The locals call this The Hummingbird because of the shape. We are underground in one of the famous Antelope Canyons looking up at the sky and colors it brings out in the canyon walls. Our Navajo guide is walking us through the canyon and pointing out sites that have been photographed for cell phone backgrounds and other corporate purposes. We are all masked, a requirement in Navajo territory.

To get here we drove to a remote spot in the desert outside Page, Arizona in the far southwestern part of the State. From the Navajo-run office outside the canyon we walk downhill with our guide to the canyon entrance, a hole in the ground. Several sets of steps and ladders lead us deep into the ground for the starting point of our gradual walk uphill through Lower Antelope Canyon.

There are just four of us on the tour but larger groups follow behind. Once we reach our starting point at the bottom of the canyon, we are reminded of those following us when a water bottle dropped from high above slams into my head. Argh.

No damage done, we start our gradual ascent. The scene is other-worldly. Intense colors and curving walls greet us at every turn. Morning light filtering in from above works its magic to produce a show of light, color, and shape.

We feel no sense of claustrophobia, The cavern is immense and always light. To get a sense of scale, see if you can find the hiker in the image below.

Magical curves and shapes are everywhere, bathed in the morning light. Some are quite remarkable, like the one below.

Others are less dramatic but interesting in their own way. The exotic shapes and swirls are the work of wind and water, we are told. And, I am reminded that we carefully checked the weather before coming. Even distant rain showers can flood one of these caverns quickly.

In this moment, however, we are feeling no anxiety. Wonder at the exotic beauty and play of color have captured our attention.

It takes us about 45 minutes to make our way to the exit. One last short climb brings us to the surface not far for the Navajo office. Our trip will end with an early lunch of Navajo flat bread in a native hogan constructed nearby. The hogan is the traditional style Navajo home with its door opening facing East to capture the early morning spirits.

But before we get there, we stop at a small memorial to the dozen or more people who died in the canyon we just exited when a flash flood triggered by a far off rain storm swept through the canyon trapping all but two of people exploring that day.

Funny how this didn't make it into our guide's introductory talk before the tour began. I guess I'm happy the water I encountered in the canyon was in a plastic bottle.

It reminded me of the small sign we saw on another trip when we exited the bus to the Haulapai Tribe's Grand Canyon site. No more than three feet high, it said "Your safety is your responsibility."

Consider this a photographic tip of the hat to a long time friend and business partner who passed away unexpectedly last year. Kevin Arner was a serial entrepreneur I had worked with for years. He had a gift for strategic thinking and business strategies, building several successful companies in the healthcare informatics space.

He had a lovely family and a big heart, working tirelessly to expand the reach of his church overseas. One such effort had him planning the expansion of an Eastern European church and then traveling there to help with the effort. Another took him to India where he subsisted on breakfast bars for weeks.

Photography was something we shared so it seems appropriate to remember him here by sharing a few images he had particularly liked. His big talent was photographing birds, so I was surprised when he first commented on the photo above of a young great blue heron.

The story behind the image was always a part of our discussions along with questions about lighting, exposure, lens, etc. This early morning image was taken from a kayak near a heron rookery on an island in a North Georgia lake. The young heron had dropped to a spot below it's nest, which sat atop a towering pine tree. Testing the waters, so to speak.

I was in a kayak with my camera. The approach was slow and deliberate, using the current to drift, not paddle, at an angle toward him.

What attracted Kevin to the image was the low, eye-level angle, the close proximity and the narrow field of focus. The heron's legs and the feet caught his eye as well. When I captured this image I was just a few feet away, so close that a 100 mm lens was all that was needed.

This second image was another that intrigued Kevin. It is a golden hour shot, taken just before sunset at a place called Zabriski Point in Death Valley. It was a clear fall day with just a few high altitude clouds.

The photograph is actually a composite of several images stitched together in post processing. Its a technique you can use to maintain a perspective that is otherwise lost with a wide angle lens. The appeal to Kevin was color toning, the composition, and how river- like the scene appears, notwithstanding it being all rock and sand.

This image from Utah was the inspiration for plans to photograph the night sky together last year. It was the only photographic skill I had that he didn't.

We didn't make it. First, I was sidelined by a with a bad surgical issue and, then, he passed from a first time heart attack. He would have been very good at this once he learned the tricks.

The appeal of the photo? I think it is the bright clarity of the Milky Way, the remoteness of the surroundings, and the hint of a photographer in the foreground with his equipment pointed at the galaxy. It was unseasonably cold that night with little breeze and crystal clear skies.

