When I was in high school Abercrombie & Fitch was this amazing store for which there were branches in New York, San Francisco and I think London. When you walked in you saw polo saddles and mallets and other merchandise invisible to most gentry. My best friend and I went there because for two months all we wanted to do was learn about fly fishing and even how to take hook and feather and fur and make flies - feathery lures to tempt mostly trout.

Where there are trout are among the most interestedly beautiful places in the world. Not a Kodak moment, unless you are there. Meaning, your photos will likely not be as good as the experience.

Photographs are very different from the gestalt. Most photographers get hooked on the eye scanned topography, the warmth of the breeze, etc and do not quite understand how to effectively convert that into a photograph. For me it has always been better to construct a good landscape by going wide angle to get in the most, or going telephoto for a close up of a symbolic detail.

It is also very manic how Tony and I would dive head first into a hobby - breeding tropical fish, gardening, stamp collecting, collecting tobacco pipes, hiking, body surfing.

Getting back on point the Abercrombie franchise today is a marketing spun gold mine for anyone under 30 trying to buy fashion identity at double the value. I recall that the chain created much buzz by creating discriminatory T-shirts making fun of Asians - The Long Island store was sixty percent Asian, and seventy percent of those buying.

I am completely alien to those who enjoy spending their weekends shopping - as if it were the equivalent of hooking a golden trout. And to truly belong to this subspecies you need to also have one's ear to a headphone or text messaging.

Greg got cargo shorts, Mariana a PJ, and I bought herbs of Provence at Williams Sonoma. The opulence there was undermined by the general economy - I thought i I bought these skewers I can bar-b-q better...more often. Williams Sonoma is a great store, but who needs a two thousand dollar espresso maker?

Today was the spring's first french kiss of summer.....ninety five degrees and makes men long to smell charcoal and the cologne that is lighter fluid.

Debbie is posting great photos this week and Trijnie posted a photograph of her amazing glass. Simply inspiring and I hope they remain.

We also all have a lot of other needs and duties, but there is something to be said for creating and sharing. Better than spending time at an over priced trendy store where the music is loud to even me - slightly deaf older one timer.

No.(s).art.(urday)