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.
4 comments
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January 21, 2010 at 10:11 am
Buck
Very nice portraiture; the light in the last photo is marvellous.
Who knows if it’s a good or bad thing that we don’t produce ‘stuff’ in the US any longer? With production comes pollution; at least that’s how it seems to me. My Mohawk and Hudson rivers are much cleaner now than when I was a boy, and that’s good for me personally. Not so good for the mills and factories that have gone.
Certainly something to ponder when the wind moves the fog about on the water…
January 21, 2010 at 10:49 am
Soundbounder
AGREE!!!
Those are nice photos
January 21, 2010 at 10:53 am
Mage B
We actually produce little here in our city. Even our port isn’t heavily used. Our only ported cruise ship will be leaving this month. Many companies, attempting to save money, laid off whole departments and out-sourced the jobs to Mexico….my husband’s among them.
I like the juxtaposition of a world gentled by the fog and the sharp reality.
January 25, 2010 at 12:40 am
bowsprite
ok! now, spot the kayaker.