Tag Archives: photography

Memory Chip

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I remember when a chip was a piece of wood that fell from a lumberjack’s axe. The wood was used to make paper which was used to make books which were stored in libraries.

lumberjack 1

This is a lumberjack made out of wood.

A library was a building where people could come to borrow books and take them home to read. The books were due back on a certain date, and there was a fine charged if the books were not returned on time.

gears

This is a torture machine used on people who didn’t return their books to the library on time. Just kidding! It’s actually more lumberjack stuff.

The library in the town where I grew up was housed in a building that took up an entire city block. I read many books that I took home from that library. Unfortunately my memory did not retain very much of the information that was in those books.

caterpillar

I could have driven this caterpillar to the library, but I did not. I drove an Oldsmobile Delta 88. It was gray.

Now chips come inside of computers that are smaller and weigh less than a lumberjack’s lunchbox. The amount of data stored in the city-block library in my home town could easily be stored in memory chips and accessed at any time virtually anywhere in the world with a smaller-than-a-lumberjack’s-lunchbox-sized computer.

lumberjack 2

Here’s another lumberjack. He’s probably never been to a library. Not because lumberjacks don’t go to libraries; but, you know, he’s made of wood.

I may have known how all of this computer stuff works at one time. I probably read it in a book. But my memory dulls faster than a lumberjack’s axe at a logging camp. Maybe someday I can upgrade to a memory chip that will help me recall all the books I have read.

That wood chip away at my memory problems for sure!

cat

This cat crawling around on logging machinery probably has a good memory. I wonder if his fur is naturally brown, or if that is dirt he acquired while crawling around on machinery. I think he’s supposed to be gray. Like my Oldsmobile.

(Photos taken at Camp 18 Logging Museum in Elsie, Oregon.)

Dancing Water (photo essay)

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Along a street that I have driven hundreds of times in the past, my eyes were drawn this morning to a water feature in front of an office building. The early morning sunlight sparkled brilliantly off the cascading stream that cycled through a structure of concrete, rough boulders and river rock. I pulled over to check it out.

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The fountain itself isn’t much to look at. With a casual glance from the street, one sees a sheet of water pouring over a concrete crossbeam and disappearing amidst some nondescript boulders.

Closer examination reveals that the water has been intentionally channeled (“choreographed,” one might say) to flow in streams that dance and glisten in the sunlight as they freefall to the rocks below.

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I am reminded of the phrase “water over the dam,” which implies that something is over and done with and cannot be retracted or reconsidered. How many of us live as though the decisions and actions of our past have left us in a freefall of dire consequences over which we have no control?

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Maybe water over the dam should mean that whatever happened in our past, “good” or “bad,” served to push us beyond sitting stagnant behind a wall of mediocrity, and has freed us to dance and sparkle in the sunlight on our way to something new.

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We can choose to see the fountain as half empty or half full. Oh, wait, that’s an entirely different analogy. Never mind.

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I’m glad I stopped to look at the fountain, and I’m going to try to be more observant of my surroundings in the future. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll find some water under the bridge.

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