Safe Travels in COVID Time
Elders are known to reminisce and reflect. I fit the demographic. In my mid-70’s and at high
risk during the global COVID pandemic, I hunker down, limiting travel to daily neighborhood
walks and monthly forays nearby for provisions. Many Americans dream of retiring and taking
trips away from familiar places. Instead, I make images with what is close at hand. I dig in my
Seattle basement to excavate an old carousel projector and 35mm film slides I made many
decades ago. I travel in my garden and in my laundry room by overlaying images that conjure
up memories of times past. Projections from my deck to the neighbors’ trees remind me of a
frigid 1971 December in Chartres Cathedral or in a Loire Valley chateau. Overlays on the
washer take me to an intact Notre Dame Cathedral decades before the 2019 fire. Others in the
laundry to a 1973 boat trip through the Golden Gate, and another on the water heater to the
summit of Mt. Tateyama, Japan, at sunrise. Safe travels with renewed gratitude for home and
memory.
