bear

Black-Eyed Susans

Strafford Photo Project

On July 5th I participated in the Strafford Photo Project. I pulled out the old film camera that Dave Pierini gave me when I was in Jasper and burned through a pile of expired slide film. I sent the rolls off to Kansas to be processed and I just got them back. I’ll be posting the results bit by bit as I go through them.

03755 Hanover

She was looking at me in that certain way from across the room. It was snowing outside, a light snowfall, and I went over and said something about taking a walk. That’s how we met.

In September, just when it was getting chilly again, I asked her to marry me. She said a funny thing, kind of like a bargain, that at our age we shouldn’t say anything about love. We were married that year in Milwaukee, on November 17, 1994.

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Something went haywire with my template a few days ago and I don’t have time to fix it. I’m going to go with this one for now. Sorry about the lost links, don’t take it personally.

Kobe in my ear

“I just tell him to relax,” Kobe Bryant said. “Sometimes he’s his own worst enemy. I tell him, ‘You’ve got to get out of the way of yourself. Just go out there and let your game come. You got a shot, shoot it. Just relax.’

God knows why I was reading sports, but when Kobe was speaking to Lamar Odom he was speaking to me. I wish I had a little Kobe in my ear, a bluetooth Kobe I could stick in there, let him whisper, “shoot, dummy. Don’t think.” One question, though. How long do you have to wait until your game comes? Hard not to think about that.

Mist in the garden at nightfall

No big story with this one. I just went to get my camera from the trunk and took a photo from where I stood. Proof at least that the snow is indeed gone, and Barbara has her garden in.

the nose

© 2008 Valley News — May not be used or reprinted without permission

This is a bit like telling a joke and forgetting the punch line because I can’t remember the details of the story I want to tell you, or exactly where I might have heard it. I’d love to say I made it up, but I doubt it. I know it wasn’t Gogol. Please don’t tell me it was Forrest Gump.

There was this famous photograph, maybe of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt in Malta, or Nixon and Khrushchev in their kitchen debate. There was another man there, too, but the excitement of the moment and the inattention of the photographer combined to leave him out of the picture. All of him, that is, except for his nose, a proud beak to put Joe DiMaggio to shame, that poked in from one edge, stubbornly asserting his rightful place in history. That man had a change of circumstances, I can’t remember the details, but he carried that photograph with him everywhere, and showed it to everyone he met. He wanted them to see that once he was a great man who had rubbed shoulders with giants. The nose was clearly his, who could mistake it? It was proof that he had been there, standing just to one side, watching as the world changed before his eyes.

This photo reminds me of that one. The Hanover girls lacrosse team won the New Hampshire State Championships on Wednesday. The caption for this photo names three girls that were there, cheering as the game-winning goal was scored. But we know there was a fourth, just off to the left, jumping and screaming as loud as the rest. Though I can’t tell you her name, I’d bet one day her kids will recognize her.

portrait

of subversives and countersubversives

Hartford, Vt.

Quechee, Vt.


Sharon, Vt.

In the top two images the message is clear but you might need a little help with the last one. For months like a Zen koan it has been there, written in magic marker on the pump at the trading post where I get gas, its meaning a little puzzle I turn over in my mind as the tank fills. I didn’t think to photograph it until it was gone. If you look hard enough you can still see it: Free Tibet, Not Public Rest Rooms. I noticed this morning that someone had almost managed to scrub it clean. A sad day for freedoms, I guess, for Tibetans, bathrooms and public expression. But ignoring the slogans themselves, I find these little acts of subversion and countersubversion fascinating. I wonder at what compelled them, both the move and the countermove. A sense of conviction, a sense of humor, or lack thereof? And how strange that the stop signs and gas pumps of Vermont should be the battlegrounds for these ideas to meet.