Feeling pursued by demons? Bombarded by images of Russian savagery in Ukraine? Wondering if things will ever return to normal? Or, as they say on the news, a new normal?

Maybe it is time to look back at normal, or at least one aspect of one normal - travel in 2019.

My path that year included a long solitary drive on two lane roads, a ridge line walk on a desert path, and a  climb through and over boulders to this panel carved by native Americans hundreds of years ago. Relatively untouched by modern graffiti (Photoshop did the rest), it is a vivid reminder of human creativity AND the uncertainties, beasts even, that have always been a part of the human experience.

That trip also took me to Moab and the nearby Green River, seen below. The image took planning to arrive at the right time and patience to wait until the light softened in anticipation of sunset. It was a still afternoon in the low 70s with no one nearby. Quiet as can be as the scene slowly darkened with nightfall. The image from that day can still lower my blood pressure.

Later, travel took us to the East Coast where we took in Mt. Vernon, Monticello, and Chestertown, a small town on the Eastern Shore. The first two stops were to take visit the iconic homes of two of our country's founders.

Washington's home was full of color with a dining room that was almost garishly bright green.

Portions of both homes that were housing for "slaves" 30 years ago are now more appropriately described as housing for enslaved people. Below is the pristine version of the enslaved Sally Hemings' cabin.

Chestertown is an old Chesapeake Bay town whose roots, and many structures, date back to the 1600s. My wife's predecessors were among the towns founders. A night stroll is always picturesque. Yes, that's me in the bottom corner taking the photograph.

And, what would travel be without an outing on the high seas. Pirates and 'arrgh' and all that. Well, not really, but an encounter and a trade off the Gulf Coast. Here we are swapping beer for shrimp with a shrimp boat crew member.

No fish were caught that day but fresh shrimp for dinner and a few days with my son and grandson were a great way to close out travels in 2019. Here's to you and your future trips as we all ease back out into the world.

A favorite moment from years ago is a reminder of the joys of travel. Here we are in Arches National Park on a spectacular warm and partly cloudy day. My wife provides the photo's focal point as she makes here way along a path through desert greenery in the high country of Utah. Shortly after I took this photo, I caught up with her and we continued our walk together through this visually striking landscape.

This visit to Moab and its surroundings was a highlight of a six week road trip we took as part of a sabbatical from my law firm. As all travel does, it opened our eyes and provided us with memories and stories for the times we are not on the road. This trip also provided the first opportunity for me to try my hand at night sky photography, something I had been studying on my own,

The image above is one from my first late night photography outing. The location is a plateau in Capitol Reef National Park, an extremely dark place at 3 a.m. in the morning. The site where I set up was about a 20 minute drive from the motel. The ride out was solitary, with not even a single other car on the road.

There was a lot of trial and error on this first outing as you might expect. All the settings, including focus, are manual for this type of shot and you can't really see what you are capturing until after the image is taken. The small screen on the back of your camera shows you what your captured and then you adjust the camera and try again. And, then there was the gusty winds lashing across the plateau on this cold Spring evening that made it difficult to keep the camera steady on its tripod for the 60 second exposure needed to capture the image.

There was some success too, however, as you can see from the image above. Not only does it capture the Milky Way high in the sky above the sage brush but it also depicts the night's moon rise. You can see the first bit of the moon breaking above the horizon in the lower left corner.

What you can't see, however, is the sense of exhilaration that comes from being alone in the dark in a remote and wild location. Or, the sense of being exposed to who knows what when you cannot beyond a few feet in the dark.

This is how it can look when the wind gets the better of your camera and tripod set up. This image of a meteor shower above Dead Horse State Park taken later on another trip makes it look like the meteors are wiggling as the fall from the sky. A neat effect you might say but not an accurate reflection of the night. Strong winds shook the camera enough through it's long exposure to create the effect. Teenage Mutant Ninja Star Fall might be an appropriate title for this image. :^)

COVID took the freedom to roam away for too long and now global warming and droughts throughout the American West threaten the very survival of our land, at least in its present form. With the Western fire season we witnessed last year and the predictions for an order-of-magnitude greater fire season this year, does a road trip out West even make sense anymore?

Will all this uncertainty make this our last road trip? Absolutely not. There are still things to see and experience. Have Camera | Will Travel.

Keep up with us here and at TrekPic.com.

On Sunday, June 24, 1787, the forty-five year old pastor of the First Congregational Church of Ipswich Hamlet in Massachusetts set off alone in his one-horse shay. The Yale educated man of immense curiosity and resolve carried a cabinet with him to save botanical specimens he encountered on his trip. His mission, however, was not so much scientific as it was political. He was headed to meet with the Congress of the Confederation in New York City, the body that governed America before the Constitution was adopted in 1789.

