Author Archive
simpering inanities
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A brief stop over in Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg saw Amtrak change out the crew on my Pittsburgh to NYC journey. Pennsylvania’s Capitol, Harrisburg, offered a 15 minute or so “leg stretch” and “smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em” interval, and half the train staggered out into the daylight to do one thing or the other and sometimes both. We had collectively boarded the train at 7:15 in the morning, after all.
After the bells rang and we all filed back onboard, an announcement that the cafe car was reopened occurred, and a humble narrator purchased a range of comestibles for luncheon and settled back into the seat I had been assigned. After quaffing some coffee and eating an Amtrak Hot Dog, I got back to pondering my fate and staring out the window while watching America roll past. The camera was gathered out of its sack, and I got back to looking for interesting sights.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The landscape in Pennsylvania fascinates me. The Appalachian Mountain range and plateau is incredibly ancient, is a geologic feature which Pennsylvania is situated on the northern reaches of, and it dates back some 480 million years to the Ordovician Period – which is when ocean critters first started exploring dry land. Formed by the action of tectonic plate compression when the super continent Pangaea begin to split up, the Appalachia once rose as high as the Alps or Rockies do today. They’re referred to as “folded mountains” and the reason that all that coal is buried in them is due to their presence during the highly forested Carboniferous era (that’s when the giant dragonflies were around, and you had centipedes the size of school buses sliding around in the swamps). An absolutely staggering amount of effort and expenditure in the 19th and 20th century saw Americans burrowing and mining into, blasting rights of way through, and building upon and around the Appalachia Range.
Fascinating. Really. Mountains older than the dinosaurs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At 30th street Station in Philadelphia the now familiar dance of changing out the locomotive engine from the diesel powered model to the electrified “coGen” unit used for the Northeast Corridor was enacted by the Amtrak people. They did their thing, and waved lanterns at each other, and then it was time to get back onboard again and head back to “home sweet hell.” This was another “stretch your legs” break and a good number of people onboard took advantage of it.
A humble narrator settled back into the assigned seat, and picked up the camera. I affixed the foam collar to my lens and began passing the time by shooting through the windows again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Philadelphia, America’s consolation prize, pictured above.
After spending an entire day on the train, and eating two Amtrak meals along the way, I was quite ready to return to the grinding existential nightmare of a dystopian shithole which I call “home.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Upon my return to Penn Station, I ducked outside onto 8th avenue to breathe a bit of what passes for fresh air in Midtown before heading back to Astoria on the subway. It was rush hour, and despite Covid, the subways were quite busy. Unlike the last time I exited from that door pictured above, this time I didn’t see anyone masturbating into a street grate. There was a guy who offered to sell me something, but I’m not sure what he was offering. Could have been a gold chain, or crack, or sex. Wasn’t interested, me.
A quick ride on the E line got me out of Dodge, and soon I was at Queens Plaza. As is usually the case with me, as soon as the train entered Queens, I felt a rush of energy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The final leg of my long journey arrived at Queens Plaza just as I did, a local R line which would carry me to Astoria.
Our Lady of the Pentacle had arrived home the night before, and had graciously obtained food stuffs which were waiting for me back at HQ. I tore into a bagel like it had done something to my mom, and began downloading all of the photos you’ve been looking at for the last two weeks onto the computer for processing.
I felt a need, and a desire, to listen to this song while setting myself up for the labor of developing them.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
debased idiom
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding Amtrak gives you not just a series of interesting if brief windows into other people’s lives and communities, it also gives you a bit of time to let your mind wander. Pondering minutiae and considering the unconsidered, as it were. I spent part of my time planning for future arguments.
I polished the current logical fallacy which is offered to several of the unvaccinated people that I’m friends with. Said argument revolves around their usage of illegal street drugs, and how they’d never ask the guy they’re buying weed or coke from what the circumstances of the stuff’s origin were. I can tell you with some authority that Marijuana in particular is absolutely doused with pesticide by most growers, in order to maximize yield and to make the risk of discovery by law enforcement one worth taking. Cocaine is manufactured, literally, using gasoline. It’s “stepped on” and diluted with other powdery substances several times before that dude with the braids shows up at the bar to deliver the end product gram to you. Beyond illegal or illicit substances, do you actually know what’s in that shot of whiskey that nice fellow behind the bar just poured for you? How about the contents of a bottle of soda, or a fast food burger? You do know it was Dr. Fauci who recommended that condoms be used to avoid getting AIDS, right?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Man, oh man, do I ever want to do a multi day car trip around central Pennsylvania just for the pursuit of some pure landscape photography. These woods seem endless, but they’re punctuated regularly by bridges and other 19th and 20th century infrastructure. So many rivers… waterfalls… mountains…
Who was the first cave guy that found a puddle of melt water, with hops and grain rotting and fermenting within, and decided to drink it, and then soon got drunk? More importantly, who’s the friend he had that decided to try it too, after the first guy described his experience with that proto beer? I know it was a group of guys. Had to be. Wine is something I’ll hand discovery of over to the cave ladies, but beer? Definitely cave guys.
