Waiting for the president to leave Mar-a-Lago. Next stop is CENTCOM in Tampa, then back to D.C.: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 6 February 2017
President Donald Trump boarding Air Force One in West Palm Beach en route Tampa, FL where he will visit CENTCOM HQ.: image via Stephen Crowley @Stcrow, 6 February 2017
President Donald Trump boarding Air Force One in West Palm Beach en route Tampa, FL where he will visit CENTCOM HQ.: image via Stephen Crowley @Stcrow, 6 February 2017
Das neue Heft ist da!: image via DER SPIEGEL @DerSPIEGEL, 3 February 2017
Trump: "[Obama] likes me.”
O'Reilly: “How do you know?”
Trump: "I can feel it. That’s what I do in life. It’s called, like, I understand.”: tweet via Philip Rucker @PhilipRucker, 6 February 2017
So, to sum up the weekend... : image via Ian Bremmer @ianbremmer, 6 February 2017
Rare shot. Much as we read of petitions/dissent channels, here you actually see the concern on #StateDept faces. #Tillersonarrival @Reuters: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 6 February 2017
Do not, under any circumstances, refer to President Bannon: image via Ian Bremmer @ianbremmer, 6 February 2017
Spotted on the AF1 flight tracker. Seems about 200 miles too far south.: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 6 February 2017
Spotted on Air Force One: image via Andrew Beatty @AndrewBeatty, 6 February 2017
At $400,000 a day, it'll cost the nation $548,000,000 to keep Melania Trump in New York City for four years. @realDonaldTrump #HalfABillion: image via The Answer-Man @ebonstorm, 3 February 2017
Spotted on Air Force One: image via Andrew Beatty @AndrewBeatty, 6 February 2017
Air Force One fortune cookie: image via Andrew Beatty @AndrewBeatty, 6 February 2017
At $400,000 a day, it'll cost the nation $548,000,000 to keep Melania Trump in New York City for four years. @realDonaldTrump #HalfABillion: image via The Answer-Man @ebonstorm, 3 February 2017
Refugees worldwide hustle to get to US before the rules change again. Some poignant reunions.: image via Jeffrey Gettleman @gettleman, 6 February 2017
Somali refugees waited 25 years to get to US. The day before they're supposed to fly, their dreams are demolished.: image via Jeffrey Gettleman @gettleman, 2 February 2017
Trump arrives at MacDill Airforce Base, home of central and special operations commands: image via Andrew Beatty @AndrewBeatty, 6 February 2017
The president arrives at MacDill AFB for military briefings and lunch: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 6 February 2017
@realDonaldTrump arriving MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa where he was greeted by military personnel and NSC Director Michael Flynn.: image via Stephen Crowley @Stcrow, 6 February 2017
@POTUS opens his remarks at MacDill AFB: "We had a wonderful election, didn't we?": tweet via Mike Memoli @mikemenoli, 6 February 2017
Trump says "forces of death" are trying to strike US, they will be defeated.: tweet via Andrew Beatty @AndrewBeatty, 6 February 2017
Trump: "To these forces of death and destruction, America and its allies with defeat you": tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 6 February 2017
Pool: POTUS then asked several of his lunch companions about whether they'd remain in the military. "Cmon you have to stay," he told one.: tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller, 6 February 2017
Marine One carrying @realDonaldTrump
lands at the White House. @POTUS spent the weekend in Florida.: image via Jeff Mason @jeffmason1, 6 February 2017
Marvel exec and Trump veterans adviser Ike Perlmutter traveled on Air Force One back to D.C.: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 6 February 2017
Another Ike Perlmutter spotting, this time at CENTCOM.: image via Jennifer Epstein @jeneps, 6 February 2017
@PressSec on POTUS assertion of unreported terror attacks via pooler @MIchaelCBender: “We’ll provide a list later": tweet via Zeke Miller @ZekeJMIller, 6 February 2017
Here's the list the White House sent of attacks they feel "did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources.": image via Kevin Liptak @Kevinliptakcnn, 6 February 2017
Preparing for the flood
[Billings, Montana]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 5 February 2017
Hi-Hat. Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 3 February 2017
Hi-Hat. Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 3 February 2017
