This week's theme: Factories

Factories, mills and all the other places of industrial production are all around, everywhere, ubiquitous. They are on every continent, in every country, in every state and province. They have become so much a part of some communities that their buildings, water towers and stacks have become landmarks - icons of those communities whose absence would be keenly felt. Though some see them as a blight on the landscape, the are not without their appeal. If you drive the New Jersey Turnpike towards New York City at night; past places like Elizabethtown and Newark, you will see them. Large and misshapen, looking as if they are something from a movie of an Orwellian future. Lighted, belching steam and smoke - they have grim and horrible beauty. Some factories have been in one place so long that generations of the same families have worked their. Often the employees have come to see each other and the factory they work in as an extended family.

Many feel that these industrial edifices and the companies that run them pollute the air, dehumanize those who toil there, mar the planet and they are not wrong. It is also true that there is more to them than that. They provide livelihoods for many. They can rejuvenate depressed and dying areas. And for the rest of us... the lifestyle that we enjoy; the lifestyle that we are so accustomed to would be impossible without them.

-Melissa Morton