Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nature is spectacular, commanding our respect

25 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Dust Storm Over Phoenix, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

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Haboob Over Phoenix, Arizona – Click on any photo for large view.

An intense dust storm swept over Phoenix last Saturday, offering this photo opportunity.

A haboob (Arabic for “strong wind”) rolled a fast-moving wall of dust across the desert, engulfing most of the Phoenix area at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 21.  Considered the largest and most dangerous of dust storms, it comes to the arid region about three times a year, during July and August, pushing dust, sand, and debris along its massive path.  Motorists pull off highways, and residents find cover for the two or three-hour duration.  It precedes a monsoon, the thunderstorm whose downdraft or microburst creates the powerful haboob…though, sometimes, the rain evaporates in the heat and never hits the ground.  Last Saturday, the rain came, as well.

I’ve seen these storms from an airplane…but never up close.  I was in Scottsdale visiting my son.  We are both photographers.  We were driving along the Pima Indian Reservation and spotted the wall of the dust storm billowing over the horizon, as if some invisible force was pushing it to the ground and churning it forward.  It was an incredible sight…powerful and mysterious.  The wall of dust was moving toward us at about 30 miles per hour.

I pulled off the road and parked on a sand clearing.  We got out.  I had my camera in hand.  Wilson III, my son, picked up an iPhone, and we walked toward the storm to gather some images.   This was an amazing opportunity.   Some other cars passed by, but we were the only ones who stopped to take photographs.  The wind picked up.  As it came closer, the thick dust wall grew taller and more magnificent.  We both took photos…of the storm and of each other.  As it neared, the air turned an orange brown color, and debris started to roll across the desert.  When the wall was almost above us, we noticed a multitude of black desert birds being carried by the wind in the front of the ballooning cloud.   They used the momentum of the wind to carry them to safety.

When we felt the dust and sand against our skin, it was time to return to the car…but we continued to take images and experience a spectacular phenomenon of nature.  While the wind gusts were strong, we were not in danger.  We just felt the exhilarating power of nature at work.  I hope you enjoy these images from an afternoon we will not forget.

The storm moves closer

Nature’s Spectacular Power – Eye of the Storm – photo of me by my son, taken with an iPhone

Photo of my son, as the haboob moves toward us

– The Storm Arrives (click on photo for larger, detailed view)

Eye of the Beholder…Eastern Shore Photography Show

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Chesapeake Bay, Photography, Uncategorized

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“Tonging for Oysters” – photograph by Wilson Wyatt, a giclee on canvas

I’m delighted, even humbled, to be juried into a special exhibit, “Working on the Eastern Shore: A Photographic Study.”  The show opens today at the Talbot County Visual Arts Center, in Easton, Maryland, with a public reception.  It can be viewed during all of June.

What do I mean by humbled?  Much of the exhibit is from a few well established photographers who are known for the excellence of their work in this highly photographed region, with images of the people and natural wonders of the Chesapeake Bay.  I’m a newcomer.

Some of the photography is historic, dating back to the 1920’s and 1930’s, showing how people lived off the land and the sea in the region.  As I gaze at the images, I’m reminded of the wonderful scene in the film, Dead Poets Society, where the inspiring professor (Robin Williams) tells his young students to gather and look closely at old photographs in the school hallway…images of students and events past.  He says, “Shhhh.. listen to them. They are talking to you.” In the silence, he recites the words of a Robert Herrick poem, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying.”

The creators of the exhibit said they wanted to display some of the best photography of the Eastern Shore from the 20th Century, including contemporary photos from a few invited photographers. Yes…that is humbling company.

Photographic work from A. Aubrey Bodine, H. Robins Hollyday, David Harp, Peter Gregorio, and David Stevens lead the exhibit. I submitted only one photograph, “Tonging for Oysters,” pictured here, and it was juried into the show.

I selected the image because it reminds me of another time, though it is a contemporary photograph.  I remember taking the photo on a cold December morning on the banks of Leadenham Creek, one of the Chesapeake’s many tributaries. There was a dense fog.  I could see two watermen in a boat just ahead of me, yet they looked as distant as in another time…Old Time is still a-flying. 

Yet this image will live on.

Social Power…the numbers behind “Facebook”

03 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Social Power - Facebook, Uncategorized

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"Connecting People World-wide" - photo: Venice, from St. Mark's Square, by Wilson Wyatt Jr (click on image for full size)

Facebook is the most visited site on the Internet, and it’s for all ages.

