James Nachtwey's TED Prize

James Nachtwey wants to show the power of news photography in the digital age. He's revealing a story worldwide, all at once, publicly and dramatically, on October 3. If you live in any of the relevant cities, I encourage you to go. Knowing TED, it will be worthwhile.

Nimrod's Fortress

I realized that in my last post about my travels, I left out my favorite part of Day One of the Northern Excursion: Nimrod's Fortress. We visited it after Caesarea Phillipi and before we went swimming in the Sea of Galilee. Here is the account.

Pulling away from Caesarea Phillipi, we headed northward into the Golan. We wove up steep hills to our next site: a crusader castle perched upon a high crag - Nimrod's Fortress. This site was by far and away one of my favorites. The fortress is enormous, covering the entire hilltop. A secret passageway plummets and twists from within the walls to an exit near a cliff outside the north wall. Its vaulted ceilings echo dramatically, and out its slitted windows are sweeping views of the Hula Valley. The fortifications on the hilltop were massive, and became progressively moreso as we moved eastward toward the citadel. Halfway there, we came across the Octagonal Tower, which - you guessed it - we climbed, to find amazing views. (Incidentally, coming down from the tower, we ran into a family hiking past us. They were speaking in Hebrew, but the mother switched to English just to tell her kids why they were too well-behaved to climb the tower like those delinquents.)

At the citadel itself, we ran into Scott, who had been making some mischief of his own. I took his camera, and photographed him against a broad backdrop of mountains. He was climbing a ruined section of wall, and I was a good hundred meters away, on top of the citadel. When the time came to leave, I threaded my way back where I came; several of teh others, however, found a harrowing snake path down the eastern sde of the hill. Nimrod's Fortress easily provided us with the most rewarding opportunities to flout "No Climbing" signs.

Well, gosh, I bet this looks kinda familiar. (photo courtesy Scott Bierly)

Now You Can Know Too Much About My Life, Part 2

As some of you know, I now have Twitter.

On Guilt Trips and Procrastination

Gah! Alright already! There will be a post here by later today. I swear! On the grave of my great-aunt Trudy!

(I'm pretty sure I don't have one of those. And if I do... well, I'm sorry, Aunt Trudy. It's a big family. You never know.)