Sometimes the thing you don't expect is the thing you need most.

I haven’t been writing here nearly enough lately. I think that part of the problem is that microblogging (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) have been consuming too much of my time and creative energy, but another issue is that I’m just running short of ideas.

On the other hand, it seems that every week, someone blunders onto my radar screen by doing something that either outrages me or makes me laugh, or otherwise engages me on a personal level. I’ve long thought that I might try doing a regular feature on these people. I’m not thinking of being nasty or ugly, although from time to time that might be called for. Rather, the intent would be to share what caught my interest, and perhaps inspire some thought or even discussion about it.

I thought of a title, then rejected it, then came up with this one. “Blip of the week” is much less offensive than my original idea, and as a bonus, it’s spelled the same in both US and UK English. While my graphic logo does in fact represent an air-to-air fire control radar (!) locked onto a target and presenting the SHOOT symbology (!!), I’m not necessarily going to yell “Fox Three!” and make it go away.

But I might. I’m weird that way.

Thoughts?

Saturday, 9:00 AM

An hour ago, I stepped off a plane that brought me to Atlanta from my new home in New Bern, North Carolina. I’m here for several reasons of varying importance, but my present surroundings say something of my priorities. I’ve been picked up at the airport by Allison and driven directly to the Parrots of the Caribbean aviary at the Georgia Renaissance Festival.

Allison, someone who’d never really handled parrots or cockatoos before meeting me, ran the aviary without me this year. For the two previous years, eight weeks of my life have been devoted to this place and its residents, a ragtag group of hook-billed characters who have come to be my friends. They surround me now, all wanting attention, all with a lot to say in both parrot and human languages. They’re thrilled to see me, and I to see them. The one thing these wonderful, intelligent creatures can’t understand is the reason for my visit. They don’t know I’ve come to say goodbye.

I have no idea how to do that, really. It will mean nothing to the birds; to them, I will simply never be seen again. Parrots are very social, forming flocks, and it is the reality of nature that members of the flock will occasionally disappear. They’ll note that I never came back, but they won’t miss me in the way humans miss each other.

In a way, that makes my visit somewhat selfish. It is I who will miss them, but there’s more than that. Even though they will not comprehend or appreciate it, I owe these birds my thanks. I am more than I was before I met them. They have all taught me something, and they have all shared something with me.

My friend Monkey is a huge, boisterous moluccan cockatoo. The “Crocodile Hunter,” Steve Irwin, once said that the only animal he feared was the cockatoo, probably because as a child he nearly lost his nose to one. The cockatoo’s beak can easily apply 300 pounds per square inch of force, and unlike the beak of a parrot, it’s kept razor sharp.

Working with birds, one learns to watch the iris of the eye. Hookbills pinpoint their pupils just before biting. Cruelly, nature has given the male cockatoo irises which are almost black and therefore invisible, depriving us of this advance warning. Working with Monkey was, as you can imagine, quite intimidating, and I was initially quite nervous. He sensed this, and rather than taking advantage as some birds might, he made a game of it. He would reach for my hand, and I would pull back, then try again. Eventually, steeling myself for a nasty bite, I put out my hand and didn’t pull away. That huge, black, fearsome beak touched my hand, gripped my knuckle very gently, and held on as one black, scaly foot reached out and stepped onto my hand. Lesson one.

We worked together often after that. I became very confident. Monkey and I would show off for the visitors; he loved to clown, and would dance and chatter and sing, flipping his crest around and flapping his giant, colorful wings. He got very excited one day, a condition that bird handlers call overstimulation, and began jumping up and down wildly on my hand. Before I could calm him, he’d reached down and neatly removed a small chunk of flesh from the ball of my thumb. Lesson two.

Monkey taught me that not everyone who has the ability to hurt me is destined to hurt me. He also taught me that even those who don’t want to hurt me will, now and then. He also gave me hours of companionship, and kept me smiling and laughing on days when life was nothing to laugh about. Today, I hold him on my arm and groom his crest features, scratch his head, and whisper my thanks to my friend and teacher.

Mom and Dad, the blue and gold macaws, have had a baby since I last wrote about these birds. Little Costa is not yet a year old, and he’s already flying skillfully around the aviary. The first week of the festival, seven weeks ago, he was so frightened of human contact that getting him out of his cage was a nearly-futile struggle. This morning, I had the honor of bringing him out from his cage, and he stepped onto my hand with almost no coaxing. This is the result of weeks of work by Chelsea, Allison’s daughter. A young woman who was once terribly afraid of birds is now a sufficiently accomplished trainer that she has taken a completely untrained young bird and hand-tamed him with no help from me other than advice over the phone. Mom and Dad are very proud of Costa, and I am very proud of Chelsea, who has really stepped up to learn everything she could about bird handling.

I really respect Dad. He and Mom are a strongly mated breeding pair, and they typically reject most human contact. They’ll take a treat from me, and say hello, and sometimes even step onto my arm without inflicting injury, but I’m mostly tolerated. Dad’s a tough guy. If I get too close, he’ll lunge at me, but won’t usually bite. At all times when I’m near him, he fixes me with a steely gaze. If I stay in his territory too long, he will raise his wings high, covering his family like a tent, and lower his head, doing his best to look large, fierce, and dangerous. He could fly at my face any time he wished, doing me grave damage, and would if he thought I was a serious threat. This isn’t aggression. It’s communication. Sometimes I raise my “wings” too, meeting his gaze, and we stare that way, unflinching. Sometimes he folds his first, and sometimes I mine, but we reach an understanding. I won’t hurt him, and he won’t hurt me, as long as I don’t do anything stupid. I fully believe that big bird would die defending his mate and his offspring.

Courage alone is inspiring. Courage that is expressed not through fighting or violence but merely by non-verbal, universal means is even more moving. Dad’s proud, yes, and brave, but he’s also wise, and has shown me the nature of true strength.

Lola, a blue-fronted amazon parrot, once sidled up next to Buddy, a moluccan cockatoo easily four times her size. She just wanted to share a perch, but Buddy was not keen. Buddy began to scream — loudly, shrilly, he made his displeasure known. Lola ignored him. He bent down, continuing to scream but now directing his ire into Lola’s ear. Lola preened, not even looking up. Buddy nipped at her, and she looked up for a moment, then returned to preening. Buddy’s screaming reached a crescendo, and Lola yawned, then sidled a bit closer, cuddling directly up to Buddy’s side. Eventually, he resorted to violence and made a biting motion, and Lola, having made her point, took one step to the side and ended the encounter.

The world is full of territorial loudmouths. Lola taught me that they can easily be ignored as long as a bit of shrillness doesn’t bother you, and sometimes walking away and letting them bluster to themselves is the most satisfying response.

Sarge is a weird fellow. He’s a military macaw, olive drab all over with a red forehead. He can be very friendly, and he can be a vampire; it all depends on his mood. One day, while I was working with him and offering him a treat, he reached out and bit my finger instead. It was a fairly hard bite, and as he clamped down, I felt a slight snap. At first I thought he’d chipped my bone, but I immediately noticed blood on his beak and my skin wasn’t broken. In his moment of pique, he’d bitten my finger so hard that he’d cracked the tip of his beak.

A cracked beak is a serious matter. Blood doesn’t clot well in the beak; it’s not chitinous like an animal’s horn or a squid’s beak, but is instead an actual bone covered with vascularized, growing keratin. Sarge seemed to know he was in trouble, and his whole demeanor changed as his day went from annoying to frightening. Somehow he knew I was trying to help. The treatment involved toweling him so that he wouldn’t squirm or injure anyone and then grinding down the keratin beyond the crack, then stopping the bleeding with styptic and pressure. When we released him, putting him into his cage so he’d rest quietly, his first thought was food. Unlike many traumatized birds, Sarge didn’t hold a grudge, and we remained friends. He nipped at me a few times today, being his usual grumpy self, and it was good to see him looking healthy and in fine feather. I thanked him for trusting.

How can I describe Fred? Fred and Lilac, both Amazon parrots, were inseparable. They never produced or brooded eggs, but they were a couple. They were also both absolutely impossible to handle. Neither would leave the cage, even on a stick, and they’d bite any appendage, human or avian, that approached within reach. I agreed to take them home and work with them for a few weeks. As they sat in their cage waiting to be loaded into the van, a curious blue-fronted Amazon named Lola landed on their cage for a visit. Fred latched onto one of her toes and nearly severed it before anyone could intervene. Lola recovered but eventually lost the claw and tip of that toe. There was clearly work to be done here.

Lilac, as it turned out, was too wild to be tamed. She was a wild-caught bird, not bred in captivity like most pet birds, and she instinctively feared human contact. No amount of work on my part of Steve’s could get her to accept handling. Fred wasn’t such a hard case.

I spent several evenings sitting in front of the cage, talking to Fred. For the first week I made no attempt to handle him at all; we just looked at each other, and I talked. After a while, I could see Fred listening to me, and he would begin making some responsive sounds. Progress was slow.

After two weeks I made my first attempt to teach Fred to step up onto my hand. This was a time when I bled a lot. Fred had a sharp, powerful beak, and was devastatingly quick. He went from pinpointing to excising tissue in milliseconds. I endured the bites, didn’t get demonstrably upset with him, and continued trying. Slowly, the bites got softer, but he still couldn’t manage the idea of my hand inside his cage. Lilac made the situation harder, nipping him on the shoulder to get him to move away from me because she feared for her mate.

One day, I extended a round perch into the cage and said, “Step up!” as I’d done hundreds of times before. Fred lifted a foot, set it down, lifted it again, and tentatively put it onto the offered perch. After a few tense seconds, the other foot followed. I brought him out, placed my hand in front of the stick perch, and said, “Step up!” again. Onto my hand he stepped … nervously, cautiously. He spread his tail feathers wide in the usual Amazon expression of cautious apprehension, pinpointed at me, and in a low, rumbling voice said, “Fred’s a good bird.”

Three weeks elapsed between Fred’s savage attack on Lola and his first cautious attempt at cooperating with me. We worked together for another month. I was sad when I returned the couple to Steve’s care last year, but Fred is now a well-adjusted bird who flies free in the aviary and gets along famously with the other birds. He’s in perfect feather and is gorgeous when he flies. He hadn’t seen me for months this morning, but when I put out my hand, he stepped right up before I could even ask. His new friend, another Amazon named Rocky, stepped onto my other hand and the three of us had an extensive conversation on the subject of who was, indeed, a good bird, and how we all were, and who was a pretty boy. I will always remember the three of us laughing in unison.

Fred, sadly, lost his mate, Lilac, to a predator (a raccoon, we think) that invaded the aviary at New York’s Renaissance Faire. Even in the face of this, he’s doing wonderfully. Fred affirmed for me something I’ve really always known. There are no bad birds. They’re all basically good, but even more so than people are the product of their environment and the traumas and happy times of their past. I will always love Fred, and saying goodbye to him was like losing a part of me.

These birds and many others have all been my teachers. I will never see the world through the remarkable eyes of a bird, but I am engaged in a lifelong effort to understand the way they see life, the world, and me. Every bird I have ever met has left me with a gift, small or large, of bird wisdom. I love spending time with them, interacting with them, and learning to understand their unique perspective. I will miss these birds, and it is with many tears and a heavy heart that I walk away from them for probably the last time.

Sunday, 5:00 PM

I’m driving a full-sized Ford van filled with all but one of my own flock of birds, bringing them from our old home near Atlanta to our new house in North Carolina. Behind me, Baby Bird, our little green-cheeked conure, is fussing at Radar, a Nanday, for being a little too close. Baby Bird thrusts out her neck and says her name as if to say, “This is BABY BIRD’s place!” Radar, undaunted, fires back “BABY BIRD! BABY BIRD!”

Two timneh African grey parrots, meanwhile, are chatting to each other. “Hello, grey bird.” “Hi.” “Can I have a kiss?” (fart sound) “Nooooo…”

Jojo, the quiet, somewhat shy Eclectus, listens intently, saying “Uh-huh” at all the appropriate moments.

In a few short hours, my flock, along with Penny the dog, Tigger the cat, and assorted other items that were packed in for the trip, will be at their new home. It’s a long, stressful trip for an avian, canine, or feline traveler, but they all seem in good spirits.

