savannah photographic workshop

“16 feet per second per second” is a formula I remember from high school physics. I don’t really get the math, but I understand the idea is to calculate the acceleration of a falling object starting from an at-rest position. This is, of course, theoretical, and does not include factors such as air resistance. Galileo, an astronomer-physicist-mathematician-engineer, in an apocryphal story, in the late 1500’s, supposedly dropped two spheres of differing mass from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that acceleration was a constant, disputing Aristotle’s theory that objects of a larger mass would fall faster because of gravity. If someone tried to replicate that particular experiment today, with the sea of visitors standing around the Tower, someone would likely be badly injured, or worse. As we walked onto the plaza surrounding the Tower, Cathedral, and (not shown) Baptistery, we noticed some odd contorting behavior from randomly scattered people. Since this was long before the advent of Flash Mobs, we did not have that as a quick-to-mind explanation, but soon realized it was individuals, usually with an assist from a friend, trying to use a camera and forced perspective to compress their position photographically with the Tower and appear to be holding it up, or trying to right it. My attempt was to seem to be sitting, leaning back against it. (Of course we did photos too.) One factoid I learned is the Baptistery building was necessary (for baptisms) because in the Middle Ages anyone not christened was prohibited from entering the Cathedral, and my favorite lesson from Galileo is that you can be judged a heretic, and still be right, but it might take 350 years to set the record straight. “e pur, si muove”

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I love olives, and I’ve worked my way to the bottom of many a martini, to that prize nestling in the perfect v shape, in the only style of glass appropriate to that particular refreshment. I like them whole or pitted, gin-soaked or not, with or without pimento stuffing, seldom with blue cheese or almond stuffing and never, ever that in a martini. I love chocolate, too, but a Chocolate Martini is an abomination. In today’s world of infinite options, one must maintain some standards. Somewhere in the ancestry of every urban dweller is someone who was the bridge from country to city. For me, that was my parents. They grew up in rural 20’s, 30’s and 40’s America, which was much more remote than rural America today, and were tempered by the Great Depression and World War. Just the communication technologies alone blur the lines between those regions now, but Mom’s and Dad’s families would only listen to the radio for a carefully calculated amount of time, to conserve the batteries. Neither Mom nor Dad finished school, Dad (the oldest son of 7 kids) dropping out in the 7th grade to help work the farm, and Mom (middle child of 8) quitting in the 10th to help take care of her siblings. So the table I sat at growing up offered a basic meat and potatoes diet; nothing exotic like olives or stinky cheeses (I love those also, the stinkier the better), but they knew where every food item came from, the time and labor it took to produce it, and what (sometimes bloody) process it went through in becoming our meal. I didn’t and I don’t, except in the most general way. If there is an apocalypse and I survive the initial impact, I will almost certainly poison myself or starve to death because of that gap in my education. So maybe it’s understandable that when we passed the first olive grove I had ever seen, and with fruit on the trees, I could not resist plucking one and popping it into my mouth to taste a really fresh olive (I understand now that may be oxymoronic). I was lucky to not chip a tooth; it was hard as stone. It may be a character flaw that even all these years later I don’t know how olives get from that to delicious, but I’m grateful that when I go to the supermarket to harvest my olives, someone does know how to prep them for me.

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I had been wanting a leather bomber jacket for awhile, and heard Florence was a great place for leather goods, so my quest, when I got there, was to see “David,” the Uffizi, and find a jacket I liked, with some random wandering the streets in between. We were staying just outside the city and when we drove in on our first morning, I grabbed the first parking space I saw. Immediately, we saw a leather goods shop right next to our parking space. They had a jacket style that seemed exactly what I was looking for, but only one in my size. It was the first place we shopped and I was reluctant to commit without looking around some more, so we spent the rest of the day shopping, but never found anything even close. First thing the next morning we went straight to the shop, but no parking was nearby, so I dropped Barbara off and drove on until I found a space. A few minutes later, as I entered the shop, Barbara’s face and the shake of her head told me right away that it was gone. The saleswoman, in halting English, told me how sorry she was, but that a customer had come in after us the day before and bought it. Knowing I would not be happy with anything else at that point, we concentrated on the rest of our casual itinerary. I don’t know if the museum layout is the same today, but when we went into the Accademia Gallery, from the lobby, we stepped into a dark hallway and at the other end he stood there, spectacular, glowing in a pool of light. Slowly, as our eyes adjusted to the low light in the hallway, we could see five of Michelangelo’s Slave sculptures, raw and muscular and more powerful in some ways than the polished, finished “David” that he had created earlier in his life. The Uffizi, the food, the wine, walking the streets–it was all so good that my disappointment over the jacket gradually receded. Three months later, when I opened my Christmas present from Barbara, it was the jacket. In the few minutes it had taken me to park the car she had bought it, arranged shipping, and coached the clerk, without benefit of any Italian language, on how disappointed to act. Even thirty six years later, I have never been able to surprise her so well.

