The Cliquot Club Cafe, a dandy little coffee and sandwich joint at 25th Street East and 30th Avenue South. This is an older shot, given a new lease on life by my “new” (well, new to me) enlarger.

Five selections today:

• Alhambra from Imitationeye
• Station Billancourt, ligne 9 from Mv
• San Francisco, 2007 from Water Molotov
• milk from Chrono
• Forgotten Harvest from First Gate Dreamer

Three selections today:

• solitary soul from Absolutely Nothing
• Piano Man from MikesRightBrain.com
• znoszone części przeszÅ‚oÅ›ci from suseu.art.pl

I pace upon the battlements and stare
On the foundations of a house, or where
Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;
And send imagination forth
Under the day’s declining beam, and call
Images and memories
From ruin or from ancient trees,
For I would ask a question of them all.

The Tower, William Butler Yeats

I stopped at the Washburn Water Tower at the tail end of our last snow storm; I hadn’t visited for almost a year. It’s still a magical spot.

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot

Three selections:

• LIE IN THE SOUND NO.2 from Wink
• Y’a toujours min copain Pierrot… from Irregular Photoblog
• untitled from Visions

Soft as a shadow on fur
The filling places
Where his footsteps were;
Lost without shape or grime
His path through the level spaces.
How can we certainly know
If this is time
Falling, or snow?

White Darkness, Virginia Hamilton Adair

Four selections:

• … not that far? from XoverIP
• Parisian Cotton Candy from rion.nu
• Canada Geese Overhead from A Walk Through Durham County
• Shooting Star from polom.org

Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Winter Trees, William Carlos Williams

Our own sure winter is surely on the wane here in the upper Midwest–the snow is turning to fog today, and with temperatures near 50 degrees predicted for next week it looks like Spring is on the way. I probably only have one or two more days where there will be enough snow for my snowshoes.

Four selections today:

• Untitled from Populuxe
• 春の影 (Shadow in spring) from Million-Year Picnic
• alaska highway moose from the narrative
• fruits of labor from bea

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

Snow-Flakes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul of dreams
and thoughts and memories.
(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care
for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman
the way to it?)

Carl Sandburg, Skyscraper

Three cullings for today:

• Winter Squall from No Traces
• 01.28.2007 from shadowphoto
• 299 from Edmund Leveckis

There’s a new on-line lit mag in the neighborhood! Check out TorkStar–you won’t be disappointed.

Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.

The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.

Carl Sandburg, To a Dead Man

Three cullings for today:

• FAIRYTALE IN B-MINOR from Wink
• a river runs through it from twenty-five.net
• Gateway Arch, Study 13 from Out of Contxt

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg, Fog

Five cullings for today:

• mudeford bay from milou
• man in the train from 1965 monochrome
• approach to the shrine – 参道 from BOXMAN fotologue
• R Train ~ Brooklyn ~ 6:55pm from Express Train
• Event from bighappyfunhouse

And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Carl Sandburg, Chicago

The “corn cobs” (a.k.a. Marina City) is another of my favorite Chicago buildings; there’s something wonderfully weird about them.

Three cullings for today:

• shodoshima, kagawa, japan from photomo
• On the hill of the cemetery from Richard Vanek
• redundancy… from gotreadgo

I’ve always loved the Tribune Tower; its over-the-top gothicism would be the perfect perch for Batman to brood.

Three cullings for today:

• Place de la Concorde from Mv
• Long Shadow from Photosensitive
• Climb the Sky from Million-Year Picnic

The Woodstock, Maine, Volunteer Fire Department’s newest tanker truck.

A happy and safe Thanksgiving to all!