A vantage point for Digby area history

This column is a repeat from one on the paper's website, but I want to see why the HTML link failed there. Trying it again here.

When I started at the Courier in 1994, one of the first things I did was discover where I could find old copies of the newspaper. The Courier has been published since the mid-1870s, but it is the last five or six decades that I was interested in especially.

The Through the Pages column has told me a great deal about the community—its people and events—that I couldn’t have found as readily elsewhere.

For example, the fire that destroyed Weymouth Industries Ltd. and the efforts to encourage it rebirth are a story that is coming to life again.

The other day, Ben Prince stopped me in Tim Horton’s to say people were ribbing him about the dry cleaning business he was newly involved with 50 years ago. If he looks this week, he’ll see his name as a goal scorer in a game against Clementsport a few years back as well.

Through the Pages as much as possible is a names column, and I try to include all I can, knowing that many people from 35, 50 or 60 years are still living here in town, and others will be remembered.

There’s a lot of news that seems familiar, too. Old problems get that way by hanging around. This week’s column, which I’ll post very soon, mentions that people at Joggin Bridge and Smith’s Cove wanted a safer turnoff from Hwy. 101, and there was even a suggestion of an overpass. That was 35 years ago—and the overpass has got the over part completed, even if the turnoff element is still lacking.

One thing that caught my eye was the decision by local communities 50 years ago to sell the power generating station on the Sissiboo. The dam and the generating equipment was the property of the municipally owned Digby County Power Board. The quarter-million dollar sale to Nova Scotia Power Commission spelled the end of a locally owned power board, but that was inevitable because the demand for electricity was growing beyond the capacity of the local board, which had been buying extra power from NSP.

We forget just how little electricity was needed before 1958; even television was still new for most people in the area, and clothes hung on lines to take advantage of solar and wind power.

Karla Kelly sent me this photo from the Sissiboo dam earlier today. The facility still generates power, but it also produces a vantage point for some great images of winter. It’s nice, too, to have a little back story on the dam and the old copies of the Courier, available at the library on microfiche, are a great source of local history.

Momentary embarrassment

There I was at the scene of a traffic accident. A fuel delivery truck had rolled in a ditch and there were all the regular emergency personnel standing about. The truck driver had been whisked off to hospital, the hazardous material crew was just arriving from Yarmouth, and I was standing around having taken shots of everything that moved, talked or threatened to leak gasoline.

Here's the embarrassing thing: I was still thinking like a print journalist, albeit one who figured to write up a story back at the office, process some of the hundred photos or so, and then post it on the newspaper's website.

What about my cell phone?

Yes, I have a cell phone capable of taking a photo and uploading it to an email address. Okay, I did think of it in the end and took a few shots that were difficult to see (phones are worse than cameras for that), and sent one back to my office after phoning in a story. Photo and story were online in minutes and I felt like I'd discovered a new world.

Mind you, not having a zoom function proved something of a liability since firemen were keeping every electrical item away from the gas fumes. I wonder if I can get a 300mm f/2.8 lens for this Samsung?

I stumble along, learning the occasional new trick and that seems to keep me going. Things could be worse.

Health and Money, American-style

I dislike just posting a link without offering some reason to follow, so let me say that nothing is perfect, but those who suggest we need to follow the American style of health care should read this (and that should discourage them).

Having got the not-quite-a-polemic out of the way, let me add that this is an exceptional story, skillfully told by a fellow, Chez, who is too talented a writer to deserve a job at CNN.

Newspapers killing the goose

Newspapers are gradually realizing their future is tied to the Web, yet they still are cutting staff to save costs. Some day they'll realize that all they have to offer on the Web is better quality journalism--more accurate, more trustworthy--than the majority of blogs.

But having decimated their newsrooms, will the newspapers be able to supply their only valuable commodity?

Man, umbrella, camera

There's something about this shot that reminds me of tourist shots from 1960s Europe. Perhaps it is simply that the man resembles a Czechoslovak who married a cousin of mine and who became a long-time family friend?

The emotional attachment created by that connection makes judging the photo more subjective, but compositionally I think it is sound enough. That's part of the objective analysis.

Blind Leading the Blind

Yes, this is another non-photographic entry, but if this isn’t as visual a short story as you’ve read today, I’ll gnaw through a hockey stick (my choice of woods).

This story comes from Heading East, a blog by Raul Gutierrez, who grew up in hot and dry Texas, moved to NYC and likes snow, and big cities in the rain.

On 7th Avenue at 18th Street today I ran into a group of 7 or 8 blind men teaching two blind teenagers, a boy who looked to be about 14 and a girl who was little older, to navigate the city.

