232. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Kingstown. Why is it that shoreline cultures are more given to bright colors?
231. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Granadines. I can stare for hours at large bodies of water–how they move, how sunlight plays on them at different times of day. I am not alone in this, and have often wondered about this universal human attraction. I finally understood it while reading Genesis: “And the earth was without form, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
230. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Granadines. I have a good camera (more importantly some great glass), so I’m always shocked by the quality of images taken on a $199 cell phone.
229. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
228. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Kingstown. Port towns are always interesting due to their naturally occurring cosmopolitanism and commerce. Kingstown was established in its modern form by Frenchmen in 1722, but had 196 years of British Empire rule. The Botanical Garden is one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere (1765), but you will pay to see it in the tropical humidity and heat because it is a climb. Everything is a climb here–the shoreline is flat for a hundred feet and then its uphill.
227. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A lifetime of travel develops certain opinions on how quality of life is defined. “Paradise” is a tropical island, and Saint Vincent qualifies. But its the things that don’t make it onto the postcards–quality of food for example. I noticed immediately the richness of the soil, which is not necessarily common on volcanic islands. All the fruits and vegetables are grown on the island–nothing is imported. The fish you eat was pulled from the sea a few hours ago; the vegetables and fruits were grown a few miles away. A person I met who splits her time between Saint Vincent and the USA said that “I eat the same things in the same amounts in both places, but when I come to Saint Vincent I immediately lose fifteen pounds off that clean food.”
226. PASSAGES. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Wiki: “Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a sovereign state in the Lesser Antilles island arc, in the southern portion of the Windward Islands, which lies in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.” In other words, a small island off the north coast of South America.
225. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Soho.
224. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Lower East Side. Looking east toward Brooklyn on a summer evening.
#223. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Riverdale, The Bronx. Riverdale is one of the little-known gems of New York, as is this Riverdale subway station on the “elevated train”, known as The El. In the day there were several Els in Manhattan, but nowadays you will only find them in the outer boroughs.
222. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Brooklyn. East Williamsburg, maybe the most interesting industrial wasteland in the Western Hemisphere.
221. NEW YORK ON FOOT. Midtown East.
220. TRAVELS IN INDIA. New Delhi.
219. PASSAGES. Isla Mujeres, Mexico. If the ocean air and sun of the Caribbean don’t get you, the color will.
218. PASSAGES. Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
217. PASSAGES. South Beach, Miami. That Caribbean sky . . .
216. PASSAGES. Baltimore. The trade-off between the “artistic” effect of low-fi equipment versus pristine technical values. The lens was plastic not glass, the camera wanted to overexpose by two stops minimum, but something might be lost had it been techically perfect.
215. PASSAGES. Saskatchewan, Canada. So cold that even the air crystallizes. But the sun shines. Always.
214. PASSAGES. Northampton, England. There is no damp, cold light like English damp, cold light. “All this time the river flowed in the falling light of a Northern sun.” – Gordon Sumner (Sting), of Newcastle.
213. TRAVELS IN INDIA. Mumbai.