I found [daily dose of imagery] thanks to Jillian at SlyBlog: The Snarky Cat...
I've not spent a lot of time at the site, but so far, this image is my favorite.
With the Swift Boat Liars For Bush dominating the news of late, I thought I'd take a slightly different tack as regards swift boats...
Last fall, I saw one of the most powerful documentaries I've ever seen on PBS' Independent Lens series—Be Good, Smile Pretty, produced by Tracy Droz Tragos, a Vietnam War era orphan.
On March 16, 2001, Tracy Droz Tragos was surfing the Internet, entering family names to see if anyone had become famous yet. What she discovered instead was a first-hand account of her father’s death on a U.S. Naval swift boat in the Mekong Delta. At that moment, Tragos decided she needed to know who that twenty-five year old stranger was – not as a statistic, tangled in the memory of a war that wounded a nation, but simply, deeply as a man who laughed a lot and had blemishes and fears and wanted more than anything to come home and be her father.
Be Good Smile Pretty is Tragos’ powerfully moving, personal exploration of her grief for the father she never knew, a grief shared by the estimated 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam. Weaving emotionally compelling interviews with home movies, stock footage and family photos, Tragos travels from Selma, Alabama, to the U.S. Senate in search of her father’s Naval Academy roommates and war buddies, each of whom has been silently mourning his death and remember his life in their own way. What Tragos uncovers about the violent climax of battle is almost unbearable. But ultimately, it is the truth that allows her, and her entire family, to move forward. (Susanna Ulrich, IFP/Los Angeles Film Festival)
Tracy discusses her father, Don Droz, with her mother for the first time, exploring her mother's memory, letters, photographs and audio recordings. She meets with her father's swift boat comerades and—while visiting the Vietnam Memorial for the first time—she and her mother and grandmother pay a visit with an emotional John Kerry, who knew her father.
Watch this film... and keep lots of tissue at hand! It is a heartbreaking story in so many ways, but it is also incredibly uplifting as Tracy's relationship with her mother rises to a whole 'nother level as they both learn about a man taken too soon from their lives.
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The last couple of weeks have been long and exhausting (though fruitful!) and I'm just getting back to feeling like I can come out of hiding and start posting regularly again...
The 2004 Great Lakes Folk Festival has come and gone... it was a great weekend filled with great music, dance and food — all enjoyed by large crowds. The challenge for me every year, of course, is to be in as many places at one time as is humanly possible!
I can't say enough about all of the people I work with who are so key to the success of this event: my fellow staffers at the MSU Museum; all the volunteers (350 or so), the sound and tech crews, the great staff at the Marriott at University Place, the great, amazing musicians and the thousands and thousands of people in attendance for three days last weekend.
There were many highlights for me, despite having little opportunity to spend big chunks of time listening to music.
On Friday night, with rain clouds threatening, Aziz Herawi, an Afghani Dutar (lute) player, took the stage with his son and an Indian (I believe) dancer, who was absolutely stunning. In the large venue of Valley Court Stage, Herawi's ragas demand a more attentive audience than the boisterous Québécois band Le Vent du Nord or Ireland's Danú, but the dance helped to capture the attention of the growing twilight audience.
Le Vent du Nord and Danú brought the evening to a rousing ending despite shortened sets caused by delays with set-ups. Their musicianship is astounding. Watching Danú, in particular, was breathtaking as each member of the seven-piece group illustrated their skills individually and in unison. Perhaps it's just the Irish in me, but there is almost nothing better than music from Eire—particularly when it's performed by people from its shore, only feet away from me. My daughter and I spent time with the band later in one of their hotel rooms listening to music, checking out the rough mixes for an upcoming DVD and tipping a few beers (me—not my daughter!).
Another magical moment for me was to see the huge crowd gathered in the sun (and shadow of the CVS) to see Danú on Saturday afternoon. The mass of people extended from the stage back beyond the intersection of M.A.C. and Albert—the first time I'd ever seen that large an audience at the M.A.C. stage. It was a delight to share shots of Bushmills and beers with Danú's Tom Doorley later that night, talking (too much about) politics, and discussing my friend Mary Pat Doorley and her family's support for the band when they appear in Ohio.
This year, we featured several Hip-Hop artists and complemented their performances with discussion panels. One of the groups did a street performance that drew a lot of attention and much praise. Going into the weekend, we were concerned about the response this element would get from the attendees, but we were fortunate to have selected artists who have a lot to say and who understood what we were trying to do.
