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CP 118 makes it way across the dam in Parry Sound, soon to get back onto the CP at South Parry. This really shouldn't have been at 5pm, but 119 was having issues in Mactier and moderate dispatch/management incompetence had this sitting a while.
Somehow we were blessed with fabulous sunshine during our walk along the seafront in Seattle. Looking out into Puget Sound it was a different kettle of fish as can be seen here. One of the many ferries that work this stretch of water can be seen making a crossing. No doubt its open decks were clear of passengers.
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We hopped on our chopper and headed out of Milford Sound which allowed us to see first hand the majesty of this magnificent natural wonder. With sheer walls towering 1,200 meters or 3,900 feet and plunging to the depths of near 1000 feet or 291 meters it's no wonder that Rudyard Kipling once call the sound the 8th wonder of the world. We will be back!
IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
The color version of the photo above is here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So far there's only been one photo in my gallery that hasn't been taken in my garden ('The Flame Rider', captured in the Maggia Valley: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/53563448847/in/datepo... ) - which makes the image above the second time I've "strayed from the path" (although not very far, since the photo was taken only approximately 500 meters from my house).
Overall, I'll stick to my "only-garden rule", but every once in a while I'll show you a little bit of the landscape around my village, because I think it will give you a better sense of just how fascinating this region is, and also of its history.
The title I chose for the photo may seem cheesy, and it's certainly not very original, but I couldn't think of another one, because it's an honest reflection of what I felt when I took it: a profound sense of peace - although if you make it to the end of this text you'll realize my relationship with that word is a bit more complicated.
I got up early that day; it was a beautiful spring morning, and there was still a bit of mist in the valley below my village which I hoped would make for a few nice mood shots, so I quickly grabbed my camera and went down there before the rising sun could dissolve the magical layer on the scenery.
Most human activity hadn't started yet, and I was engulfed in the sounds of the forest as I was walking the narrow trail along the horse pasture; it seemed every little creature around me wanted to make its presence known to potential mates (or rivals) in a myriad of sounds and voices and noises (in case you're interested, here's a taste of what I usually wake up to in spring, but you best use headphones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoCTqdAVCE )
Strolling through such an idyllic landscape next to grazing horses and surrounded by birdsong and beautiful trees, I guess it's kind of obvious one would feel the way I described above and choose the title I did, but as I looked at the old stone buildings - the cattle shelter you can see in the foreground and the stable further up ahead on the right - I also realized how fortunate I was.
It's hard to imagine now, because Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world today, but the men and women who had carried these stones and constructed the walls of these buildings were among the poorest in Europe. The hardships the people in some of the remote and little developed valleys in Ticino endured only a few generations ago are unimaginable to most folks living in my country today.
It wasn't uncommon that people had to sell their own kids as child slaves - the girls had to work in factories or in rice fields, the boys as "living chimney brushes" in northern Italy - just because there wasn't enough food to support the whole family through the harsh Ticino winters.
If you wonder why contemporary Swiss historians speak of "slaves" as opposed to child laborers, it's because that's what many of them actually were: auctioned off for a negotiable prize at the local market, once sold, these kids were not payed and in many cases not even fed by their masters (they had to beg for food in the streets or steal it).
Translated from German Wikipedia: ...The Piazza grande in Locarno, where the Locarno Film Festival is held today, was one of the places where orphans, foundlings and children from poor families were auctioned off. The boys were sold as chimney sweeps, the girls ended up in the textile industry, in tobacco processing in Brissago or in the rice fields of Novara, which was also extremely hard work: the girls had to stand bent over in the water for twelve to fourteen hours in all weathers. The last verse of the Italian folk song 'Amore mio non piangere' reads: “Mamma, papà, non piangere, se sono consumata, è stata la risaia che mi ha rovinata” (Mom, dad, don't cry when I'm used up, it was the rice field that destroyed me.)... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminfegerkinder
The conditions for the chimney sweeps - usually boys between the age of 8 and 12 (or younger, because they had to be small enough to be able to crawl into the chimneys) - were so catastrophic that many of them didn't survive; they died of starvation, cold or soot in their lungs - as well as of work-related accidents like breaking their necks when they fell, or suffocatig if they got stuck in inside a chimney. This practice of "child slavery" went on as late as the 1950s (there's a very short article in English on the topic here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini and a more in depth account for German speakers in this brief clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda8vZp_zsc ).
Now I don't know if the people who built the old stone houses along my path had to sell any of their kids, but looking at the remnants of their (not so distant) era I felt an immense sense of gratitude that I was born at a time of prosperity - and peace - in my region, my country and my home. Because none of it was my doing: it was simple luck that decided when and where I came into this world.
It also made me think of my own family. Both of my grandparents on my father's side grew up in Ticino (they were both born in 1900), but while they eventually left Switzerland's poorest region to live in its richest, the Kanton of Zurich, my grandfather's parents relocated to northern Italy in the 1920s and unfortunately were still there when WWII broke out.
They lost everything during the war, and it was their youngest daughter - whom I only knew as "Zia" which means "aunt" in Italian - who earned a little money to support herself and my great-grandparents by giving piano lessons to high-ranking Nazi officers and their kids (this was towards the end of the war when German forces had occupied Italy).
