Halle’s Smooooth Words o’ Wisdom

You saw it here first folks. A good time was had by all last weekend east of Mt. Hood and no one was life-flighted to the hospital. Some of these rigs with swapped out snowmachine engines cruise up to 45mph.

These portraits of Mert are part of an ongoing project tentatively titled Voices of Et Cetera. The title arose from an NPR story on historian Studs Terkel. My friend Steven D. Lenhart helped make these pictures in Wamic, Oregon and posted a photo and iota from the day on his blog.

Darryl is a longtime Tygh Valley, Oregon local. I photographed him in his garage for my portfolio and to see if a mag would be interested in this subject for an upcoming story on how ‘main st.’ Oregon is faring during these economic doldrums. Greed induced implosion is probably a better description than ‘doldrums’ actually.

We spent a scorcher of a Saturday-our thermometer topped out at 104.2ºF-mostly on the porch. Around 1pm we couldn’t help but notice the spectacular Gnarl Ridge Wildland Fire plume:

The politics of wildland firefighting is a fascinating subject. Lots and lots and lots of taxpayer dough spent year after year after year…