The men walked in a huddle around the kids, explaining their navigation techniques step by step. It was late afternoon and all the men and canes made long shadows. Most of the men wore dark glasses.

Both the boy and the girl were newly blind and moved awkwardly. The girl's face was burned; the boy's eyes were clouded. They reached out for steadying hands every few steps, but the men kept saying, 'Nobody is going to hold your hand out here, you have to see with your ears and your stick."

The sidewalks were full of obstacles—construction, uneven concrete, street vendors, and of course people in a hurry. Every few steps brought a new crisis. The boy got turned around. The girl stumbled. A dog on a long leash got caught up in the group. But everyone kept moving.

Near the corner of 19th Street one of the older men detected a construction barrier with his cane. He stopped and waited, listening to hear if his charges would navigate it, but both slammed straight in. The girl fell again this time in a muddy puddle. The man helped her up, took her hand and demonstrated how she had missed the sawhorse. He repeated this with the boy.

The girl was on the verge of tears. She was silent, but you could see all the frustration and fear well up on her face. Somehow the boy knew what was happening. He took her hand, "You'll get it, don't worry you're already better than me." The men in the protective circle moved in a bit tighter. Everyone patted the kids on the back murmuring encouragement; one squeezed the girl's shoulders and you could see her relax. "I'm ok. It's ok. Let's go." Then they all continued moving ever so slowly down the avenue.

What a monumental day in the lives of some people we’ll never know…even if we somehow caught a sense of their lives.

Technology that needs no batteries, never crashes, is always on

A friend candidly admits he hasn’t read a book since high school. Since he normally gets passed the ‘You-know-you’re-middle-aged-when’ mug if he drops in for coffee, that’s quite a few years without his cracking a book.

There was a time I would have found that incomprehensible.

Books line the shelves in two rooms at home, lie in small piles on the floor and even sit on the couch beside me. Their pages just don’t seem to be turned any more. There never seems to be time now to curl up for a quiet wander through a novel or even to open a cookbook to a favourite recipe.

Everything is online, and computers have information, photos and graphics that can keep Web pages flashing past. Links lead to exploration and onto other sites. RSS feeds provide constant updates on areas of interest, social sites like Facebook link friends across the province or the nation.

Despite the foregoing, I was somewhat shocked last month when Apple boss Steve Jobs said reading is pretty well dead. His statistic was that 40 per cent of Americans last year read one book or less.

My shock wasn’t about the 40 per cent of Americans. It was the realization I might be falling into that category.

I read all the time. It’s my job as well as my avocation. But I no longer am reading books. It seems the thirst for the written word can be slaked at the electronic trough as readily as the volumes that line my shelves. I won’t give them up, even if I have to dust them occasionally, but I worry that a choice has been made almost unconsciously.

This brings up a question about the future of public libraries.

Libraries themselves are millennia old, but public lending libraries we know now are a fairly recent development. They got a big boost in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Scottish-American businessman Andrew Carnegie donated the money for building thousands of libraries in English-speaking countries.

At the moment, libraries are facing major difficulties finding funds to buy books. At the same time, libraries have to wonder whether they’ll have any patrons to read those books in a decade or two. Politicians are in charge of the taxpayer-funded purse and they are as aware as Jobs that too few people read books.

But politicians should know that it is much too early to give up on books, one of the world’s most reader-friendly packages for conveying information and illuminating minds. Forget Jobs’ comment. It can be tipped on its head to read that 60 per cent of Americans (and Canadians, by extension) do read books.

Yes, many people have turned away from books and magazines paper for most of their daily reading, but try reading an electronic novel on a computer. When it comes to such books, new technology has yet to supplant the tried-and-true.

For comfortable reading, you need something that can be held in both hands, is easily transportable, offers easy scrolling by the eyes without constantly needing to hit a ‘page down’ button, and smells fresh when it is opened.

If it was also the size and weight and shape of a book, required no batteries, never crashed, and was always ‘on’, that is remarkably durable technology, and its lifetime is nowhere near over yet.

Now, I just have to close this laptop and put a book on my lap instead.

Monday morning moon

Looking the opposite direction of 'Sunday stroll'--and a few hours later.

Sunday stroll

I've been remiss about posting this week, with most of my time spent working or trying to get the Soundslides audio slide project off the ground at the company website. I was looking for a different view of town today and wound up shooting along the waterfront with a 420mm lens combo (300mm and 1.4 extender), which--just to confuse matters--is equivalent to 546mm since the 1D models use a sensor somewhat smaller than 35mm film.

All the math is a way of extending this post, I admit, but it's late and I want to go to bed. Farewell and adieu, adios and goodnight. I can see by office window, by the way, and the tide is definitely out.