Guys gather / change looms
With the US invasion of Iraq expected soon, guys in the southern port of Basra hang at a local cafe and play a tile game [anyone know what it is?]. The mural behind them depicts the peaceful, plentiful life of the region’s “marsh Arabs.” Drained wetlands and environmental destruction from oil excavation have destroyed much of that life, and the war, of course, made thing far worse. The players’ open friendliness to an American—and a woman to boot—invading their guy-space with a camera was a spontaneous act of good will and generosity.
In a working class diner in down-and-out Barre, VT, guys meet for breakfast before work. A few months later, the diner had closed and now sits derelict on Main Street—its window art faded. At the turn of the 20th century, Barre—site of world-famous granite quarries—drew gravestone carvers from Italy and quarrymen from Scandinavia. The former, tending to anarchism and the latter to socialism, they vied with each other as well as with the quarry owners whose imposed working conditions led to waves of deadly silicosis and radical labor actions. Although the quarries survive [I’ll post some shots of them soon], the town has lost much of its political and cultural vibrancy as the granite industry shifted abroad and labor lost much of its clout.