…to talk like this and act like that.

How do people see you and the world around you? There was an interesting day recently when I was pondering that very thing due to several interactions I had with people in different contexts, all of them related to photography. The right combination of moments all conspired together all in one day to give me a different appreciation of just how differently people can see the same world. Not only how they see what is around them, but how it is sometimes difficult to see it outside their own perspective

A thing I have learned after years of attempted photography is that people perceive you differently when you are holding what they consider a “real” camera and related equipment. I suppose it is one of those collectively learned reactions that is spawned from generations of ingrained association of big cameras with some sort of media outlet. But even without a “PRESS” card tucked under the band of your rumpled, felt fedora, there is an undeniable reaction that a lot of people have to seeing someone carrying a big hunk of photographic equipment. Sometimes that reaction is simply an extra glance or two your way, other times it is a cautious stare. Whether the thought going across their mind at the time is, “Ooo, I wonder who he is photographing for!” or, “Who does this guy think he is?!”, is a little hard to tell. Quite often though,  people tend to feel the need to acknowledge further.

“Gettin’ some good shots?” is by far the number one friendly ice breaker. I never really know what to say to this question. Do they really want to hear me discuss the how the glare right now is messing with my ability to see the correct focal point quickly, causing me to delay every shot a moment or two while I compensate, thus missing the perfect shot by a couple milliseconds? And, on top of that, did they also want to know that I forgot my extra battery so right now I’m not even checking the display, which means I am rationing my shutter clicks because I know at any moment, nothing will happen when I press the button?  I am quite sure that is not what they want. What is a good shot anyway? I could scroll with you through the 300 I just took and say “I guess I like this one … so yes I got one good shot”. But that isn’t really what they are looking for either.  Most of the time, I think people just want to acknowledge that they see you, and see what you are doing. Sometimes, even want to feel a part of it. They just don’t know how to express that feeling. I have yet to hear “Camera huh? Is it yours?” But I don’t think I would be surprised if I do sometime. I feel as though I understand that feeling of wanting to be involved, so as much as possible I try to respond in kind, but be brief. My typical response to the “good shots” question is as much of a warm smile as I can manage and “Oh, I’m tryin’!” followed by a comment on the weather, or the event, or how many people there are around, or how pretty the sunset is tonight. At that point both parties are usually satisfied with their level of involvement, and I go on about my business.

So that brings up another thing I have learned. If you want to meet new people, walk around carrying a big camera. I don’t care if you don’t even know how to use it, people will talk to you out of the blue and assume you really know what you are doing, or at least are doing something really important. For an extreme introvert like myself, this can be a little bit terrifying, and for the highly self-critical amateur photographer in me, this can be, well … even more terrifying. It would be rather nice to be paid by the number of times I heard “Are you with the paper?”. It wouldn’t make me rich, but I could probably buy a fairly decent lens! I have never said, “Yes” to those questions, but I’m sure people would be quite chatty if I did.

If there isn’t a connection to the paper or to National Geographic, I think that occasionally people have a hard time computing what you could possibly be spending time taking pictures of.  Sometimes I imagine the thought process of someone trying to work out the object of my camera’s attention. There is nothing obvious that indicates the cave-man-ish “I was here” in your shot, you aren’t pointing at people, that certainly isn’t food and you are focusing way too intently. What could possibly be that cool?

My wife and I were exploring some towns and sights in Northern Michigan when I had my full day of illuminating interactions. For the first encounter on my interesting day I found myself standing along the edge of a quiet street, looking at how the sand from the beach of nearby Lake Michigan glistened in the sun as it laid in stark contrast against the slowly melting black asphalt.  I followed the edge of the street looking at the different formations of the grains of sand and I came upon a iron manhole cover. The sand had piled up a little along its edge and I thought this was the perfect setup for a black and white photo.  I swung my camera around and moved in to find the perfect angle, adjusting my height up and down, focusing, snapping a few shots.  While I was snapping away, out of the corner of my ear I heard footsteps crunching the gravel on the asphalt as a man crossed the street a dozen yards away. I glanced up and he bellowed “Did you lose your keys?”  It was a bit comical, but I really didn’t know how to reply with anything other than the obvious. “No,” I chuckled, “just taking some pictures.”  Did I really look like I was looking for my keys? I wondered a moment or two just how I might be conveying that scenario since I wasn’t standing near a car and had a camera pressed up to my face. Perhaps this was something he had experienced in the past. Maybe I did drop my keys and not notice, I actually even checked to see if there was a hole in my pocket that might have made it look like I dropped my keys. Nope … keys still there. He smiled and shuffled on, and I went back to my sandy manhole.

A couple hours later, I was walking through an area of the sleepy town that was adorned with several quaint shops, the kind that have been standing since your grandfather was born. Over the years their different owners have come and gone, and they used to sell grain or lumber, until people stopped buying those things and wanted T-shirts and coffee mugs instead. I found one shop that stood two stories tall near a giant shade tree.  A small flower garden nearby was being tended by a thin, greying lady who was arranging some petunias closer to the store entrance. An electronic ding-dong sounded from a device clipped to her pants pocket and she hustled from the garden to greet the new customers just walking into the front door.  As she passed by me I smiled at her and she cheerfully said, “Hello, nice day today!”

