Pfc. Abraham Mirmelstein of Newport News, Virginia, holds the Holy Scroll as Capt. Manuel M. Poliakoff, and Cpl. Martin Willen, of Baltimore, Maryland, conduct services in Schloss Rheydt, former residence of Dr. Joseph Paul Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, in Münchengladbach, Germany on March 18, 1945. They were the first Jewish services held east of the Rur River and were offered in memory of soldiers of the faith who were lost by the 29th Division, U.S. 9th Army.

Pesach does not occur again until April, 2020.  The most sacred day of the year for Jews is Yom Kippur which begins tomorrow at sundown and ends after sundown on Wednesday.  This was just too good for me to resist posting even though it doesn’t coincide.

Wednesday Poggioreale Vecchio Open Comments

I found Grandpa’s original village after hearing my Dad tell me he described it as “a blasted rock” and that it was called something like “porto re-all-ee”. I found a road map of Sicily at the downtown library and when my eye fell upon “Poggioreale,” I knew I’d hit pay dirt. I’d connected online with another descendant of the village, and he spends half his year there, and has been there long enough to do genealogy studies on the village. It was about 1500 people, and very insular, so I’m sure the family tree looked like an average Arkansas family tree. Robert told us that if we’d moved there, our grandchildren *might* be considered villagers. Marrying an outsider was highly suspicious. He told of a woman who married her husband 30 years ago, and he still wasn’t fully accepted.

There was an earthquake in ’68 or ’69 that took out several villages in the area. A new Poggioreale was built by the Italian government and the villagers were relocated there. Poggioreale Vecchio (Old Poggioreale) is crumbling now. This bell tower of the madre duomo (mother church) fell a few years after our visit. (There were seven churches in the village, we were told.) The Poggioreale mayor is trying to get foreigners to invest in Poggioreale vecchio and rebuild the old village.

I’ve seen a picture of this image from before the earthquake. It had the priest and a class of students lined up on the steps. This staircase empties into Piazza Elimo, which was the main piazza of the village. As I stood there on the piazza, I could hear the past in the whispers of the wind: children kicking a ball, women gossiping about the young couples strolling arm in arm, the men drinking wine and discussing the crops….

Tuesday Open Comments (Click the pic)

If a person knows their camera has a bit of imagination and has a cursory knowledge of how light works anyone can take a pleasing picture. This bloom was shot with a cheapo Sony Mavica  and a Ikelite flash light.  Very very little post processing.

AND patience, ya gotta have patience when photographing anything.  I stalked this hawk for 10 minutes before I could get a shot. Don’t ask me what kind of hawk this is.  I do not know.

Manipulating light is one of my favorite things to do in photoshop.  This is the same bloom as above only desaturated (that is turned black and white for the uninitiated, but y’all knew that).  My middle brother and my grandfather are wizards of black and white photography.  Right now I can only wish I was that good.

I feel like I can take Audubon Society pictures with the best of them, but it is pictures with movement and action I covet most.  If all you have is a phone camera or a rig like mine, get out and capture some memories.  While I do enjoy sharing God’s gifts, at the end of the day the pictures I take are for me.  I do not worry about what other people think about my quality.  It is the moment in time I have in my memory the picture represents that matters most.

Weekend Open Forum

Target Practice by Tom Lovell

During and after the 1960s, Lovell increasingly focused on the American Southwest. In 1969, Lovell was commissioned by George and Gladys Abell to produce a series of paintings for the future Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland Texas. In 1995, Tom Lovell said the paintings he did for the Abell Foundation were “some of the most important commissions in (his) life.”  In 1975, Lovell and his family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, continuing to create works centering on Native Americans and the American Southwest.

Lovell was a member of the Society for Illustrators, eventually being named as a Hall of Fame Laureate in 1974. He was also a member of the Cowboy Artists of America. In 1992, both the National Academy of Western Art and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame honored Lovell with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also a two-time winner of the National Academy of Western Art’s Prix de West.