Inside-out

I was watching another music awards show on TV recently, this one to about ten songwriters who have influenced their and other generations of singers who sung their songs and songwriters who followed them. They were talking about one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Kris Kristofferson. Probably few people recognize him or his songs - you should find a compilation CD somewhere to listen to him, and fewer people know his life, especially as a veteran and Rhodes Scholar.

Anyway, one of the persons talking about Kris said his songs were written from the inside out, ones that everyone not only recognizes but finds it touches them. The songs are about the essence of life, our feelings during our experiences. We've all been there, and Kris put it to words and songs. He's written a lot of songs you've heard but don't realize they were written by him, and it's fair to say his singing is unique, meaning it ain't top 40.

But that said, I like his music and singing. And it's relationship to photography? Well, it touches on the words of David Vestal.

David Vestal has been a photographer for many years, and there is no way I can begin to summarize or praise his work and his contributions to photography. I just want to say I'm grateful to him for his column in Photo Techniques magazine. I only started subscribing to PT last year but I've read it for ten years now buying it at newstands when I saw it. My appreciation of his wisdom is of late and his advise to photographers.

Much of what David is writing about is the essence of photography, and, in my view, that a photographer works inside out. A photographer has to be there in the present with their eyes and mind open, with passion and spirit, and the camera ready to do what they see in the scene to capture and produce an image. In short, a photograph is about the photographer, and their visual expression of the world. For you to see.

I know that my photography and essays are only observations on life in my life, nothing more and nothing really great. It's my own realization of being me. And this photo is similar. While many people and photographers love images of waterfalls - and many photographers spend hours trying to learn to get the right style in their images of watefalls - I like the small things in life, and this small creek was one.

It's the ones you drive by almost everyday. And driving on the Westside Road to a trailhead in Mt. Rainier NP I glanced alongside the road and saw this small waterfall. I spent most of the rest of the afternnoon at this place - never got to hiking - and like the rest of the photographers, trying to capture what I wanted. Nearly a roll of film later I could only hope it worked, to which this was the best of them.

What it takes to express yourself from the inside out? You have to have the soul to express, the passion to have the fire, the heart to have and be the love, and the energy to drive the dedication. It's the totality of your being. Well, ok, sometimes, and many times it's not always completely there, but then we all have our moments when and where it is, as the saying from Teddy Rosevelt goes, "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have."

I liked the small rock that just can't grow moss. Sometimes we're all just like that rock.

Why Mondays are cool

Ok, for me anyway. I realized after nearly 40 years of working for someone, jobs and careers, or working for something, undergraduate and graduate school, Mondays aren't the coolest things people like in their life. And in my career I slowly learned to find a way to make it not so bad but setting time aside for getting into the idea of work and working on the workplan for the week and beyond. But since I retired nearly 20 months ago, Mondays are really cool.

I won't say my goals and plans are new or unique - that is learning to become a serious photographer and building it into a small personal business - but I have learned to enjoy Mondays. They are the days I sit down after the weekend and plan the week along with reviewing the month plan to see where I'm at and what I want, and occasionally have, to do. The latter is like last week.

But the important thing is that I don't put the pressure to do or be anywhere Mondays except to free think about my life, my work, and the rest of the world around me. I like to sit on the southeast facing deck and feel the sunshine and the warmth the morning - when it's clear and warm, after all it is the Puget Sound in Washington. To have a complete panoramic view of the southeast overlooking the Narrows Strait with the twin bridges south and Mount Rainier straight through the trees is something I am thankful for in my life.

And I get to sit in front of my really cool - to me anyway - computer and wander around the world checking the news, reading the bulletin boards and forums, writing on my blogs, thinking about places to go to photograph, doing my exercise program, and whatever else wanders by the synapses. I don't go anywhere. I just enjoy my place and the day while taking stock of life and work.

And that's why Mondays are cool.

NPR - Reading Books

I have a small library. I don't collect books per se, but collect books on specific subjects, and even then never more than a few to get a broad perspective on a subject. There are some exceptions for subjects where books aren't common and/or not commonly available, like those specifically on Dysthymia (all of four professional technical ones). In short, my library is a three bookcase set about 12 feet long and about 8 feet high.

My rule on books is that any new books must fit into the existing bookcase. I don't add bookcases or stack books around the place. I have about a dozen boxes of books in storage right now ready to donate or sell as they were read, not relevant anymore, not of interest anymore, or simply boring. I normally collect 6-8 boxes before donating them, but now I have more than I care to even haul somewhere someday. For now anyway.

My point? Well, I'm mostly a researcher reader, from my graduate school days. While a buy a fair number of books, I don't read many books cover to cover, and mostly end up reading about a quarter to half way into a book before losing interest or finding new interests. I always browse several books stores once or twice a week, because I like to get an idea of all the books currently on the "market" - remember books aren't about you reading them but buying them.

I also like to listen occasionally to writer and reviewer - like reading the book review section in the New York Times Every Sunday, and especially Seattle's own Nancy Pearl. Well, the other day she commented that she only completely reads about one book in twelve she starts. And the other eleven get dropped into the ether of never to be read again.