I wandered the flower garden for a minute or two, camera at the ready. But, I kept looking at the shop itself and how majestically old it appeared. The recent coat of yellow paint glinted brightly in the sun, but there were areas where you could see decades of paint jobs chipped away down to the siding.  Standing at the right angle, you could see small sections of the paint peeling away and hanging down in gentle curls away from the straight lines of clapboard. Zooming in with my lens, I focused on finding curly rinds of yellow paint and I started snapping a few shots.  The shopkeeper came back out of the store to tend the garden again, but she stopped nearby and tried to focus on what I was photographing. “What kind of pictures are you taking?” she asked, seeming a bit bewildered. “Oh, I’m taking a few shots of the paint peels up on the siding.” As soon as I said that, I thought that it sounded a bit odd. “Oh,” she said shaking her head a little bit, “they’re supposed to be scraping that all away and painting it right.” She commented as she walked towards the garden “It was supposed be done this spring, but they didn’t do it again. Who knows, maybe it costs too much, I don’t think they’ll be painting again this year.”  Clearly she got the wrong idea of why I was taking the picture. I thought what I saw was beauty, but that seemed too difficult to explain successfully in the moment.

In another town, we made our way to the beach as the sun was starting to hang low in the western sky.  Scores of people were standing and watching the sun slowly slip between the clouds and behind a silvery, glistening stretch of Lake Michigan. I started hauling my gear out of the car and made my way down to the water to capture the silhouettes of figures walking across the concrete breakwater at the mouth of the harbor. I snapped dozens of shots, attempting to catch the intense orange glow beaming from behind the dark figures.  The sun was setting quickly, so I did not linger. I slung my camera bag over my back, propped my tripod on my shoulder and started briskly walking down the deserted, thin strip of beach between the tall beach grass and the cool lake waves.

Glancing up a few minutes into my walk, I saw a couple sitting in beach chairs at the edge of the beach grass ahead of me that I had not noticed previously. They were facing towards the disappearing sun with its orange aura happily reflecting off their skin. There were barely three feet of sand between the waves and their beach chairs, and I’d be walking right in front of their glowy entertainment … interaction was inevitable! I scrolled through a few things that might be said, but I didn’t have much time until I was right in front of them. “‘Scuse me,” I tried to say in a way that implied an attempt at being as unobtrusive as possible, as if somehow on command my body suddenly became a bit more transparent. “Gettin’ some good shots?!” came the familiar greeting. “Oh, I’m tryin’!”, I replied to the man without even thinking, “it’s a great night isn’t it?” I glanced over without breaking my stride. I saw him point enthusiastically at the sinking sun, “I’m guessing you saw that?!” I chuckled a little and replied “It’s a little hard to miss tonight eh? Very pretty!”

My destination was a small beacon structure on the very end of the concrete breakwater at the mouth of the harbor. From this point I could frame the distant lighthouse against the backdrop of the sunset and maybe catch some passing boat traffic at the same time. I set up my tripod and framed the scene, then just waited for the sun to set a little further and hopefully not be obscured by the thick, stormy clouds at the edge of the horizon. As I waited, I could hear the low rumble of slow-trolling boats coming up the narrow waterway to make their way onto the lake. They are required to move very slowly in this section of the harbor, so slowly that I was picking up on the conversation that two boat owners were having as they converged, heading in the same direction. They amicably quizzed each other on their vitals for the few minutes they had in each other’s relative company. “What year is yours?”, “What’s her horsepower?” and “When did you first get the bug?” Questions and answers that I couldn’t relate to, but both captains used as shorthand to become fast friends in passing. They parted ways after a few moments with a “Good Luck” and a friendly wave.

One of the boats was turning towards my camera’s field of view fifty yards out. The captain was barely visible on the deck through the dusk of evening as he floated by, but I could see we made something akin to eye contact. He waved to me cheerfully and I waved back. “Am I going to ruin your shot?” he hollered to me across the water. This was new! I have had people do all sorts of strange things to get out of my way, or completely ignore me and get in my way, when they see me shooting (usually, they do the exact opposite of what you hope they will, but that is another story). I had never actually had a vehicle of any sort offer to literally change course for one of my shots. “No not at all,” I hollered back. “Go right on ahead!”  The boat glided beautifully into frame between the lighthouse and the horizon, as he floated by I fired off several “ruined” shots.

Earlier the same day, we were driving through a vast park with gorgeous open spaces punctuated by majestic expanses of trees. I was driving, but still watching the sides of the road to soak in as much of the scenery as I could. We passed by a large stretch of pine trees and I slowed the car suddenly, coming to a stop on the gravel-strewn shoulder as I flipped on the hazards. I checked the rearview and saw no cars, so I hopped out and grabbed my camera gear. I tossed a casual “I’ll just be a couple minutes” to my wife and I waded into the waist-high grass at the side of the road. I stood a few yards off the road, assessing the view. I took a few shots, crouched down and took a few more.  I could hear a car approaching, slowing down, slowing more and passing by our car at a crawl. Glancing over my shoulder I could clearly see the passenger’s curiosity as to what I had found.  Another two cars repeated the maneuver as I snapped away.

Another car approached and slowed noticeably, coming to a stop right behind me. Taking another look over my shoulder I was greeted by four curious faces. The passenger window rolled down and a young man hanging over the side. “What do you see?!” He asked in somewhat of a shouted whisper of excitement.  “Oh! Just trees!” I replied enthusiastically. The look on his face was a bit hard to describe. A combination of  disappointed, bewilderment and a dash of annoyance.  He sat back in his seat a little as he said, “Oh, OK”.  For some reason, when I saw that reaction, I felt the need to say, “Sorry.” They hesitated a moment or two, then the window rolled up, the car drove away, and I went back to my treeful forest.

Although the chronology is ever so slightly skewed via artistic license, this episode completed my interesting day full of perspectives on the world. I don’t quite know how to most effectively bend the “forest for the trees” cliche to fit my experience that day, but I think if I tried, it wouldn’t quite match the uniqueness of what actually happened. Why did I say sorry to that young man? Part of me was sad about his disappointment in not experiencing the exciting thing that he imagined was out there. Part was also sad that I assumed that he wouldn’t have the same level of excitement or appreciation for the beauty I saw in the trees just standing against the light. Later, I was mostly sad because I assumed correctly, he couldn’t see it, at least not in the moment. I like to think that as they drove away, maybe from a different angle, he saw what I saw.

