January 2015

January 18, 2015

MLK by Yousuf Karsh

I photographed this young man looking at a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the display window of Lamborn’s Studio in Athens, Ohio, on April 9, 1968, five days after the Civil Rights leader was gunned down in Memphis.

It wasn’t until this evening that I blew it up big enough to read the inscription on the left. The photo was taken by famed photographer Yousuf Karsh. Estrellita Karsh donated the portrait to the National Portrait Gallery in his memory.

Click on the photo to make it larger.

How the photo was taken

From the photo caption:

A man constantly on the move, Martin Luther King was most often photographed in action by those covering the events of the civil-rights movement. This likeness by renowned portraitist Yousuf Karsh is a different kind of image—a formal portrait that utilizes pose and lighting rather than environment to identify King as a leader and a visionary. Karsh made the photograph in August 1962, when King returned to Atlanta following the prolonged and dispiriting struggle for desegregation in Albany, Georgia. With very little time to work, Karsh photographed his subject in the only space available—a corner of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Recalling the circumstances of that sitting, Karsh noted, “Nowhere could [King] relax when constantly beset by friends and aides wishing him well, commiserating on his difficulties, congratulating him on his return, and planning new strategy.”

Earlier stories about Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 17, 2015

Kapok Tree Blocked

You know from yesterday’s manatee post that Road Warriorette Anne in in town for a few weeks to escape the cold in Texas. Saturday morning, she walked on the beach with Wife Lila, then in the afternoon she suggested we do one of our favorite bike rides – the Lake Trail in Palm Beach.

It’s about a 19.33 mile round trip from the house to the Palm Beach Inlet, and I haven’t been on a bike in so long I’m embarrassed, so I wasn’t disappointed when she said, “Let’s just go to the Kapok tree by the Flagler Museum and call it a day.” (That made it a 10.35 mile ride.)

The first thing we saw when we rounded the corner by the big tree was a gate over the walkway, some fresh fencing and a sign that said “NO PUBLIC ACCESS.”

Palm Beach doesn’t care much for us

Palm Beach isn’t fond of outsiders (who don’t have ostentatious wealth). They make it difficult to get access to the beach, and parking is expensive and closely monitored. Forget about parking on side streets. So far as I know, there are no public restrooms in town (although the guys and gals at the fire stations will give you a break if you ask).

Still, restricting access to a landmark like the Kapok tree, which was seen by Henry Morrison Flagler’s guests as they were pulled by it in Afromobiles at the beginning of the 20th Century, is a particular affront. It must have just happened, because everybody who came by, including parents who wanted to let their kids climb on it, was surprised and outraged.

Son Matt played in its huge roots when he was a little boy, and he brought HIS son, Malcolm, and Sarah there for a family portrait in 2008.

Photo gallery of the Kapok tree

It didn’t take long to come up with a representative sample of photographs showing people enjoying the tree. I’ve posed out-of-state bike tourists with it, and photographed scores of kids (and adults) marveling at the living landmark. There was almost always someone there when I’ve ridden by it.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

January 16, 2015

Swimming with Manatees

Road Warriorette Anne is back in Florida for a few weeks fleeing cold weather in Texas. For the record, that is NOT Anne. She took time off from her travel schedule to swim with manatees in Kings Bay in the Crystal River on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She bought a video of her experience, and I pulled a few frames out for this post.

Here is her account:

I’m not crazy about the cold

The night before my manatee swimming experience, I was actually pretty stressed out. I was excited, certainly. But the forecast was for 36 degrees at 7:15 a.m., which was the time we were due to arrive at the boat dock for our short ride to Kings Bay, where all the manatees were lounging in the relatively warm waters of Crystal River.

I am not a person who enjoys cold weather. Scratch that. I am a person who despises cold weather. But I had decided earlier in the day that if I was indeed going to honor my reservation, made before this rare arctic front swooped into west central Florida, I was going to do it cheerfully and have fun. A stop at the Goodwill store in Perry, complete with purchase of a cheap coat and blanket to keep me warm on the boat ride out and back, sealed the deal.

But the alarm was set for 5:45 (leaving time to eat breakfast before the boat ride), and I am ALSO not an early morning riser, so that was additional cause for anxiety. Not to mention I had driven 540 miles that day (and 525 miles the day before that), so I had a bit of white line fever running through my veins, I admit.

But I digress! It’s all about the manatees. Once I saw my first manatee in the waters of Kings Bay that morning, everything else slipped away. In my experience, it’s such a transporting experience to have a close encounter with another species, especially in their own habitat. [Editor’s note: that’s why she visits me.]