Monday, Noon

Baby Bird is asleep inside the little tent Allison made for her which hangs inside her cage. Jojo and Radar chatter quietly to each other while the greys nap in their alcove. Penny is dozing at my feet, Tigger is on the back of my chair purring quietly, and I’m vegetating in front of the TV. Everyone’s been fed, watered, and attended to. Allison is still not here, and won’t be for a couple of days, but I feel more like I’m home now than I have since moving to North Carolina. For a while, I am at peace, and I slowly drift into a deep, restful sleep in my recliner, feeling the warmth of my feathered and furry friends around me.

Things seem to be going fairly well in my life, all things considered. There are probably a lot more positives than negatives. My new job is ceasing to feel so new and proving to be a very good fit, and some really exciting opportunities are already before me. This week, I embark on a challenging and ambitious project that will occupy a large portion of my time, and I’m looking forward to getting moving on it. Raymond, Allison’s son, is up here with me, and we’ve been managing to keep the house together as we anticipate Allison’s arrival, sometime in the next month or so. The house is comfortable, and we have everything we need.

I even went to not one but two airshow performances at MCAS Cherry Point this weekend. One was on Friday evening. Night airshows are becoming quite popular, but this was my first, and it was truly wonderful to see some seriously gut-wrenching flying without risking a sunburn. Of course, I was in the sun all day Saturday for the day show, and convinced Raymond to join me. The Blue Angels performed their full high show in perfect weather, and turned in their usual breathtaking performance.

With so many great things happening, I was a little surprised to wake up on Saturday morning and find Winston Churchill’s black dog at my bedside. It won’t go away.

I think, at the heart of it, I’m just lonely and feeling disconnected and isolated. I’m pretty sure that since we met, Allison and I have never spent nearly this much time apart, and I think I underestimated how much that would affect me. With shorter trips of a week or two, I was always able to cope. At the end of the trip I would be very, very ready to be home and with my loved ones, but it didn’t reach a level where it interfered with my ability to function. Unfortunately, the stress of it has been escalating over the last few days into something that refuses to be ignored.

This is ultimately my problem. Allison has a huge, busy, stressful life down in Atlanta as she finishes up her school year, discharges her responsibilities at the Renaissance Festival aviary where we volunteered, deals with her daughter Chelsea’s move to her boyfriend’s house, tries to get vehicles repaired and a house cleaned and vacated, and deals with myriad other tasks. There is precious little time for her to even talk to me on the phone, and I understand that because I don’t even think I could get it all done if it were me down there.

At the moment, my mission is to grit my teeth and tough it out, because I’m the one with the easier job. It shouldn’t be so hard, but I’ve spent three years of my life being loved and cared for by a really outstanding, compassionate, affectionate partner, and living among (in order of increasing mass) six birds, two cats, one dog, and two young adults. I’m now down to just the one young adult and a small cadre of pholcus phalangioides spiders who hang out in the garage. Ray is good company but the spiders are decidedly non-cuddly.

Some pain might be clouding my judgement, too. I recently had what can only be described as the most monumental of dumbass attacks.

While walking around our new house, checking things out, I noticed a hornet’s nest which I’d never seen there before. It was perhaps 15 centimeters in diameter. I had not noticed any hornets in the area, either, so in a momentary lapse of judgement, I considered the nest dead and went over to have a look. This was merely the first of many mistakes to come.

As I stood on my front porch, three or four feet from the nest, bending down to peer idiotically at the nest for signs of activity, I suddenly realized I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what I’d do if I saw movement. Then I saw movement. A hornet stuck its head out of the nest, looked at me, and apparently sounded the “get off my lawn” alarm. Three hornets had launched and were headed my way before the idea trickled into my milliwatt-level consciousness: MOVE!

Move I did. Similar to a fire-evacuation exercise in a large Asian country, my brain sent messages to all parts of my body, signaling them to spring into massively uncoordinated action. I lurched toward the five brick steps leading from the porch to the front lawn. The hornets followed. I know they were back there because I could hear them laughing.

Taking an odd number of steps two at a time does not generally result in a smooth descent, and as I hit solid ground, my center of gravity shifted dangerously forward. My body was now outrunning my feet, which were in full Wile E. Coyote mode trying to catch up. I was running across the lawn at a 45 degree angle, unable to stop without face-planting. I was just beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just let myself fall so I wouldn’t run into the street, but at that very moment a tree the size of my torso intervened on my behalf.

Seeing the tree approaching at the last instant, I decided to avoid a nasty head injury by cocking my head to the right and raising my left shoulder to shield my face. That seemed to work; the left side of my rib cage took virtually all of the impact. Then I fell down, and my left hip found a piece of metal landscape edging. The world exploded in a bright red fireball of pain. The hornets must have considered their mission accomplished; I received not a single sting, and they returned to their nest after I fell, probably so that their comrades could paint portly human silhouettes on their sides.

This happened at 8:00 AM on a Friday, and I actually went to work that day. The pain responded slightly to large doses of ibuprofen, so although i looked like an invalid trying to walk, stand, or sit down, I got lots of work done. I expected the pain to have faded by the next day, but it had become a lot worse. Every breath was painful, and a light cough felt like being stabbed. By Sunday, it was unbearable and I sought medical attention.

A quick X-ray showed that no bones were actually broken, but that two left ribs were cracked. I’d suspected that because of crepitus (the sound and feeling of bones scraping together) that I could feel when I moved. The doctor’s orders were simple; I was to take pain medications so that I’d breathe deeply and avoid pneumonia. It hurt to breathe deeply, but I was instructed to do so and given a nifty little device called an “incentive spirometer.” It measured how much air I took in with a breath, but it must have been designed for people with smaller lung capacity than I. I could easily exceed its 2.5 liter capacity without even really filling my lungs, but I did the exercises as directed.

It’s been about three weeks since that happened. For the first two weeks, I slept in a recliner because I was unable to lie down without being in pain. I’m able to get into bed now, but I must sleep on my right side. Getting up in the morning is still a painful adventure, and bending to retrieve anything at floor level is downright impossible. Even when I’m not moving around, there’s a constant background pain from those two ribs. The medications keep it bearable but I’d really like it to go away. I’m told that cracked ribs can take months to heal, so I guess I’m doing all right at three weeks.

At the moment, I’m keeping the black dog at bay by concentrating on work, and on writing. Dousing the hornets’ nest with chemical death in a can helped my morale a bit, as did stomping the nest itself to bits and washing it into the storm drain. They won the battle but lost the war.

More anon. Thanks for reading.

(Via iPhone)(Updated with photographs: click to enlarge.)

Eastern North Carolina is not home to a great number of popular tourist destinations, but it has its share of important historic sites. I set out this morning to see at least one of them, something beyond the environs of New Bern.

The place where I sit now might have never been famous. It is but a small, round, wind-swept hill, an overgrown sand dune. To the east, a quarter-mile distant, the swells of the Atlantic Ocean turn to small breakers on the beach, just beyond the houses and condominiums that mark the passage of time and the march of civilization.

Once, this place was a serene, deserted tidal plain, chosen by two brothers for a grand experiment. For centuries, man had dreamed of having the ability to fly; to strap on a heavier-than-air device and keep it in the air under its own power. Many, learned and loony alike, had tried and failed, sometimes paying with their lives. Here, on the very spot where I sit, two young bicycle mechanics turned that dream to reality.

As my favorite poem begins, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings. There is no more sublime experience to be had in mortal life than to leave the earth behind, to rise and be held aloft by the very air we breathe. There are those who will insist that flying itself is a religion; if they are right, I am now upon the earth’s holiest ground.

Two small bronze statues of Orville and Wilbur Wright flank the memorial, looking out over the plain below. Behind them, a sixty-foot marble wing towers into the sky, upon which their names are carved. An inscription circles the base of the monument:

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR BY THE BROTHERS WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT CONCEIVED BY GENIUS ACHIEVED BY DAUNTLESS RESOLUTION AND UNCONQUERABLE FAITH

ERECTED BY THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES BEGUN 1928 DEDICATED 1932

Fittingly, a small airstrip with one paved runway is part of the facility. I walked around it for a while, too, vowing to return someday and squeak my wheels on a runway just yards from the site of the first optional landing ever made by a pilot.

So many things are possible because of powered flight. Not only were these our first cautious steps toward space and the stars, but the work done here made the world just a little smaller, and brought states and countries just a little closer.

The sky to the west is dark. A storm is coming; it’s probably ten miles from me, but it’s moving in steadily. I must leave here soon, put myself back among the cars and the tourists and the winding road home to New Bern, but I am glad I found myself here today. This is the kind of history that is close to my heart. Thanks, boys. We owe you.

I’m slowly settling into my new home. The town known as New Bern, North Carolina is a historic one, celebrating its tricentennial this year, and it’s certainly an interesting place.

Located at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers, New Bern was once an important port and trading center. It was the first capital of North Carolina, and remained the state’s largest city well into the 19th century. The city is situated about 24 nautical miles from the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, and is a popular sheltering harbor where small craft cruising the AIW may ride out foul weather. Boating is very big here. The Trent River is navigable water from New Bern to Pollocksville, and the Neuse is navigable for much of its length as well. Houses with private docks dot the shoreline, and the marinas are crowded with sailing and power vessels of all sizes.

New Bern was settled by Swiss and German explorers led by a Baron from Bern, Switzerland. The city’s coat of arms features a black bear and is identical to the Bern coat of arms in every respect save one:

As you can see, the Bern bear on the left is anatomically intact, while the New Bern bear has had a certain vital organ removed. The reason for the difference is a polarizing issue among those I’ve talked with. Some say the bear was emasculated by the razor-sharp blade of political correctness. Others contend that the bear is obviously female. I find myself leaning toward the former camp, and am sincerely hoping that the city will spare me the same fate. It hurts just to look at the poor bear, who is never named but whose name can only be Bernie.

With that coat of arms, it’s a foregone conclusion that visitors will see bears everywhere. There are huge reproductions of the coat of arms alongside the major highways, there are bear pawprints painted on the sidewalks, and garishly-painted five-foot bear sculptures greet us outside businesses and along city streets. Even the city’s police cars carry a phrase emblazoned proudly on their doors: “PROUD TO WEAR THE BEAR.” When I remember that CBers used to call police “bears” (after the Smokey the Bear hats they wear), I found myself giggling uncontrollably the first time I saw a bear wearing the bear. I giggled again when I saw an official, yellow, diamond-shaped sign on US route 70 that said, simply, “WATCH FOR BEARS.” The US constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms, and New Bern claims its right to arm bears.

The bears themselves strike me as kind of a good omen. One of my co-workers in Florida used to call me “Grizzly Adams.” My move for this job is generally to the north, and the north star (Polaris) is most easily located using two constellations called the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. Polaris is the end of the Little Dipper’s handle, and is pointed to by the two stars at the ladle end of the Big Dipper (Merak and Dubhe). Of course, these two constellations aren’t really “Dippers.” They’re called Ursa Major and Ursa Minor: Big Bear and Little Bear.

People are nice here. Atlanta’s certainly part of the deep south, and there’s a certain Southern charm to Georgians’ manner, but for the most part, I’ve been living among city folk. From downtown New Bern, one need only drive for ten or fifteen minutes in order to be in the land of tractors, silos, and endless furrowed fields. Life here, or at least my impression of it, is simpler. There are no traffic jams, no mega-malls or sports stadiums, no high-rise apartment clusters rising into the sky. When people pass me on the street, they actually greet me, and I them. When I meet a car, whether it’s on a country road or a city street, I often get a wave from the driver. The accents are comforting and familiar; in many western parts of North Carolina there’s a distinct Carolina accent, but here the accent is eerily similar to those of piedmont and tidewater Virginia.

Things at my new job are shaping up well. I spent my first week settling in and learning, and will spend much of my second week doing the same thing. Allison flew up this past weekend, with the company’s help, to look at some of the available houses to rent, as we plan to rent for at least the first year or two. One house we liked very much was rented before we could see it, and we scrambled for other options. Our first choice now is a house in the River Bend area, which is very roomy and well suited to our lifestyle. Our second choice is a very well cared for home in a neighborhood not far from work, equally roomy but not quite as private or nicely landscaped. We will have chosen one of the two by tomorrow, and hope to begin moving next week. Meanwhile, I’m living in a hotel room on the fourth floor overlooking the marina and the rivers beyond, and I suppose I can tolerate that situation for a bit longer.

