The Life in My Years

An anthology of life

“Sign, sign Everywhere a sign Blockin’ out the scenery Breakin’ my mind Do this, don’t do that Can’t you read the sign?” Songwriter: Les Emmerson Released in 1970 by The Five Man Electrical Band. The Monthly Monochrome for August celebrates the sign, one of the most excellent of photo subjects. Why such high praise for …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting a Spring 2021 road trip. Today in America time is money and very few have time and money to call their own. If you work, the chances are that work won’t bless you with the time or the money to take the great American road trip. …

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Anne Chandler leads this week’s Lens Artists Challenge and she asks the burning question, “What’s your photographic groove?” (Please visit Anne’s website, Slow Shutter Speed, for her take and those of others). Grooves? I’ve had more grooves than a 33 RPM album. I’ve done macro, landscape, reflections, sports, oceans and other assorted bodies of water …

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Continued from, Omaha: Landing in Flyover Country. September 10/11. 2021: Carter Lake, Iowa. I’d landed in Omaha but my airport motel was in a little enclave of Iowa called Carter Lake, just a short jet blast away from the Nebraska state line. Carter Lake, the only Iowan outpost located west of the Missouri River maintains …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from, Flying to Omaha Without Babette and Yeti. “Flyover country.” It’s the pejorative heaped on anyplace that isn’t within a day’s drive of America’s two coastlines. As someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, I …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued From Purgatory at the OAK Bound for Omaha, baby. The gate agent announces the boarding sequence; special needs passengers, military, first class, and economy. Walking past the proletariat towards the jetway and my first class seat I …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. September 10, 2021 I’m relaxing, if relaxation is actually possible, in the Delta Airlines boarding area at Oakland International Airport, known in airport-speak as simply, OAK. At the airport, relaxation is an earned and short lived luxury. There’s …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest.  This post is a continuation of the post, A Coffee Shop Morning: Chewing on Life September 23rd, 2021, driving southbound in Eastern Iowa. Off to my left is the Mississippi River and somewhere deep in the river bottom …

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A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. “Plans should be ephemeral, so be prepared to move away from them.” ~ Anthony Bourdain. Nine o’clock on a weekday morning is never a good time to get on the road in a major metropolitan area. But, instead …

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teal volkswagen beetle

A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. Continued from Contemplating The Mystery Box. Out there, between Denver and Pittsburgh, lay a broad land I’d barely seen. A once vast grassland that had become countless square plots of cornfields and soybean fields, splashed with small towns …

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