In a Field, Washington: photo by Austin Granger, 3 February 2017
NYC: photo by _Bentom Wyemji_, 2 February 2017
More wet #birds in the #rain #berkeley: photo by Buz Murdock Geotag, 18 January 2017
More wet #birds in the #rain #berkeley: photo by Buz Murdock Geotag, 18 January 2017
preparing for the flood. waiting out the rain on doolan road - dublin/livermore, california: photo by patrick boury, 6 February 2017
preparing for the flood. waiting out the rain on doolan road - dublin/livermore, california: photo by patrick boury, 6 February 2017
preparing for the flood. waiting out the rain on doolan road - dublin/livermore, california: photo by patrick boury, 6 February 2017
I'm working on a piece about The Great Dismal Swamp and Robert Frost. In 1894 Robert Frost tried to kill himself after he thought his fiancee had rejected him by walking into The Great Dismal Swamp and hoping to get lost and swallowed by the swamp or eaten by a wild animal. He was a failure and instead came across some duck hunters who took him back (and then he was afraid the drunken duck hunters might end up killing him!). The GDS was also a place where escaped slaves hid out and made their own secret community. And of course Native Americans knew it well.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHilton, It's been raining so much for so long I'm half convinced that The Great Dismal Swamp is actually located right here. But the lesson of the dejected bard suggests that merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time isn't always good enough to induce an overwhelming state of nescience.
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Frost’s attempt at self-destruction resulted from unrequited love. The twenty-year-old feared that his sweetheart, Elinor White, was drifting from his affection while she was away at college. In an attempt to secure White for himself alone, Frost made the overnight journey from his home in Massachusetts to her college in New York, carrying a book of his verse that he had created for her, and bearing the good news that finally one of his poems, “My Butterfly,” would be published.
Much to Frost’s chagrin, White refused to see him.
Frost was heartbroken and wanted some way to get back at White. What better way to show White the pain she had caused him than to disappear, never to be seen or heard from again?
The water is stained a deep, chocolate brown. The edge of the ditch is mostly a tangle of vines such as wild grape. There are mosquitoes the size of shoeboxes. At a dam on the Feeder Ditch, we saw where some predator had made quick work of some large bird of prey. Ten minutes into the paddle, my friend spooked a black bear out of a tree. The day before someone nearby had been bitten by a venomous canebrake rattlesnake.
Shortly after White rebuffed the young Frost, he left his Massachusetts home and the following morning disembarked from the Merchants and Mariners Line in Norfolk. Frost’s inquiries to locals as to the direction of the swamp must have made a peculiar sight. He was not a hunter or logger, and dressed in ordinary clothes as he was, not in a condition to tackle the terrain. But Frost was determined, though, and he walked the eight miles from Norfolk to the village of Deep Creek (now in Chesapeake).
Night had already fallen, but still Frost pressed on. The path he walked was a dirt road that ran parallel to one of the swamp’s many canals used by workmen to float logs out of the impenetrable interior. For all the potential dangers that awaited him in the swamp, though, Frost encountered relatively few. In some places, the road was covered with water and he had to negotiate planks of wood that served to span these washouts. At one point, the satchel he carried became too heavy and he jettisoned some clothes and books.
About ten miles after he entered the swamp, Frost came to one of the canal's locks and in it, a boat en route to Elizabeth City to take a group of duck hunters to the Outer Banks. By that point, hungry and tired (having walked nearly twenty miles), Frost paid the crew a dollar to take him aboard and out of the swamp. He stayed on the boat, sleeping mostly, all the way to Nags Head. Upon his return to Elizabeth City, Frost made a series of connections (including a short stint as a boxcar hobo), that eventually landed him back in Massachusetts, ending his macabre visit to the Great Dismal Swamp where his plans to end his life didn’t pan out.