11 October 2007

Time, she's a fast old train, she's here then she's gone, and she won't come 'round again







I had written a couple of paragraphs on here about Woody Guthrie, Eugene Gant, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, et al, and the intermingled myth/history of railroads--the idea of the railroad as a line to freedom or a release valve from the pressures of American ambition and competition and self-interest--but I realized it was sappy, sentimental garbage, so I scrapped it.

In it's place, I give you this list of things other people accomplished when they were my age--28. I'm not sure how to imbed a link to the site, but it's located at www.museumofconceptualart.com/accomplished/ You type in your age, and it gives you a list of other people's accomplishments--great or unusual, inspirational, ordinary, or worthless/dubious. It's a fun idea for a site, but the results aren't as clever as they could be.

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr published his revolutionary theory of the atom.

French novelist George Sand published her first novel, Indiana.

Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof of Warsaw invented the artificial language Esperanto.

British physician Thomas Wakley began publishing The Lancet.

Jamaican reggae composer/performer Bob Marley recorded "I Shot the Sheriff."

Nuclear plant lab tech Karen Silkwood died in a car crash on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter and a union official to document her allegations about falsified quality control reports.

French naturalist Jean B. Lamarck coined the word biology to encompass the studies of botany and zoology.

Radio DJ Brent McCoy killed a mouse, seemingly by staring at it, in his living room.

College graduate and licensed therapist Katie moved back in with her parents to muck stalls on their farm and fold her dad's underwear, still warm from the dryer.

3 comments:

Karen said...

By the end of her twenty-eighth year, my oldest sister, Amy, received a pace-maker.

You're photographs do inspire me. Unfortunately, I think our styles are quite different. After viewing your blog, I feel inspired to go wandering about taking photographs, which, like many other things including cartwheels and tapping my foot to the beat of music, just doesn't work well for me. Basically, the inspiration I get from your photos sets me up for failure. It's an inspired sort of failure, though, and I think that's something.

Josh Harrod said...

This comment is both to your pictures, Mark, and to Karen's comment. The latter first: I definitely think I'll take inspired failure over uninspired success any day.

As for the pictures, the second and third shots do a lot for me. The Muse highrise looming in shot 2 is wonderful. I think that actually may be Muse Hall's best side.

And aside from the clouds, I think what I like so much about the 3rd shot is SOUTHERN emblazoned on the tagged, rusted car.

Josh

mark said...

Thanks for the comments. Josh, I'm glad you noticed the inclusion of Southern on the car; that's what drew me to that shot (well, that and the graffitti and the nice clouds). I was kind of happy with the Muse shot, too. It's a view of Muse that most people don't get. I'm thinking of doing 13 Views of Muse--a view for each floor and a nod to Stevens.