The beauty in those trees, that boat, that paint, that sand, it is there for everyone to see, they just need to be seen differently.

The other day my wife and I decided to go out for a dinner at the local Lone Star Steakhouse. This was the first time in quite a while we had been tempted to go to that particular place. There were several reasons for our absence, but since the recent revamping of their menu, and quasi-update to the decor, we decided to give it another shot.  There were quite a few very interesting new things to try, the prices were better and overall it was a very enjoyable meal out on the town.  We were finishing our dinner and the glasses of tea were getting very nearly empty when something happened that I found completely derailing to my inane dinnertime banter. It kicked off a bit of self psychoanalysis that completely preempted our crucial discussion of whatever our cat was doing just prior to leaving the house.

A waitress (not our own) was passing by, carrying a stainless steel pitcher. She stopped by our table, gesturing with the pitcher towards my one-third filled glass of tea in the universal gesture of “would you like a refill?”. She supplemented her motion with the fairly simple question “you had regular tea, right?” 
Believe it or not, I froze for a moment while I had to process her question. I verbally stumbled for a moment, and then replied in a way that she didn’t understand at all.  But before I get into that, I need to supply a little back-story.

Unbeknown to me previous to this fated evening, Lone Star had augmented their menu of drinks to include several fancy flavored iced teas.  As our waiter was running through the list of flavors, I practically pounced when his list reached “Blackberry”. I didn’t really care what else was on the list, I would float away on a river of blackberry iced tea and would be unnaturally happy for doing so. On hearing the list of flavors, my wife, also pleased by the options, changed her drink order from water to Prickly Pear Iced Tea. I will freely admit, prickly pear cactus as a flavor was quite intriguing to me, but not enough for me to change my order. Besides, it would be very simple just to try a little of my dinner-mate’s drink without losing any precious blackberry.

As dinner went on, I was provided with an additional glass of my chosen beverage before even half of my wife’s was gone. By the time the meal arrived, hers was also ready for a refill. A manager that brought the meal noticed the empty prickly pear glass and said she’d get it filled right away. However, our waiter efficiently noticed the same thing as well and in no time at all, my wife had two new glasses of prickly pear iced tea that she could never possibly finish. Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am, I kindly offered to help with one glass and we both spent the remainder of the meal happily sipping on the cactus flavored goodness. 

This brings us back to my moment of mental incapacitation. When the kind waitress stopped by to pose her question and fill my glass with tea, my brain tried to determine what the correct answer was and it had an hour-glass moment. The simple question of “you had regular tea, right?” shouldn’t really be that difficult to answer, but I might as well have had a “Loading…” sign over my head like a lagging computer.

I ordered blackberry tea, so that is technically what I had. But, I switched and was now drinking my wife’s extra prickly pear tea. I never really ordered it and our waiter didn’t know I switched, and she wasn’t our waitress. How were either of them to know? On the other hand, I could have just had her fill it up with regular tea at this point and drank that instead.  In reality, this girl didn’t really care what I ordered, she saw an empty glass and thought she had the right stuff, so she was going to fill it.
Why was I hesitating?
Trying to pick the “correct answer” was more difficult than I anticipated. So what were my options here?

1. Answer directly: “No, thanks though!”


2. Answer directly but tell her what I actually had ordered: “No thanks, I ordered blackberry tea””


3. Answer directly but tell her what was in my glass: “No thanks, I have prickly pear tea””


4. Answer her implied question of “do you want me to pour this in your glass?”: “Yes thanks!””


5. Answer her implied question, but explain anyway: “Yes! I had a different flavor, but regular is fine.””


6. Answer the larger question if I actually wanted any more to drink: “No thanks, I’ve had enough””

So there are six options…and each one could have led with a positive or a negative response, so that’s twelve.  The way my brain works, I had to pick the “correct” one. I had to pick the one answer that was the most precise.  The problem was, they were all fairly similar, if spoken correctly.
She stood there patiently as the gears of my mental engine clicked, sputtered and coughed. I turned the key and cranked the cranial starter again and again as the minutes ticked by, the poor girl’s arm weakening and lowering from the weight of holding the full pitcher as I stumbled through my intellectual stall.   Ok. It wasn’t really that bad, but it is pretty crazy how long a couple seconds can feel in that kind of scenario.

Of course what really happened is that I paused thoughtfully for a moment, selected the right answer and calmly replied.
Right?
Nope. I panicked.
“Uhmmm……” I eloquently replied, “I had the cactus one”
“The what?!”
At that moment, I realized that it was very possible that this poor girl probably had no idea that prickly pear was supposed to be a cactus flavor instead of some sweet tree fruit.
I had fumbled, but I tried to recover.
“The prickly cactus tea…”
Blank stare. Another fumble.
“Err…the prickly pear cactus tea”
She paused, very bewildered, clearly wondering what I was really drinking.
“Um…I don’t know what that is…”
She sheepishly shuffled away.

If I hadn’t been a complete socially inept buffoon and had I selected any of the other twelve answers, we could have avoided some unpleasant awkwardness, and we both could have gone on happily with our respective days.  Somehow though, I had managed to pick the thirteenth option from the list…the one that makes practically no sense at all. A mild case of internal panic kept me from just being conversational and answering a simple question.

I know others can relate to that feeling as well, but I seem to have a close personal relationship with the awkward, paralytic pause over the inconsequential. 
I need time to process! 
Is it a matter of being slow? 
Is my cpu missing a core or duo? 
Or am I just getting old?
Actually I know it’s not age since I have been this way ever since I can remember. I remember thoughtfully filling out long essay questions on tests with simply six or seven words.  Each word carefully chosen to say exactly enough to be correct, but not an extra word more. 
Precision should be efficient! 

