Goodbye Vivian

Goodbye Vivian was taken on the long way to anywhere, Route 301, as it snakes through the infinite tidal flat lands. When this sign worked its way over the horizon, I was a bit struck by the personal tone. Surely it was for a goodbye party, or a retirement. Maybe they didn’t have enough letters to make a longer message.  There’s a song called "Goodbye Vivian" but the sign predates it by many years. It made me sad to know that Vivian had already left. I pulled in the empty parking lot, got out, took the picture, sat in the car for a while. 


The color in the photo: courtesy of Kodak and Kodachrome. Its was always a bit too vivid.

Photograph of a Water Skimmer on White Rock Falls Trail

I took this photo of a “skimmer” (water strider is the proper name) in a small stream on the White Rock Falls trail in Virginia. The stream  through a hilly section divided into small pools.
    The skimmers tended to shy away into a corner of the pool as they saw me lean in to take photos. Then, if I was fairly motionless, they would repopulate the surface slowly. The fact that they can float on surface tension, with thin “feet” is hard to really imagine. They should need tiny pontoons. The shadows of the skimmers on the stream bottom were interesting too. There were shadow circles where their feet were. The curvature of the water must have diverted the sunlight enough to cause a shadow.