Treat Yourself to the Best . . .

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A few posts back at the end of January, I had shared a detail of this barn facade with you, showing just two words, "the Best", asking if anyone could guess what the entire message was. Just in case anyone has been losing tremendous amounts of sleep over that unanswered question, here is the entire barn end, from central Pennsylvania, back in September.
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Was thinking about this again because I just finished re-reading Edward Abbey's marvellous book, "The Fool's Progress : An Honest Novel", in which he mentions one of these Mail Pouch barn advertising signs, which were prevalent long ago. Less so now that the risks of mouth and throat cancer associated with chewing tobacco are widely known. No wonder the signs are fading. A bygone era, when tobacco was made to sound romantic. Although, can you imagine wanting to kiss someone who has a mouthful of chewing tobacco ?
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Someone was a bit perplexed as to why I was hanging over the rail fence there taking pictures early that morning.
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Murdered Appliances. . .

In the opening pages of Edward Abbey's giant novel "The Fool's Progress : An Honest Novel", his autobiographical character Henry Lightcap uses several shots from a .357 magnum to silence a noisy Fridgidaire refrigerator, an unforgettable kickoff to an epic story of his journey back to his roots. This washing machine which I photographed in a field in France had suffered a similar fate. . .

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Edward Abbey !

Two of my all time favorite books by anybody are illustrated here . . . In "The Fool's Progress", Edward Abbey has left us some of the finest writing by any wordsmith in the English language. He had an inkling, a premonition, or perhaps a certitude that his health was failing, and he poured out an intensely human voyage back to his roots in rural Appalachia in this story. As for "Black Sun", it is quite simply one of the most beautiful tales of love and loss ever written. I strongly encourage you to go out and acquire these two books if they are not already in your personal library... and let me know what you think of them...

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Midnight Blue

This tiny but beautiful chapel was on a stone outcropping above the port of Roscoff, Brittany, France ; photo taken on a bitter cold, clear winter day three weeks ago. I think the sensor in my camera was having a hard time between the blinding bright white walls and the brilliant blazing blue sky above, and for unknown reasons decided to darken the sky nearly to black, or at least to midnight blue... maybe something like this sky color was what Edward Abbey had in mind when he coined the title "Black Sun" for his book of that name...
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PS... Just noticed in the above that without thinking intentionally about it, I used two of the four key words in the vastly important 4B principle. You know about the 4 "B"s, right ??? No ??? Well, it goes like this : The 4 B Principle : If you can't Blind them with your Brilliance, then by all means Baffle them with your Bulls**t ! Very useful for business presentations... I don't know who coined that little gem...
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Black Pine

How about a perfectly neutral post for once ? The black silhouette of our neighbor's pine tree taken from our barred bathroom window... Black Pine... reminds me of Edward Abbey's book "Black Sun", one of the most hauntingly beautiful love stories ever written. If you haven't read it yet, well, don't wait any longer. But be careful, you may find yourself wanting to travel to Northern Arizona after having done so... and that is a whole 'nother can of worms to open...

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Edward Abbey & Eliot Porter

I forget exactly how I first came across Edward Abbey, it was so long ago. But this dog-eared paperback copy of Desert Solitaire was the first one I found somewhere right around the end of highschool, this printing was from October 1977. And while looking up the printing date on the back of the title page, I just noticed a detail that had escaped me all these years and all the times I've read this book... the cover photograph here was done by Eliot Porter. Well, I said earlier that sometimes I'm a little slow... anyway, I'll do a double shot of free advertising here : please go straight to Amazon.com or other bookseller, and order all of Abbey's books, and all of Eliot Porter's too, while you are at it, you won't regret it. Excellent reading and excellent photos. To give you a little taste of why I love Edward Abbey's writing so much, here is one short paragraph from Desert Solitaire where he is discussing the Native American art that can be found on rock faces in the canyon country of Southern Utah :

"One thing is certain, the pre-Columbian Indians of the Southwest, whether hunting, making arrowpoints, going on salt-gathering expeditions or otherwise engaged, clearly enjoyed plenty of leisure time. This speaks well of the food-gathering economy and also of its culture, which encouraged the Indians to employ their freedom in the creation and sharing of a durable art. Unburdened by the necessity of devoting most of their lives to the production, distribution, sale and servicing of labor-saving machinery, lacking proper recreational facilities, these primitive savages were free to do that which comes as naturally to men as making love -- making graven images. But now they are gone..."