other, stories

Below this and the picture are some select parts of a post by Tom Engelhardt about memorial day. Scroll down and look at the list of towns. Those are the hometowns of the soldiers who’ve died this May while on duty in Afghanistan. There are twenty two towns, each recently struck by war’s curse: the death of a loved one. Year by year the wounds heal, but the scars are forever.

It’s Memorial Day and there’s a scarred town on my heart: Bellevue, Washington.

Thank you so much, Joe. We miss you  :’-(

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May is the official month of remembrance when it comes to our war dead, ending as it does on the long Memorial Day weekend when Americans typically take to the road and kill themselves and each other in far greater numbers than will die in Afghanistan.  It’s a weekend for which the police tend to predict rising fatalities and news reports tend to celebrate any declines in deaths on our roads and highways.

Quiz Americans and a surprising number undoubtedly won’t have thought about the “memorial” in Memorial Day at all — especially now that it’s largely a marker of the start of summer and an excuse for cookouts.

[…]

Count on one thing: there will be no Afghan version of Maya Lin, no Afghan Wall on the National Mall.  Unlike the Vietnam conflict, tens of thousands of books won’t be pouring out for decades to come arguing passionately about the conflict.  There may not even be a “who lost Afghanistan” debate in its aftermath.

Few Afghan veterans are likely to return from the war to infuse with new energy an antiwar movement that remains small indeed, nor will they worry about being “spit upon.”  There will be little controversy.  They — their traumas and their wounds — will, like so many bureaucratic notices, disappear into the American ether, leaving behind only an emptiness and misery, here and in Afghanistan, as perhaps befits a bankrupting, never-ending imperial war on the global frontiers.

[…]

Afghanistan has often enough been called “the graveyard of empires.”  Americans have made it a habit to whistle past that graveyard, looking the other way — a form of obliviousness much aided by the fact that the American war dead conveniently come from the less well known or forgotten places in our country.  They are so much easier to ignore thanks to that.

Except in their hometowns, how easy the war dead are to forget in an era when corporations go to war but Americans largely don’t.  So far, 1,980 American military personnel (and significant but largely unacknowledged numbers of private contractors) have died in Afghanistan, as have 1,028 NATO and allied troops, and (despite U.N. efforts to count them) unknown but staggering numbers of Afghans.

Spencerport, New York

Wichita, Kansas

Warren, Arkansas

West Chester, Ohio

Alameda, California

Charlotte, North Carolina

Stow, Ohio

Clarksville, Tennessee

Chico, California

Jeffersonville, Kentucky

Yuma, Arizona

Normangee, Texas

Round Rock, Texas

Rolla, Missouri

Lucerne Valley, California

Las Cruses, New Mexico

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Overland Park, Kansas

Wheaton, Illinois

Lawton, Oklahoma

Prince George, Virginia

Terre Haute, Indiana.

As long as the hometowns pile up, no one should rest in peace.

photography

I broke down and touched up the contrast on a few pictures; worth it? Still not sure, but I’m leaning yes.

mom and dear little sister, all us on the bus on the way to Seattle
dear little sister

 

photography

Almost sunset
walkin away
the street
the ocean gray
brewery @home
highway bridge (SODO)
cobblestone nighttime

I forgot my developing notebook, so I’ll get the nitty-gritties on the films and developing on here in a few days. Sparse details: Ilford HP5+ and TX400, mostly, pushed to 1600. All run through my F3HP, shot through an e series 35.

On cameras: I’m thinkin’ I may have to abort operation dave-saves-up-for-three-years-and-buys-a-M6/35-setup, and then start a new operation, likely to be titled dave-saves-for-a-year-and-buys-a-X100. Digital? DIGITAL? Well…yeah, I think so. Hmm. But have you SEEN that thing? Seriously, what a neat camera.

photography

Yup. Title pretty much says it all. By the way, all film, Nikon F3 (HP edition) with an e series 35, no post-dev processing. Yes, that is actually how the colors came out. Neat, yeah?

I love big machines. Especially the ones with plane-like cockpits, and also especially ones on the roadside that nobody really cares much if you climb into. Yes, those are best.
three foot mud puddle with how many hundreds of pounds of stuff in the back? Transfer case in 4wd and yes please.
goin down the highway
My dear mother, and a cute little old white church
thumbs up for sun-up
I'm becoming less and less a fan of XP2, however I do love how it captures flowers
jason and pops
other

It’s 4:19am Christmas day and I am framing photos I took in frames my apprentice little sister and I made and things could not be happier; this could be a really neat on-the-side job.

photography

Wheeeee!

(look close, feet airborne)

XP2 is awesome stuff, but I like HP5+ better. No dependable c41 development nearby…HP5+ is a clear winner. Time to stock up.