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I have a pretty good sense of direction. That, combined with a good, large scale, Michelin map, and I can navigate my way with little difficulty, a handy skill in the days before GPS tools were commercially available. For the drive from Venice to Florence though, I decided to take a more casual approach, just pointing in the general direction of Florence, and figured road signs along the way would keep me going, nominally, in the right direction. That worked pretty well for a while, staying on two lane blacktop for a more interesting drive than the autostrata would have been. Slowly, the road began to narrow, and the center line disappeared, but I expected that to be temporary and that that trend would reverse itself at some point. When the asphalt ended and the road turned into a dirt track I had to acknowledge that, even in Italy, all roads do not lead to Rome, or Florence in this case. I had the map. but now I did not know where I was, so it didn’t help much. About the time the road turned into a rut, I noticed a tavern next to the road, and if I must ask for directions, then a bar seems like a good, dual purpose place for that. I went in and asked, but of the several patrons hanging out, no one spoke English, and I did not speak Italian (still don’t), but 5-6 guys came out to the car, spread the map on the hood and carried on an incomprehensible (to me) conversation, all pointing in different directions. That didn’t help much and I imagine I just backtracked the paved road until I found some better signage, but before leaving I went back into the bar and somehow made myself clear to the barman that I wanted a bottle of red wine. He reached into a bin of empty wine bottles, pulled one out, rinsed it out, and filled it from a tap on a keg along the back of the bar. He jammed a cork into the top and charged me the equivalent of $1. It was delicious, but I suspect that had as much to do with context as it did with the grape. The event reminded me how important it is to just go get lost sometimes.

It was a rainy night in Venice, and my 39th birthday. It was not a heavy rain, but enough to clear the streets and make the place feel deserted. The dark corners of the city had a mysterious air, like scenes from a Cold War era espionage movie set in eastern Europe. We had just the one afternoon and evening to visit before heading to Florence the next morning, and after doing some aimless rambling to get a feel for the place, we realized it was getting close to closing time for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and we were too far away to walk there in time. We had also intended to take a gondola ride (cliche that it is, you have to do it at least once), so we hired the first boatman we could find and asked him to take us to the museum. Going by canals was a much more direct route. He took us through narrow waterways and then across the Grand Canal, putting us out onto the side of the museum facing the canal. We stepped over a small fence and crossed the patio, stopping to admire the Marino Marini statue of “The Little Horseman” with its removable phallus, and then stepped into the galleries. We rushed through to see as much as we could before closing and then left through the main door where we noticed there was an entrance fee we had missed with our “alternate” gateway. A little more ambling and we found a place to have a nice Birthday dinner. We sat outdoors, in a fabric-tented space and listened to the rain. I remember a vignette of a man running by with his coat pulled over his head, heading for shelter. The restaurant was empty so the maitre’d shooed away our waiter (who spoke no English) and waited on us himself, entertaining us with tales of his time in America working on a cruise ship. Earlier in the day I had bought a yellow bow tie with a paisley pattern (I don’t know why; I almost never wear bow ties) so I went to the Men’s Room and put it on, to dress up a bit for the evening. After Chateaubriand for Two, and a fabulous dessert (I only remember it was something chocolate), we finished our visit with a late night stroll through the Piazza San Marco. A little rain never hurt anyone.

