A square look at signs.

Here's yesterday's discussion of the square format in photography. I'm shuffling through the mass of photographs from our trip. I posted a few along the way as we traveled across the country and back over the last 2 weeks, but I've got many left to pick through. I'm doing a bit of that now and experimenting with cropping to a square composition.

Here are 3 that Meade stopped the car for me to take. I love roadside signs and have missed so many over the years as I've thought of stopping but barreled past anyway. But I've gotten better at seeing how important these opportunities are — much more important than big landmarks like the Delicate Arch, which are pointed out for you and photographed so often. These roadside sights are something you find for yourself. The idea that this can be a photograph is your idea. And Meade has been a great companion, who not only does nearly all the driving and drives with professional care but who turns my idea that this could be a photograph into an actual stop and who also often has the idea that this is a photograph.

Here's something we stopped for in Orderville, Utah:



I love how generic and inclusive that big sign is. And I'm fascinated by the wacky jumble of points on the red shape. Is it Googie? Anyway, I love the contrast between the complicated, exciting red structure and the simple, bland words. But it wasn't that sign that caused the stop. It was that little yellow sign. "Buffalo Elk Gator Jerky":



It was Meade who spotted that sign and insisted that we stop and I take a picture of it. It's only as I process the photo now that I see that the requisite potshots have been taken at it. I pause to Google why do people shoot at signs? and find "The Dangers and Costs of Sign Shooting" at Outdoorhub. I'm shooting the sign myself, of course, but I don't leave my impression in Orderville. I put it here on the blog.

Now, I wasn't even sure this picture was from Utah, and I don't know if I ever knew we passed through a place named Orderville. I know it's Orderville because I swiveled around and took a shot at "Food & Drug" and saw that it did have a less than completely generic name: Terry's.



I found a Yelp review — one review, 5 stars — for Terry's Food & Drug — "Small town service for a small town" — and that's where I see this is Orderville.

Orderville. We didn't explore. We only stopped for some signs that charmed us, transitorily. I muse about the motives to name a town Orderville. I think of law and order. But that's the kind of thinking of a person who blows through town and takes in the surfaces. Gator jerky! A Sinclair sign! Numbers painted on the rocks! But Orderville is something else:

"Are you sure it's not white and gold?"

Asked Magson, wisely, in this morning's "Black and Blue Café."



And Lance said, "That bug is actually gold and white":

"Good Evening, It's An Honor To Be Used As A Political Prop By My Husband's Campaign."

That's the headline for an Onion article, linked by Christopher in the comments to my live-blogging the first day of the DNC convention.

And here's a photoshop from Lance, appropriating my photograph from last night's "café" post and putting the dreamy "pioneer of the future" into Michelle Obama's dress:



(A "café" post headline on this blog signals that commenters should write about whatever they want. The sculpture is "Pioneers of the Future," by Jeffrey Barber, located on the grounds of the state capitol in Bismarck, North Dakota, dedicated in 1989, the state's centennial, and — according to the plaque — representing young people on "a path of knowledge through education that opens up unknown truths about ourselves." Also on the capitol grounds is this far superior sculpture "The Pioneer Family," depicting the pioneers of the past.)

Here's what I'd like to say the morning after the First Lady's speech. It was a typical First Lady speech, completely old fashioned, using the candidate's wife in the old-fashioned way. She's a wife and mother, and she tells you over and over how being a wife and mother is the most important thing. Children are the future. We live and sacrifice for them. And my husband knows that. Vote for the wonderful man that I'm vouching for.

There's no indication that this woman, like her husband, has a J.D. from Harvard. Her undergraduate degree is more impressive than his. As a lawyer she was senior to him: She served as his mentor when he was a summer associate at a fancy Chicago law firm where she was a permanent associate. She has (or had) professional stature and legal expertise. No trace of that showed in the speech she gave.

Isn't it ironic? The Obama campaign has relied on a theme called "the war on women," within which the Republicans want to shove women back into the past and Democrats represent the future where women are the full equals of men. Yes, yes, yes, that's all very nice, but the man has an election to win, and his woman must reenact — one more time — the role of the traditional, modest, little-lady, helpmeet housewife.