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April 2023

Vol. 51, No. 2

Musings from the Blind Birder: Photographs, Memory, and the Moment

Martha Steele

I hold a shoebox of three- by five-inch photographs. I sigh and put them down on the bed. I explore with my hands the next shelf in the closet. A pile of small boxes, with a dozen slides in each. The shelf below that? A neat stack of several photo albums.

What do I do with these? They document my life. I alone feel fully the significance of the places and people they depict, but I can no longer see them. Yet it would seem blasphemous to throw them away. Wouldn’t that be throwing away my life?

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