Mark Twain’s cats

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Figure 1 - Front page cover of the newspaper L’Aurore of Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J’accuse...!, written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair. The headline reads "I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic," from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Front page cover of the newspaper L’Aurore of Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J’accuse…!, written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair. The headline reads “I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic,” from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

I went this past Saturday to the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair.  You never know what you are going to see at the Book Fair, which is where the fun comes in.  There are six hundred and fifty years of the printed books; so invariably there are the great tombs of science, the great works of literature, and the everything in between.  Everything in between runs the gamut from, exploration and politics to phrenology.  The whole event serves as a time capsule – an if you think of it as the flotsam and jetsam of human intellectual history, you’re pretty much on the mark.

I do a pass of all the great books and then I return to each stall to explore the ephemera: political and social pamphlets, photographs, and autographs.  One year I was amazed to see Emile Zola’s expose of the Dreyfus Affair, see Figure 1.  But this year it was “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

But more importantly on just about my last pass I found a half-tone copy of the image of Figure 2.  Showing Mark Twain in 1907 with one of his beloved kittens.  Mark twain was a great lover of cats:

“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.“

Twain recognized the fundamental point that the love of a cat was a thing to be sought,  won, and nurtured.

“By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a “noble” animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward–you will never get her full confidence again.“

In Figure 2, we see the fundamental human quality of Twain.  Once more photograph transports us across time and he becomes real to us.  We are admitted into his private life.

Figure 2 - Mark Twain with one of his cats, 1907. By Underwood and Underwood, from the NY Times Arcghives and the Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.

Figure 2 – Mark Twain with one of his cats, 1907. By Underwood and Underwood, from the NY Times Archives and the Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.

Recording and doing useless things

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Figure 1 - Annie Edson Taylor and the barrell in which she became the first person to survive a plunge in a barrell over Niagra Falls, October 24, 1901. Image originally from the Francis J. Petrie Photograph Collection Author, from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Annie Edson Taylor and the barrel in which she became the first person to survive a plunge in a barrel over Niagara Falls, October 24, 1901. Image originally from the Francis J. Petrie Photograph Collection
Author, from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Let’s start with Figure 1, which is a photograph of Annie Edson Taylor, who on October 24, 1901 was the first person to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel – yes the same barrel pictured.  I mean woot, woot!  What a useless, nay what a stupid thing to do!  Sorry Annie, just saying it as it is.

Swimming from Cuba to Florida, braving jelly fish and sharks – what’s with that?  At least Diana Nyad‘s feat is a personal goal and triumph.  She even swam around Manhattan Island in 1975 – yuck to that.  So today, I was reading the BBC News and came across this very nice photograph by Stephanie Mahe of Reuters showing Canadian rower Milene Paquette arriving in Lorient Harbour in France, becoming the first North American rower to row solo across the Atlantic.  One can, at least appreciate the feat, both the physical and mental challenge.   The BBC also had this picture by Andrew Milligan of PA, showing Sean Conway emerging from his four month swim along the entire length of mainland Britain from Land End to John O’Groats.

Personal challenges and great geographic challenges, why do we attempt them?  I have previously quoted the great nineteen century British explorer, Sir Richard F. Burton:

 “Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning! I ask myself ‘Why?’ and the only echo is ‘damned fool!… the Devil drives’.”

Great feats, even foolish feats are all a part of the human experience.

Lost image of the New Frontier

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This morning I was watching a special “Meet the Press” that featured interviews with John Kennedy, when he was running for president of the United States in 1960.  It kind of takes you back, and it is a bit shocking that Kennedy actually answered the interviewers’ questions.  What a concept! We know that this week marks the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, TX, and I will have more to say about that later this week.

But the “Meet the Press” clips got me thinking about Kennedy and his image.  Despite the fact that he suffered from Addison’s disease and severe chronic back pain.  He almost always, for the camera portrayed a vigor – or as he said it “vigah.”  If we analyze our collective image of John Kennedy from countless archetypical photographs, he is always impeccably dressed: a suit or even black tie.

However, in the fall of 1960 as the presidential campaign was moving to its close, I went with my mother to see Kennedy’s motorcade head west along East Fourteenth Street in Manhattan.  My mother and I decided to stay back from the crowd which was swarming a block or so up from us, where Kennedy was going to speak.  Then there was the moment.  Kennedy was standing up in his car.  The only way to describe it was that he was bronzed.  His hair had shining streaks of blonde, and he was deeply tanned.  And he was wearing a tan buckskin jacket.  It was what every boy wanted in those days, the ultimate cowboy jacket, and, of course, symbolic of Kennedy’s “New Frontier.”

