Saint-Louis Archives - Mike Winslow Photography

Bridge Muir Woods — The Photographer’s Soul

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
Carl Sagan – in his book, Cosmos

Seventy Is

Many years ago when I began working on this website I hired a consultant to help me get started. One of her first questions was, “What is your website going to be about?”. I replied photography and philosophy. This fresh out of college consultant immediately suggested that I build 2 websites because she couldn’t make the connection between the two.

I said that to warn you. This blog, 70 Is, is a combination of both.

What Seventy Is NOT

Seventy is the new 50 said NO ONE turning 70… ever! It’s a clever cliche meant to assuage the realization that we are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

My skin is thinner, teeth are looser and fewer, I’m told that everyone my age has cataracts, hearing ain’t what it used to be, politically correct filters are waning in social situations, twenty additional years seeing friends, family and neighbors go through hard times, sickness and death, joint aches, and so on.

What Seventy Is

Speaking for myself, I was born about the time color television became widely available but no one we knew could afford it, raised by parents who survived the Great Depression, I saw John Fitzgerald Kennedy in person as he was campaigning for President in the summer of 1961, was in 4th grade when he was assassinated, and was there when RFK and MLK died preaching hope to America in ’68. I was a little too young to attend Woodstock in the fall of ’69, but I was greatly influenced by the event, that and the Apollo moon landing around Christmas time all over shadowed by the Vietnam war. And so on.

In my 70 trips around the sun, hopefully I’ve learned what I was supposed to learn, and contribute what I was given in life to give back. I call it, “Work that Matters”. I’ve had 70 years of joy with friends, family and neighbors, and 70 years of experiences (not to mention, I’ve got 20 more years of wisdom than any 50 year old punk.) And so on.

Presently

Presently I’m incredibly fortunate to enjoy decent health, healthy relationships, a loving partner, live in a great community full of opportunity, and still driven to do work that matters for people who care. This is what I do.