I posted this in another thread, but thought it deserves more attention.

The late Bill Jay still has his website up and running, and it includes many of his classic essays and articles. If you're looking for funny, insightful and thought-provoking writing on photography, then give it a visit.

http://www.billjayonphotography.com/writingsintro.html


Chuck

Chuck, There's also a huge series of Bill's stuff in the issue of Lens Work before the current one.

Looking at those portraits sort of illustrates what has been lost along with film.

And please, nobody talk about emulating filmic effects with digital.

Rob C

Rob, Are you also still using your wood stove?

Every winter, Russ, and during a bad one I use three tons of wood and in a mild one about one-and-a-half tons of the stuff. From summer it has shot into early winter via some storms - I already have two blankets on the bed and any day now it will be time for the quilt! And the electric blanket too, of course, if only to kill the dampness.

The wood stove goes on as a last resort because of the daily grind of cleaning it out and making the glass transparent once more, but, as a main source of warmth, it beats the crap out of electricity and gas, which latter device causes even more condensation! Trouble is, since the heart event I have to pay a guy to deliver and stack; last load was €360 per ton, labour included, and I wonder what it will cost this winter.

Love some of the old ways!

;-)

Rob C (blowing smoke from pistol prior to holstering...)

Ahh...that brings back not-so-fond memories of cutting, hauling, and stacking firewood--my dad and I clear-cut 6 acres of woods one summer. I became an expert chain saw operator long before I was old enough to drive, and can pontificate eruditely at length on the difficulties of splitting elm and oak wood vs. pine, maple, or poplar. The price of the firewood may seem outrageous, but in many instances one can get a better return on one's effort going door to door selling chicken necks...

[quote name='Rob C' date='Oct 16 2009, 04:02 PM' post='317775']

Rob C (blowing smoke from pistol prior to holstering...)
[/quhttp://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?act=Post&CODE=02&f=19&t=38275&qpid=317775#ote]

Black powder, I assume.

Oops. I should have asked if you were still using your wood cooking stove?

Don't worry about the stove or the cooker; your foot is safe: I was only firing blanks!

;-)

Rob C

Ah, you sissies with your chain saws. When I was a kid (1950s) we were still cutting wood with a double-handed cross-cut saw, and bucksaws. The only think I hated more was hoeing the garden. It all sounds so bucolic and environmentally correct now, but it was one of the things that drove me to a career that would not involve such things...

When I was in the Army (1966), after AIT, the powers-that-be at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind., decided that those of us who were waiting to ship out could be usefully put to work cutting trees on what was rumored to be the planned second nine holes of the golf course. Then one day, we were all loaded into trucks, driven back to the barracks, and told that we were being given an advance on our leave for anyone who wanted to go home for a few days. I was out of there like a hot desert wind...and heard later that on the day we were picked up, and taken back, some city kid with a chainsaw had dropped the top half of a dead tree on himself, and either killed or crippled himself. Don't know if it was true, but the clearing work was being so incompetently done, I didn't doubt it. I'm not sure, but chainsaws may be the most dangerous device ever invented by mankind (I have two of them), unless it's the tractor or some other farm implement.

See this.

Jeremy

John, Same thing was true in the 40s when I was a kid and spent a lot of time bucksawing. This is the kind of thing kids in the sixties discovered when they went "back to the land." They found out why their dads and grandpas busted their butts to get off the land.

I'm not sure why this is relevant, but we have that sort of problem here in Mallorca. Years ago, the island produced lots of its own food, then the Common Market gurus decreed that they would pay the farmers to slaughter lots of animals and not get new ones. Ditto with grain. This seems to have favoured the French and the Germans at the expense of the Spanish, as a drive through France will reveal millions of lush farms everywhere. Now, there is a situation where more and more stuff is imported at great expense - inevitable with an island economy - and many of those old farms have been lost to weeds and/or some sold off to rich foreigners in once-in-a-lifetime sales that render the original farmers unable ever to buy back into the market.

The older generation worked the land, began and ran business enterprises when tourism started to be viable, and had no fear of hard work. And now, I am told by some oldtimers, their children and grandchilden want to use the family money for that Mercedes or BMW but eschew the labour. This has led to the same problems as we experienced in the UK: migrant workers from much poorer economies came in - were welcomed in - to do the work that the indigenous people thought below them. The Balearics currently has over 60% unemployment and a huge proportion of non-nationals. Welcome to the disintegration of an economy if not eventually a society. I love this place, and from its people I have known nothing but kindness - it breaks me up to see it create some of its own problems.

Rob C

Firewood? Saws?

How did Bill Jay get turned into Paul Bunyan?

Chain saws can make art, too...

That they can. There's a pending court appearance over a noise complaint here in Manitou Springs, Colorado right now. The problem? The Chainsaw Bear shop -- where the guy makes wooden bears with a chainsaw. I'm not quite convinced that a chainsaw bear is art, but the tourists seem to think so.

What did they make wooden Indians with? Please, apart from wood!

Rob C

But a wooden Indian doesn't become art until it's at least 100 years old. That sort of rules out chain saws.

Then that explains why they wrote songs about them all those years ago: nothing to do with unrequited wooden love, just sympathy that they wouldn't amount to much more than firewood - which is sort of where we came in, unless one is inclined to worry about the prospects for a totem pole...

Rob C

Bill Jay is great, but the thread seems to have veered ... I had to walk through 15 miles of burning Wisconsin wilderness to get to the 1 room schoolhouse, and it was 16 miles back home, cause the planet had moved on, where I had to split the evenings wood with my bare hands, we couldn't afford those namby-pamby splitting wedges and sledges. Bunch a wooses.

On a slightly more factual note, cutting and splitting wood is greatly enhanced by the fact that the main heating system is gas, delivered as needed through a pipe, rendering the manly arts what they truely are, a hobby. One, I actually enjoy.

As to bears and indians, like a lot of art, depends on who was running the chain saw, or how lucky they were that day.