Also, there were cave bears, cave lions, and cave men. All were bigger and stronger than their modern descendants. Recently, I learned that there were cave ducks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in prior posts, one was shooting out of the window of a sometimes speeding Amtrak train while enjoying an eight hour long trip from Pittsburgh back to NYC.
I always say that the most valuable thing about a railroad’s right of way isn’t the train or the tracks. It’s the real estate directly surrounding it. I’ve asked several rail people and a Congressman or two about the land surrounding these rights of way. Federally administered but mostly privately owned, there’s a mandated amount of clear space surrounding the actual tracks. This clear space’s purpose is obvious – you don’t want trees or other vegetation to grow too close to the travel path. My big idea, however, is to attach a mechanism to the back of the train which spews seed balls of native pollinator plants, as the train travels, and at predesignated spots. It wouldn’t be anything other than an engineering problem to make sure the seed balls land outside of the designated clear area, and even if only 10% of the seed balls “take,” you’d be creating thousands of miles of pollinator plant strips all over the country. All in all, another brick in the environmental wall.
Gordian Knot, lords and ladies, Gordian Knot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Most of the humans on the train were sleeping, which is something that one such as myself cannot do in public unless I’m absolutely exhausted. I fell asleep on my last trip to Pittsburgh back in the fall, but I’d more or less been awake and very active for nearly 28 hours by then.
I’m legendarily paranoid and cautious. Drives people around me crazy, actually. Before I go to bed at night, every door lock is tested to ensure it’s locked tight. That AirBNB I was staying in back in Pittsburgh had a chair sitting in front of the door when I went to sleep. When I’m out walking around, my habit – at least once every block – is to stop and turn to see if some malign jackhole might be following me. I look three times when crossing a street, not twice. Having grown up in NYC in the 1970’s and 80’s – this sort of behavior is something that became a part of my DNA early on. People walk around like they’re safe or something. You’re not. Sleeping in public? When you don’t absolutely have to? Are you nuts? I was tempted to steal some guys shoes just to teach him a lesson.
I’m similarly tempted towards grand larceny when I see some idiot pull their car over into a bus stop, so as to pick something up at a bodega, while going inside and leaving their car running. It’s really all I can do not to jump in the thing and drive away. Brooklyn!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Amtrak trip from Pittsburgh to NYC is governed by two “layover” stops wherein the cafe car closes and you’ll see different crew members take over the various duty assignments. Saying that, you’ve got about 4 hours to wait after leaving Pittsburgh before you arrive at the first of those stops in Pennsylvania’s Capitol – Harrisburg. The second long stop is in Philadelphia, about two hours later.
I began building a mental list of Anglo Saxon versus Norman French food names. Mutton and Lamb are the exemplars on this list. Same meat, coming from the same critter. One is what the conquered called the stuff, and the other is what the conquerors called it. To this day, mutton is cheaper than lamb. There’s a lot of hidden history buried in the English Language, which is usually a leave behind from some long ago war. Is it Fowl or Poultry for lunch, or is it boar or pork for dinner? When you go to sleep will you be wearing pajamas? Going on vacation to the country, will you stay in a bungalow or a cabin, an inn or a hotel?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In accordance with my newly adopted ideology of sociopathy, I made it a point of not initiating conversation with any of my fellow travelers. They might have said something that caused me to care about something, so I avoided the possibility entirely. This “nothing matters, nobody cares” thing is great. You’re never disappointed by your fellow man this way, since you start the day by acknowledging that everything is shit. It’s quite European, this. I’m nearly a Frenchman at this stage.
I did spend a short interval poking at my phone, and I looked into a cottage industry which allows you to enact mean spirited but not illegal vengeance on those you dislike. You can anonymously send somebody a bag of gummy dicks, for instance. There’s also a service which sends a glitter bomb anonymously. A spring board mechanism within, holding a substantial amount of glitter upon it, is actuated by opening the shipping carton’s lid. This causes a cloud of glitter to explode into your interior space, and that’s awesome. There’s another one – a personal favorite – which uses a similar mechanism to distribute 5,000 live crickets about your crib when the box is opened. Good times.
More tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
absurdly slight
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One awoke at the appointed time, bathed, drank a coffee and headed over in the pre dawn hours to Pittsburgh’s Amtrak Station. The train was scheduled to depart at 7:30 a.m. and as is my habit – I was there an hour early. About 7:15, boarding began and the Amtrak conductor indicated which car they wanted me in.
