When The World Is Devoid Of Color...

Two nights ago, while taking the dog out so he could do his business, I glanced across the street at our new streetlight. With the falling snow, it cast a cool glow on the ground and in the air. After the dog went to his room for the night, I went back outside and snapped a couple of pictures.

I let the pictures sit for a few days. I didn't know if I would post them in any capacity or if they'd end up like so many other photos that exist digitally somewhere in the cloud. Tonight I took a closer look at the photos and noticed something interesting...

There's no color.

Of course, black and white are colors. I understand that. And I'm sure if you were to take the photos and examine them more carefully, you'd see varying shades of colors, but to my eyes, they looked as if I had manipulated them by taking out all colors leaving only black and white. Nope...these photos are unfiltered.

It's impossible to capture the feeling of the moment. A photo or video is about as close as we can get. I loved just looking at the scene before me...a fine mist illuminated by the overhead light. It was beautiful and intimate and fragile.

I'm glad I experienced it...even if there wasn't much color.

Improving The Neighborhood...One Streetlight At A Time

 From my office window I saw an odd truck rumble up the street. I'd never seen such a truck before, at least, one that I can remember. It looked like it might be used for cleaning out sewer pipes. Once it passed I didn't think much about it.

Shortly after, a group of men gathered on the corner across the street. They were obviously workers of some sort. Then, the truck re-appeared. Ah...I thought. They were connected. I went back to work and from time to time, wondered why a strange truck and some workers were across the street. The truck eventually left and I realized why they were there...

They installed a shiny new streetlight.

Yay!

I know it's silly...excited over a streetlight. When my father built our home in Davis County, there weren't even paved roads leading to our house. This was 1970 and instead of installing large streetlights, they set up these fiberglass pods that looked like eggs sticking out of the ground. When a new house was to be built, they would remove the egg and install a short light. I loved the one in front of our house. When we built across the street from that house 30+ years later, I wished we had a pod so we could have put in a light. No such luck. We spent almost twenty years without a streetlight.

In this neighborhood, we arrived after the streets were paved. We're no longer the first ones here. And even though we still don't have the option of having our own individual streetlight. I like having lights on the street...more lights at night is an improvement. Though the neighborhoods are separated by miles and decades, it's good to see those improvements.