Saturday, April 9, 2011

window light

Every week, Carmi over at the blog Written Inc., hosts an exercise called Thematic Photographic. It's been awhile since I've participated, but this week's theme (No. 141) is titled "Windows", and it just so happens they are a favorite subject of mine.

Here are a couple of photos I took not too long ago at Timberline Lodge. Timberline is a beautiful old lodge built on the south slope of 11,000 foot Mt. Hood.   During the Great Depression,  President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the lodge built here in Oregon by the Works Progress Administration, so that hundreds of artisans and craftsmen (and craftswomen) would have work during one of the most difficult times in our country's modern history.


This writing desk and chair were hand carved from gorgeous, old-growth Douglas fir. The windows look out on the Palmer Snowfield, one of Mt. Hood's 12 glaciers.  


Here's one of my favorite portraits of Dave, standing next to a window at Timberline, with the light reflecting off the snow outside...in July.


The WPA was a phenomenally successful and ambitious experiment by Roosevelt's New Deal, and provided over 8 million jobs between 1935 and 1943.

Timberline remains an enduring legacy to a time when our government really was (in Lincoln's words) a government "of the people, by the people, for the people", a concept that seems to be lost on many of our elected representatives today.   Click here for more info on the lodge and the WPA.

Then pop on over to Thematic Photographic and check out Carmi's photos, then scroll down to the comments and check out the other contributors.


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