Junk from the Memory Card

Every now and then it’s good to purge stuff that has been building up over time.  With my river project, I do this by emptying out my collecting bag(s) to make way for new finds and by deleting images stored on my camera’s memory card.  I have gotten into the habit of using the memory card as another form of digital storage just in case something bad happens to all the other places I store data.  In this post, I will feature favorite images of plastic flotsam and jetsam I have gathered at the river’s edge the past two months.  I will start with the image with the flip-flops and Croc-like shoes.  These are tiny to small kids’ sizes.  A few weeks a go, I picked up eight of them along a favorite walk and realized once I reached my outdoor studio that they were all meant for the right foot!  I have since added a few extras, but the initial shock of realizing there were no left shoes remains.  I wonder if subconsciously I selected for right-footedness?  Anyway, here is a still life photo portfolio of other plastic river junk toys.

One last item and while it is not made of plastic…is nevertheless memorable.

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A Need to Form: Handmade Balls from the Falls of the Ohio

At first it looked like any other ball among the wood chips and I almost passed it by.  After all, balls are the most common toy that I find at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.  But something told me to look more closely at this one and that’s when I noticed the network of filaments that were eroding away on the surface of this silvery sphere.  Picking it up, I then realized I was holding something different and to my mind and eye a bit more fascinating too.  Yes, it is a ball, but one made from duct tape!

Over the years I have found several other handmade balls made from different materials and they always elicit wonder in me as artifacts.  There is something in the human need to create form from formlessness that is at the root of creativity and can be seen in this eccentric collection.  I think this can happen reflexively too without deep thought being involved. The largest of these balls would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and is slightly smaller than an American baseball.  Since most of them are made from various tapes…I’m guessing they are the waste products of work.  What began as something relatively flat gets transformed by the mind and hand into a fully satisfying three-dimensional object that you can grasp, throw, or roll.  For me, there is something appealing art-like in these objects which began life as one thing and by shifting its original purpose and function becomes something entirely different.

Here are two duct tape balls I have found by the river.  The one on the left is pictured on the wood chips and its partner has vestiges of dried paint or primer on its surface.  The spheres are created by layering one flat piece of tape over another until a ball is formed.  It is not necessary to create a ball to dispose of this waste tape, but this is what their makers did…and then it wound up in the river which is yet again another story to ponder.

These two balls are made from stretchy electrical tape and are tight and dense.  I remember that the very first handmade ball I found was also made from this smooth black tape.  When my eldest son was a small boy and needed a project to do involving recycled materials… I helped him construct this circus pull toy from materials found at the river.

At the heart of this toy is a handmade ball made from electrical tape.  My son thought this would make a great prop for a circus lion to stand on while it jumped through a flaming hoop!  Of course, the only fire we actually used came from our imaginations.  The yellow plastic lion was also found at the river and has a nice oily patina on it that comes from being in the river for a while.  Here’s a smaller ball made from green tape.

  I’m sure people are making balls from paper-based tapes too, but these don’t survive being exposed to the elements for very long.

This ball made with cellophane tape is barely holding together.  It’s surface is fragile and the adhesive is losing its bond.  As it starts to peel apart, sand caught between the layers is released.

 

The four balls pictured here are made from compressed aluminum foil.  Perhaps they were used for cooking and once their original purpose was over, the owners rolled the foil around the palms of their hands like one would do to form a ball from either clay or snow.  The funny thing about aluminum foil and the river is that the water somehow squeezes it even more and the ball becomes denser and more solid.  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed looking at this rare and somewhat tongue in cheek odd ball collection where the sum is definitely greater than the parts!  Spring will be arriving soon and the Ohio River is calling…until next time.

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Spray Bottle Triggers

The range of plastic refuse one encounters at the Falls of the Ohio State Park is both numbing (it’s obviously trash and shouldn’t be here) and morbidly fascinating (the design sensibility and colors ) catches one’s eye and occupies the mind.  Consider the variations in something as mundane as “spray bottle triggers” if indeed this is what you call these things?  I’m not sure when I started noticing these objects and photographing them…but here they are.  Each adventure to the river is sure to garner multiple images and story lines that I sift through at my leisure.  Consider this a personal cleansing of the spray bottle trigger palette.  Ironically, much thought went into designing each of these beauties to facilitate dispersal of their contents from plastic bottles.  I like the rotating tips that give me options such as “spray” or “stream” and so forth.  These triggers are ingenious and they do their jobs well.  Without further adieu and fanfare…here are more images from an admittedly odd collection.

