On Baltimore, Deruta and Graffiti
If your back’s against the wall, turn around and write on it. From http://www.graffquotes.com/ Like a war zone. Coming into Baltimore on Amtrak as the late October sun sneaked over the southern horizon. Barbed wire and concertina on tops of fences. Graffiti. On walls. On railroad cars moored on the spider web of tracks. Hopper [...]
On John Rember, Sun Valley and Ernest Hemingway
This morning Betty and I are in Sun Valley, Hollywood in Idaho, at the Sun Valley Film Festival. Our film wasn’t chosen to be screened but our friend and mentor, Christopher Beaver has a film—Tulare-The Phantom Lake—entered and he invited us to represent him since he would be busy filming elsewhere. Besides representing Chris, we [...]
On Ancestors, Asparagus, Saints and Independence Rock
Back in my mid-to-late twenties I worked at a feedyard in southern Arizona. Every late winter/early spring, cattle buyers descended from heaven with boxes and boxes of asparagus bartered fresh out of the fields of the Imperial Valley of California. Gifts to us, the working stiffs trapped with a gazillion flies, and miles and miles [...]
On Raptors, Rattlesnakes and Environmentalists
For the last several months my wife Betty and I, along with our friend and bird watcher extraordinaire Leanne Lloyd-Fairey, have helped conduct a raptor watch for the Oregon, southwestern Idaho and southern Washington region. A lot of people are involved in this effort and we are a small cog in the machine that makes [...]
