Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 1

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 2

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 3

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 4

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 5

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 6

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 7

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 8

Trappers Shack Diner – Fort Vermilion, Ab – Canada 9

This day had begun with intention – to consider the state of this wordpress blog and consider what’s next; what does it become? For the longest while this blog has been memory’s placeholder, a responding point for photographs created. In the editing of each image, memory could be pulled forward to surface, the image associating to personal history and consideration, a starting point from which to journal. Today, though, the question was that of what does this blog next become. Is it now time to move the photoblog towards a Blurb book or perhaps a Mixbook, a hardcopy, something you need two hands to look at?

The day began with photoblog intention, investigating the integrity of photo files starting with the blog’s oldest photos. I was surprised to find that first photos I’d posted were surprisingly out of focus – the consequence of using Adobe Lightroom with presets alone; these images were created long before editing images in NiK Collection and Topaz software. I returned to original images and had a second go at editing. Along the way I rediscovered images that had been b-sides, those that had not been first choices for presentation in this blog.

The endeavor began in fueling my body in front of a computer screen – coffee, an omelette and raisin toast. The images for editing were four-year old photos from Fort Vermilion, Alberta (December, 2011). A previous century building was first edit, a building that had been re-purposed to serve as restaurant – The Trappers Shack Diner. And, while it was all the go four years back, it has, within these past two years, sat vacant. This blog has tended to do that, encourage recognition of beginnings and recognition of how and when change occurs, particularly slower moving changes – the aging barn photographed has collapsed, the rare find of a La Crete-bound forties, three-tonne REO Speedwagon cab and chassis has now been sold and removed from its Manning, Alberta farmer’s field, the forested land that was forest, is now cleared, a farmer’s field with next use in Rocky Lane, Alberta.

Time editing, today, has held music. A friend and minister recommended new tunes, an album by Mary Coughlan and Erik Visser, ‘Scars on the Calendar’ – jazzy, dark and resonant in lyric and tune. A second album that I’ve previously looked for was recommended and found today on iTunes, ‘Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ a look at the sixties folk scene and the music associated with the movie, ‘Inside Llewyn Davis.’

Curious Quotes to Consider – “‘Religion and art,’ he says, ‘are almost the same thing anyway. Just different ways of taking a man out of himself, bringing him to the emotional pitch that we call ecstasy or rapture. They’re both a rejection of the material, common-sense world for one that’s illusory, yet somehow more important. Now it’s always when a man turns away from this common-sense world around him that he begins to create, when he looks into a void, and has to give it life and form.’” … Mrs. Bentley quoting her husband. Sinclair Ross, ‘As for Me and My House,’ p. 112; after re-reading this curious quote, the pull toward Carl Jung and his quote surfaced – “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” Jung’s quote is engraved on a dark metal plaque I have hanging in my office at school.

Listening to – musician and songwriter, Brian Houston’s ‘We don’t need religion,’ a protest song – ‘we could use the love of God’ (excerpted lyrics).