 

One final image in closing.  You know you have “arrived” when a cute miniature is produced.  Here’s a recent find from a sandy bank of the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.

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The Sun is Up and the River is Down…part 2

As promised here is the second part of the previous post.  I did fill an empty cloth bag with river finds and here are some of today’s choice tidbits.  Once I straightened up my outdoor studio, I dumped the bag out onto the sand and started the sorting process.  I guess I also do a similar thing with my camera except it’s a memory card that gets filled and downloaded into the home computer.  Let’s begin with a few pictures of my newly discovered river treasures in situ.

I like all kinds of references to time.  I have a few other toy clocks and watches I’ve found courtesy of the river through the years.  Interestingly, I haven’t owned a watch personally in over thirty years and don’t want one now.  It seems I can find the time most anywhere I go and at the Falls of the Ohio…I pass by one of the largest clocks in the world.  Let’s see if I have a picture of that I can pull up for you.

Although this is a bit off topic, I thought you might enjoy seeing this mechanical wonder.  This is less than a mile away from my river spot.  It was once a part of a toothpaste factory that moved away a couple of years a go.  The building is a former prison…which is another way to mark time.  My reluctance to wear a watch has more to do with not liking to wear much in the way of jewelry.  Besides who needs the constant reminder?  Meanwhile, back at the river.

Houston…we have a problem.  I’m a plastic astronaut and it looks like the family dog has chewed one foot off!  Having some issues with my helmet too…don’t think I can last long in this alien environment.  This is an American astronaut so designated by the flag patch on his left arm.

I believe this is the smallest doll’s head I’ve ever found.  Here having a potential brain the size of a walnut could be a good thing!  I think I have found enough doll heads over the years to make a totem pole several feet tall and they would graduate from largest to smallest with no two alike.  This guy could be the cherry on top of it all.

 

As regular readers know…I have a thing for wheels too.  These are just the toy wheels I came across today.  I’m surprised by how many of these I have found in just the past two years.  I like them as a collection, but I may use them all in a single artwork.  I watched a depressing documentary today that included such nuggets of information like the average automotive tire takes seven gallons of oil to make.  And you may be thinking that all this petroleum is needed for gasoline?    I see too many real tires in the river as well.

Now how odd is this?  I found three toy hammers within a few hours of each other.  This is the most common toy tool that I find…not screwdrivers or pliers, etc…  At the river, it’s always hammer time, well the one on the far right is technically more of a mallet.  I’m not sure what the blue wheel on the far left hammer is supposed to do?

This is an interesting grouping of character toys.  It includes three dogs, two bones, a Weeble, and a Teletubby(?).  There’s a dog friend from Clifford the Big Red Dog and quick draw Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoon.  The dog sitting on the block has a nice oily river patina that takes years to develop.  The yellow character on the right is still full of mud.

Not everything I find is a toy.  Here are four fishing lures.  These get tangled up in the rocks or snagged on old fishing line.  Notice only the top left lure still has its treble hooks.  In the others, the hooks rusted or dissolved away.  I found a fifth lure after taking this photo.  I need to rephotograph my fishing lure collection because it has become seriously larger over the past couple of years.  You can see an older image in my Pages section.

I picked up all these disposable cigarette lighters today.  I have more at my studio at the church and intend to put them to use one day as well.  This was more of a photo opportunity.  I wanted to see some of the color range this particular make of lighter comes in.  No doubt the color is not light fast and over time would all probably come to resemble each other until the plastic broke down into ever smaller bits.  I also picked up other items such as interesting rootlets and sticks and heavier still…nice potential bases for the sculptures I decide to hang onto.  Well, this wraps up my finds from one particular adventure.  There is always stuff to pick up after the river rises and recedes again.  I wonder what I’ll come across next?