I am going to have to get used to the idea of being a North Carolina resident. Growing up in Virginia, North Carolina meant only two things to me: Kitty Hawk (birthplace of powered flight) and Tarheels (football and basketball teams who were in-conference rivals of the University of Virginia Cavaliers.) The former was pure romance, and the latter pure hatred, fueled by taunting bumper stickers and slogans like, “If God is not a Tarheel, then why is the sky Carolina blue?” I may live here, and I’m proud to live in the state whose slogan is “First in Flight,” but don’t ever call me a Tarheel. I’m a transplanted Cavalier, and wahoowa to you, too.

I have switched sides in a certain respect, though. Atlanta is known as the birthplace of Coca-Cola, that beverage having been invented by a downtown drug store owner named Pemberton. New Bern, ironically, is the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola, also invented by a drug store owner named Bradham. It was originally called “Brad’s Drink,” and was eventually given its catchy new name. Bradham’s drug store was directly across from the Episcopal church — had you noticed that “Pepsi-Cola” is an anagram of “Episcopal?” Few do, and the Wikipedia entry for Pepsi-Cola doesn’t even mention the connection.

There’s been precious little time to write, but I’ll continue to post updates as the situation permits. For those who do not follow me on Facebook, do look me up, as I post much more frequent (but shorter) updates there.

I’ll bet you were thinking that I’d forgotten how to write! For my sake, I hope you’re wrong. There’s certainly a lot to write about in my life recently, but the situation demands that such writing be done tactfully and with due discretion. Let’s see how successful I can be, given those constraints.

First, let me address something that’s been on my mind. You’ve probably read the ugly, ill-advised, largely unedited rant against my former employer which I posted in November. It breaks a lot of rules, written and unwritten. I violated my own personal edict against naming my employer in this blog, something I regret very much. I also trashed my former employer pretty thoroughly, something that’s generally taboo. The information presented was factual, but that’s beside the point. It was wrong to do, and I wish I’d not done it.

I have not removed that blog entry. There are several reasons for that. One is that while I’m not proud of what I did, I did it. If I were to delete it now, I think some might see that as either denying or attempting to hide what I’ve done. I’ve also not been directly asked by anyone to remove it; apparently it’s not of sufficient concern to my former employer to warrant direct communication, even though someone in Germany seems to check rather regularly to see if it’s still there.

Now, on to recent events. First of all, I am saddened at the loss earlier this month of Dug Steele, after a brief struggle with an extremely aggressive cancer.

Dug was one of the most talented, experienced, gifted photographers and photojournalists I have ever had the privilege to know. I met him in the late 1970s, through his son, Kirk, who was my classmate and contemporary at Western Albemarle High School in Crozet, Virginia. Dug was larger than life, someone who had raised the use of a camera to a fine art as I aspired to do. Kirk was himself a fine photographer, even in his teens, having learned at his father’s knee.

Dug had a quiet, unassuming wisdom that belied his vast experience. Dug was always ready with a story; I remember evenings listening to tales of sailing, of work on transmitters in Saudi Arabia and on Apple Orchard Mountain in Virginia, of photographic moments in time, and of his experiences among Native American tribes on his trips out west. He had a weird, off-beat sense of humor that was reflected in his son’s manner, and that’s probably why the three of us got on so famously. One of his terms, used to describe someone who can’t stop fiddling with controls, has remained with me to this day: K.T.B. – Knob-Twisting Bastard.

Dug and I had been out of touch for many years, but his influence on my life compelled me to travel to Charlottesville, Virginia to attend his memorial service. It was necessary to rearrange travel plans a bit to make that happen, because I was scheduled for a very important job interview the following day. Fortunately, the company was willing to bend a bit, and my planned round-trip flight became a three-legged road trip from Atlanta to Charlottesville to North Carolina and back. All waypoints were achieved on schedule and everything went very well, but before I made it home it became clear that the cold-like illness I’d been trying so hard to deny and ignore was not content to be ignored any longer. I’m feeling much better now, though, thanks to my pit crew consisting of Allison, Chelsea, Raymond, and even Allison’s sister Ellen.

The interview resulted in an offer, one which I have accepted. Beginning tomorrow, I embark on a very exciting, promising new career. In keeping with my previously-mentioned convictions, the company name will not be mentioned here. However, in order to assure my friends and other interested parties that I’ve made the right move, I will say a few words about the company where I’m now employed.

Quality. The product made by this company is engineered, built, sold, and serviced at its impressive 52,000 square foot headquarters in the United States. State-of-the-art manufacturing techniques combined with skilled craftsmanship result in a precise, elegant final product. With all manufacturing processes done in-house, nothing is left to outside contractors and stringent quality control is maintained.

Stability. The company has been in business since it was founded in 1974, and the same man remains at its helm to this day. Employee turnover is extremely infrequent. The company is debt-free and growing, despite this unstable economy.

Responsibility. The company is operated in such a way that it has zero environmental impact, releasing no pollutants into the water or the air.

Reputation. The company’s name has been a household word in the industry for decades. The name stands for quality, reliability, flexibility, and unmatched capability. Customer satisfaction is both a goal and an achievement here.

Communication. Some companies appear to be so heavily compartmentalized that communications become hopelessly unmanageable. From what I’ve seen, this company operates differently. Here, people talk, processes and products improve, and the customer reaps the benefits.

These few words are among those that have convinced me to join this superb team. I am proud to be a part of this company, and I’m excited about getting to work.

Of course, nothing worth doing is easy. As a result of my new job, we’re moving. My new home will be a beautiful, historic, medium-sized community in coastal North Carolina. I am going to start work tomorrow, and we anticipate finding a home and installing me permanently there within a month. An important trade show looms close on this horizon, and I’ll need to be there to represent my new team and its products, so I’ve got a lot of learning to do in the next three weeks. Allison’s in full take-charge mode and is determined to make the move as trauma-free as possible for me, and the company is providing lots of help as well, so while it’s going to be a bit hectic for the next month or so, it’s a good, exhilarating, productive, rewarding sort of pressure.

Saying goodbye to Atlanta will be very hard. I’m leaving behind many friends and acquaintances, lots of familiar places, and myriad memories both good and bad. There’s just not enough time for the sort of closure I’d ordinarily want. I’m going to try to make the most of my few trips back here as the move progresses, and it seems certain that a photoessay will be a part of the process. Beyond that, I’ll have to simply cross each bridge as it appears before me, and know I’ve done all I can.

A bridge. What a nice metaphor.

There is a sickness plaguing this nation, if not the entire developed world. It is a sickness born of tragedy and incubated by panic. Spread by the winds of outrage and fears both rational and irrational, it has grown to pandemic proportions in less than a decade. Unchecked, it now strikes at the heart of a concept and an ideal without which no civilized body can long endure. This sickness is destroying our Constitution, suppressing our personal and collective freedom and liberty. America — the country and the concept, conceived by our forefathers and preserved with varying degrees of success by all governments since — is dying.

1997 may have marked the genesis of this disease. The Columbine massacre, given worldwide, real-time attention by all manner of news media, may have first set the stage for the infection which has followed. 12 people died at the hands of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; 24 others suffered grievous injury. In the search for reason which followed this irrational act, factors such as the goth subculture, video games, music, the effects of bullying, and depression were considered as causes for the actions of the two youths. With no clear answers forthcoming, more irrational actions followed. Although even the U.S. Secret Service advised that zero tolerance policies were unlikely to be effective, people wanted something done to give them a sense of security — even a false one would suffice. Suddenly, children were being suspended and/or arrested for having tweety bird keychains on their bookbags. The dementia began.

September 11, 2001 was a terrible, terrible day. Like many tragedies that have befallen the innocent at the hands of terrorists and criminals in all parts of the world, the attacks on the World Trade Center brought about a degree of change that makes Barack Obama’s campaign slogan seem like a cruel joke. America dug in, locked down, and shivered. Presently we recovered from the terror, but before such recovery could really take hold, the damage was done. Suddenly, places where a man could once walk and marvel at our country’s engineering wonders, military might, and strong infrastructure were now places barred by high chain-link fences and patrolled by armed guards. A bridge is now under construction on the Arizona-Nevada border, well below the Hoover Dam, and upon its completion, traffic will no longer be allowed to drive across the dam’s roadway, this having been judged an unacceptable risk. Many other such changes have been made or are pending, and those enacted in 2001 are still in force now, nearly a decade later. The word “terrorist” came to apply not only to enraged jihadist bombers, but also to the neighborhood bully whose only weapons are his fists and his stupidity. Hoax e-mails have become matters of “national security.” Police and other law enforcement agencies were given broad powers not granted them under the constitution by a piece of legislation ironically called “The Patriot Act.” The disease process is insidious, steadily progressive, and apparently unstoppable by any means yet discovered.

A second school massacre at Virginia Tech accelerated the spread of the infection. Just as the Sung-Hui Cho intended, America trembled at the sound of his weapons. Paranoia spread and multiplied exponentially. The definition of “weapon” became hopelessly broad and conveniently blurred so that innocuous objects could now be considered deadly, when such categorization seemed warranted by security considerations.

The situation is now critical. Nowhere is the destruction wrought by the disease more patently visible than in the behavior of our nation’s school administrations. Let us examine a few recent incidents, ending with the one which brought all this to mind when it appeared in this morning’s news.

August, 2007, Chandler, Arizona: A student aged 14 was handed a five-day suspension (later reduced to three) for drawing a gun. Mind you, I don’t mean unholstering a gun with intent to use it. Instead, for a class assignment, the student made a crude pencil drawing of a handgun and turned it in.

School officials term this an implied threat and — pun intended — stuck to their guns.

October 2007, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota: A student at Hamline University was suspended for sending e-mails to the University’s president which were critical of the school’s concealed weapons policy. (Like many schools, Hamline prohibits the carrying of concealed weapons on campus, even by those licensed to carry them.) Because student Troy Scheffler pointed out that the policy might be part of the problem, his e-mails were deemed “threatening.”

September, 2008, Hilton Head, South Carolina: A 10-year-old student, not identified by name, was suspended for at least two days. His pencil sharpener broke, and he held onto the pieces (including the loose blade), probably intending to fix it or dispose of it later. The linked story lacks a lot of detail, but it’s the best one I can find now. This was clearly a case where the boy had no intention of using the blade as a weapon.

May 2009, Penn Hills, PA: 15-year-old Taylor Ray-Jetter was suspended, then expelled from Penn Hills Middle School for bringing a decidedly harmless-looking eyebrow trimmer to school. The trimmer was categorized as a weapon.

October, 2009, Des Moines, Iowa: 12-year-old Jazmine Martin was suspended for one day for bringing a spent shotgun shell to school for show-and-tell. The casing was clearly empty, open at one end, and was clearly labeled “BLANK.” It was a souvenir from a summer trip to an old west show. Principal Randy Gordon claimed that spent or empty shells still are considered “ammunition,” which will be great news to soldiers who are running short of ammo at the front lines.

November 2009, Lansingburgh, New York: Eagle Scout Matthew Whalen was suspended from Lansingburgh High School for 20 days because he kept a 1-1/2 inch folding knife in his car parked on campus. The knife was part of an emergency preparedness kit and was never brought inside the school until adminstrators, probably tipped off by another student with an agenda, demanded he turn it in. The suspension and the scar on this otherwise exceptional young man’s record were upheld on appeal to the school board.

January 14, 2010, Willows, California: Last October, Gary Tudesco, a 17-year-old student at Willows High School, went duck hunting in the early morning hours before school with a friend. Not wanting to be late for school but respecting the campus weapons policy, the boys parked Tudesco’s truck off-campus on a public street, leaving the unloaded weapons inside. Hours later, a search dog employed by school officials apparently alerted on his vehicle. School officials saw the weapons inside and immediately suspended Tudesco. He was eventually given a one-year expulsion from school on the grounds that he was a danger to himself and other students. Police and the District Attorney said the boy had done nothing wrong, but school officials cited a California state law (not cited in the story) that gives school officials the power to search a student’s vehicle during school hours regardless of its location! An appeal is pending, and the National Rifle Association is assisting with the case.

