SEARCH Travels With LD

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL

Green chair, on the peninsula behind LD, site 42, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 15, 2007
Green chair, on the peninsula behind LD, site 42, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 15, 2007

So what's with the green chair?

This green chair has been with me a long time. It is one of a pair of these wonderful aluminum folding chairs I inherited from my mom so I've had them over 20 years now and I can't remember how long mom had them; quite a while, probably since the late '50. Here's an article, Unseating a summer icon: One of the most popular chairs ever manufactured is vanishing from the American landscape, in the August 14, 2001 Chicago Tribune lamenting the passage of the ubiquitous folding lawn chair from the scene, pushed out by the chair-in-a-bag.

Maybe I should give the green chair a bag.

Let's give the green chair a ride

This green chair has already shown up in a couple of pictures on this journal. Let's see if it continues to show up. Give the old girl a little publicity on this trip. Kind of in the vein of the traveling pink flamingo (for those who remember those gags) but this time traveling with LD.

My morning walk yielded a few good photos

This morning I took an extra long walk just about sunrise on this partly cloudy morning. I took a record (for me) 100 pictures in varying early morning light as the clouds came and went. Hopefully I got a few good ones. We'll soon see. Meanwhile oatmeal beckons.

A while later: It looks like I got a few good pictures out of the 100 I took this morning. I seem to get one keeper in twenty shots - a 5% return. Interestingly, the first shot of a series is usually the best of the bunch. Taking a few more to bracket things and refine the composition and so on generally doesn't help a bit. That first intuitive sighting is usually better than the thought through one that follows.

Darn, it looks like we're in for a bit of rain here in Demopolis AL

Demopolis AL weather at weather.gov

Night camp

Site 42 - Foscue Creek Campground, Demopolis AL

Over Fifty

Some of this has been painful for me, but it's all been wildly instructive. And it convinced me that nearly every person over fifty should try to find a time to sit down and engage in the same exercise, even if you never intend to publish anything. You need to think about what really meant something to you. Who did you really love. Who really made you what you are. What the seminal events did. And also it's an incredible discipline. Because I found it shocking to me what I remember and what I don't. It's shocking to me what I can remember factually and how hard it is for me to be absolutely sure about how I felt at the time. You know, how did I feel when I was 16? I don't really know.

Bill Clinton, on writing his memoir, in an interview with James Fallows, the Atlantic Monthly

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