Precision in conversation though can be quite annoying. The pause for thought breaks up the flow and can be awkward. For some reason, I feel the need to divine exactly the correct words. Typically I don’t find them, so it comes out awkward anyway! You’d think at some point I’d try to give up on precision and just say stuff. You might think that is what I’m doing here by writing this, but, no. You’d actually be laughing at how long ago “the other day” (from the start of this story) has turned into….so, I won’t tell you. I’ll give you a hint though, it wasn’t this week.

One day I hope to master this thing you humans call “conversation”. 
Clearly I still have a bit to learn. 
Latest lesson: when someone offers to refill your tea, just say “yes”.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the end of summer and the sudden onset of the heart of fall… at least in Illinois weather.  It is a bit of melancholy amongst the beauty of the colorful, falling leaves.  This is a bit of an ode to summertime in the heart of everyone.

I kicked the leaves along the path today
The morning cool and crispy air
Filled my chest and chased my breath away
Faded gleams of warm and fair

The sun hung low inside the darkened sky
Shadows sighed of trees soon bare
The fog of frost soon filled my eyes
Longing for the loss of care

Growing up in a big family can be tough. I feel that I can say this with a bit of authority because I am one of seven children, and I feel that this numerical resume entry grants license to call myself a somewhat qualified commentator for the Large Family Channel. And, while growing up in a large family can be difficult, providing for a large family can be a near impossibility. Even in the good times, just getting by can be tough. Survival skills are tested to the max especially in the summertime by the additional challenge of keeping all those idle, wiggly youngsters occupied and out of trouble. The solution? Find some sort of work for those young ones to do.

Since my family met the above criteria, and since we were an especially wiggly lot, work for us started at an early age. My laboring career began at the age of 11 and throughout my wonder years consisted of a wide array of different jobs and tasks, and almost all of them were outdoor manual labor. I worked for multiple employers, on an as-needed basis, and most often, on or around farms. Some jobs were not fun, some of them were…for at least the first 20 minutes. Jobs such as baling hay or straw, repairing fences, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, mowing lots of yards, raking leaves, cleaning barns, filling the clean barn with stacked hay, emptying the barn of hay to feed to cattle, and “walking beans”.

For those of you that have not had the privilege of walking beans, I can briefly explain. “Walking beans” is basically weeding a really big garden. Of course, nobody actually likes weeds, but a farmer despises weeds. The pesky plants grow in their crops and steal nutrients, compete for sunlight and water and they just plain look ugly in a nice pretty field of row after row of neatly planted crops. After the growing season they don’t stop being a nuisance; they get tangled in the desirable plants and jam harvesting equipment, adding debris to the harvested grain and lowering the sale price. All of these features of weeds make them particularly loathsome in soybean fields. They are a pain in multiple ways and the farmer wants them out, so somehow he has to weed this huge garden.

These days there are all kinds of chemicals and treatments that can be put on the field that will kill almost all the weeds for an entire season. They are dispatched with a quick spray or two from one of those monster machines you may have found yourself stuck behind on the country back roads. But, back in my day (am I old enough to say that yet?!), most of the chemicals were just becoming popularized and they were still expensive enough to consider other, cheaper alternatives. For a time, I was that cheaper alternative.

The process of walking beans is quite simple. Start at one side of the field; count out 2, 3, or 4 rows; and start walking down that row armed with your weed killing implement of choice. My personal favorite weed slaying companion was a corn knife, an 18 inch, super-sharp machete. While walking through the field with your dangerous weapon, the idea is to cut, kill or pull all of the weeds in your set number of rows on either side (without killing any bean plants) as you walk all the way to the opposite end of the field. Count out 2, 3, or 4 rows past the ones just cleared, and walk back down the field again killing more of the dastardly weeds.

Repeat…
Repeat…
Repeat…

Soybeans Ready for Harvest

Over the years, my brothers and I walked beans in fields all over the county, racking up literally thousands of acres of soybeans cleared of weeds and miles and miles of uneven ground trodden beneath our dusty boots. All of this travel had to start with a first step, and that first step was taken in a bean field alongside a couple of my brothers and sisters when I was 11 years old.

It was an already hot morning in late June and we were trying to get to the field before it turned into an unbearable summer day. We rode in the farmer’s van up to the edge of the field and tumbled out, ready to attack the weeds. But this was the first day, so we needed some guidance from the owner of the field and provider of the work.

We gathered around while he gave us some brief words of instruction. Hank was a rather quiet but upbeat man in his late-fifties, with a slower and more deliberate demeanor, but with plenty of life left in the tank. He had thinning silvery hair and walked with a bit of a hitch in his gait. I never knew what caused his limp, but to hear him tell it, I am certain it was quite the story! And quite a storyteller he was! I always liked watching him spin a yarn, embellishing and polishing until it was perfect. He lost himself in the telling, and it never mattered if you heard the story before. Hank seemed like he was spinning a yarn now, he had a big smile on his face as he told us what fun we’d be having today. However, his words were laden with sarcasm, as we were about to find out.

Hank prepared to ration out the weed dispatching weapons to each member of my familial squad while he gave the last bits of instructions. He opened the back door of the van and there were the tools. Stacked in the back of the van were freshly sharpened corn knives, brand new weed hooks, and an awesome looking weed sickle (which was actually nothing more than a tooth from a sickle bar mower bolted to a rough cut shaft of cottonwood…you may not be able to picture that, but trust me, it looked wicked). I watched as all of the coolest, or to be more accurate, the more dangerous tools were handed out to everyone but me. No corn knife for me, no weed hook, and no weed sickle, I was handed a garden hoe. Looking back, I know this was a very smart move by Hank, but at the time I was bummed and a bit jealous.

