Back in Willimantic

We rolled in tonight at around six after picking up the dog on the way home. Home from Connecticut where we spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving used to be at Nana’s, my wife’s grandmother’s house. But since Nana died we have spent it with my mother-in-law in Columbia. We cooked the first couple of times, but for the last two years, she too has gotten quite frail and doesn’t seem able to cope with the hectic hub-bub of a big Thanksgiving dinner. So we take her out to eat at her favorite restaurant. Even there she eats like a bird and takes most of her dinner home to have as leftovers. My wife, daughter, and I are all vegetarians, so we don’t miss the turkey. I do miss sitting around the table with all the family, though. Both the brothers do their own thing, both the sisters are out of town now (not that we aren’t). So it’s just the four of us.

I got up early on Thanksgiving morning and, while my wife and daughter slept, went out with my camera to cruise around Willimantic again. Since we are there at Thanksgiving and Christmas I seem to be able to photograph that town when there are few people on the streets and things are very quiet. It had rained during the night and the streets were wet. The temp was extremely mild for late November. Mist was hanging over the river and along the creek beds. The sky was cloudy but beginning to break.

Willimantic is a great town for street photography. At least the kind I like to shoot. There’s a great deal of ethnic diversity, a somewhat depressed economy, a nearby college, old neighborhoods, and historic buildings mixed with not so new architecture. It makes for great combinations and colorful material.

The town has a historic connection to frogs via the Windham Frog Pond. The story dates from 1754 when, after a long drought, the townspeople were awakened one night to a terrible noise. Fearing and indian attack, they took to the hills with guns. Finding nothing there they returned home, only to discover, the next morning, that the noise had come, not from the hills, but from what was left of the mill pond to the east, where, during the night, a fierce battle between the bull frogs for what was left of the remaining water had taken place.

The town is also known for its historic thread mills. So on the bridge spanning the river there are enormous frogs sitting atop thread spools. They also appear at other places about the town and seem to be thematic in countless windows and yards around the area.

I love the visual aspects of this town. The juxtapositions and the contrasts. I did a previous post on Willimantic. I don’t know if it’s just different material than I’m used to, or if this town holds something special that I need to document. Whatever it is, I’ll keep returning, as long as the holidays bring me there.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

The Beauty of Nature’s Reclamation

After visiting the graveyard of rusting farm equipment a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been looking at those images and some others of a similar nature and marveling at the beauty to be found in deteriorating things. As we ourselves age we struggle to maintain our health and our youth. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry just trying to prevent ourselves getting old. And certainly care and attention given to ourselves and to those things we wish to preserve can prolong the life of anything.

My house is nearing two centuries old, yet it’s still standing and giving shelter. I was amazed recently to see the body of King Tut opened and unwrapped for scientific analysis and how those human remains had been preserved after thousands of years. Astonishing! The museum where I work holds many objects that, as fragile as they are, have survived for thousands of years.

But it’s those things that are left to the elements, that nature is working to reclaim, that interest me. Nature is marvelous that way, taking back what has been made by us from her raw materials. Stability only exists when propped up on the crutch of maintenance, and preservatives, and a good coat of paint. When left to fend for themselves, few things survive nature’s reclamation.

Unfortunately, in our infinite wisdom and scientific achievements, humans have created some horrible things that would have been better left as raw materials. Nuclear waste, undissolving plastics, chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls and DDT. Nature cannot process these fast enough to benefit us today. But perhaps in the eons ahead, when the human species has vanished from the planet from an uncontrollable virus or the asteroid that darkens the world or global warming or nuclear war or the next Noah’s flood, even these poisons will be, over time, consumed by nature’s great reclamation processes.

In the meanwhile, as I walk about with my camera, I will continue to be intrigued by the beauty in rust and peeling paint and decaying wood and tattered fabrics. Just as nature has a marvelous way of creating beauty in the new born blossom or the gills of a mushroom or an amethyst filled geode, she continues to be as artful in the transformation of those things that are dying. Our autumn season is testament to the beauty of nature’s recycling. And all around us, she is gracefully taking back what belongs to her.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All Rights Reserved.

Change will come, regardless.

Our world changes a little with every season, and every year. We have become a global community with exports and imports and interdependent economies. Grapes from Chili, oranges from Brazil, lumber from the Philippines, oil from Canada, almost everything imaginable from China. We are not the manufacturing nation we once were. Nor are we the agricultural nation we once were with the family farm as the backbone. Huge agribusiness and imports have meant the demise of family farms all over America. Land values have changed, tax bases and environmental restrictions have run up costs for family farmers making them less and less profitable. A lot of young people just don’t want to stay on the farm any more.

I am not a farmer. In fact I don’t even like yard work and gardening. But I live in an area surrounded by beautiful farm country. There are still many family farms around this part of New York, but it doesn’t take a lot of looking to see these farms slowly disappearing, falling into disrepair, or being replaced by developments of housing or shopping or office parks.

When I first moved to New York in the 70’s I had a job driving a delivery van and running a warehouse for a small medical supply company in Rochester. Every week I would take a day to drive to Buffalo, Batavia, and Niagara Falls, and another day to drive to Geneva, Canandaigua, Naples, Penn Yan, and Bath. I got to see a lot of New York farm country through all the seasons and how beautiful this country is. Coming here from Georgia, I had no idea that New York was so rural.

So as the world changes and we are propelled into this global economy, I wonder how long it will take for this to become a very different place from the one I first came to know thirty plus years ago. Change is inevitable. Just as I see the changes in my own face as I get older, or the changes in the Florida coast every time we visit my father-in-law and his wife, New York will change with age.

We look back fondly at the things in our past that impacted us, made a lasting impression, romanticizing and putting a patina on those memories. I suppose we are always wanting to hold on to things as they were just as we want to hold on to our youth and not see those additional wrinkles that appear in the mirror. I got word last month that I’m going to be a great-grandfather. Boy do I feel old. And my knees feel like these rusting trucks sometimes. I think about retirement like most people my age, but figure I have at least nine more years before that’s even a hint of reality and especially with a daughter ready for college in less than two years. Sometimes I just want to put on the brakes, back up the bus. But time is linear and unstoppable, and we all will reach the end. I heard a great quote on Fresh Air the other day. “The saddest thing in life is wasted time.”

Change has no heart, no compassion, no memory. So live it to the fullest. Don’t let a day pass wasted. Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If it must come, let’s make it good.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, all rights reserved.