Travel Dreams

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite magazines was Life. I always wanted to be a photo-journalist for them. I wanted to travel to exotic places and see life as it really was. My host father traveled in the 1960's to Central America, and being an amateur photographer, took striking black and white photographs, very much worthy of the pages of, not just Life, but National Geographic, Time and other national publications. He returned to Central America in the early 90's and again took photographs, some color, some black and white. When compared to the earlier photographs, practically nothing had changed, for the most part, just the faces. But through his photographs he captured their lives in deep, rich detail. His photographs were so intense, you could almost feel the grit beneath your nails. Imagine life without art. No photographs, or paintings, no singing or dancing, a life without movies or sculptures or books. No jewelry or different hairstyles. No Tolkien, no Lord of the Rings, no Viggo. No face-painting or balloon animals at the County Fair. No doodling during a long meeting. No Tennessee Williams, “Amazing Grace,” or Nine Inch Nails. No cave paintings to give clues to the past, no ornate sarcophagus for King Tut, no Guggenheim, or Eiffel Tower, Westminster Abbey, or Tower of Pisa. No knitting, quilt-making, beading, or scrapbooking. No free-thinking. Support the arts.