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The Iron Gill

Hello all and welcome to another adventure set at the Falls of the Ohio.  Since my last visit, the Ohio River has risen in response to all the rain that fell in the northern portion of the Ohio Valley and has flowed down river in a southwestern direction.  The fossil beds normally exposed during the summer and early autumn months are now submerged by swiftly flowing water.  Walking this ever shifting shoreline I’m open for whatever presents itself as novel and different.  Turning the corner around a  stand of willow trees I was caught by this unusual sight.

A tree captured barge cable or rope was in a different position from the last time I had noticed it (see this year’s Halloween post).  It is possible that the river rose high enough to dislodge it from its previous resting spot.  I was struck by the way it seemingly is suspended in mid-air with its regular yellow and black intervals contrasting with the unruly roots and branches around it.  Around here, water can both rise and fall quickly.  In the fine silt and mud you can often find interesting patterns that were created by the movement of wind and water.  Here is such an example.

The back and forth rhythm of the river caressing the land are recorded as peaks and valleys in this very fine mud.  I can be “hypnotized” at times by concentrating on this movement which I find soothing.  I’m always interested in the various subtle patterns that water can create on the mud of the riverbank.  It’s akin to trying to “track” water and recognize its footprint as it moves onto the land. I also noticed about a two foot tall, low “wall” of material (mostly wood and dried grasses) along the shoreline that marks this latest high water moment.  And of course, there is always the ever-present mostly plastic junk that also gets swept away and mixes with the natural debris.  I found lots of plastic detergent bottles, bits and pieces from toys including another doll’s head.  Here are images of other finds including an interesting toy ball.

I’m assuming this is a dog toy based on the image of the dog on the ball?  The small knobs are different from the usual balls I find out here.  Now, for a bright blue comb in a design that’s also new to me.  The tiny grains around the comb are seeds from various river grasses.

More ” blueness”  in the form of plastic wheels on a wrecked pull toy.

In the mud, I came across this other type of footprint that I thought was a bit unusual from the norm.  Of course, it’s a sports shoe with cleats on the bottom sticking up from the mud.

And one last found wheel whose radial pattern inspired another image in my ever-growing “Coal Flake” series.

I’ve come to really like making these designs from river-altered coal that I find at the Falls.  I’m under the impression that this coal has fallen or been swept off the immense barges that transport this fuel up and down the river.  I suppose it’s possible that somewhere along the river’s journey the water has cut down through the rock to expose a coal seam somewhere, but I haven’t ever heard of this happening.  The barges seem the likeliest answer.  This particular example has more Asiatic Clam shells used in the design.  These clams are the most common of their kind that I find at the Falls.  Once upon a very recent time a go, the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys were the world’s epicenter for fresh water clams.  By altering the rivers and the water quality in them, many of these amazing creatures have either gone extinct or have become so very rare.  The Asiatic Clam is a non-native animal imported here in the 19th century as a good luck charm and has thrived as has the Zebra Mussel that you may have heard about?  The day was moving on and except for a few Mallard ducks and Canada geese I hadn’t seen much in the way of wildlife.  I decided to end my day by doing a little fishing.  I found a short, recently beaver-chewed willow branch and attached some waste fishing line I found.  I attached a hook and found bobber and into the water it went.

Oh, for bait I caught a small grasshopper and attached it to the hook.  A small found lead weight kept the bait below the water.  Every once in a while I would raise my short pole up and down in a “jigging” motion.  To my immense surprise I caught this very unusual fish!

This fish is called the Iron Gill based on the metallic covers it sports around its gills.  Other distinctive features include bright blue eyes and a small white dorsal fin.  It’s body shape is unique and lends itself to easy filleting…although I wouldn’t normally recommend eating the fish from this part of the river.  Catching this fish here was a surprise because normally this is a deep water fish found in large flowing rivers.

This species was first described to science by Constantine Rafinesque back in 1811.  Rafinesque was a controversial figure and brilliant naturalist.  He had a gift for collecting and recognizing new species, however, in his zest to publish and receive credit for his discoveries he was very sloppy in his methods.  As a result, many of the animals and plants he introduced to science are poorly described and classified which led to much confusion and consternation among the other “scientifics” of the time.  In the end, Rafinesque usually won out because science gives priority to the person who first (no matter how poorly) brings the new creature to the world’s attention.