I wasn't privy to one of the most moving moments of the Festival, unfortunately, which I have to tell second-hand, as best as my memory might allow...
Because the Festival is designed to be educational as well as entertaining, one of my duties as music coordinator is to put together what we call "Traditions Showcases", sessions which are usually made up of musicians from different cultural traditions who play the same or similar instruments. One such showcase featured six accordion players: Celtic, Québécois, Cajun, Conjunto (Tex-Mex), and two from the Polka tradition.
There is mention of the session in a Lansing State Journal post-fest review (a little more comprehensive look at the Festival appeared in the Lansing City Pulse), but from what I heard from people who were there, it was a more moving story than as reported. One of the Polka-playing accordionists, Staś Wisniach, had been presented a Michigan Heritage Award and so came late to join the other five musicians. By the time he arrived, it was his "turn" to play something in order to demonstrate his background. He played a classical piece and from all reports had the other musicians rapt in attention, astonished, I think, at his virtuosity on the instrument.
When Staś finished, he spoke eloquently of the musicianship of the others present on stage with him, and what an honor it was to be amongst them. Of course, it was clear from the reactions on the faces of the others that they were the ones feeling honored.
Prior to the Festival, when I had talked with one of the accordionists, Frank Piotrowski of Pan Franek & Zosia's Polka Towners, about participating in the showcase, he expressed concern, that he was a bit nervous since he'd never done anything but play music; rarely (if ever) had he talked about it in such a setting. Sunday morning, when it came time for Frank to leave, he was beaming and raving about the experience he'd had with the other accordionists and with Staś in particular.
I received a similar rave from Gao Hong, who was thrilled to have had the opportunity to share a Lute Traditions Showcase with Abdel Karim Bader, an Arab-American Oud (rhymes with food) player, and the previously mentioned Aziz Herawi. I was thrilled to have recognized the opportunity to present these three outstanding lute players in this format as our audience appreciates learning about the various cultures we present, but when the artists leave the sessions excited, my thrill grows exponentially.
Sunday, after the Festival wrapped up ("rapped" up?), a few of the staff, some friends and Le Vent du Nord gathered at Lou & Harry's to share a few drinks in the cooling night air of the establishment's patio. I think that Harry stayed open past his regular hours as we kept ordering pitchers and laughing. Eventually, a couple of the Hip-Hop artists joined; later, a handful of us gathered in the hotel room of ethnomusicologist/folklorist Nancy Groce, and into the hours of morning, we continued our discussions of music and cultures.
These are the moments that make a year's worth of phone calls, meetings (and more meetings!), contract negotiations, schedule preparations, blah, blah, blah... all worthwhile. While it's great to hear how much the audiences enjoyed the variety and quality of the music that I help to program, I think the most treasured aspect for me is knowing that most of the musicians, who often come to the Festival thinking that it's just another gig, leave with such meaningful experiences.
Without a doubt, this is the best job I've ever had. Ever could have. Ever will have.
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Me and Penny, Wedding Day
Every year this date rolls around. Every year it kicks the memory into gear. Sometimes, I notice that the date is coming; sometimes, I notice that it just past. Today, however, as I viewed one of my recently posted blog entries, it hit me on the same day.
I was married on Saturday, August 7, 1982. Divorced a little over thirteen years later.
It's funny how lives change and how the events of our past continue to hang on—in this case, like the burrs from a field of weeds that stuck to my socks when I was a kid
For those of you who weren't there (almost 100% of you), it was a clear, very warm day in Laingsburg, Michigan. The corn was a good six-foot high or more in the field next to my soon-to-be-in-laws' home. The wedding would take place in the shade of the big tree in their front yard.
Our friend Lynda (or Linda—however she's spelling it these days) had spilled a pan of baked beans on the living room floor as she was bringing them out the front door of the house.
I had prepared several tapes of recorded music for the day (Martin Mull dominated the mix: "What say you and I get normal/It don't have to be that formal/We'll just sit and watch TV like others do"); the Reverend John Carson would preside. Tony and Ann May would stand with us as our witnesses.
It was a purposefully small event, with the bride's sister Paula taking photographs. My parents and one of my three brothers (and his family) was present; one of my college roommates, Dan Graves, was there, as was my advisor from school, Barry Piersol, and his wife Vickie, and their daughter, Meredith.
Now, it's been almost nine years since I moved out of my house and into my apartment. The years have been kind to me, actually, as I have been blessed with many friends. I have been able to pursue life from a different tack.