Over 28,000,000 Americans 45 years old and older log on to Facebook today.  One of the fastest growing groups of users is the “over 55” group.  Who said it was only for the younger generation?  Everyone’s using it…well, half of everyone… at least, in the United States (see below).

As the largest IPO in history hits the financial markets, let’s look at the demographics* behind this eight-year-old “social” phenomenon.  What makes it so powerful?

It’s all about the numbers and the power to connect people…all kinds of people…people from everywhere who share talents, likes, and dislikes…people from across the world…all races, beliefs, and genders.  As of this week, Facebook had 812,130,400 users worldwide.  Take a moment.  Think about it.

In the United States, the country with the largest percentage of users word-wide, over 155,701,780 people log on to Facebook, and half them connect daily.  They remain on the site for an average of 23 minutes per visit.

Fifty-four per cent of all Facebook users are female, and 46% are male.  The average user visits the site 40 times a month, connecting to over 80 community pages, groups, and events.  Each user creates an average of 90 pieces of “content” on the site every month.  That’s a lot of communicating!

While it’s true that half of Facebook users are between the ages of 18 and 34, the number of senior Americans is also growing.  Facebook ranks #3 among all Internet sites visited by seniors, over 65.

There are still some unbelievers out there.  Some may be concerned about Internet security (careful what you say in public).  Some fear they will be bombarded with commercial ads…you know, like television (though this is a “social” network, not commercial…an important distinction).  Some will have other fears or reasons to resist.  After all, habits are hard to change.

My guess is most people will join and benefit…soon…and wonder why they didn’t sooner.  They will find social networking enjoyable, highly educational, and even entertaining.

For writers and others interested in marketing their work, social media has become essential, and Facebook is the giant of all of them.  It’s even stronger when combined with Twitter, blogs, and websites.  It’s uses are multiplying.

It’s amazing, isn’t it?  We can now connect with almost one billion people instantly with a simple “click” on our cell phones, tablets, or computers.  That’s power…social power.

* Demographic information was culled from various public sites on the Internet.

Happy New Year! Ring in the new!

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in Happy New Year, Uncategorized

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"New Sun Rising" - Copyright 2011, Wilson Wyatt Jr

New opportunities, new chances, new experiences, forgiveness, a time to start again.  Ahh…can’t you feel the freshness of it all, as you breathe it in?

We cram in promises on this day, forgetting at least for a moment, the arbitrary nature of it.  While it may be just the first day of the year on our calendar, it is a powerful day of new beginnings.

That stack of “undone” becomes “to do.”  There’s a new timetable for my writing.  Those “incomplete” outdoor chores  begin a whole new list.  Exercise…yes, the gym and that old bike with flat tires.  Forgotten household “fixes” become “new improvements.”  It’s magic.  There is no scurrying around to remember what hasn’t  been done.  It’s over. No guilt for the forgotten.

There is only the transformation, as with pixie dust, of everything to a new calendar. Relief.  A new sense of order.  A new world awaits. Please…someone tell the politicians and Wall Street.  They might miss it.

Oh, yes, those resolutions…that’s easy.  Let’s see.  Where did I put last year’s list?

 

 

Aging and Freedom…”How would you like to die?”

27 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Aging and Freedom, Uncategorized

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Sunset Over the Valley

I just read a story about a man’s determination to be free and to realize a dream.  It was about his struggle to remain free in aging, to make his own choices, when others sought to place him in an “assisted living home”…ostensibly to protect him from himself in his final days.  We saw the world through the man’s mind.

All our lives we struggle with personal aspects of freedom, trying to find our way through the quagmire of reality toward some vision of freedom…reminds me of Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Freedom.  You’d think that as we get older and wiser, we’d reach our answer…and maybe we do in death.  Or, as Franzen illustrated in his novel, perhaps freedom is not all we think it will be.  There may be unintended consequences.

It seems as we grow older, in the final third of our lives, freedom is as much a dream as in adolescence, those precious years when a boy or a girl struggles through innocence to enjoy the imagined fruits of adulthood.  There is always someone to be beholding to…some impediment to reckon with.  Life becomes bigger than ourselves, never as simple as it seems.  It’s what it is.

