Roads to Nothing

Valley View

The first photo is just one of those spots I find as I wind through country roads. There wasn't much around it, and I just happened to stumble upon it. I doubt if I could find it again if I tried. The second photo is a view from Waubansie State Park in Iowa. It was a beautiful view, and I'll have to get out there sometime for the sunset.

Inspiration

From Howard Zinn, printed in "The Nation" magazine:

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Some History

Hidden

A hidden spot along a well-traveled path, this old monument was probably my favorite of them all. It wasn't kept up very well, and even appeared to have burn marks on parts of the structure.

Simple beauty

A quick shot. Careless composition... but beautiful.

In Ruins

There was a short moment in Washington D.C., when I turned around briefly to find that there was no person before me, through to the Washington Monument seemingly empty. It was a slightly strange moment - only because it's such a busy area. Tourists all over the world descend upon the place, filling the parks and paths with thousands of people. In this brief moment, I lowered the aperture to 2.4 and focused on the ground in front of me, knowing this would throw the photo mostly out-of-focus. It was the only photo I took at the moment, before we took a taxi back to our hotel.























I'm reminded, in this photo, of Rome and Egypt, of it's vast monuments of a defeated civilization. I think of how these civilizations crumbled to the ground. Did they fall because of war? Corruption? Or was it purely apathy?

I'm so comfortable in front of my television and 70 channels, my Xbox and TV dinners. I look around and can't imagine a planet - a world without a country named America - the most powerful force the world has ever known. And I imagine for a second the hundreds - the thousands - the tens of thousands of people in this country who are starving, who are pushed to the margins. I see ads being sold on television for wonder drugs that will stop depression and everything else you can think of.

Maybe we can't sleep - feel pure happiness - or function simply because we all know there is something wrong? That no matter what, the things we buy or the promotions we fight to get won't make us happy? What happens when we, as a culture, figure out that something is deeply wrong here, and that we have to fix it?