After this last image, I released the Iron Gill back into the water and rebaited my hook.  Alas, this was the only fish I caught on this day, but it reassured me that my skills in this area were still intact.  For my next post, I want to show you images of a coal-themed exhibition I’m participating in the nearby town of  New Albany, Indiana.  It’s a good show and worth a post.  For now, I would like to close with another image of a found toy I came across on this day.  Have a great weekend out there in the wider world!

 

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Digital Driftwood: Part II, Wood Mix

Welcome to my second look at wood as expressed at the Falls of the Ohio.  The first post concentrated more on the river and water as an agent of change moving material through the landscape.  This post looks more closely at the driftwood that gets stranded in this southern Indiana park.  I once curated an exhibition at the Louisville Visual Art Association entitled “River Sticks” where all the artworks were made from locally procured driftwood.  The majority of these works of art utilized raw, natural sources, but there is also wood in the mix of a slightly different character.

There is a wooden staircase placed here by the Department of Natural Resources (which maintains this state park) that is a popular access way onto the riverbank and fossil rocks.  It is not unusual during bouts of flooding to see part of this staircase submerged by the Ohio River.  During those moments, all you can do is look from a distance or visit the Interpretive Center.

Over time this staircase has needed frequent repairs as it gets battered by floating logs and tree trunks.  Only after the water has drained away can you walk among the driftwood and see what else made from wood has been left high and dry.

Here’s a dramatic shot of a different staircase that has floated down the river and has been snagged by a willow tree.  Objects stranded in trees bear witness to how high the river rose.

I frequently find wooden pallets and they get snagged in the trees too.  This one is a little different in that it appears the tree is growing through and around this artificial form. Over time, the pallet will fall apart. Perhaps wood is wood, but one can’t help noticing how much milled and processed wood is a part of the mix.  Here are a few other images showing this contrast between natural and man-shaped wood.

Sometimes it seems like there are enough planed boards at the Falls to build a small house. Fishermen and visitors use these planks to span muddy areas and puddles to keep their shoes clean and dry.  All this wood is a disposable resource?  I’ve seen visitors taking lumber out and I’ve done the same.  I like using river-worn cut boards as bases for the Styrofoam sculptures I choose to keep.  To me, even the smallest board tells a story of our relationship to trees and nature.  I tell myself that someday I’ll make some rustic piece of furniture from this wood.  The same processes that break a tree down in the river…do a similar “service” to disposed of wooden furniture.

Here’s a piece of a child’s crib or bed that I found at the river’s edge.

This is one of many table legs and turned pieces I’ve come across.  Sometimes I pick them up and take them home.  I’ve used them on rare occasions in my art, but I have also given many pieces to artist friends to see what they could make of them.  I suppose I could make an homage to  Louise Nevelson’s sculptures, but would prefer to create something more personal.  Nevertheless, I have picked up a few wooden artifacts from the river and here’s how they look collectively.

I left the toes of my shoes sneaking a peak for scale!  Here’s some of the hand-turned and machine-made table legs, chair staves, and spindles I’ve saved.  These artifacts do break down over time and eventually revert back to nature.  Now for a detail.

Here’s a slightly different collection of wooden artifacts I’ve saved over the years.  Some things I recognize and others require pondering to figure them out.

The objects on the right are mostly finials from fence posts.  The circular objects with the holes in them…I’m not sure how those were originally used?  Could they be part of a float system for barge ropes or are they wooden wheels for toys…could they be lids for some kinds of containers?  In this grouping I have also included a small rustic picture frame I found as well as a whittled stick I could tell someone cut and scored and is perhaps the most minimal artifact in my altered wood collection.  I find many board fragments, but I kept one small piece because someone named “Bill” tried routing his name in the wood and drilled a few holes that became bigger as the wood softened and aged from exposure to water.  This piece of wood exhibits several ways we leave our mark on nature.

I also have a sign collection that can be seen in my Pages section.  Most all of them are also made from wood and were once part of this unusual driftwood mix that came from the Ohio River.  I’m thinking of putting my found “Bill” board in that collection because it too is a sign of the times as we lose our ability and desire to write in cursive.  Very few schools in my area even bother to teach this skill anymore.