Looking beyond the schools, we have extreme overreactions in spades as well. We are practically strip-searched before every airline flight, yet people like the Undiebomber manage to elude even this indignity. Paranoia is not a solution; it is a symptom.

Can there be a cure?

This entry breaks an unwritten rule to which I’ve held myself. In the years since I began this blog in August of 2003, not once have I mentioned the name of my employer. I’ve talked about them without naming them, in order to chronicle their influence on my life, and I don’t regret that. Naming the company would have crossed a line, making potentially negative information available to anyone with access to Google.

Some of you know I’ve now resigned from my job, and that the reason for that resignation was the company’s failure to pay salary. Rather than laying off their three remaining employees, they chose to keep us working and stop issuing paychecks, promising that payroll would be caught up “soon.” When “soon” stretched into months, I’d had enough and decided to cut my losses. I filed a lawsuit soon after to recover my back pay, as did the two employees, but the legal system moves slowly. The company has until late January to file an answer.

The German parent company, we were told, was purchased by another, larger German company. The new owner had lofty goals for turning the company’s dive into a zoom-climb by injecting new capital and changing management. I was told that I, along with the two employees who are still working, would be receiving a wire transfer just before Thanksgiving to reconcile back pay. For me that amounts to many thousands of dollars. It didn’t happen, and I am ashamed to have been surprised. Excuses have been made, e-mails inquiring as to the status of the wire transfer have been ignored, and nothing has actually happened.

That brings us to yesterday — Monday, December 20, four days before Christmas. I have finally become angry, infuriated that a heartless jerk in Germany has essentially ruined the holidays for me and left me in a rather dire state.*

The following letter was sent to Andreas Gruettner, president of the “new” Klotz Digital AG, parent company of Klotz Digital Audio Systems, Inc., my former employer. He is also a director of United Screens Media, the company we were told has purchased Klotz Digital AG.

From:	Scott Johnson
To:	ajgruettner, A.Gruettner
Subj:	Trust

Herr Gruettner,

I really tried to believe you when you said you’d be wiring money before Thanksgiving, nearly a month ago.

I tried very hard to believe you when you finally, after more than a week, claimed it wasn’t sent because you needed more information.

I wanted to believe that Klotz was finally in capable hands, and that I as well as Mike and Terri would get real answers instead of more excuses.

I made an effort to give you the benefit of the doubt when you repeatedly told Michael you would get in touch with me, and failed to do so.

It is now Monday, four days before Christmas, and no wire transfer has taken place.

Michael tells me that you have expressed an interest in working with me when the company is on firmer ground. I have heard this from Michael only, not from you. If that is something you truly want to happen, then I would urge you to take immediate action with respect to the money which Klotz already owes me.

I invested my time, my energy, my knowledge, and my expertise in keeping KDAS alive, just as Mike and Terri have. This isn’t a handout we’re asking for. It’s money that you owe us, money that we have worked hard to earn, and money that is needed to turn a very grim holiday season into a hopeful, joyous one. If Klotz Digital AG and United Screens Media together cannot manage to stand up and do what’s right by balancing that debt, then you will truly be the Grinch who Stole Christmas. That will destroy what little trust remains and make it impossible for us to work together going forward.

It’s your decision. I hope you make the right one.

Scott Johnson

It will surprise no one that at the time of this writing, 36 hours after the e-mail was sent, there has been not a hint of a reply. Even Mike, my friend and one of the two remaining employees, has been strangely silent even though he was cc’d on the e-mail.

Merry Christmas, Klotz. Without using profanity, I can say no more.

* Georgia

Update — February, 2009

A week or two ago, Klotz wired most of the money they owed me. They continue to owe me around a thousand dollars, plus the costs incurred in filing and pursuing my lawsuit, so it still appears I’ll have to take them to court to be made whole. Thomas Klotz, the founder of Klotz Digital, and Hans Reinisch, a “consultant” who was entrusted with handling the US division’s finances, have since resigned and all but disappeared. Based on what I know of their recent activities, I can guess why, and losing them might be the best thing that ever happened to the company.

Meanwhile, Herr Gruettner either found or was directed to this blog entry. I’m told he thought it might be bad for business, an assessment I find entirely accurate. Instead of contacting me, unfortunately, he contacted my friend Mike, who is still in his employ, and asked him to speak with me about it. My response was that Mike didn’t need to be put in that position, and that if he objected to what I had written, he should contact me directly. Predictably, he didn’t.

Since everything in the letter and the blog entry that accompanies it is factual, accurate, and true, I see no reason to alter or remove it, particularly in the absence of any direct contact from anyone who objects to it. I’m not proud of my outburst, but none of this would have ever become public if a few people had simply acted with more integrity and less self-interest.

I’ve been somewhat disturbed lately by the number of trite phrases used by writers, particularly in journalism. I wonder if the trend represents a decline in general creativity.

Why is it that a fire cannot be reported without the use of the word, “blaze?” We never see “conflagration” or “deflagration,” both of which are often technically accurate. Blazes are never lit, though, only “torched” or “touched off.”

Why is a man with a gun always a “gunman?” To refer to a man with a gun makes sense, but applying a title like “gunman” seems to confer a sense of purpose, as if it were a vocation, or perhaps a serious avocation. I’ve even heard reporters use the phrase, “armed gunmen.” Perhaps these people were carrying knives also?

In murder-suicide cases, why is it that the culprit never “commits suicide” or “shoots himself,” but always “turns the gun on himself?” I always think to myself, “Did he then pull the trigger?”

In journalism, why is it considered not only okay, but somewhat fashionable to write sentences without verbs? “A four-car pileup on I-90. Four dead. The full story on KSFY Action News at 11.” There no verb these sentences. Not understand. Sloppy.

There are dozens of these. Stopped cars are always “stalled.” People aren’t killed by bullets, they’re “felled” or “cut down,” unless they duck, in which case they are “pinned down by gunfire.” Power lines don’t fall in the active voice, but are instead always “downed” in the passive voice.

I’m guilty of using such literary crutches at times, but I try very hard to avoid them. I never refer to anything as a “grassroots” organization, nor to union laborers as the “rank and file.” Where do these phrases originate, and why are they so persistent and inescapable?

Is conformity to clichés the new creativity? I hope not.

It’s strange how certain terms, even ones I’ve used in conversation, correspondence, or expository writing, can go unexplained, their meanings merely abstract concepts that fit my thoughts at the time.

Until the last year or so, I think I can say with complete candor that I hadn’t the slightest idea what a “mid-life crisis” was. It happened to middle-aged people, more men than women if one were to judge by common usage of the term, and it caused odd and sometimes inappropriate behavior. That was the extent of my knowledge, and I felt more than qualified to use the term based on that definition.

Like a man referring flippantly to the experience of childbirth, I seem to have missed the mark. Certain feelings have seized me in the last few months, and I feel sure that they, far more than the cursory effort above, represent an accurate and true definition of mid-life crisis. Apparently, such crises are like heart attacks. It sometimes isn’t completely clear that you’re having one until enough symptoms click into place and the alarm goes off.

I guess the first signs came when my employers, some months ago, decided that I wasn’t valuable to them anymore. I was marked down, in a sense; they sought to acquire my services at a substantial discount.

It was at that point that I realized, as I’d written in a previous entry here, that I had essentially wasted eight years of my life building a career with that employer. Over and above that, though, was the sense that those years represented nothing accomplished. I’d helped a couple of German people live more comfortably, and I’d made some radio and TV stations some nice new toys, but what did that really mean in the grand scheme of things?

I have worked hard in building my career, such as it is. Since graduating from high school, I’ve applied myself to one pursuit or another, and aside from some typical stupidities common to many young people starting out, I put in my time and did an honest day’s work. I learned what I could, applied what I’d learned to acquire still more knowledge, and slowly gained authority in my chosen fields. My biggest mistake, I think, was that I forgot to look up as I climbed the ladder, to see where I was going. Was I headed somewhere where I could make a real difference? That’s where I wanted to be. Almost all of the people I admired or idolized had made a difference.

My mother was a nurse. In Virginia at the time, there was a particular type of nurse, with more training than the typical L.P.N.. They were the Certified Tuberculosis Nurses, or C.T.N.’s. They worked in special hospitals called sanatoriums where TB patients were isolated, made comfortable, and treated. In those days prior to World War II, there was no cure for the disease. When Streptomycin was finally discovered in 1943, most of the tuberculosis hospitals closed or were converted into more conventional hospitals. My mom was still proud of her C.T.N. certification, not relinquishing it until a nursing management position required her to complete the few additional courses and become an R.N. at about the time I turned 16.

Mom and I didn’t always get along. We were both headstrong people and had rather deep-seated beliefs that were often diametrically opposed. However, I always admired her for what she did, just as I look up a bit to all nurses today. Nursing was not an easy, glamorous, or lucrative career choice. Indeed, it was often gruesome, back-breaking, emotionally enervating work that often left her tired, frustrated, and sad. In later years, when she managed a nursing home, I got to know many of her patients, and mourned with her as each one passed away, at the same time knowing that their last years were infinitely more pleasant because of her caring manner and devoted attention to their needs and desires.

My father fixed television sets and radios for a living. Having grown up in coal country, he wanted to work in the mines, but his six foot, four inch frame was too big. He learned to fix electric mine cars instead, and did so until he was diagnosed with TB in his early 20s. He found himself under my future mother’s care, and admired her as much as I one day would. Retrained in electronics, he began a career with Sears, Roebuck and Company, spending nearly thirty years in that same job.

I doubt that he felt he was making a difference changing tubes in TV sets. When I became a Cub Scout, he immediately became involved with the program. Eventually he became the leader of my Cub Scout pack, and later followed me into the Boy Scout program, becoming my troop leader as well. Something about scouting must have been rewarding to him. He remained with the program long after I moved on, and in the lives of the kids he led, he made a difference. He also worked hard to mold and guide the lives of his two children; we are his living legacy.

My uncle John was a Marine infantryman. My uncle Bruce was a member of an elite Navy diving unit. My uncle Bill was a medic. My aunt Kay was a medical laboratory technician, and my cousin Bill was also a Marine who fought in Vietnam. I’m quite certain every one of those people saved many, many lives. People live today who might not have lived. That is making a difference.

A few weeks ago I watched a show on TV called “Whale Wars.” It’s a typical reality TV show, except that instead of following the lives of some plastic losers on a deserted island, it follows the efforts of the Sea Shepherds, who are bound and determined to stop illegal whaling by the Japanese in the Southern Ocean.

My first impression was, “These people have got to be crazy.” After all, the crew is unpaid, the voyages are a month long or longer, they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to save whales that are being hunted to extinction, and they’re doing it not for money or for recognition, but because it’s the right thing to do.

After a very short period of reflection, my second impression was, “These people are making a difference in a way that I never have, and perhaps never will.” Suddenly the lunatics were heroes, and I wanted to be out there with them.

The harsh, difficult realization that I have done nothing with my life that will leave any lasting effect has been devastating me of late. I’m 46 years old, and I’ve not lived my life in a way conducive to above-average longevity. I’m fat, out of shape, and not particularly healthy. It doesn’t take a physician to come to the conclusion that the sun is setting, not rising, on my life from here on out. Being past my prime and realizing I’ve not even scratched the surface of what I wanted to accomplish by now is a bitter pill to swallow.

Some people say I’m being maudlin when I get this way, and that I’m just looking for validation, for pity, or for reassurance. Believe me when I say that I want none of these things, and that if they were offered they would be of no comfort whatsoever. Validation requires something to validate. Pity is pointless, and reassurance rings hollow without substantive proof. In my days as an EMT, I saved a life or two or three, and perhaps those people represent a difference I will leave behind when I go, but set those aside and it’s clear that when my work is done here, a year later nothing will be any different than it would have been had I never existed.

