Cuyahoga from Cynthia Hooper on Vimeo.

Ohio’s Cuyahoga River has long maintained the dubious distinction of igniting the U.S. environmental movement in 1969. This fire, however, was unremarkable in its intensity and singularity—for a number of industrial-age waterways (over the course of more than a century) have episodically burst into flames. The Cuyahoga is a generally more tranquil river today, but the remnants of its intensively industrialized past still soberly operate along its shores. This video examines the modest decorum and monumental grace of these remaining waterside enterprises. (2009, running time: 8.5 minutes.)

(Out-takes from the video I'm working on now.)

A new project by SIMPARCH (click here)

Estacion Tijuana (click here)

Sunday boating enthusiasts and the Conrail Bridge from "Shooters":

Catherine Yass at the MOCA Cleveland:




(This meditative two-channel video documents a barge slowly passing through a gigantic lock in China's Three Gorges Dam.)

The Conrail Bridge from the deck of the "Shooters" Bar and Grill:

The mighty Arcelor-Mittel blast furnace:

Herons at the Cargill Salt Works:

The Cuyahoga from the top of Saint Mary's cement silo:

Saint Mary's Cement Company ROCKS!!!! Go to them for all your cement needs!!!!

Here is the image that goes with the text:

(I love my nerdy friends.)

The awesome power of Google Earth...

"it's nice to know there are a lot of things we don't know about."

--Dave Bazard

CHUB (click here)

The awesome Cuyahoga Habitat Underwater Basket Project.

"A sensation of understanding is an aesthetic experience."

--Matt Coolidge

"We attempt to dissolve these notions of what's art and what isn't, or what's the practice and what's the rest of the time, and enter a continuous experience."

--Bill Gilbert in his new book "Land Arts of the American West"

The Fires of the Cuyahoga River (click here)

(This one was in 1952.)

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

--Andy Warhol

When Our Brains Short-Circuit (click here)

“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.

Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.

Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.

“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”

spinningbeachballofdeath.com