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Although the photographer seen here is Barbara, it does not follow that the person crawling up to peer over the edge of this mountain is me. Nope. I can see what’s NOT there from back here, thank you. We were continuing our first trip, traveling from Liechtenstein (see last week’s post, https://savannahphotographicworkshop.com/) back through Switzerland and into northern Italy, making our way toward Venice. Along our route there was a spot with a cable car up to the top, for skiing in the winter (if you are crazy), and sightseeing when there’s no snow. We rode up to check it out. Wow! My experience of mountains had, at that point, been limited to the Smokies and the southern Appalachians. I don’t think I had ever been above the tree line, and if so, not by much. When we stepped out of the cable car (about 3000 meters up), there was a very large sign, in four languages, that said, essentially, if you die, it’s not our problem. Walking out to explore, we heard a sound, a song, flowing gently in the wind. Seeking that out, we found a group of nuns (the black clad group in the background) conducting a rite. Barbara is Catholic and she said it was a Jubilee Celebration for one of them; I’ll defer to her greater knowledge of that sort of thing.

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It was the first trip Barbara and I ever took together. It was also my first ever trip out of the USA. Arriving in some place I had read about, seen pictures of, and thought of as exotic and/or mysterious was sensory overload, trying to take it all in, trying to fix a memory long term. In my head I’m sure I was going, “…there’s the Rhine, and Switzerland, and OMG there’s the Alps, and we’re in Liechtenstein, a Fairy Tale place…,” and as a more seasoned traveler now, I miss some of that naive wonderment. What I remember now is dreamlike. We had landed in Zurich, rented a car and headed in a random, easterly direction. We had a flight home scheduled two weeks later, from Milan. Everything between arrival and departure was ours to make up as we went along. The second day, we had crossed into Liechstenstein and around lunch time saw a roadside cafe/tavern. We stopped and were ushered to tables on a back deck, built hanging off the side of an Alp (not one of any particular distinction, as far as I know). It was cool and brisk, but warm sitting in the sun. As we ate lunch and had a beer, a soft whoosh sound was a hang glider spiraling, floating slowly past us, down from the highest altitudes into the Rhine valley. It was all perfect stillness. To try to suspend the moment we had a second beer. And there was no consideration of moving on. We asked for a room in the small hotel there. They were full, but called a friend down the street who rented a guest room and it was available. Looking out the room’s window the next morning, I’m sure I heard Sister Maria singing, “The hills are alive….”

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The Grand Finale of Streak Week: 1543 people took off all their clothes and ran from south campus to north campus. Earlier in the week students at the University of South Carolina had set a record for the largest group streak at 300. Not to be outdone by Gamecocks, word spread across campus that the Dawgs would attempt to break that record. After the confrontations with Athens’ finest earlier in the week, the administration quietly put out the word that any events au natural should be confined to school property. So, on a beautiful, balmy Thursday evening, 1543 people set a record that still stands. We know the number because campus security stationed officers at every entrance to the finish area and counted them as they came in. Earlier the same day another unique moment came when five guys sky-streaked, jumping out of an airplane wearing nothing but parachutes, and landed on the intramural fields.

For more photos of the Finale of Streak Week, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-3/G0000hAtbpzmb5_0

Continuing Streak Week from my last post, passions ran high as culture wars were in full force. Lester Maddox, streaked by several men while speaking, was on campus campaigning for the Democratic nomination in the Georgia gubernatorial election, running against George Busbee. William Shockley, who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics, was also at UGA to debate his theory that non-White peoples were genetically inferior to Whites. In an early example of what is now called cancelling, he was chased from the auditorium and campus and no debate happened. To be clear, I find any notion of racial superiority abhorrent, but I also believe preventing a disagreeable opinion from being debated is wrong. The only way to defeat an argument is to offer a better argument. The Free Speech clause of the First Amendment must protect even the most vile and offensive speech, or it is an empty promise. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are for children. (Next week’s final post from Streak Week will show setting the record for the largest streak in the country, a record that still stands.)

For more photographs of the middle part of Streak Week, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-2/G0000oS5z0PWZaEo/

It was beautiful early springtime weather at the end of Winter Quarter at the University of Georgia. A colleague from The Red and Black, the daily student newspaper, was at my apartment that Monday evening when we heard there was a disturbance outside the high rise dorms along Baxter Avenue, so we hurried over. (No cell phones then, or 24/7 news coverage; not even a local TV station in Athens, so I don’t know how we heard.) Streaking had been happening around the country and a couple of people had dropped trou and drew a small crowd. Athens police overreacted by firing tear gas into the crowd drawing more students out, in a less than friendly mood. This happened the first of the week, for a couple of nights, but calmer heads prevailed and the students eventually even cleaned up the mess. It was the beginning of an eventful week.

For more photographs from the first part of Streak Week, go to: https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-1/G0000b_D9MgCzmSw/