I am not sure what I can do this late in the game to try to salvage some meaning from this life, and to do something that truly does make a difference. It is the subject of much internal turmoil for me, though, and it has become a distraction to the point where I recognize that I am not myself lately. My bank made a stupid mistake the other night, shutting off my check card “to see if it was really me using it,” and I had to call them. Usually, I make an effort in such situations to be at least minimally polite, but I lost my temper. Allison, standing beside me, said nothing, but I know she noticed.

Allison understands, I think, what I’m going through. She tries to tell me I’ve accomplished more than I think, and that I have indeed made some sort of meaningful difference with my life, but I’m just not feeling that way, and no amount of warm fuzzy logic is going to change the standard I’m holding myself to. I love her for trying and for enduring my endless introspection, my self-criticism, and sometimes my fatalism.

I don’t seek fame, glory, recognition. Those are selfish goals, and I’ve done enough self-serving, meaningless things in my life. What I do want is to make a difference. I want there to be at least one thing that people can point to after I am mere worm food and say, “That wouldn’t be what it is if Scott hadn’t been here.” It’s not about pride or recognition or glory. It’s more about meaning; it’s about my life having a purpose, and about my having a reason to exist, other than combining organic matter with oxygen and producing fertilizer and methane. I am good at that, but metabolism is hardly an impressive lifetime achievement.

To slightly modify a well-known laconic phrase, the self-flagellation will continue until morale improves. Thanks for listening.

What’s that you say? A month ago I promised to finish my epic tale of sunburn and homesickness? I apologize for what must have been intolerable suspense. Life has been coming at me pretty fast lately, and I think it’s now towing me. Writing time has been at a premium.

We let our back yard get a bit out of control while we were attending to birds at the Renaissance Festival, so our first weekend at home was dedicated to yard work. Allison, who has within her head the complex map of mower-breaking stumps and snags, generally pilots the riding lawn mower, while the kids trim and move various obstructions. My job this time was to tackle a thicket of deep brush that had grown up on an incline too steep for either of the mowers. No sweat, I thought.

Two hours and one extended water break later, the brush had been reduced to mere stubble, and I was much more knowledgeable about the stress and strain involved with swinging a string trimmer powered by a 2-cycle gasoline engine without a shoulder strap. I was also keenly aware that I had forgotten to wear a hat. I remind readers who haven’t seen me recently that I am extremely fair of skin, freckled, and devoid of hair on the upper regions of my cranium. My head, which already looked a bit like the melon of a beluga whale, now looked and felt a lot like the surface of the sun.

The next day I was called upon to photograph one of Earthquest’s Birds of Prey shows for a scout troop in Jasper, and I again failed to cover my dome. In my defense I can only say that hats with brims interfere with my use of a camera, and that I don’t own any without brims.

For the next week I was embarrassed and annoyed by my peeling scalp, more so because it was the result of my own stupidity.

In mid-week, when the worst of the sunburn had subsided, we began a long-awaited extended weekend trip to visit my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. I’d not been home for quite some time, and it was a very pleasant visit. We left Wednesday evening and returned on Monday, giving us lots of time to visit my old haunts and to meet with some old friends. Alas, we didn’t get to visit everyone we hoped to see or to do everything we wish we could have done, but it was enough to sate my homesickness for quite some time. We had a nice dinner with old friend Rey Barry, and got to see the result of some recent remodeling work at his home. I had the chance to say hello to Rob Graham, Chris Callahan, and Jane Foy, some old friends from my days at WINA radio.

We even visited the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA, formerly run by a wonderful lady named Sally Mead. Sally was the most caring, devoted, and selfless animal advocate I have ever met. When I was doing an afternoon radio show, Sally called in and went on the air daily to report on happenings, recent arrivals, and pets available for adoption. She treated every animal that came through her doors as if it were her own beloved pet. I will never forget the day that Sally called just after Samson, a big friendly cat who had become a permanent resident, passed away. She could barely speak, the grief evident in her voice, and I tried to convince her not to bother going on the air that day, but she insisted. It was part of her calling, and it would not be subdued. It was heartbreaking and awe-inspiring all at once. I deeply admired her strength of character as much as her deep emotion.

There is now a memorial garden at the SPCA dedicated to this singularly remarkable woman, and a photo of her in the lobby that brought a tear to my eye as I remembered her and her work. If she could see the beautiful, modern, clean, well-run SPCA that has replaced the old one, she would be well pleased.

Returning home from the trip was a jarring experience. There was much catching up to do. The trip was a welcome break from recent stresses, though, and was a healing experience.

Since then, we’ve been struggling to get our fledgling photography business off the ground. It’s called Aves Photography, and we are specializing in portraiture and pet photography, the latter seeming to be a growing market segment and well suited to our comfort with animals.

We have an official business license now, and on the first weekend after July 4 we went to our first event, Atlanta’s Exotic Bird Fair. We set up in a ten by twenty foot space, with half reserved for studio space and the other half for tables and sales space. The venue was kind enough to pipe and drape all four sides of my studio space, giving me comfortable isolation and preventing my strobes from bothering adjacent booth occupants.

The whole family got involved with this. Allison acted as transportation captain and booth manager, arranging everything with her usual efficiency. She also helped by getting business cards and flyers designed and out the door in time for the event. Chelsea assisted with setup and acted as salesperson, pulling people in and hawking our services. Raymond was my photo assistant, in charge of powering lighting gear up and down, moving lights and modifiers as necessary, and assisting customers in and out. Raymond also designed the Aves Photography logo. For my part, I designed a very simplistic but workable web site in record time, set up a cute little studio that worked well, and pushed the shutter button on the camera.

For a first weekend in business, I think we did quite well. I’m quite happy with all of the photos we did for our customers. Best of all, we had a good time doing it, and we learned lots of lessons so that we can make an even better showing next time.

Beyond business, life has been odd. My emotions have taken a downturn of late, and it’s taken me a few days to discover why. It’s easy to turn and place the blame on people and events in my past, and some of that has crept in, but really most of the misfortunes in my life have been of my own making. I try not to resent my past.

I was listening to music on my way to work this morning, fatigued with the traffic reports and endless ultra-conservative political banter that is talk radio. A song by Tori Amos called “A Sorta Fairytale” came on, and I was intrigued by the lyrics, even though I’ve heard them dozens of times. I found myself wondering about the meaning of some of the phrases, so I did some google searches when I got to the office. Serendipitously, I stumbled on a quote from Tori herself which I am finding extremely comforting. Speaking of the character, Scarlet, from whose voice the song comes, she says,

“I think that there is a place where she realizes that people come in and out of your life, sometimes for one day, sometimes for longer, and all of them make you what you are. You can’t separate these people out of you. They form who you are, even the ones that you kind of say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t know if I wanna be formed by them anymore.’ But you are in some way… you are, that’s why maybe you don’t have to look at them so harshly because they have affected you. At the end, though, you know, it’s… us as individuals… with our… hmm… with our love for the land, for something intangible that, when soulmates come and go, you’re never alone even when you’re standing just you and your shoes, because you carry them with you.”

I didn’t expect such perspective-changing wisdom from Tori, but I should have. She’s right; this quote has the unmistakable ring of truth. Each of us is the sum of what we were given at birth and everything that has been added to us by the people we’ve met and the experiences we’ve had. People who have hurt us have also, in some way small or large, changed who we are, and who’s to say that such changes are not for the better? No, I’m not about to get on the phone and thank anyone who’s hurt me, but at the same time I am beginning to let go of some resentment and regret. I wouldn’t be involved with a wonderful woman like Allison if some other women hadn’t left tread marks on me a few miles back up the road, so not everything that seems bad really is bad in the long run. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but like chemistry on film, it develops them, revealing the true meaning that could not be seen before.

Speaking of film: despite pleas from Paul Simon that began as early as 1973, Momma (in the person of Eastman Kodak) has taken our Kodachrome away. Not another roll of that marvelous film will ever be produced. What’s left is what’s left; I’m trying to get my hands on a roll or two for a project, but it’s disappearing fast, but I’ve got a Nikon camera, and I love to take a photograph.

As a friend pointed out recently, it’s been some time since I wrote here. It’s not been an intentional hiatus; rather, my creative energies have been focused in other directions and my life, as a whole, has been more than a little unstable. I’m working to change that.

My employment situation, such as it is, has stabilized. While still serving, in title only, as Director of Engineering for the company, I have been told that I’m now an independent contractor. I’m being paid at an hourly rate equivalent to half my previous salary. I am receiving no benefits and am having to pay COBRA rates for health insurance out of pocket. My work week is twenty hours, which I have decided to provide as two 7-hour days and one 6-hour day. I don’t work one minute longer.

I now admit to myself that I was angry about this situation; insulted, I was in a right snit for some time. I’m over that now, and it’s no longer personal. Being an independent contractor has some advantages, but beyond even those, I have found myself with a refreshingly new mindset. Before, as a full-time employee and member of management, I tended to become very invested in virtually every aspect of my job. The company’s engineering successes were my own, but so were the many areas in which the company failed its customers. I felt personally responsible for and attached to these failures, even though most of them were completely unrelated to my performance. To an extent, I became the company.

That’s changed now. As a part-time independent contractor, I remind myself daily that the problems I see are not mine anymore. I just work here. Customers who depend on me to provide engineering support for their systems are up in arms over my reduction in hours, fearing that they’ll be left hanging in the event of an emergency. I sympathize, I emphasize that none of this was my idea, and apologize on the company’s behalf. I then give them the boss’ phone number, hang up, and divest myself of any negative feelings. I am not the company any longer.

The company itself is in deep trouble. In a few weeks or perhaps a few months, there’ll be nothing left of what was once a thriving concern. I’m watching it happen, doing what I can and what I’m able in the hours I work, and I’m distanced from it now. My feelings are different from before in the same way that watching a car accident on television is different from being involved in one. It’s a bit jarring and unpleasant to see, but then you just change the channel and laugh as Gregory House calls someone an idiot again.

Birds have continued to occupy a large sector of my time and emotional energy lately. From May through early June, Allison and I along with Chelsea (and occasionally Raymond) managed the Parrots of the Caribbean aviary at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. We volunteered there last year and enjoyed it thoroughly. This year, the founder and director of EarthQuest, Steve Hoddy, asked us to run the parrot exhibit for him.

It’s a beautiful facility. The aviary is roughly a square 75 feet on each side, completely covered with a material called shade cloth. The cloth keeps parrots and cockatoos in, keeps birds of prey out, and cuts the sun’s rays by a considerable factor, keeping the aviary cool. Inside, the birds are completely free to fly around or perch in their favorite spots. Guests, who enter through protected doors, walk among the birds, interact with them, and enjoy the spectacle.

It was a ton of work, much of it spent in either sweltering heat or drizzling rain. Because of my personal choice not to use a glove when handling and training large birds, my hands sported impressive carnage for weeks. Because I was working full-time during all this, I had not a single day off for the entire two months, other than a single work holiday. I grumbled, I groaned, and I complained far more than Allison would have liked, but I also have to admit that I enjoyed every minute, and that I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Of course, the work involved dressing like a pirate! Allison outdid herself in putting together pirate costumes for the whole family; I had a great pair of boots, homemade pirate pants, some blousy linen pirate shirts, a real leather bandolier, a headcloth and an authentic-looking pirate hat. I even kept my beard long for most of the time, despite sidelong glances from co-workers. Arrrr.

One of the joys of working with birds is that they all have distinct personalities which are as colorful as their plumage. Let me tell you about a few of the dear friends I met and worked with during the festival.

Rainbow is a beautiful scarlet macaw. He’d be much more beautiful if he hadn’t gone through some hard times. Rainbow was overbonded to his owner, an older woman who passed away a couple of years ago. In a profound grief reaction, he pulled out every feather he could reach, picking himself clean before he finally got over her and moved on. He’s starting to re-grow feathers now and is as colorful as his name might suggest, but it’ll be another year or two before he’s in full feather again.

Rainbow is on a bit of a power trip. His favorite game is making people jump. He will wait until a group of people, preferably small children, are standing very close to his perch. He chooses his moment carefully. When no member of the group is looking in his direction, he will suddenly unleash a piercing, strident squawk at an incredibly loud volume, then bob his head in satisfaction as the people all jump out of their skins. I cannot help laughing. People are his favorite toys.