My doctor asked me an interesting question the other day, after my annual physical exam. He finished going through my lab work, reviewed all the tests warranted for my age, and gave me a conclusion. He told me the good news was I was almost at no risk for any of the major causes of premature death.  My veins were clear, colon was healthy, good blood pressure, no heart disease, no cancer, clear lungs, etc.  All I needed to do was lose some weight and get more daily exercise…very reasonable. Then he said. “So, assuming you will live to be 85 or so, you face an enviable question. How would you like to die?”

It was striking, not what you’d expect your doctor to say after a successful physical exam. It was provocative, as I think he intended.  The question begs other questions, how will you lead the rest of your life…what will you do with it?  I’m still thinking of a dazzling array of interesting answers.  There are spiritual and personal choice concerns. Regardless of my imagination, the question of my own freedom keeps nudging up in importance…along with the unintended consequences.  It’s good to have choices.

Wouldn’t it be best if when we knew the time was right, we could just reach up and turn off the light?

Reflections create a private journey for the eye and mind

05 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Photography, Uncategorized, Writing

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Leadenham Creek - A Still Afternoon

There is something magically captivating about reflections, as the sight of them draws the eye and stimulates the mind.  It’s a private moment, to ourselves, regardless of who is nearby.  We see the reflection’s image, and it draws thoughts within us…perhaps a memory…or perhaps just to preserve the moment’s beauty in time.

Mirror Lake - Yosemite Valley

Whether we are successful or not in our daily lives, rich or poor, young or old, beauty surrounds us in many ways.  It is our choice to carve out a slice of time to see it and appreciate it…and, if we do, the whole world takes on a different view. Reflections double the intensity.

Beginning of Autumn - Chesapeake Bay Country

November Sunrise - Chesapeake Bay Country

Memories come on little cat feet…remembering Carl Sandburg

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in Uncategorized, Writing

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September Fog - "It sits on silent haunches...and then moves on." (Click on image for full size)

Louisville, Kentucky 1954 – Carl Sandburg sat in the white Adirondack chair on our wrap-around front porch.  I was too young to know more about him than he was a famous writer, and he wrote “Fog,” which I could recite as a ten-year-old.  My older sisters were more aware of his work. We sat at his feet as he read to us.

His thinning white hair stood from his pale scalp like slender feathers, playing in the summer sun.  He wore a white shirt that hung loose from his skeletal frame.  When he smiled, his whole mouth opened and spread across his face, hinged from ear to ear.  He reminded me, as a boy, of the comedian, Joey Brown, who could fit a baseball inside his mouth.

He was a gentle man, but when he spoke, it was with a certain authority.  Words came from his mouth as long, slow syllables.  His rich, mellow voice trembled slightly, hanging onto certain words, accenting them with importance.  There was a musical cadence to his speech.  He punctuated sentences with silence, waiting for the words to take hold in space.  His open collar exposed a pronounced Adam’s apple, which moved up and down his stalk-like neck…syllable by syllable.

When he finished reading to us, he removed several pages of white note paper from a folder.  They contained handwritten words, scratched out in liquid black ink.  I couldn’t make them out.  There were lines and arrows and underlines, with other words scribbled along the sides.  He signed the pages and handed them to my oldest sister.  “I am dedicating this to you,” he said.

I later learned that those pen-scratched words composed the “Prologue” to the book The Family of Man.  It was a collection of an era of photography, inscribed “The greatest photographic exhibition of all time,” edited by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art.  The museum published it the following year, in 1955. My sister treasured those handwritten pages, and we all treasure the memory.

In the years since my childhood, when I see a fog bank covering the water and landscape, I often think of Carl Sandburg’s Fog, coming “on little cat feet…looking over harbor and city, on silent haunches.”  When I visit Chicago, I think of his Chicago, “Hog Butcher for the world…Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat…City of the Big Shoulders.”  I can hear his voice uttering the words, slowly, syllable by syllable.  And, when I read the Prologue to The Family of Man, I see him, sitting there, with a boy at his feet, as he speaks with a measured cadence:

“The first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, “I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the family.”   

It comes to me now, looking back. It all makes sense.

A writer’s voice and words have an inherent telepathy, replaying a memory, only with permanence.  The uttered words once scribbled down with liquid black ink on paper later become a gift, in the future, for all to read.  They live on, in time, from one place to another, one person to the next, indefinitely.