Sunday - Summer and spring all in one day, the day after the trump shamble

Yesterday I got to thinking that it's time for me to sit down and start writing, as if these brief screeds I've posted just about every day since late March, weren't writing. They are but they are not what I mean. My friends know I can write a good story when I want to and I've published in several of the last few issues of Public Illumination Magazine, and in a couple of the Unbearables anthologies.

As much as I like to photograph people in public places, I like to write in public places. I get a certain inspiration from having people around me since most of what I write is about people. Recently I haven't been able to sit on a crowded MetroNorth commuter train or at a table in a cafe since social distancing imposed by our strong and seemingly successful attempt to subdue the contagion has all but closed off those venues.

But it's summer and there are other places out of doors where I can sit and write while people walk past or sun themselves. The Kensico Dam Plaza is a clear example of such a place, and I don't have an excuse for not doing it.

Moving on, I've been thinking about our Draft-Dodger-in-Chief's performance at the United States Military Academy yesterday. He was there to preside over the graduation of the 2020 class, and it was a shaky performance. He looked shaky on the podium, steadying the water glass he was sipping from with both hands, delivering a desultory, mush-mouthed speech, and then most tentatively shambling down the short ramp. He's looking feeble as well as febrile and we should wonder if his life of carousing and womanizing is catching up to him. He's not very old, only 74, but he seems more and more a victim of dementia. Other people tell me that they have heard it's a long term drug problem. I don't know, but whatever the problem it is very scary, indeed.

These photos are a sequence shot on an afternoon stroll in midtown Manhattan a couple of years ago. I have been using some of the time the lockdown has given me to review photos I've shot over the last decade or so, and have done nothing with except to occasionally peruse. I am rediscovering some of pleasures of my work, and I hope that anyone stumbling on these will share in that pleasure.

Some are urban portraits, some street scenes and one something that caught my eye.

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