Music, which has always been a major part of my life, has become not only more important, it's become my life's work—for the time being, anyway. (My position is scheduled to be terminated at the end of this month.) I also spend an enormous amount of time as a volunteer with a local folk music organization. I'm doubtful that these things would have happened had I not gone through a divorce.
As Jackson Browne sings in a song that seemed to carry me through the darkest of divorce days, "I thought that it would kill me, but I'm alive."
While it is easy to hold onto the bitterness that comes with being the jettisoned half of the household, every day that passes lessens the desire to do so. Slowly, but surely, the focus has shifted away from the pain of loss to the thrill of living; the love and kindness of friends—old and new—has supplanted the hurt and ill-will.
Loudon Wainwright III always has seemed to have the perfect song for every occasion. Interestingly, he always seems to write them at about the time I happen to be living the same experiences. "Our Own War" came out a little after the divorce became final.
Our Own War
© Loudon Wainwright III, 1997 Snowden Music, Inc.
Hostilities ended, nobody cared
Anymore for the war, so a truce was declared.
So it ends in surrender, then there's peace at least;
Arms are withdrawn and fire is ceased.
To stay in a skirmish one needs appetite;
Two need desire to keep up a fight;
But when appetite's off and desire is gone,
Then the fire is held and arms are withdrawn.
When losses and wounds are grievous and gory,
When the battle is pitched, in the field there is glory,
When hearts just aren't in it, retreat leads to rout
And arms are laid down and the fire goes out.
We remember the ones who run out of dumb luck;
Monuments are erected and statues are struck;
But we tend to forget if and when we forgive,
And the survivors survive but they never quite live.
As for our own war, yes, I recall it well,
Just what it was like our own personal hell.
I've forgotten the good times—heaven's so vague—
But I remember the battles. Oh, how they raged!
When losses and wounds are grievous and gory,
When the battle is pitched, in the field there is glory,
When hearts just aren't in it, retreat leads to rout
And arms are laid down and the fire goes out.
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Mary Kay Letourneau (Court TV)
There is something about this case that is—quite simply—very, very sad.
Ex-Student Seeks Reunion With Letourneau
By Rebecca Cook (AP)
GIG HARBOR, Wash. - Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher convicted for having sex with a sixth-grade student, was released from prison Wednesday, and her 21-year-old victim quickly sought to get back together with her.
Vili Fualaau is challenging a court order that bars Letourneau from contacting him as part of her child rape sentence. He says he is an adult and can pick his own friends, especially the mother of his two children.
"He is now an adult and, as an adult, is requesting that the court allow him to associate with other adults of his own choosing, specifically Mary K. Letourneau," his court motion says.
Letourneau, 42, slipped out of prison quietly after midnight and was met by a crowd that included dozens of media outlets and a group of rowdy teenage boys waving signs that said "I'm 18, Baby!" and "Take Me Home."
Letourneau was a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in suburban Des Moines and an unhappily married mother of four in 1996, when she began having sex with the sixth-grader.
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How does a 34-year-old woman (or man, for that matter) develop such intense affection for a 13-year-old? I can almost understand her sexual attraction for him if he looked older than his years, but what was so lacking in her life that she could have fallen in love with someone so emotionally immature? (Interestingly enough, Fualaau's mother considered her son old beyond his years.)
That question was posed to her during an online chat with Court TV in 1991 and she responded:
How did you manage to fall in love with a child?
I think it's more appropriate to say a teenager. How did he manage falling in love with me? How did I manage falling in love with him? You know it's not as simple as to say "it just happened." But we both did find ourselves in love. And it was a mutual love. Love is something that evolves. And it was very intense, too. I don't really think that falling in love can be explained.
What were you feeling about life when you began to feel attracted to Vili?
That's something I haven't really thought about...Well, I think many people have theorized or speculated that I must have been very lonely at the time. But I wasn't. At the time I considered myself a very independent person, and very confident. I was, at the time, looking to my future, knowing I was going to get a divorce, and was actually looking forward to being happy alone in life with my children. In other words I don't have the type of personality that is dependent on having a man in my life, or a partner. I feel very fulfilled just with myself, my family, my friends, my children.
Now that she's served her sentence, what does she have to look forward to? She has been added to the state of Washington's sexual offenders list; she is going to continue to be the butt of late night jokes every time her name makes the news wires; as the above story notes, at her release from prison she was greeted by "a group of rowdy teenage boys waving signs that said 'I'm 18, Baby!' and 'Take Me Home.'" How can she possibly go anywhere without meeting with this kind of abuse? Could this all have been worth it?