Kennedy turned, flashed a big smile at my mother and I, and waved.  I have just spent several hours trying to find a picture of Kennedy campaigning in that jacket.  I know that they are out there, but I have not yet been able to find one – a picture that captured that shining moment of Camelot and optimism.

 

Roll clouds

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Figure 1 - A classic example of a roll cloud. Photgraph from the US NOAA and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – A classic example of a roll cloud. Photgraph from the US NOAA and in the public domain.

I posted recently about cloud photography, and the night that I wrote the post I saw a clip on the NBC Nightly News showing a so-called “roll cloud” spotted and filmed over Texas.  The Texas roll cloud is, I think, best viewed as a video.  But I have included as Figure 1 a from NOAA.  There is also a really impressive image from the United States National Weather Service showing a roll cloud forming in Sterling, VA, Figure 2.

Roll clouds are really rare.  They are a form of arcus cloud.  These are low forming horizontal clouds.  The other major form of Arcus Cloud is the shelf cloud.   While they appear to be horizontal tornados, they are, in fact, not related to tornadoes at all. They are caused by convective down draft at the leading edge of frontal systems.

So now I want to see and photograph my own.  And I am still waiting to see mammatus clouds as well.

Figure 2 - Roll cloud forming over Sterling, VA. From the US National Weather Service and in the public domain.

Figure 2 – Roll cloud forming over Sterling, VA. From the US National Weather Service and in the public domain.

On the limina and terrified – photographs by Gabriele Stabile

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Over the last few months in the United States, we have been rather appalled, and most of us embarrassed, by the shoddy performance of our congress in dealing with real issues, and yes, in their failure to do their jobs.  I had the opportunity over these months to take three trips.  The first was to Washington, DC – the helpless Capital of us all – the true belly of the beast as it were.  The second, was to New York City – Capital of the Blue Zone – and the third to Houston, Texas –  Capital of the Red Zone.  In both cases, I was struck and really moved in the end by the hardworking immigrants to America, who are trying to build a future for their children here.  You just need to speak with them.  I had a long conversation with a New York City taxi driver, originally from Cuba, who told me about his children, who were going after advanced degrees in college, and about how he was working to build their futures.  I came away from all of this pretty optimistic.  We will be OK in the end, because, as it always has been, the future of the United States lies with its immigrants.

On a typical day at my job, I work with Indians, Iranians, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Chinese and Iranians.  We are the United Nations!  I am, in fact, a little concerned that I might insult some valued colleague by omitting them from this list. This kind of diversity is one of the great benefits of being a scientist.

But there is a very special class of immigrants – the refugees, the people who came here fleeing persecution, indeed often fleeing imminent death.  So imagine this – imagine that you are a refugee and you have just crossed over, just arrived in America.  You stand at the limina, the threshold of passage from an old to a new world.  What do you feel?  Is it terror, relief, elation, ambiguity?  Every one of these refuges has been at that point and felt those feelings.  I remember a friend in college who told me about her family’s escape from Ceausescu’s Romania.  Her father had been imprisoned and tortured.  Their escape was via Italy to the United States.  I have never forgotten her story.  I can still hear her soft quiet voice as I write about her. And there were other friends as well: one who told the harrowing story of her narrow escape from Idi Amin’s Uganda, fearing rape and murder; and another from a friend whose mother carried him on her back across a river to freedom.  These are the refugees and their stories are unique and personal.

So I’d like to draw your attention to Kerri MacDonald’s blog in the New York Times on November 12, 2013 entitled “Checking In to a New Life in America.”  This blog and a new exhibit at the Bronx Documentary Center  features photographs from Gabriele Stabile’s book “Refugee Hotel.”  There is also a book “Refugee Hotel, Voice of Witness,” by Juliet Linderman and Stabile.  Mr. Stabile gained access through the International Organization for Migration and documented over several years the “first night” that many refugees to America spent in the United States.

There are many touching stories  here.  One is a 2009 photograph of Somali refugees who spent the night in the hotel hallway for fear they would be left behind on their trip to resettlement.  Then there is the image of Karen refugees being introduced to modern hotel plumbing.  You don’t see their faces, but true to great photography you can read their expressions, feel their wonderment. Another great example is Stabile photograph of a refugee brother and sister asleep and locked in an embrace – holding on to beloved familiarity, to the very bonds of place and sanity for dear life.  I usually only give at most three examples.  But I am totally haunted by the face of a little Bhutanese girl in Los Angeles from 2008 that tells the entire story.  This image says everything.

There is a dark graininess to Stabile’s images that creates a certain grittiness. Like the subjects, your eyes are strained by the darkness, trying to adjust, and looking for brightness. The mood is totally captured.  And I think most clearly the total exhaustion of these people on their first night is vividly portrayed.  It is as if, indeed it has to be, all of their strength has been required to bring themselves to the limina, to the threshold of a new world.

