Our Love Affair with Bad Guys

Lower Taughannock Falls, Taughannock Falls SP, NY

We all, I trust, are familiar with the notion of “the dark side”.  Made famous by George Lucas in the Star Wars movies, the term became synonymous with all things evil.  The “dark side”, of course,  is the domain of the bad guys, the ones who lie, cheat, steal, and otherwise do their very best to make our lives miserable.  Sort of like Republicans.  I never quite understood, by the way, why there wasn’t a corresponding “light side”.  Seems like there should have been.

Anyway, Paul Lester and I have been having a little fun with the term lately, mostly with respect to cameras and stuff.  I’ve called Nikon the “dark side” and he’s called digital the “dark side” (as opposed to film).  Again, all in fun.  He also had a post, though, in which he talked about “shadows” and the dark side of our own personalities.  In a comment, I pointed out that we often openly root for the bad guy in movies.  I mentioned that when I first saw the final installment of Star Wars the audience appaluded and cheered when Darth Vader made his initial appearance.  They loved the guy.  Nobody stood up and cheered for the hero when he first appeared.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about it (a lot).  Why is it that we often root for the “bad guys”?  Why do we make folk heros out of outlaws?  True, we do it for the Abe Lincolns, Mother Theresa’s and Nelson Mandelas as well, but we seem to really get into elevating our villains, whether they be real or imaginary.

American movies are full of lovable bad guys.  The real star of the most recent Batman movie – The Dark Knight – is The Joker (played so well by Heath Ledger).  In the classic Silence of the Lambs, we worry about Jody Foster’s FBI character, but we also want Hannibal Lector to escape, presumably to continue his cannibalistic ways.  And he does.  We also come to admire Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, even though he isn’t even human.  Yes, he does turn into a “good guy” in the latter installments of the series, but he wreaks tremendous amounts of havoc in the original story.  But we forgive him his murderous excesses.  The list goes on and on – Michael Myers (Halloween), Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street), and Agent Smith (the Matrix series).  We’re horrified by what these characters do, but it is them that we pay to go and see.

It’s not just fictional bad guys, either.  How about Jesse James.  Butch Cassidy.  Billy the Kid.  All have been raised from the depths of criminal behavior to the lofty pedestal of folk hero.  Why?  Because they represent what most of us are jealous of – the courage to step outside normal, accepted behavior.  There is nothing exciting or romantic about obeying all the rules.  We pay homage to our saints, but we secretly admire (and sometimes not so secretly) our most famous sinners.

Need a more recent, ”real-life” example?  In 2006, a guy named Ralph “Bucky” Phillips escaped from prison and went on a shooting spree in western New York that eventually attracted national attention.  By the time it was all over, a number of people were dead or wounded.  Among the dead was a New York State Trooper who, along with 2 other officers, was ambushed by Bucky.  These men never saw their attacker.

Bucky is currently serving a life sentence.  He actually pled guilty (or in his own words, “guilty as hell”).  So what’s my point?  Simply this: While Bucky was on the run, he became one of these “folk heros”.  The longer he evaded police, the more popular he became.  As police threw more and more men into the manhunt, the more people there were who openly hoped that he would avoid capture or death.  At the height of this nonsense you could actually buy “Where’s Bucky?”  T-shirts.  The topper though, in my opinion, was the restaurant that proudly began serving “Bucky Burgers”.  Not surprisingly, they sold quite a few.  Right up until “poor” Bucky got caught.

Bridge Building

I had an opportunity over the weekend to meet with Mark Hobson (The Landscapist).  Mark, who has lived in Rochester and has relatives here, had decided to drive to Taughannock Falls on Saturday and then head north to the Flower City.  Before doing so, he’d let me know he was heading in this direction and wanted to know if I’d like to meet him somewhere.  Well sure, I said.  Why not?

Now, anyone who has read either blog might wonder if this was a good idea.  It ain’t no secret that Mark and I have crossed swords from time to time.  Our views have clashed over a number of things, including what constitutes a good photograph.  Not to mention the nature of “truth” and “reality”.