Not all the driftwood in the river consists of logs, branches, and roots.  Much of my riverblog bears witness to the extent our handiwork pervades the larger environment.  What I see happening in my part of the world I assume is transitioning  simultaneously across the surface of the planet.  We have added our own distinctiveness to the overall material aggregate which challenges our now quaint notions of what is “purely natural”.  I was right when I mentioned in an earlier post that the month of July would find a way to be memorable.  It’s official now, July was our hottest month ever in what is shaping up to be our hottest year ever.  Much of our country is experiencing an intense drought and so I end with a picture of what it looks like when there is too much water.

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Plush Portfolio

I confess that I like the word “plush”.  In my mind it evokes a sense of luxury and well-being.  I roll the word around my mouth like a fine wine and I also get overtones of comfort, safety, warmth, softness, and abundance.  I feel similarly about the word “verdant”, but that’s the subject of another post.  Returning to “plush”…it is also a word used to describe a variety of soft, sewn toys usually made with polyester fibers.  This includes most of the teddy bears and stuffed animals that one is likely to come across today.  In my own family, plush toys are and were among our most beloved and trusted playthings and misplacing or losing one was like losing a member of the family itself.  Which brings me to this portfolio of images taken with found plush toys in situ that I stumbled upon at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.  Each toy was probably loved by some child and if these images hold any power it probably derives from feelings of separation and loss.  I’m also interested in them as aspects of our material culture that manifest themselves as more junk for the environment to try to absorb.  All these plush toys were deposited by the Ohio River and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some of these objects probably floated hundreds of miles to reach my camera’s lens.  Here are some of my “favorite” images in this “genre” and I’ll start with the object I’m holding in the first picture.

Once upon a time this was an impressive toy.  I think this is “Pink” from the famous Pink Panther cartoon series.  Lifting it from the mud took some effort because its stuffing has been replaced with impacted mud.  This toy had effectively merged with its muddy matrix.

I also found this cute plush dinosaur embedded in the mud.  Later I set him up on a log and took his portrait in the context of where he was found.  He’s a friendly tyrannosaur photographed against a fossil landscape that predates the real dinosaurs by millions of years.

This was an unusual find.  Later I identified this as a  child’s slipper featuring a Rug-rats character, but it fits my plush category nevertheless!  Now let’s look at some teddy bears.

This was once a member of the Care Bear clan.  Here’s a different kind of bear minus his stuffing.

I came across this unfortunate bear in the sand.  Somehow he lost all his stuffing and was essentially just a hollow skin which I salvaged and used as a costume for one of my Styrofoam figures I later entitled “Cubby”.

This bear was still in the process of arriving by water when I came across him.  The black background is coal gravel and dust while the white dots are the remains of broken clam shells.  I’m sure you will recognize my next find.

My eldest son has the exact sized Pooh bear that he has treasured all his life.  Even though he’s now a teenager, I noticed that Pooh still occupies a prominent place in his room.  Here’s one last bear and its a little different and may not “technically” qualify as a plush toy.  Nevertheless, I found it appealing and I include it with the others.

Let’s try a change of pace and include a few rather small stuffed toy objects I’ve found over the last couple of years.

This looks to be some kind of flamingo head.

I’m not really sure what this might represent…it could be a moon or a vegetable?

Here’s another object I had trouble identifying.  I like how the cockle burrs are hitching a ride on its knitted surface.  Here are few toys that either are or were inspired by Beanie Babies.

The purple reindeer was photographed against the blackness of coal dust and gravel.

I believe this is another beanie baby-styled toy in the form of a purple cow?

I believe this tiny plush toy is meant to represent a killer whale.  Here’s an image that came out of the floods from two years a go.

This guy is clearly an elephant.  When I was a child I had a Dumbo character soft animal toy.

Another hard for me to identify figure, but the destroyed aluminum can help give you a sense of how large this plush toy is.  Could this be some type of Halloween toy?

Over the years I have found many surprises buried in the sand.  When I spotted the above object…I had no idea what it was until I lifted it up.  This is what I found.  I remember staring at the blue eye!