Hank counted out rows of young bean plants for the placement of each walker and after I was ushered to my assigned spot, we started down our first wave of attack. I confidently strode out into the field seeing my first weedy victim, a pigweed, a hundred feet down the row I was walking. I hacked at the plant in front of me and it tumbled down as the hoe kicked up small clods of dirt.
This was kinda fun!
On to the next one!
It did not take long to find the next target a row over, I ran up to it and hacked at it wildly. The weed fell over and a few bean plants fell with it. I couldn’t exactly paste them back together, so I ignored the mangled bean plants and just moved on to the next intended victim.

It wasn’t long before the fun of hacking in the dirt with a garden hoe started to turn dull and quite tiresome. The glee of finding the new weeds was replaced by annoyance that there were just so many of them. If it was possible, I was getting a little more careless. I had been knocking over more than a few bean plants and was sharply critiqued by my sister at the end of one round.
“You can’t go killing all the beans like that, slow down! Weren’t you paying attention to what Hank said?”
Apparently I was not. And, it wasn’t the only thing I had missed.
I replied that I would be more careful, and I did try. But as the day wore on, I started getting preoccupied by something else entirely – finishing my row first!

There must not have been enough thrill anymore in walking back and forth on a hot, humid day whacking at some plants but not others. I had to create a game that apparently only I was playing. The rules were simple. Whoever got to the end of the field first on that round did the best job, and therefore was the winner. I wanted to do the best and I kept getting to the end of my row first, but no one seemed to celebrate my bean walking domination. I was also missing something slightly important. That’s right, weeds. My sister stopped me and scolded me…again.
“What are you doing? Hank is having clean up behind you and get all the weeds you are missing!”

At first I didn’t believe her. I was doing great, I was finishing first! But on the next round when I was ahead again, just to check, I took a look back behind me. There was Hank, leaning over and cutting down a weed fairly close to my row…was that mine? I walked on some more…another look back. This time, there was no doubt, about 100 yards back, Hank was leaning down into the very row I was walking in and cutting down a weed that I should have practically tripped over. It hit me quickly; here I was playing a game with a job I was assigned while I made this man five times my age do double the work. I was embarrassed.

To be fair, I was only 11, and I don’t believe that Hank really expected that much out of me. But that was kind of the point to my embarrassment; he did not expect much and I was living up to that low expectation. Wasn’t I taught to do the best job I could? Is it fair to play a game out of something I’m getting paid for? Am I going to hell for making an “old man” do my work for me? Ok, I didn’t really think that last one at the time, but I was feeling bad, especially when he was finishing last because of my missed weeds. I resolved to do better.

Rather than run, I slowed down. I tried not to indiscriminately demolish all plants around each weed. My goal changed from getting to the end of the row first, to getting all of my own weeds. My goal was to keep Hank from cleaning up after me. By the end of the job, I had improved markedly, and even got a compliment on how well I had done. It was a lot of work, but I really felt like I had accomplished something. Rather than be off in my own world, achieving accomplishments that existed only in my own head, I had lived up to and surpassed expectations of my ability. It felt great, and really made an impression on me.

Many years have passed since then, but I do like to think that the experience helped me grow a little, and helped shape my attitude in approaching my work. Although I don’t keep this specific memory in the front of my mind at all times, every now and then I feel myself metaphorically looking back over my shoulder…just to make sure that no one is having to get my weeds.

This isn’t a recent story, but even though it is just a little old, I thought it would be a good thing to share as a cautionary, yet humorous tale.

It was summer, and my wife an I traveled down to Peoria Illinois for my brother’s medical school graduation. It was a great day and I was very proud of my formerly little brother on his big day. He had worked very hard for years to get through medical school, and it was great to see him pass this significant milestone. After the graduation ceremonies, the family spent time in the hotel restaurant and lounge area talking, eating and having a generally great time. In the middle of our evening, a tornado warning interrupted our celebration and the hotel staff whisked us off to a conference room to wait out the demon wind. In the end, the storms came and passed with lots of bark, and luckily, not much bite. All the excitement from the celebration and predicted doom of storm was more than we could possibly handle, and figured it was time we adjourned for the evening to spend time with our beloved sleep.

Back in our room, we began unpacking all of the things that we pretend to be a necessity for an arduous two-day journey 110 miles from home. Creature comforts that we, never quite successfully, attempt to transport from from our home-life and inject into the fabricated reality of a hotel room. After making as much of a temporary home as possible out of 350 square feet, I turned my attention to the very practiced art of the bedtime routine. Of course, this routine relies heavily on the not-so-artful practice of packing with foresight. Very quickly, an error in the forethought process was uncovered: a missing container for my contact lenses. Normally this wouldn’t be much of an issue except for the detail that the contact container was for my Clear Care lens solution.

If you are not a contact wearer, the name of this solution may mean nothing to you, but allow me to explain. One type of contact cleaning method uses two solutions. Step number one uses a mix of chemicals that remove enzymes on the lenses, and the second step uses another solution to rinse and neutralize the harsh cleaning chemicals that you use in step one. Clear Care is a one-step hydrogen peroxide based liquid that reacts in a special container over 6 hours to clean the lenses and, in the process, break down the hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. I’m sure you noticed the choice of the words “special container”.

Yes, it is THAT special container that I had so brilliantly left out of my “packing with foresight”. But, being the prepared, resourceful and ingenuous Eagle Scout that I am…no hold on, that should actually be Dr. Eagle Scout…and perhaps more important, it is not actually me, but my freshly graduated brother. So to rephrase with even more accuracy: being the tired, unprepared former b-average college science major that I am, I started to formulate a plan for getting this contact solution to work without it’s so-called special container!

Step one, figure out how this solution works. Here was how my brain broke it down: Clear Care is based on a low percentage solution of hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is sensitive to exposure to light and oxygen and will break down quickly when in the presence of one or both. So, therefore if this is a low percentage solution, and it is exposed to air overnight and then sunlight in the morning, it should break down some of its potency and should have a similar effect as using the special container…right?

