Fog 8

Where DOES the time go?  It’s been over a year since I used this title, a word fairly common around water.  The nearer container ship is Ital Milione headed for Port Elizabeth and the one barely emerging from the fog is

OOCL Chicago bound for Bayonne.

This foto taken a few minutes earlier than the previous two also shows OOCL Chicago approaching the VZ bridge.  The tanker to the right is Ionian Wave.

If I have to make a point with these fotos, then what I’d like to reflect on is my sense sometimes that the number of ships entering the port is limitless.  They just keep coming, and most of them look alike.  Given the fog, I can easily imagine a line of ships like an infinite regression, each bringing more and more and more stuff, which we used to make.  And far be it  for me to claim to understand the global economy, but domestic manufacturing begins to sound oxymoronic.    Isn’t it foggy thinking or foggy decisions to import as much as we do?

These thoughts are prompted by a story in the New York Times yesterday about the glass sheathing for the World Trade Center . ..   made in China and transported into the boro–no doubt–on these limitless vessels built, crewed, and registered elsewhere.  World Trade Center . . . like it or not . . . is a national icon.  It seems appropriate that components should be made in this country, in spite of the complex’s name.

My two cents.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Sixth Boro Fishing 2010

Looking north from the center of the Upper Bay toward southern Manhattan, one might conclude that fishing–a single boat in a spacious sea– in the sixth boro is a lonely trade, until

you turn around and look south.  Tuesday saw more boats in the harbor than usual, including

regulars and ones I’ve never before seen.

like this one.  I couldn’t spot a name on this very basic fishing platform, but

I’d like to.  The lighthouse here and elsewhere is the Robbins Reef light, and farther in the distance is my “logo” Bayonne Bridge, now a limitation to growth of NY/NJ as a container port..

In the background is GMD Bayonne.

Note the KV buoy, Nathan E. Stewart,  and the variety of fish rigs:  here,

here, and

one more.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.