlooked in my web constructions.

In the mid sixties a lot of the remnants of the West's childhood still existed in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and West Texas. I'd sometimes drive US 66 and its tributaries and estuaries in those days, and I always carried a camera. I was stationed in Colorado Springs beginning in 1965, and in those days the prairies still held a few remnants of pioneer days. I was lucky enough to capture images of some of them before they disappeared. One of my all-time favorites is the abandoned hotel at Cimmaron, NM (http://www.russ-lewis.com/photo_gallery/Ruins/content/Cimmaron_large.html). Got it just in time. Next time I drove by it was gone.

Almost all of that is gone now. Gradually the wide open prairies between Fort Collins and Pueblo, Colorado are filling in with houses and strip malls. As Thomas Wolfe made clear, you can't go home again. And though you can't turn back the clock, what went before always is interesting. "For the wind passeth over it and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more."

[David Eckels]

Reminds me of that song with the line: Where does a slow-movin' once quick-draw cowboy have to go?
Sounds like a great project, Russ, and I enjoy your prose to go with them. Good luck with moving!