Let me state at this point, that I’m normally not prone to this type of dangerous experimentation, but exhaustion was creeping in quickly, and I just wanted sleep. I wasn’t really thinking about how smart this was, and I wasn’t really thinking about…well I can stop there…I wasn’t really thinking. I pondered the wisdom of my idea for only a moment or two and then spent a significantly longer amount of time than that mumbling aloud about how silly it was to forget an item so simple. No matter, on to step two. I grabbed a clean hotel glass, squirted in an eighth inch of Clear Care liquid, and dropped in my sight-saving discs. This whole process took a frighteningly short amount of time to clumsily rush through. At this point, it was easy to stumble on to step three: collapse on the bed and fall asleep to whatever fascinating, albeit mildly blurry program that was playing on the History Channel.

After sleeping in for a sufficient amount of time to clear a foggy thought process, we awoke to a bright and sunny morning. It was at this point where I began to question the wisdom of my eye care plan of the previous evening. I rehashed the logic in my mind, and I had a nagging doubt if this was going to work correctly. However, I had convinced myself the night before and I was not dissuaded so easily. I approached my contacts with only slightly hesitant confidence. I fished the first disc out of the crystal clear liquid in the drinking glass where it had been lazily floating all night. I placed the contact on the tip of my finger as I stood in front of the mirror and paused a moment. “Well, here it goes!” I placed it in my eye.

It is a little difficult to describe what happened next since the descriptive timing is very skewed compared to how much time actually elapsed. It seemed as though about 10 seconds passed as I waited for my vision to adjust to the contact, but in actuality it was more like a tenth of a second before I started to feel that something may be wrong. And when I say that I could feel that something “may” be wrong, I mean that I became very disturbed by the sort of hyena-type howl filling the hotel room, while simultaneously feeling as though I had somehow managed to place only my left eye in the path of a shooting jet of molten lava. I concede that it would be very difficult to imagine what the searing pain of a volcano vomiting directly into your eye could feel like, but I still contend that it would be about as equally comfortable as what I was feeling at that moment as I hopped up and down in front of the bathroom mirror.

I believe a total of 2 seconds of jumping and howling had passed before I started frantically clawing at my eye to attempt removal of the shard of flame sticking in my cornea. At first I could not overcome my eye’s seemingly sensible instinct to clamp the eyelid shut to protect itself, but it was too late for protecting and was now just in the way, it had to come out! I finally managed to pry my eye open through the pain, but now I had difficulty actually holding still long enough to stick my fingers in to pull out the contact. Removal attempt one failed miserably, more hopping ensued. Attempt two failed, as did attempts three through ten. It seemed as though it was not only sticking on and melting my eyeball, but was burning a hole right through my head to the back of my skull.

After many painful attempts, I was finally able to wrest the offending circle of silicone from my eye and I practically threw it onto the counter expecting some sort of relief. In more ways than one, I was sorely disappointed. I did know that one of the worst things to do was rub my eye, but the temptation was impossible to resist, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t think at the time that It’d do much more damage than a magma bath. I was conscious enough to stop rubbing and remember that the best thing to help in this case was an eye wash. A little luck! The hotel had one of those high arc faucets in the small, cramped counter space that passed for a kitchenette. This gave me just enough room to stick my head in the sink and have my eye directly under the flow of water. Although the wash provided some abatement in the pain, having my body doubled over the counter with my head under a running faucet was far from my ideal way to start the day.

After about ten minutes of running water directly on my eyeball, I felt safe to retreat from the sink. At this point I felt immensely relieved, but far from comfortable. My eye was sore and throbbing a strange combination of numbness from the cold water and menthol-like burning from the caustic liquid. I could feel the veins in my eye bulging and rubbing against my eyelids, which were tender from some twenty minutes of prying, and now the whole side of my head was wet and dripping cold water down my shirt.

Then, I looked in the mirror. What I saw looking back at me was a little frightening. There was no “white” of my eye anymore, it was now completely red. I don’t mean “ow, I got an eyelash stuck in my eye and now I need some Visene” red. I mean full-on “oh my God call a priest, we have a total Exorcist possession and I can see Satan glowing in his eyes!” red.
Really…it was freaky.

I was still hurting, but after a quick trip to Wal-mart for an eye wash kit, and some more rinsing under the handy-dandy hotel room faucet, the danger was gone. The rest of the day was spent trying to hide my eye by holding it closed, wearing a baseball hat down low, wearing dark sunglasses, anything to shield my satan-eye. I had to tell the whole story several times to the rest of the family…which fortunately for me, contains several health care professionals. A couple of examinations inevitably ensued to ensure that there was no serious damage…after which everyone was free to laugh at the situation. Other than my bruised ego, there was no long term damage.

Every now and then I look back on this experience and seriously question my sanity. The packaging of Clear Care is now a little more jarring in its warnings about how to NOT use their product, and it is possible that it may have helped me avoid that painful experience. But I have to be completely honest, it’s also possible that I would have done the exact same thing. It is a little hard to say, but my little bout of ingenuity might have even over-powered the bolder and stronger warnings of impending liquid doom.
And there is where the moral of the story arises.
Even if you’re not using a Red Ryder bb gun, be careful, you can still shoot your eye out!

The Artist

I have to admit that quite a few people may not like The Artist (2011), and that’s really too bad.

This is a movie that has a number of issues that conspire to keep it out of the year’s “most popular” lists.  It’s first “problem” is that it is black and white.  Who wants to see a black and white movie these days?  It just feels so…old!  The next issue, no one in the States knows the lead actor or actress. Sure, there are some recognizable faces in the cast, but where is the star power?  But, perhaps its biggest issue is this: it is a silent film. Say what!? That’s right, a silent movie! Most movie-goers will be shrugging at the concept and instead plunking down their cash (more likely, their credit card) to see a big time action movie, with big time stars, than to see this film. It almost seems like a tragedy to me because I loved this movie. So much so that I thought I would break my self-imposed embargo on writing film reviews to come up with some words to describe just how much it impressed me.