Not to worry.  Mark and I had a long lunch and an even longer discussion.  It was so long that I think he was more than a little late getting back on the road to his home in the Adirondacks (Au Sable Forks).  We talked about all kinds of things (except truth and reality) and discovered we had much in common.  We also discovered that some of the differences we’d had were more the result of misunderstood language than actual substance.

Our views on photography, however, are still somewhat different.  Mark still favors complexity in his images and I still strive mightily for simplicity.  Our subject matter preferences are different.  Mark prefers color over black and white while for me it’s kind of a toss-up. 

Well, so what.  Unlike at least one of our political parties here in the U. S., the photographic tent is very large.  Lots of room for everybody.  I might not “get” one of Mark’s images, but in the final analysis he’s doing the same thing I am.  He’s trying to communicate something.  And that’s good enough for me.

Stay on the Path, Please

At the base of Taughannock Falls

I think this is one of the places that I could spend a lifetime exploring.   Or maybe just sitting and watching the falls.  Like the guy sitting on the fallen tree in the lower right (with his dog).  If nothing else, he provides scale for the size of this waterfall.  I thanked him for it, too, and then mentioned that he was sitting in an “off-limits” area.  I don’t think he cared.   Certainly the dog didn’t care – he thought it was a great place to swim.

Photographically, that’s the problem with some of these places.  There are signs all over the place telling you where you can’t go.  And it always seems that those are the exact spots you’d like to be to set up your tripod.  You think that if you could just get up on that ledge up there you’d have the perfect perspective, the perfect angle.  So what if it’s a bit dangerous?  It’s a “bit dangerous” to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, but nobody stops you from doing that.  So why do I have to “stay on the path” here? 

I was once wandering around Letchworth SP, close to a short wall (about a foot and a half tall) above the gorge.  The wall itself was roughly 25 feet from the edge.  To get a better angle, I set the tripod on the wall and straddled the wall with my feet.  Before you could say “watch the birdie”, a park ranger appeared out of nowhere and asked me to step back.  Again, if it’s OK for me to stand on the very edge of one of the world’s deepest canyons, why in the hell can’t I stand 25 feet from the edge of the Genesee River gorge?

Well, that’s New York state for you.  Lots of taxes, lots of snow, and lots of silly rules.

The Devil’s Kitchen

Devil's Kitchen, Robert Treman SP, NY

You just have to love the names in places like this.   Lucifer Falls.  Devil’s Kitchen.

You find the same kind of thing, of course, in national parks - 

Towers of the Virgin.  Court of the Patriarchs.  The Temple of Sinawava.  The Great White Throne.  The Altar of Sacrifice.  The Watchman.  All of these from my favorite spot in the universe (so far):  Zion NP.  Other places have their own  interesting iconic labels.  Some names you find used again and again, like “Devil’s Kitchen”.

I’m not sure why this spot was named as it was, but I can guess.  It’s kind of a strange spot in what’s more widely known as Enfield Glen.  While the wall and the bridge are clearly manmade, the rest was done by nature.  And that’s kind of hard to believe when you’re standing there looking at it.  Many of the stone formations in and around the stream have been cut at nearly perfect right angles.  Just beyond the bridge, in fact, the stream makes a left turn that you’d swear was constructed by engineers.  I don’t know if anyone has ever measured it, but it sure looks like a perfect 90 degree turn.  Who knew Mother Nature could be so precise?  Or maybe the devil did it just to make idiots like me scratch my head in wonder.

Who says the guy doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Impressive, but…..

Lucifer Falls, Robert Treman SP, NY

Oscar Wilde, the famous 19th century Irish playwright, once said about Niagara Falls -

“It would be more impressive if it flowed the other way”.

Almost sounds like Mr. Wilde wasn’t terribly impressed with Niagara.  If not, he probably wouldn’t have given Lucifer Falls here a second glance.  Typical European.  Always putting down what we have over here in the colonies. 

