Progressive Wednesday

In Memoriam: September 11

Six years ago, 2,974 people died on this day. Giving these people a number, however, does no justice. Each individual had a name, and maybe more importantly, had a story of a life, and thankfully that’s something, in the end, all of us have. Mostly, today, we’re hoping those stories pulse on in the memories of the living.

We’ll have more to say tomorrow, but today, we don’t really have a lot of words to write. Instead, we’ve got something else brief to hope for in the honor of those victims: a little less war, and yes, a little more peace.

In Memoriam: Bradford Washburn, 1910 – “ 2007

While tramping the Appalachian Trail in 2001, my crunchy hiking companion “Raven,” prone to late-night, lean-to-induced philosophy sessions like the rest of us, asked a simple question: “Are you a mountain person or an ocean person?– Questions like this inevitably lead into many other questions and stories that slay time otherwise spent dwelling on the mice scampering over your sleeping bag or the fact that your stomach is still craving more calories than your back could ever hope to carry. Deeper questions have been posed, I admit. But for some reason this particular AT inquiry clings to the slippery rock face of my memory like a tiny mountaineer.

You see, I've always considered myself a lover of mountains, which made my two years, four months, and 17 days living in the altitude deprived Midwest a near impossible experience. It is ironic, then, that I became acquainted with Brad Washburn during this temporary bout with flatness. When the September 2005 issue of Outside arrived at my O'Fallon, Missouri apartment like an answered prayer, it introduced me to the man I have come to believe in as the greatest mountain photographer to ever live.

Right now you might be thinking, Come on Bris, everyone knows Ansel Adams placed mountain photography on art's topographic map. I'll grant you that Adams taught us to love and appreciate nature on film, but I stand by my belief in Washburn as a superior mountain photographer.

Let's start by considering that Adams himself called Washburn “a roving genius of mind and mountains.– Panopticon Gallery points to that same genius as “[the inspiration] for photographic techniques that capture the most remote and inaccessible points on earth under conditions worthy of a stunt man.– It's the sheer remoteness associated with his “subjects,” the unclimbed mountains and treacherous glaciers, that makes Washburn's eye for light and shadow amidst these indifferent and harsh giants worthy of our progressive awe. Washburn's technique included tethering himself to the cabin wall of a prop-engine plane, strapping a 50-pound, eight-by-ten large format Fairchild camera to his chest, and leaning precariously out the aircraft door at 20,000 feet without the aid of a tripod. Despite such ridiculous conditions, his pictures display the un-cropped, crisp brilliance of “whole– mountains, stealing your breath like a high-altitude summit.

On January 10 of this year, we lost Washburn's epic eye for tectonic marvels. He came as close to capturing the soul of a mountain as any true “mountain person– or “mountain photographer– ever will again. Don't take my word for it. Check out Washburn's legacy for yourself at Panopticon's online gallery here or read Kurt Markus' Outside ode to the greatest mountain photographer you've probably never heard of here.

From one “mountain person– to another, thank you Bradford for inspiring all of us to continue exploring earth's giants, so often reluctant beneath their snow and ice.

In Memoriam: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. I felt I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least give him a mention on this site, because he did, unbeknownst to him, three powerful things for me:

1. He taught me that writing can meld humor and humanism.
2. He filled my coffee cup to the brim with a desire to write.
3. He further convinced me that, while we’re an ugly species at times, we have the capacity for goodness.

Mr. Vonnegut was the author of 14 novels, most notably Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and the mild-melting and heart-opening Slaughterhouse-Five. The latter was a fictionalization of his experience as a POW army infantryman who managed to survive the fire-bombing of Dresden. I say fictionalization because, on top of the depictions of WWII, this thing is chock-full of aliens, time-warping, and humans on display as zoo animals (for the aforementioned extraterrestrials). The book is hilarious and horrifying and humanizing. It’s utterly brilliant. And it’s one of the treasures of American literature. If you haven’t read it, please do. Given the current state of war in the world, it seems like a timely novel because, as his writings suggest, all wars are part of the same war.

If you have read Slaughterhouse-Five, let me recommend my second favorite Vonnegut book, the rather under-the-radar novel, Slapstick. It’s weird as all hell, and in my opinion, it’s weird in all the right ways.

To see one of the last interviews of Mr. Vonnegut, just click this sentence to witness his appearance on The Daily Show.

I’ll leave you, and my discussion of him, with some of my favorite Vonnegut quotations:

• “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
• “If you really want to disappoint your parents, and don’t have the nerve to be gay, go into the arts.”
• “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ “
• “I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can’t help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what He or She is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.”
• From Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons: “A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.”
• From God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: “Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies – ” – ˜[Damn] it, you've got to be kind.' –