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Henri Cartier-Bresson by Jane Brown (1957)
One of the world's greatest photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson died today at 95. Cartier-Bresson was an inspiration for me and probably any photographer with notions of being good or respectable.
Behind The Gare St. Lazare (Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1932)
From Dysonology:
He has said that a sense of human dignity is an essential quality for any photojournalist, and feels that no picture, regardless of how brilliant from a visual or technical standpoint, can be successful unless it grows from love and comprehension of people and an awareness of "man facing his fate." [...] "In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject," he wrote in The Decisive Moment. "The little human detail can become a leitmotif."
More Cartier-Bresson photographs
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The Republicans have done well (sic) since the Reagan years to turn "Liberal" into a dirty word. It's interesting to note, however, that in one of his most well-known (and quoted) speeches that Reagan posed to Mikhail Gorbachev:
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
As a matter of trying to reclaim the true meaning of the word, I'd like to cite John F. Kennedy from September of 1960, while accepting the New York Liberal Party Nomination:
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
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Eight Gored at Pamplona Bull Run
Eight people have been gored during Pamplona's Festival of San Fermin, better known as the running of the bulls.
One man suffered a series of injuries as he was repeatedly caught a bull's horns at the entrance to the bull ring. His trousers and shirt were ripped to shreds as he tried to crawl away.
A further nine people have been treated for cuts and bruises after being trampled and four people were admitted to hospital on Friday after being gored by bulls.
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The kind of people who drive Volkswagens strike syndicated columnist Sydney J. Harris of the Chicago Daily News "as having what traffic officers call 'the right attitude' on the road... They seem sensible people, with decent values, and I would wager a sizable amount that the accident rate is quite low among them." Harris is right; insurance rates are often lower for Volkswagen owners than for owners of big cars. As for their being people with "decent values," Harris seems right too, as the "Police Blotter" column in the Sudbury, Massachusetts, Citizen shows. "On Saturday night," it reported, "a VW sedan struck a stone wall on the Haynes property on Morse Road. The next day a young man returned and rebuilt the wall."
For some reason, it seemed to get darker earlier today!
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ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN, poet and pre-eminent classicist of his time, was born near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire in 1859. The eldest of seven children he entered Bromsgrove School at the age of eleven and, with a strong academic grounding there, won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford in 1877. After gaining First Class Honours in Classical Moderations, he failed his 'Greats', the Final School, in 1881 and so left Oxford without a degree. After a brief time teaching at his old school he returned to Oxford for a term to take a pass degree and the following year took up employment in the Patent Office in London, where his great friend from Oxford days, Moses Jackson, was working.
In 1892, on the strength of scholarly articles published in classical journals, Housman was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London. In 1896 his most famous book, A Shropshire Lad, was published and it has never been out of print since. The 63 spare nostalgic verses, born out of the troubles Housman suffered during his life, are set in a half-imaginary Shropshire, a 'land of lost content', and the heart-penetrating simplicity of its verse has given it an enduring popularity.
XIX. The time you won your town the race
To an Athlete Dying Young
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
From The Guardian...
Sound of Bloomsday comes 100 years laterAudiobooks mark centenary of Joyce's famed literary walk
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Monday June 7, 2004You wait a century for a recording of every word of Ulysses and then 54 CDs of James Joyce's masterpiece come along at once.
Rival versions - one on 22 CDs, the other on 32 - of the complete text are launched this month to mark the anniversary of the book acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century but also as one of the most started, least finished, books in the world.
A day isn't long enough for either. The Naxos audiobooks version, read by two actors, runs for about 27 hours. The version by RTÉ, Irish state radio, which was originally recorded more than 20 years ago to mark the centenary of Joyce's birth using half the actors in Ireland, lasts for more than 30 hours.
Nicholas Soames, founder publisher at Naxos audiobooks and Anne Marie O'Callaghan, the producer for RTÉ's version, only discovered a few months ago that they would be rivals.
Ms O'Callaghan, whose version will retail for €100 (£66.40), said they were so different there should be room for both.
Mr Soames, whose set will cost £85, said: "There are things you do to make money, and things you do to ensure your place in heaven. My hope is that when I arrive at the gate I'll say 'I got every word of Ulysses onto CD' and they'll wave me straight in."
