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© 2019 tozofoto –Tóth Zoltán- All rights reserved.
Thanks to all for your wonderful comments,faves and invites!!:-))
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.
People who complain that software engineers build unwieldy, unfriendly and outright mindboggling user interfaces need to look back in history to realize that hardware engineers have not always been much better in that respect. A good place to do that is the Railway Museum in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) / Duftende Platterbse, Duftwicke
Best view for this picture: Press F11 and L (Windows, Linux)
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Es tut mir leid, dass ich Kommentare aus Zeitmangel im Moment unbeantwortet lassen muss. Daher bedanke ich mich hiermit bei allen, die sich die Mühe gemacht haben, ihre Meinung zu diesem Foto mitzuteilen.
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Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 135 - Fiddler
Model with thanks to ackermaennchen
Created for MIXMASTER Challenge # 8
Chef jaci XIII's ingredients:
~ You must include an image of a city and ...
~ Elements from a chess set (board and/or pieces) and ...
~ A drop shadow or silhouette and ...
~ And an image from outer space (such as a planet) but ...
~ You may NOT use the color red (orange and pink are okay as long as they're clearly not red).
Thanks to Rubyblossom for pre-made background
Scatto fra le vie di Sirmione centro.
Shooting in the streets of Sirmione downtown.
Steve Best | Twitter | 500px | FlickRiver | Flipboard | Nikon Club |
This image is the copyright of © Neil Holman. Any users, found to replicate, reproduce, circulate, distribute, download, manipulate or otherwise use my images without my written consent will be in breach of copyright laws. Please contact me for permission to use any of my photographs.
2J74 Southport to Manchester Oxford Road, formed of 150138 trailing 156428, has deposited a solitary passenger at Hoscar station. In the 2016/17 period the station was the least used station in Lancashire with just 1024 recorded passengers although this was up from 900 in the previous year. There are just 8 services, 4 in each direction, that call at this lonely outpost Monday to Saturday.
La Ramada - Tucumán - Argentina.
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Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 159 – Background 20
Background with thanks to ElenaDudina
Entered in Toys and Dolls Challenge - December 2017.
Also Created for 97th MMM Challenge
Clown doll with thanks to Trish
June 20, 2020 - Riverdale Nebraska
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Severe Warnings popped up for this lone cell by Oconto Nebraska with a nice TVS marker just south of the city. It was my calling to get my gear together and make a small jaunt north on Hwy 2 from Kearney Nebraska. This storm was to be in the Miller Nebraska (northwest of Kearney) area within the hour and I wasn't going to miss this show when its this close to home.
No other chasers on this storm and it was just this lone thunderstorm and me! Beautiful LP structure with clearly visible rotation on this storms' time lapse. Couldn't have asked for a better landscape setup with the pure flatness of northern part of South Central Nebraska.
Storm died out as this storm cell scooted almost directly due east it still had some luster left in her and she was showing off. Beautiful billowing thunderheads to end this chase day!
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Copyright 2020
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
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Please add COMMENTS and FAVES. I hope to replicate as soon as possible!!! :)
“Any users, found to replicate, reproduce, circulate, distribute, download, manipulate or otherwise use my images without my written consent will be in breach of copyright laws as well as contract laws.”
“The Eye Moment photos by Nolan H. Rhodes”
nrhodesphotos@yahoo.com
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 144 – 181
With thanks to....
Background • Nathies-Stock
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© Copyright Parée Erica. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this image in any form without express and written permission from me is illegal
all canon users say HOOORRAAAAAAAAAAAY =P
and yea Nikon - sony - Fuji users =P
too bad u can't say hoooray
out of picture
out of ideas =P
and btw. that colorful thing is eatable =P LOOOL i jst did it to take this shot =P
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My favorite tool for weeding is that little folding saw.
It allows me to get under the surface and pull out weeds and grasses with the serrations. It's sure easier than grasping weeds with fingers and pulling.
It was cold today, down to the low 20ºsF/3ºC. Even in the early afternoon I had to wear a sweatshirt and thick vest. The hat and balaclava sleeve are to keep the UV rays off.
So why did I shoot this?
The Photo Forum challenge this week is "Tools Paradise." We are to try to show them in context.
I was out there weeding and wondered if I could get the shot by propping the phone against one of those rocks.
Excerpt from www.nfm.go.kr/user/bbs/english/17/469/bbsDataView/23209.d...:
Most Jangseung (Village Guardian Posts) and Sotdae (Sacred Poles) stand at the village entrance. The posts are believed to drive off evil spirits, illness or catastrophe that could enter the village, and the duck perched up on a such a pole symbolizes abundance and fertility. The posts protect the village with glaring eyes and the ever-watchful duck on the sacred pole cries with a thunderous roar.
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge #57 – Queen of the Night 38
Model with thanks to Valentine-FOV-Stock
Model: valentine-fov-stock.deviantart.com/art/Queen-of-the-Night...
Forest: northstar76.deviantart.com/art/Nice-and-quiet-341162110
Roses: yvaineglarestock.deviantart.com/art/4-Roses-stock-pack-19...
and inadesign-stock.deviantart.com/art/Rose-and-Petals-Pack-1...
Buddha: www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=4851258
This Photo Goes to MyCuzn Maramesh i Upload's l3youn'ha *(L)
Umm what i have to say umm i don't have word's to say about you but i will say one word's for you Maryoom" you are the beest :D " i hope soon you have a true LOVE :P< i know you will kill me bcuz i say that :P but what ever :P umm adrey anch ma t3rfeen english 3dell :P but i don't have arabic latter's :P sow it's oky ^^
تدري لوطلبت حياتي عطيتڪ ~
i hope i say all about you true !
i LOVE u MyCuzn''s (L)(L)!!
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge #75
Premade BG - Mist Water ll with thanks to E-DinaPhotoArt
You can help the billions of animals across the world who suffer everyday, if you care enough ,
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Sometimes it is VERY clear which road you have to go. Even though it is cold and misty... Just go!
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Click this link to see the awards for this photo.
Selected as Picture of the Day for 27th of september in Nature's Heaven.
This image is available for purchase through Getty Images.
"Why did you choose THAT as a username? Does it mean something? Is it a special date? We want to know!"
Tagged by honeysuckle jasmine & Lulemee
FloundersFolly was something I came up with when I joined Flickr to share photos and see the stories behind others collections. As a large majority of my collection is from my childhood, I wanted something linked to that (as I only started collecting again in 2010 - thanks DS) and I was reminded of one of my favourite childhood books. I also liked the way it sounded phonetically. No prizes as to what my favourite film is, lol.
Fun fact: little did I know Flounders' Folly is also a tower here in England, to find out more: www.britainexplorer.com/flounders-folly.html
If you've viewed this and would like to play consider yourself tagged!