Now that was enlightening because I always thought book reviewers and/or critics actually read a lot of books, and I felt guity for my low rate of completion. Now I don't feel so bad about putting a book down as either bad, boring or stupid, or just something that doesn't interest me right now, as many books get put on a shelf of on-going where I will return now and then to read another chapter.

Anyway, my favorite book of all time is Clarence Glacken's book, Traces on the Rhodian Shore. He was a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley for much of his career. I attended California State University, Sacramento in the early-mid 1970's where many of the faculty had worked or met him throughout their careers.

The irony of his career is that while there was the pressure in academia to publish, he only wrote and published this one book. He spent his entire academic career researching and writing it, but instead of relying on translations of books or texts to use in his book, he learned the original language and traveled around the world to read the original books and texts. He was dedicated to providing his own understanding and interpretation to the material than use others'.

What more can you say for the value of dedication and devotion? Well, it's a book that will take my lifetime to read, as you can only read a few pages to some of a chapter before I am overwhelmed with the words and ideas. But that not the issue to me, but simply the consistent effort to read it. It's one book I may put down, but guarranteed to pick up soon.

Any other books? Well, a set. In the 1970's I read the normal books environmentalist of the19th century naturalists, but I had the habit of wanting to read the complete works of writers. On the side I read the complete works of Sherlock Holme, but I read the complete writing of Thoreau and others, not just their major book(s). To that end, Linda, my then wife, bought me the complete works of John Burroughs in a 1924 edition set.

This is a really cool set of books. It was printed as the Wake Robin Edition from Wm. H. Wise and Company purchased by a collector in Peckskill, NY (inside jacket sticker). I don't know how it got to a Sacramento used bookstore but I envied it for a long time before Linda secretly bought it as a college graduation present. I've read about a dozen of the twenty three volumes. Some are interesting and some mundane, but overall it's worth the time to get the flavor of the 19th century naturalists.

And so in the end, I don't feel so bad about reading, as long as the interest is always there.

What is wrong here?

I always love a good contradiction. And this is a good example, to me at least, of someone not really thinking through what they're doing. Is a notice of posting no notices also illegal? Does it break the law it advertises similar to if we posted notices on the pole? I always just wonder, can we call to say there is an illegal notice on this pole? Or, after asking us to explan the notice, would the say we didn't understand?

And what about those old wooden power poles pummelled with staples which held notices long since blown away into the world, to fall to earth, be picked up, and thrown in the trash? Did you ever notice no one ever removes their notices which are long since obsolete or past their day. People just staple over them with their new ones, which often makes some interesting scenes and combination notices.

Well, I don't have much else to say about it except it seemed kinda' illogical on its face. Kinda' the small stuff of and in life I like to find and photograph.

NPR - To my brother Greg

My older brother Greg passed away August 21, 1991. It was an eventful day all the way around, as I realized later. He overshadowed me throughout our lives. He was 6-plus years older, the first born. Our parents put almost all their love into him and his future, the rest going to my sister with some scrapes for me, until that day, and afterward I wasn't much beyond a card now and then. His death took the life from our Dad, who passed away just over 3 years later.

We were like the plants. He the bigger noticeable one with all the life to show. I the one finding life on the edge and eventually asked to leave at 19. It wasn't either of us who caused this, it was our Dad who made those decision about our importance in his life and the family, and my Mom who followed Dad. That's all. In our twenties we had our own lives, work and families, but as we grew into our thirties, we broke through the divide our Dad created.

We found being brothers was what we missed and let it almost slip through our lives, never really knowing the other one. Greg was the career one in our family, rising to be CEO of AMC Theater Company before being ousted in a buyout he negotiated. He learned about corporate politics the hard way, and one on his own again, he lost sight of life, to die a few years later from the wear and tear of life. And that's the sadness of it.

While he was a two-pack a day smoker and an alcoholic, he was smart and wise in many aspects. Sadly not with his family. It seems he followed what he learned from Dad, and his three kids turned out very similar to us three, but they're doing far better now as we did. That's life, you cope and get on with it, or decide something else to do.

Anyway, I salute him every August 21st. You see it was the day I bought my 1991 VW Vanagon Syncro, and drove it home to hear the news on the answering machine. The first drive was to the airport to fly to Kansas City for the funeral. The second trip after coming home was to the ocean near Westport south of Aberdeen. For a reason.

We travelled a lot in the world, but Greg never saw the Pacific Ocean. He came close once when he went to LA to negotiate the buyout deal of AMC with the new company. He couldn't find the time to go to the beach and stand there to see the ocean. He always expressed regret about that, so I took some flower from the service to place them in the ocean, and watch them float out to sea. It was all I could think of to do to give thanks for him and being his brother.

You see for many years our Dad tried to make us compete with each other on his standards. We broke from that when he was living in Gunnison, Colorado. He loved living there in the country. His family didn't, so after 2-plus years he returned to Denver and then Kansas City for the family. But I could see it in his eyes and heart, he didn't want to leave Gunnison. While I praised his success, he praised my freedom.

He was locked into our parents. I was set free but mostly disowned. We found our friendship to talk about life, something I haven't done with anyone else. We were totally different but found we were also so alike. I miss him. And I think of May 25, 1997, the day we reached the same age in our life. I'm still here and he's still in our hearts.