A Random Photograph

3 March 2020

I got a new MacBook in mid-January.  This MacBook does not have much storage capacity; my phone has more.  But my computer’s storage issues were solved with the use of an external drive. Note well the external drive was much, much, much cheaper than having the additional storage added into the computer.

When I got the new computer, I moved a copy of all my photos off my phone onto the new external drive. My phone at the point of the photo dump had roughly 9,700 pictures and videos. The problem is they aren’t organized in any meaningful way.  As a result, I decided today to delve into those photos. My plan is to just pull one out and talk about it.

The random shot I have come up with is not a bad one.  The photograph captures an early morning in October of 2018, looking southeast over the Midtown apartments in Lansing. The Midtown building sits at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Friendship Circle, Michigan Avenue being a main thoroughfare to the heart of the city.

Chances are that I had walked the 35 minutes required to go from my home to office.  So late in the month of October the air was probably quite brisk at that early hour. I probably had already grabbed a coffee at the Friendship Circle Biggby’s to warm my cockles up.  While standing there, cup in hand I would shoot the breeze with the baristas.  Next, I would have gone inside to my office and set my briefcase and coffee down. Finally, I would have gone back to hang out the door because the light had caught my eye.  The above photo is the result.

Taking this photo, I was standing on the loading dock which is the early morning entrance for the Secretary of State’s Offices near the Frandor Shopping Center; this is just inside of the city limits for Lansing. The camera is pointed southeast toward the Michigan State University campus.  The university is just a stone’s through across an apartment building and a river marsh. The photo is from 8:13 am and the sun would have broken the horizon just 23 minutes earlier.  The clouds on the right-hand side of the shot capture a front moving through.

The Midtown Apartments countenance no middle ground in opinions about their design.  Me, I liked the bright, bright colors.  Others have told me they find the decoration of the building repulsive. Those strongly contrasting colors remind me of the houses in St. John, Newfoundland. You can’t really ignore such bright colors. In this shot, the bright colors of the building combine with the purple and pinks in the leading edge of a weather front and the gold of sunrise. Together I find them to have made a picture of early morning joy.  

What I miss most about walking into my office each day, now that I am retired, is that I no longer experience the same level of visual serendipity.  On any given morning as I trudged in there would be flowers or houses or people along my route conveying the wonder of being alive. I do still walk every single day and have done so for a couple of years now. On those walks I see things that catch my eye, but it isn’t quite the same. Maybe I don’t feel the same because when I was going to work, I needed something to pump up my spirits to face the tales of woe I would be hearing on any given day and thus I was more attuned to nature’s beauty. Maybe my current routes just don’t have as many wonderful gardens.

This picture is a shot from the old normal.  I am not sure I will ever pass that way again.

I am not talking about the plague today.  This is a choice I made with some deliberation. If you need a good dose of corona virus news there are plenty of outlets for you to get that information today.  Me, I need the warm sun that is out this beautiful spring day.