His name was Manasseth Cutler and he had a big proposal for the young Congress. Negotiations at the close of the American Revolution had resulted in the transfer of England's claim to the Northwest Territory to the American nation.

Cutler and several partners had a plan for this territory, an area larger that the territory of the entire 13 States that sat north of the Ohio River to the Great Lakes and west to the Mississippi . His request was two-fold, for Congress to adopt laws governing the territory and to sell a portion of the land to a stock company he represented.

The first requirement was critical to his group and to the many Continental Army veterans who looked to this uncharted territory as an opportunity to experience what would later become known as the American Dream. Washington and Jefferson both knew the importance of establishing rules to govern the new territory and supported efforts in the Congress to develop those rules. Jefferson even submitted a proposed charter that was not adopted. Interestingly, his proposal included a prohibition of involuntary servitude in the new territory, a system his livelihood depended on.

Cutler and his partners had their own ideas about what an ordinance governing the territory needed to include. He and a group of ten men led by Revolutionary War General Rufus Putnam met on March 1, 1786, in the Bunch of Grapes tavern in Boston to formulate a plan for settlement of the territory. They established the Ohio Company to raise funds to acquire land for settlement and chose Cutler to represent them before the Confederation Congress.

The group believed strongly that for settlement to succeed, Congress needed to adopt a governing ordinance that would establish their legal ownership of land purchased and provide a set of rules designed to encourage and support a healthy society. Among their requirements were freedom of religion, encouragement of schools and the means of education, good faith interactions with the Indians, and the prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude from the  territory.

Cutler took the Ohio Company's plan to Congress with an offer, when combined with another interested developer, of $3.5 million to purchase property in the Northwest Territory if an Ordinance governing the territory could be adopted that fulfilled their requirements. In a debt-ridden new nation, this sum, the equivalent of more than $120 billion in today's dollars, was a strong incentive for its Congress to act.

Still, there was opposition. Some feared mass exodus of citizens from their States while others objected to excluding slavery from the territory. Counter proposals were proposed which Cutler found unacceptable. Cutler left New York without an Ordinance to visit Philadelphia, where many influential legislators were working on a new Constitution to create a more powerful and stable United States. His meetings there included the eminent Benjamin Franklin and the noted physician and Jefferson correspondent Benjamin Rush.

On his return to New York, Cutler continued to advocate for the ordinance the Ohio Company but to no avail. He finally notified legislators that he would leave New York empty handed that afternoon.

This very real prospect of losing the revenues from a proposed sale of territory land evidently inspired the necessary spirit of compromise among the legislators. Before Cutler could leave, he was informed Congress had adopted a ordinance to govern the territory that was based largely on the Massachussets State Constitution.

The new Northwest Ordinance included all of the Ohio Company requirements. The territory would recognize freedom of religion, encourage education and the means of providing it (every town would set aside property for a school-house and a university), Indian relations would be conducted in good faith, and slavery would be prohibited. Congress authorized its Treasury to close the sale of 5,000,000 acres to the two companies interested in purchasing land, with the Ohio Company acquiring 1,500,000 of those acres.

Cutler returned to his church and only managed to visit the new settlement that followed his negotiations once in his lifetime. The first town established by the Ohio Company would  be at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers and would be named Marietta to honor the French Queen Marie Antoinette who, it was commonly believed, had done much to persuade Louis XVI to support the American cause during the Revolution.

So, if you have wondered what real estate developers have  ever contributed to the well being and prosperity of the United States, you now have your answer. But, of course, Manasseth Cutler was much more than a developer. He was an highly educated man, a preacher, a physician, a veteran, and someone who was deeply invested in providing opportunity for American citizens.

Those who guessed last week that we were at Mara River on the Kenyan border to watch the Wildebeest Migration got it right. Here is a moment from our approach as we traveled to see this National Geographic moment.

And, another as the Wildebeest slowly make their way to the river crossing. We did not see any crocodiles challenging the crossing midstream but did witness this lioness take down one unfortunate wildebeest.

Below, she has moved her kill to higher grass to catch her breath and announce her kill with a roar.

This was the only casualty while we were there. Most, as you can see below, made the transit without a challenge.

No new Where In the World today. I  am taking a break from Facebook. If you don't want to miss the next posting, click on the  link and subscribe for email updates.

Best wishes.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Where can you find political courage in the face of a self-proclaimed law and  order President?

