Dad’s new binoculars © Jim Korpi

“It takes three generations to make a musician,” cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s father Ma Xiao-Jun would say. “The first to leave poverty, the second to go to school, and the third to master an instrument.”

Pressure from relatives to succeed in life is often subconscious, but it exists. Why should it not?

My grandfather owned a farm now turned subdivision. Another grandfather went from running a service station to owning a farm in New Hampshire that eventually went bankrupt. The third worked in the mills after fighting in World War II.

Yesterday I presented my master’s project to a committee of professors in order to defend the year of work I’ve spent on it. I passed. I will soon have a Master’s degree in photography.

Whether I will ever become a “master” of photography is questionable, but I’m now keenly aware of those from the past who have carried me on their tired shoulders and allowed me the opportunity and time to pursuit my dreams.

It may also take three generations to make a photographer.

Drone Attacks © Jim Korpi

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.” Hamlet

What would Shakespeare write of the little spoken truths lightly whispered in our popular media in regards to our government’s increasing use of drones? The lack of in-depth discussion and contemplation amongst the paying public attests a relaxing in the collective conscience.
There have been shouts in the streets about the cowardice behind a man wrapped in bombs taking his life with innocent others. Am I innocent? Innocence hints at unknowing. It suggests a lack of guilt in one’s conscience.

First Murderer: How dost thou feel thyself now?
Second Murderer: Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me.
First Murderer: Remember our reward, when the deed’s done.
Second Murderer: Zounds, he dies; I had forgot the reward.
First Murderer: Where is thy conscience now?
Second Murderer: In the Duke of Gloucester’s purse.
First Murderer: So, when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.
Second Murderer: Let it go; there’s few or none will entertain it.
First Murderer: How if it come to thee again?
Second Murderer: I’ll not meddle with it, it is a dangerous thing, it makes a man a coward; a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbour’s wife, but it detects him: ’tis a blushing shame-faced spirit, that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold, that I found; it beggars any man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well, endeavors to trust to himself, and live without it.
The Life and Death of King Richard III – William Shakespeare

The treaty read “as far as a man can go in a day in a half.”

Years after it was written and signed, The Propriety of Pennsylvania thought they would reinterpret this wording.

The Delaware tribe figured the day and a half would equal roughly a 30 mile walk, and so they signed over land west and north of the Delaware river from Philadelphia.

So the government of the time got to cutting the straightest path from the northwestern most curve in the Delaware river as far west as they thought necessary for their ploy. Next they found a fit chap who was known for his endurance. He left at midnight, ran 36 hours straight and then collapsed after 150 miles. This was the new western boundary, and the treaty was known in jest from then on as the “Walking Treaty.”

- Read in the introduction of That Dark and Bloody River by Allan W. Eckert

Closed Ice Cream Shop, Weirton, West Virginia © Jim Korpi

Catchy sound bites about Main Street verses Wall Street are subtly, but neatly, wrapped in manipulative rhetoric. After driving through a number of main streets across the country, I’ve come to the understanding that they’re not dying, they’re dead.
The revitalization of our cities, towns and villages would take a change of mindsets and habits no politician could accomplish.
Our consideration for space and place has dissolved into a hapless disregard for all things sacred. The natural world, community, craftsmanship, and basic use of the human body are all lined up for future exhibition at the Smithsonian.
But there is hope. There is an alternative. I’ve seen it in places like Burlington, Vt., and Charlottesville, Va. The downtown areas are alive. People are walking through the streets, eating at cafes, and enjoying life and the company of their neighbors. People come from around the country to go to towns like this, not for all the box stores their own comfortable towns have, but because of something unique. The towns are truly alive.
Who loses when a downtown becomes vibrant again?

playing house © Jim Korpi

Saturday morning started with an early phone call. When the phone rings late in the evening or early in the morning there is always a thought that the call may not be a good one.

Our friend’s house had just burned to the ground. Their giant log cabin-style castle, complete with stone tower, had caught fire the night before and was still burning. The fire department said that when a log cabin burns it takes a little more to get it going, but once the fire starts it burns extremely hot.

Annah and I drove to their place as soon as we got the call. We could see smoke from the highway on the hillside where their house would be. It was worse than we thought.

Everyone was safe, but the house, a mansion-like estate on a small hill at the top of their winding drive, was a charred smoking half-wall.

Tanya had seen the fire start on the second floor and came running downstairs while Andy was placing a log in the fireplace. She grabbed the two children with no time to grab their shoes and ran them to their grandfather’s house next door. Andy, who has served two tours in Iraq, emptied three fire extinguishers on the growing fire on the second floor. He then ran outside to grab the hose only to realize it was frozen. He then ran back into the house and was overcome with the smoke. At this point he realized that there was absolutely nothing he could do to save his house and there wasn’t an item he could save.

Every piece of clothing, every photograph, his grandfather’s gun collection…EVERYTHING… gone.

What do you do for friends who have lost everything except the clothes they were wearing when they left their burning house? Their insurance is good and will rebuild the house, buy new appliances and replace things of value.

Our instincts are to help, but why? How?

The morning after the fire I saw a shocked Andy at the farmer’s market. He  recalled a talk with his good friend Bill, who he and his wife spent the night with while their house lie in a smoldering pile a few miles away. “Look at it this way, Andy,” Bill explained. “You just cleansed yourself of all your belongings, and you didn’t have to become a Buddhist to do it.”

The frozen heaving of the ground beneath my feet never meant much more to me than the inconvenience of a bumpy car ride. In the compacted paths that lead to the woods in my backyard this upheaval has made me think differently about this frosty season and the thawing one to follow.

There are periods of frigid and lonely stillness, thawing calm and resurrection, blossoming warm growth, and the inevitable decline and decay. These are the seasons of our lives and those defining the natural world. For the paths behind my house, the compacted soil has adjusted with the frost and loosened to give room for the seeds and swelling of spring.

I’m growing a beard this winter, partly to see if puberty truly hasn’t skipped my facial features, and partly to reconnect to some personal version of seasonal change. Over the years spent in cold climates, I’ve grown more  interested in things like hibernation, not because I desire a break from the world, but because the notion of adjusting life’s activities to that of the climate  makes sense.

After running out of cord-wood for the firestove two days ago, I called up my neighbor Kent Butler  to see if he knew anyone in the country with some seasoned hardwood. “You’ve been a bad squirrel,” he said after listening to my predicament. “You’re right,” I said surprised by his analogy. “I’d be a dead squirrel.”

It’s as if life gets in the way of life sometimes.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy lately.”
“Oh yeah, with what?”
“Well… living.”
A visit home for the holiday makes you realize all the lives that exist in the periphery of your own, but with little effect on your existence.
Children are born, they begin to walk, talk, and call the names of all those who surround them. You, you on the periphery, you’re forgotten. You’re that distant relative who shows up on holidays. You’re the one who is so busy “living.”