Mom and Dad are two blue and gold macaws who represent the sort of marital success I wish humans achieved more often. They’ve been together for thirty years. As a mated pair, they’re less interested in human interaction than most single birds, but they’re not totally reclusive. Dad loves to display, spreading his wings wide and puffing up his feathers and being a total macho-bird, whenever anyone draws too near. The two are difficult to handle, and most people tend to bring them in and out of their cage on a stick rather than by hand. I’m far too stupid and stubborn for that, though. They’ve stepped up onto my hands many times, sometimes even without inflicting serious injury.

On one particular day, when it was time to go from aviary to cage for the night, they were being stubborn. Dad kept biting at me each time I reached for him,and Mom kept running away. The rule had always been to pick up Dad first so as to avoid any protective aggression. Since he wasn’t having any of that, though, and because I was frustrated, I simply picked Mom up from the ground where she’d fled and walked away. There was a loud, indignant squawk, and I looked back to see Dad looking very worried.

“Come on, Dad,” I called over my shoulder, and raised my opposite arm. In what to me was an indescribably special and beautiful moment, the huge bird raised his wings, jumped from the perch, and majestically soared across the aviary, flaring at the last moment to execute a perfect landing on my outstretched arm.

One of my duties during the festival was to introduce the Birds of Prey show, a most impressive falconry demonstration presented by Steve Hoddy himself. I would go out before the show with one of the parrots or cockatoos perched on my hand, and talk a little about our parrot exhibit, parrots in general, and parrot rescue. I would then admit that parrots are birds that pray they don’t get eaten by birds of prey, at which point I would introduce Steve. His first line would refer to his birds eating birds that talk, and my parrot and I would silently disappear as Steve began the show. I had a blast doing it, and toward the end I even brought my own bird, Mila, to visit the aviary and help me with the intros. Mila knows several cute tricks, which she performed to a very attentive audience, and she really seemed to love being out there.

EarthQuest is big on environmental education, so Steve performs shows for schools, environmental organizations, parks, and other various hosts throughout the year. He recently did a show for a Cub Scout troop in Jasper, Georgia, giving me the opportunity to photograph the demonstration. The above photo is one of a set which you can see on my Flickr photostream.

Allison has found herself far more comfortable with many of the large birds than the was before this experience. Also, Chelsea, Allison’s 21-year-old daughter, surprised us all. I don’t think she’ll mind my telling you that she’s been afraid of birds for years. She doesn’t mind looking at them or even cuddling with our tiny little green-cheeked conure, but a bird flying toward her used to send her running for cover.

A strange thing happened during the festival. While helping in the aviary, Chelsea met a lot of the birds and actually grew close to some of them, particularly a pair of umbrella cockatoos named Oupay and Qupay. Brother and sister, the two are nearly inseparable but are also the cuddliest that two birds can be without spontaneously morphing into teddy bears. Working with these birds brought about a huge change in Chelsea’s outlook. She began not only working around birds but actually enjoying it! Suddenly I had a most eager student quizzing me on every aspect of bird handling, enthusiastically reporting every successful experience to me, and actively seeking out opportunities to interact with the parrots and cockatoos. The birds seemed to like her, too. She could, in fact, readily handle one or two birds that tended to exhibit very poor manners toward me.

Before we were finished, she was not only participating in the early training of a previously unhandled and untrained amazon parrot, but allowing some of the fully flighted birds to fly directly to her arm. A former bird-phobic became a novice bird trainer/handler right before my eyes, and I am enormously pleased and proud.

The last day of the festival was bittersweet. I looked forward to having more free time, but saying goodbye to the birds was hard. I’d gotten used to their company, their antics, their chatter and even their noise. We’ll get to visit them at the EarthQuest preserve, but we won’t be hanging out two days a week anymore, and I miss them.

There’s a lot more going on in my life, but this post is nearing 2,000 words. Tune in for the next exciting episode, in which I sunburn myself to a crisp and visit my hometown.

Note to British readers: Please substitute “right” for “left” and “left” for “right” in the following discussion.

Note to Jamaican readers: This will be very confusing, and you might want to skip it entirely and go hit the beach instead. Irie, mon.

It may be due to my general mood, but driving on the highways around Atlanta has become a twice-daily exercise in frustration for me. We have huge, high-capacity roads here, and in some spots there are eight lanes in each direction, but we still somehow manage to clog them up. My 40-mile drive this morning took two hours, making me late and annoying me more than it should have.

I have been watching other drivers very closely, and I’ve noticed a few things that could really improve traffic flow. They’ll never be implemented, of course, but they would work if we could somehow make them happen.

In Germany, on the Autobahns, they have a strictly enforced law called “Rechtsfahren.” It means, simply, traveling on the right. The left lane(s) are for passing only. If you are caught driving along in the left lane for no good reason, you will find yourself on the receiving end of a very large fine. This is called lane discipline, and it works beautifully there. Of course, in Germany, driving is taken very seriously. Getting a driving license in Germany can cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars, and requires that the new driver pass rigorous tests. Germans give their driving their full attention. German automakers laughed when American markets began to demand cupholders in their automobiles, because no German would dream of sipping a cup of coffee or tea while driving.

Here, driving is what people do while they put on makeup, talk on mobile phones, read the newspaper, gesticulate wildly with both hands at their passengers, do their hair, eat fried chicken, and watch television. Yes, I have personally seen all of the above on Atlanta’s highways. Lane discipline, unfortunately, is largely unheard of.

Every day as I drive to and from my office, I see people puttering along in the far left lane, traveling very slowly, blissfully oblivious to the people whizzing by them on the right. They remain absorbed in their phone calls or are simply too clueless to notice that they’re traffic obstructions.

In Atlanta, we even have some HOV lanes. These High Occupancy Vehicle lanes are designed to allow people who are carpooling or carrying multiple passengers a clearer route around traffic — sort of an award for driving “green.” There’s generally only one such lane, though, and one is only allowed to enter or exit that lane at designated places. Invariably, on any given day that we use the HOV lane, there’ll be one idiot who believes that since he’s carrying a passenger, he can get into that lane and go as slowly as he likes. We can’t pass him until we come to an exit where we’re allowed to exit and re-enter the HOV lane, and he won’t get out of the way either, so we’re stuck. I can’t imagine the thought process that went into obstructing an HOV lane that way, and that’s probably because “thought process” is a gross exaggeration.

Oh, the Georgia lawmakers have tried to fix the problem. In fact, their solution is absolutely brilliant: conflicting laws! The German autobahns don’t have speed limits to deal with, so Rechtsfahren works. Our elected wonders have ignored this difference and effectively implemented Rechtsfahren and speed limits simultaneously. The law is called “slower traffic keep right,” and police are beginning to enforce it. It’s creating a terrible mess.

Suppose I’m on a two-lane highway. Traffic in the right lane is moving at 65 MPH, which is the posted speed limit. It has now become impossible to use the left lane without breaking a law. If I get into the left lane at 65 MPH or less, I’m breaking the “slower traffic keep right” law. If I get over there at 70 MPH, I’m breaking the speed limit. If traffic in the right lane is instead moving at 70 MPH, which is more usual here, and I drive 70 MPH in the left lane, I’m breaking BOTH laws. I’m going too fast and too slow simultaneously. It sounds like Laurel and Hardy. It is, basically.

It’s even worse on the surface streets. I was at a traffic light last night on a major city street. The signal was red, and there were 12 cars in front of me. It took FORTY SECONDS from the time the light turned green until I was able to move. That’s insane. That means that it took each car in the queue an average of over three seconds to begin moving. I should add that we could all clearly visualize the traffic light. Everyone saw it turn green at the same time. The light did not take forty seconds to reach me, the 13th car. Every car in the queue COULD have begun moving at exactly the same time, and we could have taken spacing as we went, but instead we have this ridiculous caterpillar effect. Every driver just sits there until the car in front has moved eight or ten yards, then slowly creeps away. That average, of course, doesn’t count the cell phone guy or the make-up lady who aren’t even looking to see when the light changes — they can’t be bothered with something as mundane as paying attention.

I was cut off this morning by a moron who decided it would be permissible to make a left turn from the right lane, just because he’d forgotten where he was meant to be going, and didn’t feel he could manage the inconvenience of going around the block.

High-speed highways that come to a complete stop every single day are a sign of the apocalypse, I think. I blame the cupholders.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

Two weeks ago, my co-workers and I were given an “offer” by our employer. The company is apparently broke, and we were given the “opportunity” to go to work as “freelancers” for about half our previous compensation, with no health insurance or other benefits, and with the company not even handling tax or FICA withholding. In other words, each of us would be an independent contractor — except that the company also said that we needed to work a 30-hour week, and be in the office all five days from 9 AM to 5 PM. There’s apparently some deficiency in someone’s math skills.

One of my co-workers accepted the deal. She and her husband are insured through his employer and he does quite well. Another co-worker is trying unsuccessfully to re-negotiate the deal. Neither of them really saw this for what it was. The employer wants us to sign that deal because it amounts to a de facto resignation from full-time employment. They don’t have to terminate us, and don’t have to worry about unemployment liabilities.

I declined the offer in writing.

Two weeks later I had heard absolutely nothing from anyone. Then, this past Friday, I received a diminutive paycheck in the amount that would be expected under the new agreement, which I did not accept. On top of that, I got a call saying that one boss thought the other boss was handling things, so no one did. I was told that the company didn’t want to lose me, and was asked what would make the deal acceptable.

I think my response was reasonable. I said that there were two issues here, not one. My full-time employment situation needed to be dealt with first, and that if they were terminating that because I wouldn’t voluntarily do so, they needed to put it in writing. Once that was done and all liabilities associated with the full-time job (like the missing half of my paycheck this week, and my remaining vacation time) were resolved, I would happily entertain offers of part-time or contract employment.

Today, I got an e-mail from the owner of the company that didn’t answer any of my questions at all, and also told me that our working hours were being reduced by 50%. That’s a 20-hour week, not 30. If I couldn’t accept that, I was told, then I should submit my resignation.

So now I’m waiting another 24 hours for an answer to four questions:

1) What is my current pay rate?
2) What do you plan to do about salary owed me to date?
3) What do you plan to do about unused vacation time owed me?
4) Am I an employee or an independent contractor?

I guess we’ll see how that goes. If I get written confirmation that they’re cutting my salary in half as well as my working hours, then that’ll be a valid reason for resigning and will not disqualify me for unemployment, should I find myself in need of it. There’s also a hostile work environment right now, since the one co-worker who took the deal is already acting as if I am the one raining on her parade.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Renaissance Festival opened this past weekend. Allison and I are managing the “Parrots of the Caribbean” aviary for Earthquest, and our first weekend went very well! Saturday’s crowd was huge, and Sunday’s was somewhat smaller due to rainy conditions, but everyone had a great time.

There’s one bad apple in every bushel, of course. Another volunteer, someone who’d been helping with landscaping inside the aviary, reacted badly to a clerical error that left him off the volunteer list. Of course, he had a ticket and got in anyway with no difficulty at all, but he was sufficiently miffed that he made the mistake of cursing, berating, and abusing Allison in front of a crowd of onlookers when she merely greeted him at the end of the day on Saturday. I was not around when this happened, and I think that’s probably a good thing, because we would have ended up in a hospital and/or a jail. He had the good sense not to turn up on Sunday, and he will find that he’s somehow been left off the volunteer list for all the remaining weekends through June 7. Unless he plans to apologize, and that seems unlikely, it’s probably better I don’t see him again. I can still see Allison on the edge of tears, and I’m damned angry.

Finally, last night after we got home from the Renaissance Festival, tired, hungry, and wiped out, Allison got a call from an irate relative. Back on Easter Sunday, I shot some portraits of family members at the request of Allison’s mother, who was aware this was for the purpose of building my portfolio also. After the photos were done, tweaked, and posted on Flickr, someone apparently became unhappy that his first and last name were on the photo and demanded immediate satisfaction.

This, of course, simply reminded me of how stupid I’d been. It’s absolutely essential to have signed model releases for all photographs — even of family members — if you’re going to put them on the Internet. I was quite proud of the entire set, but since I didn’t get releases in writing, I’ll not be able to use them beyond the purpose that Allison’s mom had in mind, which is inclusion in her photo album. She now has prints for that, though, and is apparently pleased with them. I left my setup shot on Flickr, and may eventually put Allison’s or Chelsea’s photo back up.