“I’m not Over” (Las Vegas)

done

It’s almost a year and a half now since we moved back to Rochester, NY from Las Vegas, NV.  And as the post title and embedded song imply, I’m not quite over the place.  I routinely check LV TV websites and the online site for The Las Vegas Review Journal (one of the best papers in the country, in my opinion) to see what’s going on there.  As with most major U. S. cities, the economy in Vegas is pretty bad.  Visitor levels are way down, gaming revenues are anemic, and unemployment is very high.  I often wonder if I’d still have my job if we hadn’t moved back east. 

Who knows.  But aside from all that, I still love the place.  I can’t say that about many cities.  Charleston, SC is another one we enjoy very much.  I also like San Antonio, TX (and Austin), and Flagstaff, AZ.  But most cities – especially in the northeast – leave me cold (no pun intended).  I don’t much care for urban environments, generally speaking.

But why Las Vegas?  We don’t gamble (well, not very much), we don’t “party” (we’re rarely up past 10:00), and I almost never drink.  But we loved to visit the strip.  We’d drive in, park somewhere (usually at New York New York), and then just walk.  Usually, we’d walk north as far as Bellagio and then back, wandering through a number of casinos along the way.  If it wasn’t windy, we would always watch one or two of the fountain shows in front of the Bellagio.  I never tired of those excursions.  There was always something to see, always something to photograph.  Night or day.

In short, the place was alive.  People were everywhere, doing all kinds of things.  And they were there from all over the country.  It got so you could look at people and usually tell where they were from.  People from the northeast and midwest were the easiest to identify, mainly by the way they dressed and the way they gawked at what was in front of them.  If it was their first visit, they looked at the strip as if they were on another planet.  Californians were also easy to spot, especially if they were driving.  Just ask a native Las Vegan which state license plate they least like to see when they’re out on the roads.

Las Vegas, of course, isn’t for everyone.  I would never attempt to raise kids there.  The public school system there ranks 50th or 51st in the nation.  Medical care isn’t the best, either.  And yes, there’s crime.  But I really don’t think it’s any worse than other large metropolitan areas.  Probably better than some.  All I can say is that I was never, ever afraid to walk on the strip.  I felt much safer there than I would if I were to walk in downtown Rochester.  Not to mention the fact that there’s little to do in downtown Rochester – the place is dead.

So even though we lived there for less than a year, Las Vegas felt like home.  I made some good friends there and worked with a lot of very good people.  And, of course, our son is still there.  If all goes well, we’ll pay the place a return visit sometime this coming spring – probably March.  Then from there we’ll hit Yosemite in California, and then a return visit to Zion and Bryce in southern Utah.  Then maybe Canyonlands and Arches.  So many places, so little time…..

Hope you enjoy the images.  I apologize for their small size and low resolution, but I needed to keep the video file size  reasonable.  Believe me, they look much better at “normal” resolutions!

Update:  While I’ve been told that the images in the video look “OK”, I’ve added higher resolution versions on a separate gallery page (titled “Las Vegas Lights”).  Just click on any image to see the larger version.

In the Red

Some more or less random thoughts this morning:

I’ve been a New York Yankees fan for over half a century.  I remember watching people like Mantle, Maris, Berra, Ford, Howard, Richardson, Skowron, etc., etc. on black and white TV almost every fall.  That was when they actually played the World Series in the fall (instead of early winter) and when almost every game was played in the afternoon.  “Prime time” sports hadn’t been invented yet.  Kids could actually watch the games without staying up until midnight.  And they wonder why American kids don’t want to play baseball anymore.  It’s because they’ve never seen a World Series game, you idiots!   Anyway, we’d come home from school and the game would already be in progress.  Sometimes we’d have to listen to them on the radio.  Didn’t matter.  It was great stuff.  Especially if you were a fan of the mighty pinstripes.  Except, of course, for that horrible, horrible day in October, 1960 when Bill Mazeroski hit a leadoff home run in the bottom of the ninth in Pittsburgh to beat the Yankees and win the series.  It was the first time in history that a walkoff home run had ever decided the outcome of the fall classic.  It took me months to get over that one.

