Category: Environment

visual venting

whbeebe

There comes a point where the life you’re currently living is so atrocious you need some way to vent the emotions it generates. I’m speaking, of course, having to deal on a daily basis with the buffoon in the White House. I’ve been paying attention to Washington Politics since Kennedy starting with his election in 1961 to his assassination November 1963 (I still remember where I was that day when we were told of his death, and yes, I was in the third grade). I’ve kept up with every president, through Johnson and the Viet Nam War, through Nixon and Watergate, Gerald Ford and Nixon’s Pardon, Jimmy Carter and the Iran Hostage Crisis, Regan’s two terms and all his catastrophes, through George H. W. Bush and the first Gulf War, through two terms of Bill Clinton and all his catastrophes, then two contentious terms with Dubyah, two more terms with Obama, and finally the current Orange Hued Buffoon in the White House.

This last election has been so bad, and has elected an individual so totally unqualified to be president, surrounded in both chambers of Congress with Republicans who will aid and abet anyone no matter how bad, that I’ve been driven back, which is probably what everyone was hoping would happen with folks like me. Those folks that think and feel and find politicians like the current ilk so repulsive they’re driven totally out of the political discourse that any healthy democracy needs to remain healthy and viable.

Today I took a small step to come out of my shell. Realizing that walking away and living in a self-created and imposed bubble isn’t the answer, I’ve decided to document all the environmental destruction happening in Orlando as we widen I-4 and effect nearly every major roadway that connects to it. Let my very modest work stand as mute testament to just how this corner of the world is so stupid in the face of global warming and environmental catastrophe. I want to document how the forces that unleashed our current political dumpster fire are also destroying the rest of the world.

construction triptych 

whbeebe

I’ve been wanting to stop and photograph some of the on-going construction of Universal’s Volcano Bay before construction is finished and everything is buttoned down. I decided to run these series of photos with the Olympus E-M10 and the 14-140 Mark II. I moved the color JPEGs from the E-M10 to my iPad Pro 9.7″ and post processed them with Snapseed. I them moved them up to my blog with the WordPress app. Unfortunately I once again had to go into the browser-based WordPress editor to finish this entry. I’m pretty much done trying to edit with WordPress on either iPhone or iPad. Now it’s time to move on to some other tool.

This is the water park meant to open next year and to replace the old Wet ‘n Wild water park directly across Univeral at I-4. I have no idea how much more work needs to be done or if it’ll open 1 June 2017 as promised. The last time Universal tried to open a park on 1 June, it was Universal itself in 1990, and it didn’t go well. I was one of thousands of contractors trying to get it open and operational. I was a contractor with a company named Kinetix (long since gone) and I worked on Jaws, Quake, and E.T. Starting November 1989 I started working 12 hour days, six days/week, until March of 1990, and then we went to seven day weeks. On the afternoon of 31 May I walked into the park and worked a solid 34 hours until I left the morning of 2 June. It took almost a month for me to get back down to a normal work schedule. I’ve not worked a schedule that long and that intense since.

I’m curious to see what will transpire over the summer.