I am really tired, really stressed, and now I think I’ll go find something de-stressing to do. Thanks for listening to me as I vent.

As I walk out through the glass door of my office building and into the serene stillness of the parking lot, one clear voice shatters the silence.

At first the voice mildly annoys me. After hours of listening to the whirring of computer fans, the clicks of my keyboard and mouse, and the ringing of the telephone, these few seconds of precious quiet are a much-needed respite for my fatigued ears. After no more than a second, the annoyance is replaced by curiosity. I stop in my tracks, not wanting even the soft padding of my own footfalls to drown out the sound.

After a few moments, I see him, high above me on the branch of a tall loblolly pine tree. He is much too far away for me to discern much about his appearance, but his movements make it clear that he is the source of the strident calls. It’s difficult to believe how clearly and how reverberantly his small voice is carried to my ears.

His song is a marvel, his music beyond beautiful. He sings with no knowledge of notes, of key, of meter. Oval blobs spread across five lines on a piece of paper might somehow convey the vision of Bach or Brahms, but could not begin to do justice to this performance. He’s never had a lesson, but his innate talent argues eloquently for his professionalism.

I stand and listen for several minutes. The song changes frequently. New notes are added, new patterns form, and new rhythms emerge, and each is more interesting than the last. That such songs were being sung just outside the cage of glass and metal that imprisons me for most of the day seemed obvious. How many other things in life that mattered had been taking place just outside my window? How many had I missed? I would not miss this one. Just once, just for a few minutes, I would put all other business aside and give myself the time to enjoy this impromptu concert.

That songbird, I reason, probably has as much to worry about as I do. Civilization and deforestation encroach further and further into his habitat with every passing day. Predators, drawn to the very songs that captivate me, seek to end his life to nourish themselves. His very nature requires him to migrate hundreds of miles, twice yearly, to survive. He might even have a family to help feed, and a mate to protect and care for, and a nest to maintain. With all that on his little mind, he can take the time to find a comfortable branch, settle in, and sing. Can my life possibly be so badly prioritized that I can’t take the time to listen?

I stand in this parking lot with the potential of being jobless by week’s end. I have no health insurance due to my employer’s mismanagement, nor do my co-workers. I have health problems, I have debts, and as the middle years of my life slowly pass me by, I’m convinced that I’ve not accomplished a tenth of what I should have. This has caught up with me emotionally many times over the recent few weeks, and I have alternated between periods of dogged determination to do something positive and periods of sadness and dejected resignation. It’s been a dark time. Against that backdrop, even the dimmest of lights is a searchlight to me.

Presently, my searchlight finishes his song and raises his wings, flexing them powerfully and leaping from the branch. He dives to gain airspeed, his dark feathers glistening in the afternoon sunlight, and then he swoops toward me, soaring over the warmth of the asphalt. In a flash he passes over my head, crosses the roofline, and is gone.

I can only stand slack-jawed as I regard the majesty with which he flies. His grace and aplomb are as natural as his voice. I walk to my car slowly, honored and truly, unexpectedly awed and moved by the experience. I open the car door and get inside, starting the engine. The radio comes alive. The fan whirs. The engine hums. Life, as I’ve always known it, resumes.

For now.

I would like to acknowledge poet Marcie Hans and her beautiful poem, “No One Clapped”, from which I have borrowed the title of this piece.

Some of the best photographs I’ve ever taken have been happy accidents.

I was once a very active pilot. I’m not now; I fly desks and mixing consoles and digital workstations now, and I have gradually grown away from airplane flying. Still, airplanes and airports and the people and lore that surround them have never ceased to hold a nostalgic, passionate appeal for me. I’m afraid I have become something of an armchair pilot, but the love of aviation will never die in me.

I have a fairly long commute to and from work. To break the monotony, on Tuesday evening I decided to go home via an unusual route. The road I used is not one I’m intimately familiar with, and I had not noticed the small, grass airstrip by the roadside before. Now, two men were pushing a small Cessna 150 out of a hangar and toward the strip. Fascinated, I quickly turned the car around and returned, parking next to some telephone equipment so as not to trespass on private property.

My camera, which has been with me every day for months now, rested in its spacious new LowePro bag* next to me on the passenger seat. I grabbed it, put on the 200mm zoom lens, and practically leapt from the car just as the plane began to taxi toward the far end of the grass runway. I watched it intently through my lens. I may have been watching a bit too intently, in fact, because presently a bright yellow Piper J-3 cub came zooming in, just a foot or three above my head, landing downwind. After checking to make sure I’d kept what little hair I have on my head, I snapped a few frames of the perfect landing.

Moments later I saw the cloud of dust that heralded the application of full power by the Cessna, and I once again raised the camera. I shot one frame just as the main gear left the ground, and a second a moment later as the plane began to climb. I followed the plane with my lens, zooming out to keep it in frame, until it passed over my head and I nearly fell over backward. A gymnast I am not.

As I recovered my balance, I turned and saw the plane climbing away against a beautiful backdrop of sunlit clouds, and by happy accident, I must have tripped the shutter at precisely the right moment. When I got home and saw the image, my emotional response was absolutely shocking.

This is the moment that makes flying more than the simple balance of thrust, drag, lift, and gravity. It’s the moment when the ground that has been our master loses its power over us, and we are free to roam all three dimensions. It’s the moment when the mind, as well as the body, takes flight. Those few seconds, just after takeoff, are magic.

I share the photo with you because I hope I captured some small measure of that feeling, that longing that it inspired in me. Photography, if nothing else, is a beautiful way to communicate feelings, emotions, and those other parts of our minds and souls that do not lend themselves to mere words.

* I have an amazingly wonderful fiancee’ … have I mentioned that lately?

I apologize for the headline, but it’s a fairly common trait among aviation people to be a little callous about airline crashes. I admit that I’d be far less so if I were personally involved, and I hope no one is deeply offended.

Last month, a Turkish airlines 737-800 crashed on approach to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. The cause of the crash, until recently, was somewhat puzzling. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Dutch investigators have now determined the cause of the crash.

As the aircraft passed through 2,000 feet on an approach flown by the autopilot, there was an apparent malfunction of one of the aircraft’s two radio altimeters, which judge its height above ground. The left instrument indicated -8 feet (8 feet below ground) and happened to also be the instrument the autopilot was using.

This erroneous signal caused the autopilot to reduce power to idle and begin a flare, believing that it was at touchdown when in reality it was still nearly two thousand feet in the air. The plane assumed an extreme nose-up attitude, stalled, and struck the ground tail first. The rest of the aircraft then pancaked into the ground, killing 9 of the 134 souls on board and seriously injuring 28 more.

Why didn’t the crew cross-check their altimeters during the approach? Why didn’t they notice the throttles being retarded to idle at altitude? All of the flight crew were among the dead, so we will perhaps never know. The aircraft’s flight data recorder, which contained data from the plane’s last eight flights, showed that the same altimeter had malfunctioned on two previous approaches and that the crew had successfully recovered in each instance.

I know that it’s very, very wrong to find humor in a situation like this, but I was unable to prevent the image from entering my head. I was always a big fan of the sitcom, “WKRP in Cincinnati,” because in my radio career I met at least one of every character created for that show. The show’s most famous and highest-rated episode featured a Thanksgiving promotion that went horribly wrong, and when I saw this Turkish 737 smashed on the ground on national TV, in my mind’s eyes and ears stood Arthur Carlson in tattered clothes, breathlessly saying,

“As God is my witness, I thought Turkish could fly.”

I haven’t had a lot to write recently, so I thought I’d share something with you that I’ve recently rediscovered.

I read this many years ago while in high school, and while the title and author were lost to my memory, the content and its impact on me never faded. I recently made an effort to look it up and managed to find it and read it again, and discovered that I still could not get through it without a tear coming to my eye.

Here, then, is that wonderful piece of writing by the author of “The Forsyte Saga.” Written in 1911, it is now in the public domain, and is brought to you through the courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Quality
By John Galsworthy

I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he made my father’s boots; inhabiting with his elder brother two little shops let into one, in a small by-street-now no more, but then most fashionably placed in the West End.

That tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no sign upon its face that he made for any of the Royal Family–merely his own German name of Gessler Brothers; and in the window a few pairs of boots. I remember that it always troubled me to account for those unvarying boots in the window, for he made only what was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it seemed so inconceivable that what he made could ever have failed to fit. Had he bought them to put there? That, too, seemed inconceivable. He would never have tolerated in his house leather on which he had not worked himself. Besides, they were too beautiful–the pair of pumps, so inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth tops, making water come into one’s mouth, the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty glow, as if, though new, they had been worn a hundred years. Those pairs could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot—so truly were they prototypes incarnating the very spirit of all foot-gear. These thoughts, of course, came to me later, though even when I was promoted to him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted me of the dignity of himself and brother. For to make boots–such boots as he made–seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious and wonderful.

I remember well my shy remark, one day, while stretching out to him my youthful foot:

“Isn’t it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gessler?”

And his answer, given with a sudden smile from out of the sardonic redness of his beard: “Id is an Ardt!”

Himself, he was a little as if made from leather, with his yellow crinkly face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard; and neat folds slanting down his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, and his guttural and one-toned voice; for leather is a sardonic substance, and stiff and slow of purpose. And that was the character of his face, save that his eyes, which were grey-blue, had in them the simple gravity of one secretly possessed by the Ideal. His elder brother was so very like him—though watery, paler in every way, with a great industry–that sometimes in early days I was not quite sure of him until the interview was over. Then I knew that it was he, if the words, “I will ask my brudder,” had not been spoken; and that, if they had, it was his elder brother.

When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow never ran them up with Gessler Brothers. It would not have seemed becoming to go in there and stretch out one’s foot to that blue iron-spectacled glance, owing him for more than–say–two pairs, just the comfortable reassurance that one was still his client.

For it was not possible to go to him very often–his boots lasted terribly, having something beyond the temporary–some, as it were,
essence of boot stitched into them.

One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: “Please serve me, and let me go!” but restfully, as one enters a church; and, sitting on the single wooden chair, waited–for there was never anybody there. Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well–rather dark, and smelling soothingly of leather–which formed the shop, there would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking–as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this interruption.

And I would say: “How do you do, Mr. Gessler? Could you make me a pair of Russia leather boots?”

Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he came, or into the other portion of the shop, and I would, continue to rest in the wooden chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he would come back, holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-brown leather. With eyes fixed on it, he would remark: “What a beaudiful biece!” When I, too, had admired it, he would speak again. “When do you wand dem?” And I would answer: “Oh! As soon as you conveniently can.” And he would say: “To-morrow fordnighd?” Or if he were his elder brother: “I will ask my brudder!”

Then I would murmur: “Thank you! Good-morning, Mr. Gessler.” “Goot-morning!” he would reply, still looking at the leather in his hand. And as I moved to the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast slippers restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if it were some new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then indeed he would observe ceremony–divesting me of my boot and holding it long in his hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and loving, as if recalling the glow with which he had created it, and rebuking the way in which one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then, placing my foot on a piece of paper, he would two or three times tickle the outer edges with a pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, feeling himself into the heart of my requirements.

I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him; “Mr. Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know.”

He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:

“Id shouldn’d ‘ave greaked.”

“It did, I’m afraid.”

“You goddem wed before dey found demselves?”

“I don’t think so.”

At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots, and I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.

“Zend dem back!” he said; “I will look at dem.”

A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would bend on them.

“Zome boods,” he said slowly, “are bad from birdt. If I can do nodding wid dem, I dake dem off your bill.”

Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of boots bought in an emergency at some large firm’s. He took my order without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating the inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:

“Dose are nod my boods.”

The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but there was in it something quiet that froze the blood. He put his hand down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot, endeavouring to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.

“Id ‘urds you dere,”, he said. “Dose big virms ‘ave no self-respect. Drash!” And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the conditions and hardships of his trade.