It seems that the way they handle things on Amtrak is that they group passengers together according to where they’re going. Given that I was heading all the way to Moynihan/Penn Station in NYC, that meant I was in the last car on the train. One settled into a seat and got comfortable.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I wasn’t terribly well prepared – creature comforts wise – for the 8 hour trip, which meant that I was going to be getting my sustenance from Amtrak’s cafe car. They have pretty decent coffee, and a variety of high fat and sugar content offerings. Cakes and candies, juice and soda, even booze. Truth be told, the offerings reminded me a lot of the crap that I’d jam into my face hole back when I used to work overnight shifts in midtown Manhattan. I stuck with the coffee, mostly, but this time around instead of the Amtrak hamburger, I had the Amtrak hot dog. My advice? Go for the burger. It’s gross, but less so than the hot dog.
I spent my journey staring out the window again. This time, however, I used a piece of my homemade camera gear – a foam collar for my lens – to shoot random images out the window as the train ran along the tracks.
All of the shots gathered using this method have been given a different crop ratio than I normally use. It’s to distinguish them from properly composed photos, as these are basically “run and guns.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I sat in a weird posture with my torso twisted towards the window, the camera supported by the left arm while the right one worked the shutter. My head was turned in opposition to the torso, looking ahead in the direction the train was traveling. The camera had the foam collar on the lens, and the collar was pressed directly against the glass while avoiding having the actual lens make contact. When it looked like something interesting was coming up, I’d just start shooting. The exposures were something like 1/5,000th of a second, so as to freeze the scene at a fairly high ISO. Amtrak’s windows are generally pretty dirty, and colored with a reddish brown tint. This makes for a challenging environment when you’re developing them, back in the photoshop application at home.
Saying all that, I really enjoy the randomness, and getting the sort of views that you normally can’t reach.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wish I could tell you about that power plant in the second shot, the canalized waterway in the third, or the bridge pictured above. Doing so would negate the point of the exercise, however, and add a meaningless layer of trivia into the effort.
These are shots, by the way, not photographs. The latter definition – at least by my way of thinking – indicates “photographs” as being something consciously composed and offered in a manner that makes a statement of some kind, whereas shots are entirely random and are more of a technical exercise than anything else.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Somewhere down the road, this particular technique will come in handy when I’m in a position where I have to get the shot or the photograph despite the situational challenges – which is why I engage in the exercise. All of my low light/night time shooting over the last few years has allowed me to develop a set of skills which allow me to leave the flash gun at home, even when I’m shooting indoors. Rail shots like these have taught me how to capture detail while shooting through a dirty rust brown colored window from a vehicle moving at 50 mph. That’ll come in handy, someday, somehow.
That’s the Altoona Horseshoe curve pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We rolled through several rail yards on our course eastwards. Pictured above are Norfolk and Southern locomotives. I saw lots of rail, lots of dams and bridges, and lots of people who have festooned their homes with Trump flags. I saw one building, which seemed to be the offices of a trailer park, which had affixed a two story tall banner with Trump’s face silk screened on it facing the railway with the screed “miss me yet?”.
Nothing matters, nobody cares.
More next week, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
bulky leather
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Boy oh boy, did a humble narrator suffer in pursuance of getting the shots in today’s post. Standing on the edge of Pittsburgh’s Mt. Washington after the atmospheric temperature tumbled thirty degrees in two hours and despite a sustained thirty mile an hour wind began painting my back, one nevertheless stuck it out through sunset.
For an idea of how high up over the Golden Triangle of Downtown Pittsburgh and the three rivers I was, that line between the orange sunset light and the foreground is the sun shadow of Mt. Washington.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had been planning for this spate of shooting all weekend. That plan got thrown out the window due to the high wind speed, which forced me set up the tripod quite low to the ground due to the force of air shaking the rig. My original intent was to use a filter to “slow down” the sunset shot and render the waters as a mirror.
One managed to pull that off in one or two of these, but it soon became apparent that this was an entirely futile pursuit and I changed gears.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, I wasn’t prepared – garment wise – for this sort of cold and wind. My fingers and toes were numb, and I was having trouble operating the discreet control buttons on the camera.
I was also fairly terrified that a blast of wind would carry the camera and tripod away and over the side of Mt. Washington.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As soon as the light show offered by the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself ended, one decided to just head back to the shelter of the rented AirBnb room and settle in for an early night. I was hoping to stick it out in the location of these shots until the City lights came on, but the wind and cold really was becoming horrific at this point.
