Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

Wed, September 12, 2001 08:20:05
Yesterday’s Occurrence, Today’s News

We’ve just learned on the morning news, in fact, a special news report, that the World Trade Center in New York, New York has been destroyed in terrorist attacks involving the hijacking of several commercial airliners. The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. is damaged. The death toll is very high.

God have mercy on their souls, and grant eternal rest upon them. God forgive those who wrought this event.

Wed, September 12, 2001 10:05:39

Our hosts, P and D M, kindly set up the television in the lounge so we could follow the current reports. (Think I forgot to mention, there are no televisions in the public areas nor in the guest rooms here. Their brochure states they feel their guests are on holiday and so they seek to avoid television. So bringing their TV down... is a big deal.) D received telephone calls from her two daughters, both abroad, and both in good health. One daughter called from London; she is due to return to New Zealand, and may be booked on NZ Flight 1 which is grounded in London. The other is in another Pacific Rim country.

All airports in the U.S. are closed now. I expect that traveling home may not be as easy as coming out was; security checks in the States will no doubt be more stringent for a while, until people become complacent again.

I hope that is a long time.

Wed, September 12, 2001 22:57:43
Today
The day started off early, just before sunrise, and making photographs of that sunrise over Dunedin. The light was quite spectacular. Then, the radio alarm came on to wake us up, and wake us it did. That’s when we received the news of happenings back in the States.

( Sunrise Over Dunedin/Otago Bay )

Listening to the news caused us to miss our early appointment at Olveston House, which is a very interesting turn of the century house. Lots of neat things here; also some interesting history as one family lived through it. No photographs, that pastime not being permitted. I presume this is in part to help further the Olveston Trust, which it succeeded in doing in our case. One may purchase picture post cards and a book about the house.

Then we walked through downtown Dunedin, looking for (surprise) a camera store with my film in it. We found some, then headed back up the hill (again) after lunch to get into the car and drive out Otago Peninsula to meet some penguins. Quite interesting to discover that the apparently clumsy penguin is actually quite nimble ashore. We paused a couple of times on the way back in for some night-time photos of Dunedin across the bay. Hmm, photography seems to be becoming a bit of a stuck record here, doesn’t it?

( Otago Peninsula Drive )

Anyway, we’re now mostly packed and ready to depart Dunedin on the morrow (which will be when I actually send this, but then who’s counting).

I close this portion of the journal with a prayer for all those who perished in New York and Washington D.C.

Wed, September 12, 2001 23:11:54
( Addendum: the windows which I photographed in Castlewood B&B, well, the entire history as known transcribed from a flyer in our room: )

Retrospective
And I'm not sure, other than habit, why I've redacted the owner/proprietor's names to initials. Or I am sure. Castlewood closed as a B&B about six years ago, selling their license to another house and owners in the hills overlooking Octagon.

Things I didn't write down: In Octagon set into the pavement of the plaza are plaques commemorating medal-winning (or not) Olympic athletes from Dunedin.

There are a lot of Olveston House references on the web.
Main web site: http://www.olveston.co.nz/
A Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olveston_(house)

Photography outdoors is permitted; I think I've just not scanned those negatives yet. Actually, there are a lot of photographs from NZ not scanned yet. More on that later. There are layers of UV resistant plexiglass inside the windows in Olveston House, which the guide explained is due to the high UV factors in NZ. This is related to being so far south, and the hole in the ozone layer.

Waitangi Day!

I don't think there are any Kiwi's reading my meanderings, though there are Kiwi's on Flists of Friends. There's a couple two-three or more Ozzies (which is properly spelled Aussies, but pronounced the way I spelled it, eh?) but they've got a different day to celebrate.

Why do I mention Waitangi Day if I'm not a Kiwi? Here's where I'm supposed to day, 'It's a long story, and...' and then bore you with the long story. Thing is, it's not a long story. We spent a month there some years back, and I came away from that experience profoundly moved by Kiwi's friendliness and hospitality, and by the beauty of what we did see which really comprises South Island. That's the start.

The other thing I observed (this for the benefit of my Aussie readers... pronounce that correctly now, you Yanks), I clued in to because of where I grew up. Namely, along the shores of Lake Huron, which is Yank on one side and Canadian (Canuck) on the other. My mother's family came to the States through Canada from Ireland, and I've still cousins living in Ontario. Because of the way my ear and brain are connected, I'll start sounding like locals fairly quickly; toward the end of my stay in NZ, the Kiwis were asking what part of Canada I came from. But that's not what I clued in to.

Canadians and Yanks have a sort of love/hate relationship, much like siblings in a nuclear family. We can gripe and jump on each other, but nobody else better try it. Aussies and Kiwis exhibit very similar traits towards each other. And that just rather brought me to like the both of them even more.

At least for now. Via one of my favourite airlines, and avoiding one of my most detested airports (LAX):
O-town to San Francisco to Aukland NZ to Chch NZ & back again
2 Adults @ 2589.50 = 5179.00

Total Taxes USD 519.00

Total Airfare (including taxes) USD 5179.00

That's just there and back again.

Not today.

Although, now that someone's mentioned it publicly, things will probably change.

Three years ago I woke just a wee bit before dawn on this date, in the wonderful (though now closed) Bed & Breakfast known as Castlewood in Dunedin, New Zealand. Looking out our east-facing window over Otago Bay, I realized it would be a marvelous sunrise, and snagged my wife's Canon AE-1 as my Mamiya C330 was not currently loaded. I spent the next half-hour photographing that same sunrise. Not having quite worked out the means to post links to images here, for now you'll simply need to accept that (IMOHO) the dyptych of that sunrise is one of my best pieces.

( Behind the Click-here thing. )

Yes, I mark 9/11 with memorials along with my countrymen. But I hold my own personal memorial, for two people who went out of their way to help two travelers, strangers in a far land, to feel at some ease; as well as to remember all those who died on that horrible day. For me, because of where I was, because of who shared that day with my wife & I, it will always be today 9/12 that those terrible things happened.