“Dey get id all,” he said, “dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work. Dey dake it away from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to this–bresently I haf no work. Every year id gets less you will see.” And looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed before, bitter things and bitter struggle–and what a lot of grey hairs there seemed suddenly in his red beard!

As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go to him for nearly two years.

When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the two little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of a bootmaker-making, of course, for the Royal Family. The old familiar boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the single window. Inside, the now contracted well of the one little shop was more scented and darker than ever. And it was longer than usual, too, before a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers began. At last he stood before me, and, gazing through those rusty iron spectacles, said:

“Mr.—–, isn’d it?”

“Ah! Mr. Gessler,” I stammered, “but your boots are really too good, you know! See, these are quite decent still!” And I stretched out to him my foot. He looked at it.

“Yes,” he said, “beople do nod wand good boods, id seems.”

To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked: “What have you done to your shop?”

He answered quietly: “Id was too exbensif. Do you wand some boods?”

I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly left. I had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his mind, of a conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him as against his idea of boot. One does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for it was again many months before my next visit to his shop, paid, I remember, with the feeling: “Oh! well, I can’t leave the old boy–so here goes! Perhaps it’ll be his elder brother!”

For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to reproach me, even dumbly.

And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder brother, handling a piece of leather.

“Well, Mr. Gessler,” I said, “how are you?”

He came close, and peered at me.

“I am breddy well,” he said slowly “but my elder brudder is dead.”

And I saw that it was indeed himself–but how aged and wan! And never before had I heard him mention his brother. Much shocked; I murmured: “Oh! I am sorry!”

“Yes,” he answered, “he was a good man, he made a good bood; but he is dead.” And he touched the top of his head, where the hair had suddenly gone as thin as it had been on that of his poor brother, to indicate, I suppose, the cause of death. “He could nod ged over losing de oder shop. Do you wand any boods?” And he held up the leather in his hand: “Id’s a beaudiful biece.”

I ordered several pairs. It was very long before they came–but they were better than ever. One simply could not wear them out. And soon after that I went abroad.

It was over a year before I was again in London. And the first shop I went to was my old friend’s. I had left a man of sixty, I came back to one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremulous, who genuinely, this time, did not at first know me.

“Oh! Mr. Gessler,” I said, sick at heart; “how splendid your boots are! See, I’ve been wearing this pair nearly all the time I’ve been abroad; and they’re not half worn out, are they?”

He looked long at my boots–a pair of Russia leather, and his face seemed to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep, he said:

“Do dey vid you here? I ‘ad drouble wid dat bair, I remember.”

I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.

“Do you wand any boods?” he said. “I can make dem quickly; id is a slack dime.”

I answered: “Please, please! I want boots all round–every kind!”

“I will make a vresh model. Your food must be bigger.” And with utter slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes, only once looking up to say:

“Did I dell you my brudder was dead?”

To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was glad to get away.

I had given those boots up, when one evening they came. Opening the parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row. Then one by one I tried them on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and fit, in finish and quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me. And in the mouth of one of the Town walking-boots I found his bill.

The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me quite a shock. He had never before sent it in till quarter day. I flew down-stairs, and wrote a cheque, and posted it at once with my own hand.

A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go in and tell him how splendidly the new boots fitted. But when I came to where his shop had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the window, were the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots.

I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops–again made into one–was a young man with an English face.

“Mr. Gessler in?” I said.

He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.

“No, sir,” he said, “no. But we can attend to anything with pleasure. We’ve taken the shop over. You’ve seen our name, no doubt, next door. We make for some very good people.”

“Yes, Yes,” I said; “but Mr. Gessler?”

“Oh!” he answered; “dead.”

“Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday week.”

“Ah!” he said; “a shockin’ go. Poor old man starved ‘imself.”

“Good God!”

“Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to work in such a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn’t have a soul touch his boots except himself. When he got an order, it took him such a time. People won’t wait. He lost everybody. And there he’d sit, goin’ on and on—I will say that for him not a man in London made a better boot! But look at the competition! He never advertised! Would ‘ave the best leather, too, and do it all ‘imself. Well, there it is. What could you expect with his ideas?”

“But starvation—-!”

“That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin’ is–but I know myself he was sittin’ over his boots day and night, to the very last. You see I used to watch him. Never gave ‘imself time to eat; never had a penny in the house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don’t know. He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good boots.”

“Yes,” I said, “he made good boots.”

And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to know that I could hardly see.

No, I have nothing to say about the Super Bowl. I recorded it on my Tivo and plan to watch the commercials at my convenience, skipping the extraneous football* action.

This morning presented some unusual news, though. Today is Groundhog Day, a holiday the Germans once called Candlemas. If a particular groundhog, one Punxsutawney Phil of Pennsylvania, sees his shadow this morn, six more weeks of winter are assured, or so reads the legend. Since the release of the Bill Murray vehicle, “Groundhog Day,” Punxsutawney has seen huge crowds of visitors flocking to their town to witness the amazing prognostications of this silly woodchuck.

I think the woodchuck — or perhaps his throng of handlers — has finally lost his mind. This morning at 7:25 AM Eastern, Phil apparently declared that under a bright sky, he saw his shadow beside him.

Punxsutawney, according to most authorities including real-time GOES imagery and National Weather Service observations, was under heavy (as in 100%) cloud cover at that time. Unless seeing his shadow from the television lights is somehow sufficient, Phil’s prediction is crap.

Of course, most woodchucks live to be no older than ten years, and according to the Groundhog Club of Punxsutawney’s Inner Circle, Phil is now 123 years old and probably suffers from some sciuridine form of Alzheimer’s disease, if he is not already among the walking undead.

In any case, Phil has clearly outlived his usefulness as a weather forecaster, and in the interest of letting younger, brighter talent take the spotlight, I’d like to suggest a new career for our old friend.

* American Football. They kind they play with their hands.

UPDATE 28 Feb 2009: Several letters (the old fashioned kind, printed on paper, sent in envelopes with stamps) have been dispatched to higher-ups at Georgia Power and its parent company, Southern Company. I have also contacted the Georgia ACLU. So far, there has been no official reply from the company, although in recent weeks my logs show that they do seem inordinately interested in this particular blog entry.

I got a new camera for Christmas, a Nikon D60 that my fiancee picked out for me. New cameras represent huge events in my life because of my love of photography. My last new camera was bought in April of 2002, and it was also a Nikon. I must admit to being a bit of a Nikon snob.

My new camera has rarely left my side since December 25. It goes to work with me, it goes shopping with me, and it accompanies me on even mundane errands. However, I have also looked hard for photo opportunities in the last few weeks, and that was the impetus for a recent trip to Euharlee, Georgia, and Georgia Power’s Plant Bowen, said by some to be the third largest coal-fired generating plant in the country. Rising from rural surroundings adjacent to the quiet Etowah river, the plant is an impressive sight from up to ten miles away, with two smokestacks rising 1,000 feet above ground level and four 380-foot natural draft cooling towers. I had wanted to pay a visit and photograph the plant for some time, and the new camera provided a perfect opportunity.

For reference, here is a view of the property, courtesy of Google Maps. I have marked several points of interest; you can click the blue pointer for more information on each point.

View Larger Map

I’ve spent a lot of time around sensitive facilities, and I know not to drive through gates or place myself on corporate property. I know what to shoot and what not to shoot, and I know the law. Allison and I drove first to the south side of the plant, looking for a nice establishing shot. I found one along Atwood Road, a nice view of two cooling towers framed by an interesting pattern of towers and 500 KV transmission lines. (Click the picture to see other sizes and more info on Flickr.)

We then drove around to the east side of the plant on Covered Bridge Road, noticing how tantalizingly close we were to the huge cooling towers. Allison had never seen such a cooling tower in operation, so I found a small area of gravel on the right-of-way where I could stop and take a few shots.

I got back into the car and took a quick photo of a very odd piece of construction equipment that was approaching us on the highway. (The shot was not very successful and I have not posted it.) I then pulled back out onto the pavement northbound and noticed that a Georgia Power pickup truck had been parked behind me and was now following me.

In retrospect, I really wish I’d stopped and asked if I could be of assistance. The pickup truck followed me, remaining less than one car length from my rear bumper, for nearly half a mile. He made no attempt to get me to stop, but definitely did his best to be intimidating. Eventually, as I passed the recreation area entrance and left the vicinity of the plant, he broke off, but stopped and continued to observe me as I continued on my way.

When I posted my photographs on Flickr, I discovered I was not the first person to be treated this way by Georgia Power security personnel. Another photographer on Flickr had an even worse experience, as described on one of her photos. In her case, the security guard approached her and asked her to erase her photos.

That set me off, and I wished even more fervently that I’d stopped and gotten some firsthand experience with these paranoid security people. Can you imagine asking people to erase photos taken on public property? I couldn’t. It’s Hitleresque to say the least.

On January 21, I sent the following inquiry to Georgia Power’s corporate communications department by way of their web site.

After being closely followed by one your company trucks while taking photographs from the public highway adjacent to Plant Bowen, I read on another photographer’s site that photography in these areas is against “company policy” and that your security people have forced people to erase photographs taken there. Please explain how your company policy affects people on a public highway.

Today, January 30, I received the following reply from Lynn Williams of Southern Company, parent company of Georgia Power.

Mr. Johnson, the response below was provided by a security employee at Plant Bowen:

Covered Bridge Road is a County Road that divides our Plant Site with GPC Property on both sides. Due to the nature of our business and our high threat level of risk, anytime a vehicle or person is observed leaving the county road entering on to GPC property, Security will attempt to speak with these individuals and request some form of identification. If these individuals are observed photographing while on GPC Plant property we advise them that photographing of the plant site is not allowed without permission from GPC Plant Management and request that they erase the photos. We provide them with the number for Corporate Communications if they would like to make that request. At no time has anyone ever been forced by Security to erase photographs on GPC Plant property or from the Roadway surrounding the property.

Not knowing any particulars of Mr. Johnson, I would suspect that he could have been observed making photographs from the County Road. If this were the case possibly the Officer was attempting to obtain a vehicle description and License Plate Number from the vehicle to submit a report of this observation of someone making photographs from the roadway to submit to Corporate Security.

Great. “Corporate Security” now has my license number and vehicle description on record. I wonder what they plan to do with that information? Clearly these people are counting on the fact that most people do not know their rights as photographers. With very few exceptions, in this country, if you can see it, you can photograph it legally. The exceptions are sensible ones: Nuclear generating plants, military bases and operations, and people with a reasonable expectation of privacy. Bowen isn’t nuclear, it’s not military in nature, and I didn’t shoot pictures through any bedroom windows. I’m covered.

There are people, though, who do not question authority. She says their security people ask for identification and ask that photos be erased. I wonder how many people would have the knowledge and the presence of mind to know that they aren’t required to erase pictures, and in fact are not even required to identify themselves to a private security officer on public property, outside his area of authority.

Therefore, this morning I decided to push a bit harder. I sent the following back to Ms. Williams.

I’m afraid this isn’t an acceptable response. Your security employee states:

“…photographing of the plant site is not allowed without permission from GPC Plant Management.”

I would like to know what law supports your employee’s statement, or what special rights your company may have to restrict photography otherwise protected against US law. The only things that may not be photographed from public property, even in this post-9/11 era, are nuclear plants, certain military operations and installations, and people who have a reasonable expectation of privacy (such as people inside their own homes). Your plant falls under none of these categories.

If your employee (the one following me in a pickup truck) made a report to “corporate security” about my taking photographs from a public street, and that report included my license number and vehicle description, I would like to know what will be done with that information. My actions were completely legal, and if your company claims they aren’t, perhaps the proper authorities should become involved.

We’ll see where it goes from here. People should not be hassled, interrogated, or treated like criminals for simply recording a visual image of things they can see. The New York City subway and the BART system in San Francisco have both been in the news for trying to prohibit photography in their facilities; in neither case is there a law or statute in place, but Port Authority police and BART fare inspectors have abused photographers regardless.

It’s got to stop.

If you are a photographer in the United States, I urge you to read (or even carry with you) an excellent pamphlet published by an Oregon lawyer called “The Photographer’s Right.” You can download it in PDF form and print it in any convenient size. If anyone knows of a comparable document for photographers in other countries, please let me know of it and I will post a similar link here.