I broke down the rig, changed lenses, and set the camera back up for handheld shooting mode.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was about a mile and a half back to the room, but I decided to be lazy and call for a cab on one of my rideshare accounts. While waiting to get picked up, I kept an eye on the scene. I felt thwarted.
Naturally, just as the car arrived…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s when the city lights snapped on. I just cannot win, I tell you.
More tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
amidst tangles
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s only one bridge in the entire country named after a visual artist, it’s in Pittsburgh, and it’s pictured above. That’s the Seventh Street/Andy Warhol Bridge spanning the Allegheny River, which opened in 1907. Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself crossed it in the rain, on foot. It was all very romantic, and a bit soggy.
There are two other somewhat identical bridges neighboring this one on the Allegheny which are of the same vintage. They are named for Baseball player Roberto Clemente and author Rachel Carson.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now, as I’ve mentioned in the past – it ain’t all sunshine and handjobs here in Western Pennsylvania. There’s all sorts of ugly you can encounter. A nasty history of segregation and “race stuff,” lots and lots of junkies (opioid epidemic), and crime. The local police have a national reputation for being heavy handed, and you’re at the ideological crossroads of the toxicity of National Political Party politics. A white supremacist shot up a synagogue here in Pittsburgh not too long ago. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are generally left leaning, whereas the center of the state is fairly Trumpist.
Saying that, they really do seem to have graffiti under control here. You don’t see garbage floating in the rivers. All of the bridges I’ve encountered here have combined bike and pedestrian paths, and whereas Our Lady and myself were moving around in areas which the Pittsburghers we talked to raised an eyebrow at and described to us as “sketchy,” we never felt unsafe. As it turns out, our AirBNB was at the edge of one of these feared “danger” zones, a neighborhood called Beltzhoover. Beltzhoover actually reminded me a lot of the sort of neighborhoods in which I’d lived in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, except for all the nearly vertical hills and valleys. There ain’t no “flatbush,” here’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of our rented room for the long weekend, Our Lady of the Pentacle’s flight time was nearing and soon after clicking the shutter button for the shot above, we had to head back to Mt. Washington for her to gather up her traveling kit and call for a cab to take her to the Pittsburgh International Airport for the flight back home.
As mentioned in prior posts, I’d be taking Amtrak home the next morning and had been planning on a full evening of photographic pursuits. Pittsburgh’s legendarily volatile climate had other plans in store for me, however.
As a note, you’ll notice a building sticking up in the distance behind the bridge’s right side pier superstructure in the shot above. That’s the one that the fancy pants restaurant I mentioned yesterday is housed in, and it’s directly behind the spot where I was heading for my big night of photographic pursuit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After a goodbye kiss was enjoyed and Our Lady was on her way, I was on my own again. My first destination was one of the inclines on Mt. Washington, where I was happy to see the rain clouds and stormy weather blowing out to the north and east. I think it was east, at least. My plan involved capturing dusk and sunset, and despite what the meteorological forecast was predicting – proper night time darkness with the city all lit up like a scarlet woman.
My desire was to execute a series of long exposure tripod shots, but the weather was not impressed by my plans. A wicked bit of wind began to kick up, and the temperature began dropping. There was an actual whistling sound being caused by the air flowing around the camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That heavy wind was buffeting the camera, and several of my shots were ruined by the motion thereby introduced. I had to change my plan, from long exposures to ones that were significantly shorter. That’s part of the deal, when you’re standing behind a camera. Got to adapt.
I wasn’t ready for this sort of cold, though. This was early December, mind you, and winter hadn’t really set in yet, nor was I physically acclimatized to deep cold yet. Additionally, I had no long underwear or heavy gloves with me, and I was just wearing the usual “mitch suit” with a hoodie sweatshirt and the filthy black raincoat. This particular wintry uniform works great for me until the temperature begins to dip below thirty, whereupon I layer up with thermals and all that. I was naked under my clothes, which sounds kind of obvious when you say it out loud.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Before long, the atmospheric temperature had plummeted to just 21 degrees, and the wind had kicked up at the same time. Sustained 10-20 mph winds, with gusts of 30-40 mph, were now on the menu. By the time I had returned to the Duquesne Heights location I had found the night before, the only words on my lips were “fuck me, it’s freezing.”
An additional bit of circumstance is that I was standing on the veritable edge of a nearly thousand foot prominence overlooking the three rivers, and the wind was coming up the hill from behind and then dropping over the edge down to the water below. The physics of that slope increased the wind speed at the edge where I was, and meant that I also needed to vouchsafe against my camera getting toppled and smashing down to the ground – or worse still – getting blown over the edge of Mt. Washington.
I got some of the shots I wanted, sort of, but you’re going to have to wait for tomorrow to see them.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 