But last night was good.  The Yankees won their 27th World Series.  Far more championships than other team in any other sport (at least in major professional sports).  As often happens, it wasn’t one of the big “super stars” that decided the outcome.  It was Hideki Matsui – probably playing in his last game as a Yankee – who provided all the big hits.  I loved it.  All’s right with the sports world, at least until next spring.

On a more serious note: In the news this morning it was reported that some major banking firms on Wall Street (like Goldman Sachs) have received as much swine flu vaccine as the local hospitals in New York City.  It was quickly pointed out that no rules were broken, but I have to say that this just really smells bad.  Flu vaccine is routinely distributed to corporations every year, but this isn’t your “routine” flu.  Why should major banks on Wall Street get 200 doses of this stuff when doctors can’t get it and people are standing in line for hours to get it all across the country?  Like pregnant women and kids.  This just doesn’t make sense.  This is a case, I think, where Barack Obama should get in front of the microphone and simply say, “No more.   We (the administration) will not only control distribution, we will strictly enforce the guidelines that already exist”.  I for one would love to see the guy show a little more backbone.  Like millions of others, I voted for “change”, not a limitless perpetuation of the status quo.  First the banks take our money, and now they get first dibs on flu vaccine?  Like I said, it just really smells bad.   

Speaking of politics, Michael Steele, the chairman of the RNC (Republican National Committee), said yesterday that  the GOP gubenatorial wins on Tuesday were the beginning of a “Republican Renaissance”.  Now there’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.  Does either major party in this country have a clue, even a small inkling, of what’s really going on?  I’m beginning to think not.

Speaking of political humor, one Republican congresswoman stood on the floor of the House last week and said that passage of any of the currently proposed healthcare reform bills would be more dangerous to the future of the United States than terrorists.  Say what?  You’re kidding right?  No, probably not.  The inmates are truly running the asylum. 

I think I’ll go back to that waterfall.  Life is simpler there, even if it’s only a temporary reprieve from ”real life”.

Table for One

Waterfall, Stony Brook SP, NY

One of the great things about being out of the rat race – even if it’s not completely voluntary – is that you can choose to eat lunch whenever and wherever you want.  In this case, sitting on a large flat rock in the middle of a stream while listening to the soothing sounds of a waterfall seemed to be a fine idea.  I just left the camera on the tripod, pulled a sandwich from my backpack, and enjoyed the ambiance.  I didn’t even have to leave a tip.

A Light Mystery

Charlotte Lighthouse, Rochester, NY

As most people who live in and around Rochester know, we have our very own lighthouse.  Originally built in 1822 to guide ships coming in off the lake, the Charlotte Lighthouse (pronounced Shar-lot, as in a lot of money) sits near the mouth of the Genesee River.  In this case, “near” is the operative word.  When I first saw this light years ago, I was very much puzzled by its location.  It’s a good half mile from where the river actually meets Lake Ontario.  One would think that mariners of the day would have wanted it located as close as possible to the river’s entrance.  Why, then, was it placed so far upstream?

Now I have to say that I wasn’t losing any sleep over it.  Every time I saw it the question would pop into my head, only to pop right back out again as soon as it was out of sight (I’m a firm believer in the old “out of sight, out of mind” adage).  But the other day – the same day that I saw the Stephen B. Roman – I decided to walk up to the lighthouse just to see if I could get any decent images of it.  Lighthouses have always interested me and I’d never seriously attempted to photograph this one.

While walking around the grounds, a guy who was obviously connected to the place came up to me and said that he had to go up into the tower – would I like to come along?  I said sure.  It’s only 40 feet tall, so it wasn’t much of a climb.  I don’t know if you’ve ever climbed the Hatteras tower on the Outer Banks, but that’s a serious lighthouse.  You could have a heart attack walking up those stairs.  But it’s one hell of a view once you get there.

I didn’t get any good images from the tower, but this one will give you an idea of the distance from the light to the mouth of the river, and hence an inkling of the mystery that’s been banging around in my head for all these years.

