Friday, October 22, 2010

MAIN-taining

Main Street a few blocks north and south of Broadway has evolved into a hub of hipness so mainstream it has lost some of its hard-earned edginess - and has inevitably acquired the flash flood of corporate chain and condo development dredging...
And yet on a sunny fall weekend during another one of its frequent street festivals - SHIFT? SHRIFT? SIFT?? - the essence of the Main of yore faded in and out of my consciousness, like an old movie that hasn't quite finished unreeling...






[note the new incongruous TIM HORTONS (in the above window's reflection) now ensconced in the cool old marble and glass bank building on the southwest corner of Broadway and Main]





[glue-splotch pattern left after the sign was taken down when the store had to close from damages of a fire next door and a few over]

[during the street festival, the resident of this apartment posted this heartfelt note that was barely visible from the street below - no one paid any attention by turning the music down!]


[where the fire had started and razed, now waiting for a new configuration of commerce]

[but gracious living still goes on around the corner...*]

*more images of the WENONAH in my next post...

Sunday, October 17, 2010

backwater stills

another scatological study of an ursine nature...

slightly worn antler missing detached moose...

pioneer coop for fowl long feasted on...

a gang of chainlinks hanging about...

retired from a generation of growing seasons...

rusticated still life perched in certitude...

the river that feeds a thousand fields...

a pristine source that flows into that river deep...

Friday, October 8, 2010

backwoods pathos

Five hundred kilometers north east of Vancouver and we are in a river valley of very few inhabitants...
Land was cheap and one could bird call hundreds of acres a kingdom of one's own for a sing along song...
As we explored one such lyrical kingdom, we stumbled upon a wooded meadow tombstoned with dozens of dead cars - a verdant graveyard of long abandoned machines - as incongruous a setting as a rose garden in a parking garage....





not only decomposing car-davers, but a canoe corpse...

and even a fossilizing snowmobile...

and more implanted rusting hulks...

before almost stepping on fresh scatological evidence of a greater, and much furrier, presence in these deep dark woods...