Vanishing

Wooden water tank at Chown Pella Lofts in the Pearl, seen from NW Glisan.

This old water tank is a relic of another time. Growing up, I saw many of them on Manhattan rooftops. Now they are rare.

The Pearl District was redeveloped from an old industrial area. Some of the buildings are new, and others, like this one, are renovations. The developers intended to emphasize the industrial history of the area, so they left a few cobblestone streets and a few features like this tank as mementos of the past. This wooden tank is atop a building that is over 100 years old - an item of great antiquity in the Pacific Northwest!

Some of the things I was unable to determine about such wooden tanks:
- Were they used for drinking water? firefighting?
- Was the water pumped in or collected from rainfall?
- What kind of wood was used? (Redwood is a likely candidate, at least in the West, because it's so impervious to water damage.)
The fact that Google and Wikipedia weren't helpful in answering these question is an indication of how thoroughly they are vanishing from our sight and from our knowledge.

MEMENTO: DDW Sept 7 challenge by Anniemay

(Cropped and adjusted in iPhoto.)

-----------------------------------------

PHOTOGRAPHY NOTE (or, perhaps, Blipfoto Note)

On Blipfoto we are notified (and, if we choose, emailed) whenever someone anoints our photo as a favorite. But stars are anonymous unless the giver self-identifies. I rather like anonymous stars, and have given them often, but I also like to know who has so kindly complimented my work.

The only way I can find out how many stars I've received, if I care to know, is by clicking on the Statistics link. In that corner of Blipland I can also see, a week at a time, how many people have looked at each blip and how many have commented. I sometimes ponder these statistics, wondering what it is that makes one journal entry of mine so much more interesting to viewers than another.

I also think about my thumbnails. Am I creating them to please myself, or to entice others? I generally look at the blips of all my subscriptions, and I also realize that a given picture, whether the thumbnail is interesting or not, might contain words that I would regret missing if I skipped over them. But I have relatively few subscriptions. For those who have hundreds, how do they choose? How can I make my entries stand out, be more appealing? After all, the reason I'm blipping is that I want to share my work. Sharing is the ultimate action of any creative process.

In The New Yorker I recently read a quote that caused me to rethink whether such information is good for me to have. Chris Hayes, who appears on MSNBC cable news and commentary, said:

"Looking at day-to-day ratings tickles the worst instincts human beings have on causal inference. It creates cargo cult. It creates rain dances. It's, like, Oh, my God, the number's good today. What did we do yesterday? Well, we danced, and it rained. So let's dance!"

I love getting stars and hearts! Who wouldn't?
And yet I wonder if they're really the kind of feedback I need.
I wonder if they keep our exchanges on a superficial level when we could be more to one another.
I feel a pressure to comment, to say something cheery, even when I have nothing noteworthy to contribute.

I wonder if others have asked themselves these questions, and whether they have reached any conclusions worth sharing.