Words For My Pictures

  The central vegetable and fish market of Addis known in Amharic name Atkilt Tera is a vegetable and fruit whole sell market that used to be located in the heart of the city. It is a place where fresh produce comes from almost all corners of Ethiopia to be resold to small traders who in turn sell in small local markets that local juice bars and restaurants buy from. Some individuals with big families also come to buy in bulk to save money. For a reason, I don't know fish is sold in this market. It might be because some Orthodox Christance eats fish during lent where they abstain from meat and dairy products. It makes sense to have all items needed for the lent season in one place.  The fresh produce is collected from farmers from all over Ethiopia by merchants who travel to collect the harvest and sell it to another bigger merchant who sells it to whole sells in the capital.  The same product might be sold and bought multiple times before it reaches the city. The chain i...

 Whenever I pass a construction site here in the US. I always wonder how quiet it is compared to construction sites in Ethiopia where they are always loud and sometimes chaotic. Contractors in Ethiopia use a lot of unskilled manpower to compensate for the lack of machinery or high price to rent or buy them. It is relatively cheaper for them to hire people to work as laborers. The drawback is the laborers they hire are unskilled and are not productive as the contractors want them to be. To perform a simple task there needs to be a lot of commotion and shouting accompanied by whatever noise construction machinery on the site makes. On the other hand contractors in the US are highly dependent on machinery to minimize cost because unlike Ethiopia hiring people is expensive. The people they hire are highly skilled and much more productive than their Ethiopian counterparts. You will not see a lot of unskilled laborers doing manual tasks in the US instead you will see few high skilled co...

  I took another self-portrait to mark another birthday. A simple headshot to mark the effect of nearly a half-century of existence as Deresse.  I can hardly notice the subtle changes in how I look but I am sure they are changes because once you pass your growth stage there is no turning back. You slowly age every second. It is inevitable. Depending on what you believe you can pray and do good deeds for your afterlife but you can not reverse aging, getting old, and finally death.   Stoping to grow physically and the aging of your body doesn't mean that you stop growing as a person but you need to put an effort into that. If you are not open-minded and curious to learn your intellectual growth will also deteriorate. I try my best to learn and understand new things as much as I can. Trying to see the world and life from different perspectives. I would say that I am wiser than I was twenty years ago and want to be much wiser next year. This doesn't mean that I regrate f...

Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays celebrated by Americans. Although different thanksgiving ceremonies and rituals exist in different parts of the world the American thanksgiving is uniquely American.  When European settlers started settling in New England and the Northern East coast life was hard and harsh and every year they survived in the new land was a moment to be thankful especially when they had a good harvest.  This tradition of giving thanks continued to the present making  Thanksgiving holiday where families come together and celebrate with good food.  I had been in the US for many Thanksgivings now but never had the full experience until this year. Although I had all the traditional Thanksgiving foods during the previous holidays this year was my first to sit with a family for the traditional dinner. Like all human celebrations, there was a lot of food and drink and great conversations. This made me think that people in every corner of the world an...

  The vibrant colors of autumn are a great subject for photographers all over the northern hemisphere. We all have seen hundreds and hundreds of images of fall captured in almost every photography style you can imagine. From landscape to macro photographs the magical season is frozen in millions and millions of pictures every year. Unlike the pictures taken during the seasons, the orange and yellow leafs will fall and give way to the dark gray winter. That is the law of nature!  I didn't know how fall can be breathtakingly beautiful before I moved to the United States. Yes, I have seen many pictures of fall when I was in Ethiopia but I had never imagined that dying leafs will have such beauty. Even though I was not aware of the esthetics of a falling leaf I knew the importance of the symbolism associated with it. Thanks to O Henry's American Classic short story "The  Last Leaf "I was able to envision how a simple phenomenon can be associated with life and death. In hi...

  Here is a picture I took in an antic store in Seattle's Industrial District. For young people who don't know what the classic items in the photo are, they are an analog telephone and a typewriter. How these gadgets work is another topic and we will not go there. Every time I see the picture I go back in time and hear the distinctive sounds that each gadget makes. Those sounds are engraved in me and most of my generation's memories and some of us still cling to those sounds. I don't know anyone who looks back nostalgically to the sound of the typewriter unless maybe their parents were writers but many like me are still trying to hold on to the sound of the analog telephone by choosing "Old Phone" ringtone in our mobile phones.  It is strange how memories are stored in our brains. I still hear the typewriters clicking loudly whenever I remember my trips to the principal's office at school where the secretaries are usually typing the next test or exam. Thos...

 Simone Biles was in the news recently not for the usual reasons as she normally makes it to the headlines but for a different reason. Simone Biles withdrew from the US   Olympic gymnastic team. She sensed that her body and mind were not connected well which is very important for a gymnast. That connection is very important since that is the reason which enables athletes to perform complex movements safely.  Athletes at every level are trained to give all they have to their sport. They work hard to be the best in their sport with great discipline, dedication, and focus. Coaches encourage and demand athletes to give all they got and sometimes more than what they have.  When athletes become successful the pressure becomes greater, now they don't have it coming only from coaches and teammates but additional actors like media and sponsors come to play.  Athletes drive themself to the brink physically and mentally.  In a success-driven world of sport, athle...