To my surprise emerged the form of this friendly and shaggy green parrot.  I placed him upon a branch for others to find and moved on.  We are getting close to being done!  Here are a few more found figures.

A sharp-eyed observer identified this as the Magician character from the Frosty the Snowman cartoon.  Makes sense to me because I found him right after Christmas of that year.  Could have been some child’s gift that wasn’t properly appreciated and in to the river you go?

I don’t know why I remember this now, but I believe this figure was once used to advertise a barbecue restaurant?  Could have had additional info on the back of the shirt, but I also could be completely wrong about this.  It might simply be a birthday wish novelty.  I think you will recognize this next one.

This isn’t the original Raggedy Ann doll, but a similar conception.  I found it face down in the sand and flipped it over for this photo.

I live in a basketball crazy region, but this is the first time I’ve encountered this object.  I know it references basketball, but what else is it intended to do?  What purpose do the white cords serve?   It definitely has plush elements.

This is me standing in my beat up Falls shoes next to a found plush “dog bone”.    My dog makes short work of any plush toys she comes across.  She knows how to get her teeth around their seams and split their contents open.  This makes me wary to think that this orange bone might be a dog’s toy…but what else could it be?  The Ohio River is always presenting me with such conundrums, however, I enjoy putting on my thinking cap and trying to puzzle them out.  I hope you liked some of the images and I will leave you with this final one of the parrot in the place where I left him for others to find.

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Soul Man

The heat and the relentless light of the sun makes it official.  It’s summer at the Falls of the Ohio.  Now I need to plan my forays a bit more carefully if I want to get the most from each trip out here.  Earlier in the day is better.  You miss most of the heat, there are fewer people (except for the die-hard fishermen) and the chances are better you might see some wildlife…especially birds.  Luckily, if you don’t make it out here early enough…the trees are all in full leaf and the shade provides needed relief.  I wonder what kind of summer is boding for this year?  So far we have had the warmest spring ever being nearly a full seven degrees above normal temperatures.  Yikes!!  No doubt, summer will find a way to be memorable.  Anyway, when I’m out here I try to take some precautions in the form of drinking water and sun block.  Once my mind engages on something…I tend to forget my body.  This post is about another “personality” that I ran into on this day and the following is his story.

I came across this fellow several times during this day.  The usual protocol when encountering a stranger is maybe a quick nod of the head and each party then goes their own way.  I would have been happy to stick with this, but I kept bumping into this guy seemingly everywhere I walked.  One very curious thing about him (or her and how do you tell?) was that “he” was picking up old shoe soles and sticking them under his belt.  Here’s another view showing this.

Truthfully, I was at a loss to explain this to myself and the best I could come up with for this strange behavior was that this guy forgot his collecting bag and had some type of project that required shoe soles?  I’ve already noticed that a lot of wayward shoes wind up here courtesy of the Ohio River.  If you don’t believe me, check out my special collections area under “The Shoes You Lose” and you will doubt no more!  I haven’t added images to either collection in a while, nevertheless the lost shoes keep on coming.  Just for kicks, here are a couple additional shoes I saw on this trip that piqued my camera’s interest.

Here’s another shoe found near the previous one.  See what I mean?  I could go on and on about the shoes alone.

After my first encounter with this odd character I ran into him near a willow tree by the river’s edge and he was doing the same activity as before.

This time I abandoned my typical reserve and engaged the guy in conversation.  I think I said something like,…”Hey mister, I can’t help noticing that you are collecting shoes and shoe soles and although I know it is none of my business…what are you going to do with the footwear?”  I further added, ” I see you have tucked a few more soles into your belt since I saw you earlier.”   The Sole Man (my mental designation for him) smiled easily from his green mouth and put me at ease.  I had nothing to fear from him.  We walked together for a while and he told me what his angle is and why he does what he does.  Spotting another lost sole in the sand, my new friend bent over and lifted it up.

Upon picking the sole up, the “Sole Man” flung it over his shoulder and said follow me.

We didn’t need to walk far.  The Sole Man had a spot in mind where he told me he was going to deposit his shoes.  In the full light of the sun he selected an area marked by two shattered plastic drums, driftwood, plastic junk, and the tell-tale white beads from Styrofoam that had been deposited here by the Ohio River.

