You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The observation tower on Garrison Hill sits on the highest point in Dover. As I posted in an earlier look, along with some views, back on June 5, 2013, it has some stunning panoramas of New Hampshire and neighboring Maine.
The details of the interior, too, can be fascinating to observe as you climb or descend. Along with some of the running commentary.
An abandoned mill, built on a railroad spur and relying on steam power, has found new life as affordable housing. Now touted as Woodbury Mills, it has 42 “apartment homes.” It’s one of several repurposed and renovated mills in the city.
I’ve contended that locale can be beautiful. But the reality is that many are stripped of the opportunity.
As my wife points out, a town where the railroad tracks run down the middle of the main street through town is, well, bound to be ugly.
Put another way, the presence of beauty or ugliness is a reflection of other values. Is there a degree of generosity and restfulness, for instance, or is it more stingy and pinched? There’s rarely any financial return in planting flowers, after all, and even trees take years to mature.
Still, even when I lived in some pretty gritty factory towns, small corners of beauty could be found, even if they were the exception rather than the rule. And Dover, where I am now, has undergone a renaissance from its days of boarded-up abandoned textiles mills downtown only decades ago.
To have a sense of beauty and grace proliferate, I’m sensing, is really a matter of religion – or at least heightened spirituality. Where would a community be, after all, without artists and skilled crafters who embody their holy visions?
When I think of essential tools, I’ve already mentioned the wheelbarrow and loppers. We could add the Cuisinart in the kitchen. Well, you get the picture.
But let’s not overlook the hammock.
She protested when she unwrapped the hammock we’d landed for her birthday.
Still, it went to the Smoking Garden, set parallel to the barn. And her resistance wore down, bit by bit, till one afternoon she fell asleep in it. She never, I should add, takes a nap. Ahem.
I’d say a hammock is an important garden tool, or thinking tool, even if it has no handles. You can work out a lot of problems there.
At the moment, it’s in pieces, stored in the top of the barn. Like so much else, waiting for warming and thawing.
Playing with my entry-level Kodak digital camera, I’ll have to admit, has been a lot of fun. And I hope you’ve been enjoying the results I keep posting here at the Barn.
But I’d never consider myself a photographer, especially after working with some of the best in the news business. After watching them cope with so many of the nuances of light- and shutter-speed adjustments in the days of negatives and film-processing, I can’t shake the awareness that this digital stuff is just too easy. (Well, I’ve written about feeling the same way about desktop publishing in comparison to the old Linotype craftsmanship back I started my journalism career.)
Yes, the real photographers today are still meticulous about getting everything right. They use tripods, slow-speed exposure, lens adjustments for depth and focus, and so much more. Whether to Photoshop an image later is a whole other discussion.
Maybe it’s in homage to their high standards that I’ve chosen (with rare exceptions) to compose or crop my pictures in the camera itself, using only the 5x zoom. Yes, sometimes the camera “sees” quite differently than I do at the time – color and light, especially, but I’ve chosen to stick with that rather than trying to “correct” it later. Art and crafts, after all, function best within limitations. Yes, too, my work is taken “on the fly,” rather than waiting hours for perfect conditions, the way a real photographer would do.
The bottom line? I’m getting fond of the funky results, even if some of the work of my former colleagues is so incredibly exquisite it often brings tears to my eyes. Never, ever, forget the gap between what they’re doing and what the rest of us are attempting with our cellphones and cameras these days.
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Now, for an update: Our latest round of Christmas gifts brought me a new camera, a huge improvement, I must add, and one my elder daughter, in giving it a test run, almost didn’t return. I’ll admit, the Olympus is a lot of fun, even as I’m just starting to play with it.
But I must also confess, it still doesn’t change my perspective on the Real Photographers and the rest of us. Humility, then, in the face of brilliance.
Jnana's Red Barn 