Although there were large areas of water cordoned off with buoys where visitors can’t enter, the manatees very often leave these sanctuary areas and come “visit” you! They are curious and just come right up to humans again and again.

My coat and blanket kept me warm on the boat ride out, and since it was such a cold day, maybe just 14 to 16 guests were in the whole area. Our guide told us the previous week (the holiday season) there were as many as 200 people in the water at one time. Which meant anytime a manatee was spotted, it was positively swarmed by humans, all with grasping hands and cameras, etc. I was definitely feeling there was an upside to the cold weather by this time.

Watch the video

The manatees’ whiskers were softer than I thought they’d be, but their skin is quite tough. Their wrinkles feel funny and it’s darling the way they almost always turn over to have their tummies scratched. I had two wonderful encounters; one was on camera, which you can see on the video, and one all alone, when I got nose to nose with a cow who came up for a close look. Then she turned over for me to pet her tummy, which I did; but then she slowly began twirling around and around, mesmerizing me so that I just kept my hand on her while she quietly rotated.

Violated the two-hand rule

Our guide happened to be filming when I had my second special encounter. A cow came up to me very close and then actually reached toward me with both fins. It was the dearest thing. Something within me wanted to respond in kind, so I reached out with both hands to sort of cup her face or perhaps touch her fins, I’m not sure which. I wasn’t really thinking, just reacting to her gesture. But apparently there’s a “one-hand” rule, which I didn’t recall hearing, despite closely watching the video about procedures before departure. Whatever, I did actually get to touch her with both hands before I got caught and it was very meaningful to me (and maybe to her because she reached out first!) so I don’t care about getting caught!

Two hours with the gentle giants

Our small group of six that left from The Plantation Dive Shop stayed in Kings Bay for close to two hours, having multiple encounters with the gentle giants. The only time I was truly, bitterly cold was when we got out of the water. Then we were all actually shaking so hard that we spilled lots of hot chocolate as we tried to drink it to warm up.

But every one of us agreed it was totally worth it.

Swimming with manatees has been on my bucket list for quite a while. If it’s on yours, go do it, and don’t be afraid to pick a cold day.

January 15, 2015December 20, 2021

Pumpjacks in Athens County

I was all excited back on September 18, 2014, when gas in Jackson dropped to $3.03. On December, 14, I celebrated that gas in Florida had fallen below $2.50. This week, I gassed up for $2.13, and Neighbor Jacqie got it for seven cents less two days later

That got me to thinking about this pumping rig I spotted in Athens County last summer. I was hoping I would run across one because they used to be pretty common in that area.

Other names for pumpjack

In case you aren’t familiar with the term “pumpjack” (I wasn’t), it is also called “oil horse, donkey pumper, nodding donkey, pumping unit, horsehead pump, rocking horse, beam pump, dinosaur, sucker rod pump (SRP), grasshopper pump, Big Texan, thirsty bird, or jack pump). It is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump in an oil well.”

In the old days, you’d drive by a field that was covered with a thick sludge of oily goop and see pipes running to a central collection point. For some reason, I don’t think I ever shot one. Maybe it was just too ugly in a not-neat way.

Here is a site that explains how those old “jackline”operations work, along with a lot of other interesting history. That sounds like what I remember. They’ve pretty much become obsolete.

Drilling rig hit gas

The closest I came to photographing anything like that was this fire. I don’t know why this drilling rig was working right next to the road on a chilly day in March of 1969, but it must have hit a pocket of natural gas, and all it took was one spark to light it off.

How does thing work?

Curator Jessica and I found this while we were running around looking for neat stuff. I asked her how it worked.

Curators are supposed to know everything, plus, she’s married to T.J., who is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University. I figured she’d have picked up this kind of knowledge through osmosis.

Instead of breaking a stick off a tree and sketching out the whole thing in the dirt alongside the road, she said, “Wait until dinner and have T.J. explain it to you.”

Natural gas is the target

T.J. is an effective teacher. The first thing he explained was that the target is natural gas, not oil, as I had always thought.

His description pretty much matched this explanation given on Wikipedia. He’s known on campus as a tough grader, so rather than try to parrot what he said, I’m going to let this illustration explain it. (He doesn’t tolerate students who copy the work of others, so I may STILL be in trouble.)

When I asked why they went to all the trouble to use the walking beam with its horse head for a small operation like this (I’ve seen giant ones out West), he explained that the walking beam with a counterweight can do all the heavy lifting, enabling the use of a much smaller motor than if it was connected directly.

I don’t have any idea what kind of volume the wells produce nor how many of them are in operation. A lot of them were sitting idle when we passed by, but we saw one large one that looked like it was fairly new.