I really did love everything about this film.  So many times I see movies and it’s fairly easy to nit-pick about things that I think should be changed or improved somehow, less of _this_ and more of _that_, a better way to tell the story, a better choice of actors.  Although it usually doesn’t prevent me from enjoying movies, it is a fun exercise to dream up ways to tweak things, even in great movies, just to make it better. With The Artist, I wouldn’t change a thing.

The film is not a parody, and neither is it an insolent exercise in snobbish self-importance.  It is a loving homage to the history of cinema told in the wrapper of a charming story that stands on it’s own beyond it’s tribute.  The arc of the story is familiar, as is the story’s setting of a silent film star (played by Jean Dujardin) at his peak of popularity in 1927, but perched on the verge of irrelevance in the emerging era of “talkies”. The way the director (Michel Hazanavicius) shares this familiar story, however, feels fresh and original.  He deftly uses the quintessential old-school Hollywood style, shots and techniques as tools to tell the story and not as a gimmick for laughs.  At the same time, this isn’t a film that takes itself too seriously…it is presented with a wink to the audience as if to say “Yeah I know! Isn’t this fun?”.

The Artist IS fun.  It is a lighthearted comedy that occasionally pricks your heart with a sharp pin. There are a great many laughs, but it is one of those stories where you find yourself a bit surprised at how much you connected…you really feel for the characters. Everything about this film makes you feel like you are watching a film made in the glory days of early cinema.  Even the sparse dialogue cards in the film fit right in with the overall mood, although most of the time, the cards are only required to drive home a specific point.  From start to finish this movie entertains smartly, and never treats the audience as if they need their hand held or the actions explained.  The filmmakers understand very well how the images on the screen communicate to the audience.

With an incredible eye for the beauty of black and white, the scenes are staged in a way that can only be described as art. A few scenes really stand out for their beauty, but at almost any moment you could stop the film and it would be a frame-able photo or poster. The rest of the cast are perfectly chosen (including: Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller) and I would have a difficult time imagining others in their roles. Even the music throughout the film is used in a way that compliments the film rather than telling the audience what to feel, by itself a rare accomplishment these days. It is not as easy as it sounds to have all these elements work together to create a mood or a moment in a film, yet throughout,  The Artist makes it seem like the work was effortless.

It is fairly certain that if you are not already interested in seeing this film, my words will do no more than vanish into the morass of critique and commentary that plagues the Internet and numbs brains worldwide.

And that’s OK.

In a way this is just a very wordy “Like” button to acknowledge the creativity of a great film, and a simple wish that it gets the armloads of Oscar nominations and other accolades that it deserves.

Raise your hand if you love music!

You can’t see it, but I am raising my hand.  I love music.  Music is pervasive in our culture so it is easy to say that everyone loves music to some degree.  However, I think some groups of people react very differently to music.  I’m definitely in the analytical-emotional-romanticizing group of music lovers.  Music can sometimes affect me in very interesting ways.  I can hear a clip of instrumental music or a popular song and I can have an instant emotional reaction. It can suddenly revive a long forgotten memory, it can make me happy and content or it can unflinchingly break my heart.  As important as it is to me to have that connection to the music itself, I find it is even much more profound when combined with lyrics that have real substance.

Thanks Dan.

What got me started on this train of thought was posts by Dan Hasletine from Jars of Clay.  I have been following him on Twitter for some time and he just started posting on his blog about lyrics he has written and is re-visiting their meaning or, what they have come to mean.  He asked his fans to come up with lyrics they are interested in knowing about and I was very excited to post a reply.  I started to mind-scroll through the Jars of Clay songs that I admired and I kept getting stuck.  I couldn’t pick one!  But what I found more interesting is that I did not really consider any whole song, instead I focused on bits of lyrics that paint a picture.

One of the shots from my Lyrical Imagery Project on Flickr

Grasping the meaning in an entire song is sometimes easier for me than in a specific subset of its words, which is probably why I find small parts of songs so intriguing.   (A whole photography project of mine is based on of small portions of lyrics — blatant plug-in the photo to the right).  I kept focusing on some of those brilliant bits of writing from Jars of Clay songs and visualizing the scene.  Imagining the event that inspired the eloquence, I get very distinct pictures, sometimes without knowing  exactly what they mean.  Sometimes I just don’t care about their exact meaning because I know I feel a very specific way when I read or hear words like these:

• They don’t see behind the lights, or the painted backgrounds, they just like to see you fall.
• If I was not so weak. If I was not so cold. If I was not so scared of being broken…growing old.
• A flower for your vanity, a penny for your thoughts.
• This picture I’ve painted…it looks like my heart or what still remains.
• You feel a lot like the good guy, but do you know why, everything’s so blue?
• Fearful tears are running down, the pain you’ve laid don’t speak a sound.
• I have no fear of drowning, it’s the breathing that’s taking all this work.
• Trying to jump away from rock that keeps on spreading, for solace in the shift of the sinking sand
• It takes more than your saline eyes…to make things right.
• Flowers through the asphalt, diamonds in the pockets of your eyes…turn your face and hide.
• If the wind should shake this house apart, the cradle hits the ground with a broken heart.
• Weddings, boats and alibis, all drift away….and a mother cries.
• Said and done I stand alone amongst remains of a life I should not own.

These are just some lyrics that I love from Jars of Clay.  Lyrics where I would love to know, not so much the meaning, but the source of inspiration, the story behind the moment of vision.   I haven’t used a Jars  song as a photo inspiration yet…but I certainly plan on it!  Even without knowing the story or inspiration behind these and other lyrics, there is no denying the power the words have and the images and emotions that they can stir.   Music is amazing.