A new light

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Figure 1 - A Waterton, Ma street during the first snowfall, November 12, 2013. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Figure 1 – A Watertown, Ma street during the first snowfall, November 12, 2013. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

As I was headed to bed on Monday night the late news was filled with the dire warning of first snow – the snowpocalypse that we have all be dreading since early July, when we first resigned ourselves to the waning length of the days.  Please, people! Get a life!  In any event, there was a lot of meteorological spitting of rain and snow and its mixture sleet during the morning commute.

So when I got into work I decided to snap an IPhone record of the event, see Figure 1.  It is not a great photograph by any means.  It does, however, show the clash of seasons: snow coming down, leaves still exhibiting brilliant color, and even last summer’s geraniums clinging to life in window boxes.

The splendid photographic light of late summer and autumn is now past.  Winter begins to beckon.  The sun will be low, the shadows long.  The sky will take on that deep blue frigid tone and then, of course, there will be snow.  The light is ever changing.  We have to adapt to it.

Zooming in on Tacloban

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On Friday I posted about satellite images of typhoon Haiyan bearing down mercilessly on the Phillipines.  I called this post “The Destroyer of Worlds,” because it was very clear even then what we would see.  And now we can see it.

The reports, the videos, and the images are beginning to come in and it is as expected or maybe worse than expected, because you can never truly foresee something this bad.  There are over ten thousand dead, whole towns destroyed.  And there are countless families destroyed.  The New York Times today quoted Robert S. Ziegler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines, who said that he was worried that he was very concerned that the damage reports were coming from Tacloban, the capital of the province of Leyte, which is 360 miles from Manilla, but not from the many fishing communities that line the coast.

“The coastal areas can be quite vulnerable — in many cases, you have fishing communities right up to the shoreline, and they can be wiped out” by a powerful storm surge of the sort that hit Tacloban, he said. “The disturbing reports are the lack of reports, and the areas that are cut off could be quite severely hit.”

Nothing really can be said that truly captures what we are now seeing.  Even the images only touch a raw nerve and then are gone.  But the people remain, the desperation remains.  We begin with a beautiful view from space.  But as soon as we come closer down the stark reality captures us and we begin to imagine.  Finally, zoom down to the human level and it becomes very personal.

Mitch Dobrowner – chasing the wind

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Whenever I fly, I always have my IPhone ready to catch an interesting cloud pattern and I have posted a couple of these here: storm clouds over the Chesapeake and the optical phenomenon called the glory.  On a recent trip into Houston, I was half expecting, somewhere, as we crossed from Massachusetts and the Northeast into the South, to see a sharp line with blue color on one side and red on the other.  It wasn’t that way at all – just everywhere majestic and beautiful.

Clouds and cloud patterns hold a very special appeal.  What if we could soar like birds?  And in another sense they speak of the changing, the ephemeral, and of something beautiful and nebulous  that is only loosely held to the Earth.

The message here is that I am very drawn to dramatic cloud pictures and, of course, the most dramatic of cloud pictures are the storms.  In turn, the most dramatic of storms are the super cells that can become tornadoes. 2013 was a devastating year for such storms in the United States, the most terrible being an EF5 storm in Moore, OK on May 20th.

There are people, who chase these storms for science and people who chase these storms to photograph them.  One of the best storm photographers is Mitch Dobrowner.  He has a recently released a book of storm images with Gretel Ehrlich.   Dobrowner’s images are humbling and awe inspiring.  There is an intense and frightening magnificence to these images – a sense of the omnipotent and the fragility of what we are.  I am really hard-pressed to say which of Dobrowner’s wonderful images are my favorites.  But I will give you two.  First, there is “Rope Out, Regan, ND, 2011.”  The second is one of his beautiful landscapes entitled “Shiprock Storm, Navajo Nation,New Mexico 2008.”

In great black and white photography there are always three things: first the light, second the vision, and third the technical ability to create a print with rich black, dramatic whites, and all the tonal range in between.  Dobrowner is truly a master.  And I have to tell you that when I am trying to recover from an intense work week there is nothing that reestablishes balance and bliss than great black and white photography.

It is often the case that you can find a photographer’s raison d’être on their websites in terms of a quote that they have placed in some prominent place.  Dobrowner quotes enivronmentalist, anarchist, and eco-terrorist Edward Abbey (1927-1989).

“Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.”

This seems a wonderful vision and mantra for all photographers – something to strive for and something that answers the question: is this worth photographing?

We ask why photographers like Dobrowner chase the moments and the light, even to the point of great personal risk.  I believe this answers the question and our vision is so enriched by it.