Looking in on the old grain silos upriver, before they go down

The only sounds I hear while standing at the foot of the silos is the whip and whoosh of occasional traffic on W.Va. 2, a trail mix of various birds charting out their personal space in song, and now and again the wind whistling through the portals of these abandoned legacies of a pre-industrial rural heartland.

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Categories Photography

The News from Lake Trumpbegone

A StoryIsTheThing Public Service Announcement: It's Booking Day in NYC today! That will mean much malevolence, much media blathering, much of way too much muchness. When you need to tear your eyes from the spectacle, here are four images to ponder.

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Categories Essays Photography

Things I really should be doing

I should be meditating. I should be writing a new chapter in my 'sorta memoir.' Or polishing an old one. I should not be eating pretzels & pepper jack cheese after 10 p.m. I should be sleeping. I should not be posting yet another black-and-white Instagram photo ...

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Categories Essays Photography

Getting all stage-struck at the Keith-Albee

You need to drop in a human figure, here and there, into any collection of shots of the grand Keith-Albee Theater in Huntington, W.Va. There's no other way to get a sense of the sheer ambitious size of this theater, which is surely on the short list of Coolest Theaters in North America.

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Categories Photography

In the heart of the heart of the country

I was up early at 5 a.m. I stood, barefoot, just outside the doorframe to the house where I was staying, deep in the West Virginia hills. No traffic noise since this was the heart of the heart of the country. Only a rural road curved around the house ...

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Categories Essays Photography

Holy Ghosts and Scapulars

I came upon one of my mother’s old rosaries in my collection of family stuff, and paired it on a tack beside my writing desk wall with some old religious medallions I earned on some long-ago Holy Day. Catholicism didn't take, but the accoutrements remain.

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Categories Photography

One key to rule them all

Much of my life and existence, my world view and how I spend my time, plus how I orient myself in the space-time continuum of ongoing mystery and confounding confusion, is summed up in this photograph.

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Categories Photography