As you can see, the river’s mouth is a way’s off.  So I asked him if he knew why they’d built the light so far from where it would be most beneficial to incoming vessels.  For just the briefest moment I got this look of incredulity, a look that asked, ”are you really this dumb”?  But just for an instant.  Then he pointed out through the glass.

“Do you see the railroad tracks down there”, he asked?  “That’s where the shoreline was in 1822″.  I was dumbstruck.  It just didn’t seem possible that all of that extra land, land that was now covered with roads and houses and a very large beach area, could have materialized in only 187 years.  He knew the questions that were forming in my befuddled brain. 

“It’s because of the piers”, he said.  “After the lighthouse was built, they put solid piers on either side of the river that extended into the lake.  The piers kept sandbars from forming across the river’s mouth.  But the sand had to go somewhere.  It built up along the piers, parallel to them, slowly creating beach area.  Once that started, dirt was brought in to fill in behind the sand, creating more useable land area.  Over the years, the lighthouse got farther and farther away from the new shoreline”.

Well, son of a gun.  And here I’d thought that the guys who originally built the light just flat didn’t know what they were doing.  I thanked him and went on my way.  He’s probably still chuckling about the tall, dumb guy with the nice camera.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Entering Port of Rochester

No, I don’t mean ghosts and goblins on Halloween.  I mean large vessels that seem to have a knack for bumping into things that they shouldn’t.  Bump into, that is.

But I’m way ahead of myself.

The other day I spent the afternoon walking what’s called the Genesee Riverway Trail, a trail that runs from just south of the city – along the river, obviously – all the way to the river’s mouth (into Lake Ontario).  I’d have to check, but I think the trail is 9 or 10 miles long and is paved most of the way.  Personally, I’ve never come close to walking the whole thing.  I tend to spend most of my time near the northern end by the lake.

Anyway, at the end of this particular excursion I was getting ready to leave when I heard the horn on the lift bridge signal that it was going to open up.  I went back to the river’s edge, looked downstream, and saw a very large vessel heading into the port.  It was the Stephen B. Roman, a cement carrier that spends most of its time sailing around Lake Ontario.  Rochester, you see, is kind of a regional center for cement.  If you live in the northeast and need to buy a bag or two of powdered cement, those bags probably will have come from Rochester.  That’s not nearly as glamorous as being the world’s center for photographic film (Eastman Kodak), of course, but the world has changed.  We used to do film - now we do cement. 

Naturally, I decided to photograph this particular event.  I mean, you just don’t get that many chances at this.  It isn’t as if this is the Port of New York or Charleston or San Francisco.  It just isn’t very busy.  Then, once I had the picture, I figured I should do “due diligence” and conduct a little research on the vessel.  I knew it was big – it looked like a battleship in a bathtub – but how big was it?

Well, that part was easy: it’s 488′ long and can carry 7,600 tons of powdered cement.  That’s big for the Genesee River.  The channel coming in, at least the dredged part, isn’t all that wide.  If you look at the image, you’ll see a guy standing right at the bow of the vessel.  He isn’t on break and he isn’t sightseeing.  He’s making sure that they remain in the center of the channel and that the way is clear.  This thing is moving very, very slowly.

What fascinated me, though, was what I read about the ship’s history.  It was originally built in 1965 and christened the Fort William.  On one of its first voyages, while docked in Montreal, the ship capsized and exploded, killing 5 crewmen.  Apparently, they were moving cargo to an upper deck while pumping ballast at the same time, rendering the vessel unstable.  Not a good start.

Then, in August 1967, the ship was involved in a head-on collision on Lake Huron.  In December 1977 she ran aground (in a fog) near Toledo, Ohio.  Finally, in October 1979, the starcrossed vessel hit the Detroit River light (again, in a fog).  All in all, not a great track record for a Great Lakes vessel.

She was eventually sold and converted (in 1983) into the cement carrier she is today.  Interestingly, they also changed her name.  Apparently, it worked.  She hasn’t been involved in any kind of incident since.         

So I guess it’s true – there’s always a story behind every image you capture.  You just have to look for it.