I never knew that about her; Zia only very rarely spoke of the war, but one time when I visited her when she was already over a 100 years old (she died at close to 104), I asked her how they had managed to survive, and she told me that she went to the local prefecture nearly every day to teach piano. "And on the way there would be the dangling ones" she said, with a shudder.
I didn't get what she meant, so she explained. Visiting the city center where the high ranking military resided meant she had to walk underneath the executed men and women who were hanging from the lantern posts along the road (these executions - often of civilians - were the Germans' retaliations for attacks by the Italian partisans).
I never forgot her words - nor could I shake the look on her face as she re-lived this memory. And I still can't grasp it; my house in Ticino is only 60 meters from the Italian border, and the idea that there was a brutal war going on three houses down the road from where I live now in Zia's lifetime strikes me as completely surreal.
So, back to my title for the photo above. "Peace". It's such a simple, short word, isn't it? And we use it - or its cousin "peaceful" - quite often when we mean nice and quiet or stress-free. But if I'm honest I don't think I know what it means. My grandaunt Zia did, but I can't know. And I honestly hope I never will.
I'm sorry I led you down such a dark road; I usually intend to make people smile with the anecdotes that go with my photos, but this one demanded a different approach (I guess with this latest image I've strayed from the path in more than one sense, and I hope you'll forgive me).
Ticino today is the region with the second highest average life expectancy in Europe (85.2 years), and "The Human Development Index" of 0.961 in 2021 was one of the highest found anywhere in the world, and northern Italy isn't far behind. But my neighbors, many of whom are now in their 90s, remember well it wasn't always so.
That a region so poor it must have felt like purgatory to many of its inhabitants could turn into something as close to paradise on Earth as I can imagine in a person's lifetime should make us all very hopeful. But, and this is the sad part, it also works the other way 'round. And I believe we'd do well to remember that, too.
To all of you - with my usual tardiness but from the bottom of my heart - a happy, healthy, hopeful 2025 and beyond.
From Devils Point near where HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, sailed from Plymouth Sound on 27 December 1831.
In the distance Drakes Island, Bovisand, Wembury and the Mewstone.
We headed to beautiful Santa Cruz, located at the California coast across the hill from the Silicon Valley. It's fun strolling along the beach, listening to the sound of waves.
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-- ƒ/7.1, 56 mm, 1/160 sec, ISO 125, Sony A6000, SEL-55210, HDR, 1 RAW exposure, _DSC5841_hdr1rea1pho1d.jpg
-- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, © Peter Thoeny, Quality HDR Photography
Den Sound von Plagu gibts hier:
Sound of Silence...Featuring Heth Haute Couture
Blog:
diamondswithjewel.blogspot.com/2016/03/sound-of-silencefe...
Another experimenting with the WDA, if we stop having rank rotten (I love rainy arty shots but this is just floods everywhere!) weather I will get out with the Brownie and get some new stuff!
There are no words that can adequately capture the experience that is Milford Sound. I've never seen anything quite like it. Dozens of huge waterfalls cascade down near vertical walls of rock and foliage. It is a sight to behold!
With Aaronxxx, Walking passed a pub in Manchester.Been listening to the Album Low by DB.take on the cover.
Sound Collector unpolished - Take the A-Train Musicfestival 2021, 18.09.2021 - Hotel Hohenstauffen Salzburg
www.jazzfoto.at/konzertfotos21/_take_the_a_train/_tag3/ho...
Besetzung:
Lisa Hofmaninger: bassclarinet, sax
Judith Schwarz: drums
Explore 29.05.16
Milford Sound (Piopiotahi in Maori) è un fiordo situato nell'angolo sud-ovest dell'Isola del Sud della Nuova Zelanda, all'interno del Fiordland National Park. È considerata la meta turistica più famosa della Nuova Zelanda. Rudyard Kipling la descrisse come l' "Ottava meraviglia del mondo".
Milford Sound si estende per 15 chilometri dal Mar di Tasman verso l'entroterra ed è circondato su entrambi i lati da ripidissime pareti di roccia alte fino a più di 1200 metri.
Con una media di precipitazioni di 6.813 mm in ben 182 giorni all'anno, Milford Sound può essere considerato come il posto abitato più piovoso della Nuova Zelanda e uno dei più piovosi al mondo.
Noi abbiamo ammirato le sue rocce da una barca, in una giornata molto molto piovosa. Purtroppo non posso mostrarvi altre foto perchè, come potete immaginare, non è stato facile fotografare da una barca, sotto la pioggia battente e col mare "forza nove". Comunque esperienza indimenticabile!
pose by Del May Poses
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzdI440W6U
...
Hello darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
left it's seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains, within the sounds of silence
...
(Salve oscurità, mia vecchia amica
ho ripreso a parlarti ancora
perché una visione che fa dolcemente rabbrividire
ha lasciato in me i suoi semi mentre dormivo
e la visione che è stata piantata nel mio cervello
ancora persiste nel suono del silenzio )
Sounder #1509 for Tacoma and points south blasts out of King Street Station as a BNSF mixed freight from Everett waits for a window to head south. The off-ramp on the right is part of the interchange that makes up the very west end of Interstate 90.
A little bit of Midtown New York street action. This guy was extremely tall and stood out as he wandered between the NBC building and Radio City Music Hall.