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Got A Cross-Country Trip?My father died on Memorial Day, May 27, 1992 and was buried on the observed Memorial Day, the following Monday.
We weren't particularly close throughout the years we lived under the same roof on Utah Street in Toledo. My three brothers and I lived pretty much in fear for many of those years, actually. That's not to say that my fear was constant, of course, but it always seemed to be just below the surface for me. Once, however, he took a belt to my mother for reasons I have never understood—an incident that two of my brothers (who also witnessed it) don't recall. He came flailing at me one high school night when I arrived home after 11:30pm.
Fear.
Mind you, it wasn't twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. We were not abused children. And while "getting the paddle" (a cribbage board, actually) was often threatened, his anger rarely took him beyond the point of yelling at us, but knowing what he was capable of was enough for me to know not to cross him.
We grew up in a household in which we were regularly chided with "Is that what you learned in church today?" by a man who didn't go to church. Ironically, at about the time I stopped going to church, he had become a fervent church goer, and was eventually baptized Catholic.
That I am probably the most sensitive of my brothers was a natural and, I suppose, mutually repelling factor in our relationship—despite our shared fondness for baseball, golf, drawing and a penchant (I later realized) for whistling. I grew up watching my President (John F. Kennedy), his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King, Jr. get murdered; I watched as mounting numbers of American soldiers and Vietnamese people (soldiers or not) were killed. I developed a deeper and deeper distaste for authority thanks to the Presidency of Richard Nixon. My father, naturally, was the authority in our home, so there seemed little to attract me to him; and more and more (as I began to believe that I could think for myself) for him to get angry with me. I let my hair grow longer than my brothers would dare, an increasingly difficult thing to do considering that my dad cut our hair all those many years.
The stupidest thing (amongst the many!) I did while in that household was to sneak out our back door in the middle of the night to take snapshots of a local late-night radio talk show host (whose show kept me awake too many nights) for my art project, an oil painting. To do so, I had to "steal" my dad's Ford Falcon and drive about five miles to the station (WOHO). I was sixteen at best and didn't have a drivers license. Upon my return at about five or six in the morning, snow had begun to fall as I pulled up to the curb. Tire tracks were evidence that the car had been moved overnight... that nobody took the car's original parking spot while I was gone was a miracle, but I fully expected the tire tracks to give my hijinx away.
When I tried to open the back door, it was locked... I had to use the front door. Upon entering, he was in the kitchen (between me and my room). I'd been busted. I lied, though, about how I'd gotten to the radio station. "I hitchhiked," I told him. He went back to bed without further incident and I begged for more snow to fall by morning. I was lucky. Six inches of snow fell covering the car's tire tracks. You cannot imagine my sigh of relief that morning.
On this Memorial Day, I recall how my father never expressed his views on the Vietnam War, which was not only a polarizing issue in the United States at that time, but a very palpable fear for those of us coming of draft age. Nor did I ask for his opinions. I wonder now, though, what might have gone through his head since he'd served in the Navy during World War II (on a minesweeper). I wonder what he thought of the possibility of his sons serving in that disaster.
In my parents' wedding photo, he wears his Navy Blues. I recall, now, that his ribbons were kept in a desk drawer (not a particularly hallowed place, actually) in the house but I didn't know much about what they meant. We knew more about his baseball and softball exploits as a young man than we knew about his experiences in the Navy. [My favorite softball story is about a game in which he fell as he rounded third base just as his brother Rob (who had singled) stumbled rounding first base. "I was the better ballplayer," Rob would pronounce at the funeral home's mini-memorial the night before the funeral.] All that remains of his Navy days are fading black-and-white photographs.
I came to recognize as I stepped further into adulthood that there was much more to him than he often let on. He had always claimed to be a good artist while we were kids, occasionally scribbling or sketching out caricatures of my mother (or such), but it didn't otherwise take up much of his time. Thankfully, once he retired from his job as a refrigeration mechanic for Coca-Cola in the late 1980s, he spent a great deal of his waking hours painting landscapes. My then-wife (Penny, herself an amazing artist) encouraged him and freely gave him studio tips, suggestions and materials.
He loved nature; he loved to feed the birds in our backyard; he made birdfeeders and would etch "Crude Productions: Not Made in Korea" (I can still hear his snicker) on their backsides. He regularly went deerhunting in Canada with my uncle Dick (his sister Mary Belle's husband) but never came home with a killing of his own. My mother always posited that he couldn't bring himself to shoot something he thought so beautiful. Perhaps he was just a bad shot, but I prefer to believe my mother's explanation.