Thanks for the stories and inspirations, the words that paint the pictures in our heads, and for the great music that stirs emotion.

P.S. – Memorable Jars Event

I had several opportunities to see Jars of Clay in concert but somehow missed them, or was not able to go.  It disappointed me, but good things do come!  My first Jars concert was at Twin City Bible Church in Urbana IL in December of 2000.  My brother was a student at the University of Illinois and he got one ticket to a special unplugged concert but didn’t know the band, so he offered it to me.  There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred seats available and was it an amazing acoustic concert with audience requests, and great stories.  One of those events I’ll always remember.  I even got to talk with Dan at the end of the show.  I didn’t have anything for him to sign but stood in line anyway just to say something (and somehow that ended up including mentioning U2 in concert).  All around, it was very inspiring and hearing their music in that type of venue was all the more memorable.  Thanks again 🙂

Sometimes I think you must really believe we are idiots.  The way you behave, your actions and your words all make the assumption that we are stupid.  In a small way, I do understand that you have to be that way.  When it comes down to work in life, I really don’t expect that many people really want to have your jobs.  It is very tough to please everyone…in reality, it is actually impossible, even though that seems to be what gets placed in your job descriptions.  But, having a tough job is not a good enough excuse to treat everyone else as if they are only tools to enable your power.

Let me elaborate a little, just in case you don’t know who you are yet:

You are elected politicians.  We are the people you serve.  I think I may need to re-emphasize that.   You serve us.   Your job is designed to be one that deals with the unpleasantness of leading a group of people that do not always agree on the best course of action.   Your job is not a vehicle to expand your power, establish manipulative influence or  build a platform for personal gain.  Yet time after time, this is what we see.  We hear your promises, and we want to believe them.  We want things better, and we want you to help us.  We believe you, we vote for you, and time after time we feel lied to.   This should not be interpreted as me saying that I think all politicians are liars.   Actually, quite to the contrary.  I believe quite a number of politicians really do want to help and do not intentionally lie in ads or in their message.  The key word in that last sentence is “intentionally”.  The unfortunate reality is that despite intent, after the flurry of  campaigning is over, people inevitably feel let down.

The cycle right now is beginning again.  Election day has come and gone, and suddenly my phone is quiet.  Over the past several weeks, my phone would ring eight times a night with “urgent” (recorded) messages about how important it was to vote for fill-in-the-blank candidate.  “Your vote is important!”.  This does not make me feel like you care about me, the voter.  Honestly, it feels like winning is the only objective, and that is why my vote is important to you.  With winning as the only objective, ceaseless intensely personal negative attack ads flood the airwaves to convince voters how evil the opponent is.   This is where I really get upset with you.  You obviously think we are all dumb enough to believe these petty attacks and that we will change our allegiance  because you call someone a name, or scare us about loosing something we know.  It’s deemed OK to say almost anything you want, even if it is speculation, because you think we believe it.

You obviously think of us all in the same way.  We are the dumb masses and you have to trick us in order to win.  Then, you wonder why people are upset!  Obviously, some people are affected by the mean attacks, or the “reminders” to vote, but certainly not all of us.  The problem with people in your jobs is that you treat us as “them” and not as “us”.  STOP putting us into categories of friend or foe.  We are all Americans, and we want honest people we can trust.   Currently, we do not trust you.  And we will not trust you until you stop thinking of us as stupid masses…as demographics, and start thinking of us…ALL of us, as “the people”.  Not only as “the people” that are looking to you for guidance, but as “the people” who give you your jobs, and pay for all that you spend.

We really aren’t as stupid as you think, and no matter what, you do still work for us.

Who cares what YOU think?

Think about that for a moment.  I’m not referring to the sarcastic, kiss-off version of that statement.  I’m referring to people in your life that really value your opinion.  People that look to you for advice or input on something that is important to them.  Or, how many people just care to hear what is on your mind or read your Twitter feed, your Facebook status, your random emails from late at night.  Think of all of the people that you know, are acquainted with or e-know…who of these people care what YOU think?

I don’t care what other people think!

Or…do you?  Do you really mean that when you say it?  It seems that most people that go out of their way to say they don’t care what others think are usually reacting to something that indicates their own thoughts or feelings were not taken into consideration.  Someone most likely implied to them “I don’t care what you think!”  Naturally, the reaction is to return the favor.  The simple fact is that everyone wants to feel important to someone else.  People want their thoughts to matter…to someone.  And when they don’t matter, it hurts.

Everyone is a critic.

Have you ever noticed that everyone reviews movies these days?  Everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to share it.  Just look at comments on movies at IMDB.  I’ve never seen so many essays that assume they have the only “correct” interpretation.  I’ve never seen so many people being judged for their opinion…hold on…yes I have seen that before!  Try looking through the comments on YouTube I find it actually quite frustrating to see so much negativity and grand-standing! Perhaps it’s an American thing, perhaps it’s a human thing, but it sure seems to me that everyone thinks their opinion is the right one and there is no tolerance for other opinions. (Let’s not even get started on politics!)
Maybe all the naysayers are looking for is a little attention for themselves. And you know what? That isn’t so bad.  We all can relate…right?  Yes, I think so…just think about your response for a minute or two, maybe hold some of the profanity…and perhaps consider using lowercase letters as well as uppercase!

So, where is this going?

I’m not sure it’s going anywhere really.  And that may be part of my point I guess.  Who REALLY cares what you write in your blog?  I am not making the assumption that anyone really cares about reading these words right now!
But I can assume that everyone can think of someone who values their opinion and thoughts…and maybe you should just take a moment and think about those people…thanks guys, you rock!