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The Old Bolt
23 November 2021
A few weeks ago a storm took out the fence along the side of our, uh, estate. We took the old fence apart board by board to clear the area and cleaned up the retaining wall on which it stood. A few rusted old bolts were all that were left of it.
The Old Bolt. Nikon D200 with Lensbaby Edge 80 at f8, 1/90 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
As we continue our family tree project by writing about the stories of the people older than us, one thing has been becoming clearer and clearer to us.
Life is short.
No matter who you are or what you think or what you wear or where you went to school or how much money you make or how many kids you have, you only have so many days on this earth. Then it's as over for you as it has been for everyone before you.
Contemplating the bolts lined up on the tidied up retaining wall, we thought of that lesson. The bolts are history, soon to be sheered off in favor of heavy-duty metal 4x4 post bases anchored by four bolts to the top of the wall.
They won't last forever either.
Nor will we, come to think of it. And when we go, so will Photo Corners. It's impossible to imagine anyone carrying it on after us.
It's not that the job is hard. Herb Caen's three-dot journalism wasn't hard but no one could carry it on after him. And while we're more of a Félix Fénéon than a Herb Caen (three sentences rather than three dots), it's the same problem.
Photo Corners reflects our approach of photography and publishing and writing. Nobody else's.
Which is why we have written obituaries for what is now 167 photographers. Or provided a Saturday matinee for 423 weeks in a row now. Or a weekly Friday slide show for eight years.
Not to mention the 7,410 articles and over 4,746,131 words we've published here.
We are each of us a bolt whose threads promise to hold on tightly to the nuts that come into our lives so something will stand as long as we do. The shadow that we cast may be long or short but we stand only briefly in this life.
Make the most of it.