One by one my new acquaintance dropped his shoe soles in his selected spot.

He told me that he does this as a form of meditation.  Seeing all the junk from our material culture wash up here at the Falls of the Ohio has bothered him for years.  He couldn’t understand why anybody would do this to the Earth?  Fixating on all the debris was just making him madder and angrier which has  its own consequences.  He carried these shoe soles here because he wanted it to be visible so that others might see and reflect as he had.

He hit upon the idea that collecting and carrying these soles might provide him some peace of mind or insight into his fellow beings?  Each sole was a record of a lived life with their scuff marks and pressure points compressed into the very sole itself.  The sole was a record of an individual’s life experience and no two souls were bound to be alike. The old adage about not knowing a person until you walked in their shoes hit home like never before.  I asked him was it working…making him less angry?  He said that it did.  His negative feelings were replaced with something akin to empathy for he understood that he was not much different from the former owners of these shoes.  It made him feel less “high and mighty” and more of an equal stakeholder for the many conversations to come.  After a few more photographs, I bid my new friend good luck.  Leaving him, I placed one foot in front of the other and headed for home on this hot day.

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Pop-A-Wheelie Collection

Frequent visitors to the old Riverblog may have noticed my penchant for posting images of wheels and tires that I find at the Falls of the Ohio.  Far too many automotive tires find their way into the river and many of them wash up here where they comprise omnipresent elements on the shoreline.  In addition to being more physical junk…they have also insinuated themselves into my imagination much as Styrofoam has.

When I see a wheel…I see an abstract portrait of our kind.  Through the cleverness of our minds we have invented such a simple device for first harnessing the power of nature to eventually “mastering” it.  It doesn’t surprise me to read that many experts consider the wheel to be our most important mechanical invention.  If you dispute this think beyond the ox cart and potter’s wheels…try imagining our world without gears, cogs, time pieces, jet engines, and the hard drive of your computer and more.

From what I’ve been able to find out, the wheel has been around for about five thousand years.  The oldest depictions come from Mesopotamia, but other cultures seem to have “simultaneously” invented the wheel too.  A lot depended upon domesticating draft animals to provide the power necessary to move a load.  In the New World…the ancient Olmecs knew of the wheel and used it on pull toys, but since they lacked draft animals their use of this invention was limited.  In more recent times, Industrialization and the harnessing of other energy sources has greatly and forever expanded the role that wheels play in our lives.  We have come a long way since the Neolithic.

Apart from objects, wheels also have other rich associations.  In many cultural contexts…wheels are also potent spiritual metaphors.  The Yin and Yang symbol can be thought of as a wheel.  The flag of India features a wheel which represents Dharma or the law.

The cyclical nature of things has me thinking about the changing of the seasons.  Spring is giving way to summer and it looks like our Memorial Day weekend is shaping up to be a beastly hot one.  Time is flying by.  Although I’m not a fan of auto racing, the annual tradition of the Indianapolis 500 is also set for this weekend.  I couldn’t help noticing that one of the symbols associated with this race track is a tire with wings!

When I go to the river, I bring a canvas collecting bag to store my finds.  I have more than one bag which I usually store on the front porch of my house to await later sorting.  As I have mentioned before…I have a very patient wife who with usual good humor, puts up with my obsessions!  It is this cycle of sorting through the junk that is the inspiration for this post and I had three full bags that had among other objects, toy wheels that have caught my eye.  I knew I had been picking them up of late, but hadn’t realized the collection I had formed until I laid them out.  With the exception of the odd skateboard wheel…my collection comes from toy trucks and vehicles where the heaviest load they have borne has come from the imaginations of children.  I like how they look visually and apart from that…I’m not sure what I will eventually do with them all!  Perhaps I will make some other metaphorical vehicle some day?

 

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Rubber Ducky Collection

One last post before all of 2011′s sand runs through the hour-glass!  Here are a few of the many rubber duckies that I have come across at the Falls of the Ohio over the years.  I thought it would be a fun way to end the year. If you would like to see more ducky images…I’ve posted a new collection, “Kentucky Lucky Ducky Collection” which can be found in my Pages section.  Have a Happy New Year and may 2012 be kind to all!

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