I spent the better part of a day with him a year or so before he died, driving along the Maumee River from Toledo to Grand Rapids, taking photographs. He with his 35mm Pentax K1000; I with a Fuji 6cm x 17cm panoramic camera I'd borrowed from work. He would use his photographs for reference material for his paintings. It was one of the very few days that we'd spent that kind of time together. Ever.
I was working when I got the call that he'd been taken to the hospital, after which my family and I bee-lined it for Toledo. For the next several days, his condition went from good to bad to good and back. I slept most nights in the hospital waiting room, where I watched Johnny Carson step down from his Tonight Show set for the last time. My dad didn't particularly care for Johnny's "dirty jokes" and like me, despised the cackling Ed McMahon, so my announcement about the event to my dad was probably one of the more enjoyable moments of his time spent at the hospital.
Because his condition continued to fluctuate, and because the doctors told us that he could stay like this indefinitely, my family and I returned home. We decided not to continue the vigil. Sometime mid-week he died and we returned to Ohio for the funeral. We were at the church's rectory talking to the priest when I learned from my mother that my father had received a medal for saving several lives, pulling men up from a burning oil fire after the explosion aboard the USS YF-415.
For all the faults I was able to find with him while I was a kid, I came to appreciate him much more as we both grew older. I suppose that's typical. What I have come to appreciate most about him, though, was his charity towards others. He regularly shoveled snow for Mrs. Raitz, an elderly woman across the street; he was always willing to help out friends with their cars or refrigeration (ice-makers, air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers) problems. He genuinely liked helping people, I think. He was a good friend to many. I don't know that I could pay him any higher compliment.
So, with all this going through my head this weekend, it was difficult watching the news Saturday night, listening to the veterans of World War II pining on behalf of their brethren who had survived the war but who had died too soon to see the new memorial in D.C. My dad belonged there, if only to share the pride for taking part in something that about which he never would have publicly boasted.
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Okay, okay... so I've not been particularly prolific of late.
Today as I was doing a little cleaning (little being the operative word), I came across a book of writings I started in September of 2000, comprised mostly of never-to-be-sent letters to a woman I have known for over twenty years and for whom I have long held great affection.
We had met while I was working at Michigan State University's Instructional Media Center. She was from another department, and had come to either drop off or pick up an order and I, well, was instantly smitten. I don't know that I'd quite call it love at first sight—in French, le coup de foudre (sorry, but my brain is awash in French at the moment!)—but it was surely one of those meetings in which I had to immediately shake my head clear and remind myself that I was married.
Those kind of moments didn't come all that often while I was married. Surely, I appreciated looking at other women (more glances of appreciation than gawking, by the way), but I was married to what I thought was a pretty special human being. By that time, I'm quite sure that Zachary had been born, so we were well on our way into family life. This in-my-head flirtation would have to quickly go its merry little way.
And, of course, it did. Such daydreams always dissipated before long, as I really, seriously had no intentions of being a loutish husband. Still, over the course of the next ten years, we would run into each other occasionally—either when she showed up at the office with a co-worker or when I happened to bump into her where she worked off-campus on a part-time basis, at an art boutique while delivering something for my wife.
As the years passed, our lives ran their very separate courses. In the early summer of 1995, I left my job at MSU and by the following winter was dragged into the hell known as divorce. I moved out of my house in July of 1996, and while I had again gained full-time employment, I was continuing to do some photography on the side. One of the jobs that came my way was to document some of the activities surrounding the local presentation of (the nationally touring) Phantom (Of The Opera).
There were a number of gala parties which I was asked to attend and photograph. These parties occurred at several different homes in the East Lansing area (I photographed three, one of them at a Frank Lloyd Wright home), and at the conclusion of the parties, a bus would swing by (can buses "swing by" a neighbourhood?) and whisk the alcohol-imbibing socialites off to MSU's Wharton Center, where yours truly would be waiting to photograph them as they proceeded up the red carpet.
As curtain time approached, I wandered inside Wharton and upstairs to take a few frames of people standing around in the foyer, waiting for the doors to open.
And there she was.
Dressed in black. A vision. I wish I could include the photograph that I took of her and her friend, but I had handed the prints and negatives over to the client. When I attempted to borrow them back, they couldn't be located. She wouldn't have wanted me to post it here anyway, so you'll have to take my word for it that she looked amazing.
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Unless otherwise noted, all writings on this blog are copyright Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.
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