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February 18, 2015

HELPING SET UP THE UNIVERSE

... okay, just a catchy way of saying i accompanied john, who is nursing a sore shoulder, to saco to help him set up the planetarium for a couple of showings at the town library ... mostly, i just hauled some of the equipment in from the parking lot, setting the whole thing up is a complex soletary choreography he's perfected through thirty years practice ... once the kids started filing in i went for a little stroll down route one ...

... beautiful, but i saw many older buildings, now multi-unit apartments, that had icicles so bad they posed structural danger ...

... not sure why, perhaps a higher tax base, but saco plows its sidewalks ... this fence fascinated me ...

... shooting with the ancient olympus 50mm f/1.8 manual focus lens on my little x-e1, i spent twenty minutes exploring about forty feet of snow-banked pickets ...

... what can i say, other'n i live in new england ...

... grammy and grampy (or, considering where they are from and my own childhood, "mémé" and "pépé") had brought their grandchildren for the show ... one of the kids asked me, "do you know where diamonds come from" ... i translated an entire geology text chapter into ten-year-old speak, and, by time we were finished, his grandmother had gotten some paper and was making notes so that next summer she could take her grandkids to coo's canyon to do some panning for gold ...

... there was just a hint of light remaining as we headed back to portland, so john routed us over to the portland head light ... no tripod, shivering in the cold, damp sea spray, nevertheless we took a few minutes to live to our motto—"if we're truly crazy, we might as well take some pictures to prove it" ...

... i'm rather photographically proud of this image ... hand-held at 1/5 second, my simple intent was to share this with you ... i'm crossing my fingers i accomplished that ...

... a perfect way to end a great day ... fresh fish for john ... for me, enticed as i was by the fried haddock, hearing a faint echo, "patrick ... do you eat french fries with everything," i opted for a most excellent—yes, i hear your chorus, "turkey club on toasted rye, hold the mayo, please" ...

... in the dark of his air bubble dome john teaches, "all you need do is open your eyes and look, the universe'll take care of the awe and wonder rest of it" ...

... he's so right ...