In 1963, Michigan’s Republican Governor surprised my hometown of Grosse Pointe when he appeared with black leaders and civil rights activists to march in protest of housing segregation. The Governor spoke to the gathered crowd and promised to establish a civil rights commission to help eliminate “human inequality and discrimination.”  When asked, he said he had chosen to get involved in the march because the issues involved were “so fundamental that they are above the partisan level.”

Our Governor would go on to serve several productive terms as Michigan’s Governor. In 1968, he would run for the Republican nomination as President, beginning the race as the Party’s front runner only to lose to Richard Nixon.

He continued to support civil rights and fight extremism throughout his career, which made him unpopular with many in his church and put him at odds with the Republican Party and his President. When he served as Nixon’s head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he directed the Department to reject projects from States that promoted segregated housing. The President shut down his program and refused to meet with him. Unable to be effective in the position, our Governor resigned.

His son would inherit his father’s interest in politics and his sense of duty. In 2012, he would even carry the Republican Party’s standard as its Presidential nominee. Later, serving as a freshman Senator from Utah, he would have his own moral reckoning on a national stage.

President Donald Trump had been Impeached by the House of Representatives for withholding Congressionally directed aid to Ukraine to force its leaders to start a dubious investigation into Trump’s likely opponent in the upcoming Presidential election. The evidence was overwhelming - a transcript of the call in question had been made - but the Republican Representatives did everything in their power to discredit the proceedings.

When the proceedings reached the Senate for the required trial, the Republican majority fell in line with the President’s direction and refused to even hear testimony. Making short order of the proceedings, some would say a mockery, a vote was called that declined to convict the President. The vote was on Party lines. The minority Democrats voted almost unanimously to convict while the majority Republicans voted to exonerate.

One Republican Senator, however, broke with his party to vote his conscious and to convict the President on the evidence. And, yes, he was the son of our principled Michigan Governor and the standard bearer for his Party in 2012.

Senator Mitt Romney, in placing his vote to convict, stated in his floor remarks that “Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.”

He added, “I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me.”

Like father, like son. George Romney, the Michigan Governor and head of Nixon’s Department of Housing and Urban Development who fought for civil justice even when his Party and President disagreed because it he believed civil just to be “so fundamental” as to be “above the partisan level” would have been proud of his son’s actions.

And, when protests erupted over George Floyd's untimely death at the hands of Minneapolis police, who would be the only Republican Senator marching with the crowds to show his support for civil justice and human rights? You, guessed it. Mitt Romney.

It makes you wonder how much of Abraham Lincoln's values survive in today's Republican Party.

For the Romneys at least, principle, civil justice, and country rise above Republican Party politics.

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All text is copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

So, where in the world? It is September and the temperatures are in the low 80s.

And, where were we last week? At the National Museum of the American Indian located in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House near Battery Park in New York City. Just steps from a great spot to view the Statue of Liberty and not far from Ellis Island.

Here are a few more images.

Even Lady Liberty needs to answer her phone once and awhile.

A different kind of lady liberty.

On the right is an Indian Peace Medal, issued by Thomas Jefferson's administration for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

This is not an Indian artifact in the strictest sense. It was issued by the General Court of Massachussets in 1676 and  awarded to Christian Indian scouts in a forced internment camp on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The English recruited these scouts to assist themselves during King Phillips War, a war precipitated by the Wampanaog natives in an effort to drive out the encroaching settlers.

This is a box-and-border robe from the Lakota tribe, probably from South Dakota around 1865. Made of buffalo calf hide and glass beads, it was typical  of robes worn by Lakota women in their puberty ceremonies and by married women.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are in Battery Park, across the water from the Statue of Liberty, getting ready to enter the building guarded by these protectors. Can you guess where we are?

And, where were we last week? Dragonfest in downtown Atlanta is the answer, watching the parade with  grandchildren long before social distancing.

Green Lantern and a tommy gunner.

Spiderman working the crowd.

Who you gonna call?

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Remember crowds? This image is from a few years ago, along a parade route. We are in downtown Atlanta but can you guess the occasion?

And did you guess? A lot of you knew our last image was from Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah outside of Moab. Here's another image of the bend in the Colorado River from a different vantage point.

And here is a night view. I call the image below Teenage Mutant Ninja Aliens because the meteorite trails looks like look like how a flight pattern might look these were alien space ships piloted by teenagers.

But what is it that makes these meteorite trails so unusual looking. Likely, it is just wind moving the camera ever so slightly during the 30 second exposure needed to capture this image. No one really knows, though. The image title just might be on point.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.