Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia


Autumn has taken up residence is this Mid-Atlantic region of America; but from the observation car of the Capital Limited train from Chicago to Washington, I’ve been getting photographs that look as if they might have been taken with a Kodak Brownie using 25 ASA film and shooting from a bicycle going full-tilt downhill... so I’ve erased those images and am waiting for more deliberate circumstances for capturing fall color. The conditions will be right this weekend. Margaret, Nancy and I are going down to the Mall for the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial. The President and other Washington movers and shakers are scheduled to be there.

I like President Obama. I like the way he does the most difficult job in America and at the same time manages to take care of his family. When he speaks the names of his wife and daughters, he does it with genuine fatherly affection. I plead guilt to ridiculing the public silliness of some of the people who are making it their full-time job to try to limit his presidency to one term. The President doesn’t do it. I like the way he comports himself in any situation. He respects the dignity of his office. Failing to find obvious character flaws that can be made hilarious by comics and cartoonists, his political critics say he is uppity. Although they resolutely deny the characterization has anything to do with race and color, oddly the people who see hubris and haughtiness when Barack Obama walks to a podium didn’t consider George Bush’s landing on an aircraft carrier in fighter jet battle dress to declare “Mission Accomplished” to be anything but good old American patriotism.

Only one of the pictures I took from the train up near Cumberland, Maryland, was worth using today. I gave the matted and framed image above a dry brush effect. The second image, not framed, is the way the camera saw it.