Moving on sometimes requires looking back

To those of you who have followed this blog I apologize for the lack of a new post. Frankly, I've been unable to find a subject that excited me. However, I have been actively continuing my project to convert many of my photographs from film to digital, a tedious yet quite rewarding effort.

Some of the negatives are 35+ years old and are as clean as the day I processed the film while other strips of film have serious degradation. I think back to the days of hand processing and know that often the film wasn't left in the hypo clearing solution or washed long enough. Archival processing was usually trumped by newspaper deadlines. Fortunately, most of the issues of pinholes, dust and scratches can be remedied in Photoshop but the process often takes hours for each image.

The reward is to see the photographs again and always better than I could have ever printed them in a darkroom. It has also been a chance to assess how my style of shooting changed and matured over the years. The most pleasant surprise in this endeavor has been the opportunity to reconnect with some of the people I photographed through internet people search engines.

I've noticed that the years 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2009 are benchmarks, connected by images I made during major projects or in special moments in my life.

1969 was the year I entered the Peace Corps and was sent to Malaysia. It was also the year I began taking photography seriously.

Ten years later, 1979, I returned to Southeast Asia to photograph Cambodian refugees coming to Thailand as the Khmer Rouge regime was collapsing and revealing the genocide of nearly 2 million citizens. (the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting).

In 1989 I was half-way through the Yosemite Centennial project to document the human experience in the park. (a Pulitzer finalist in 1991).

1999 was the third year of my volunteer work with the Sacramento Ballet that gave me the opportunity to establish a 13-year body of work culminating in a trip to China with the company on their first foreign performing tour in 2007.

2009 finds me retired from newspaper work but certainly not from documentary photography. I chose this image of North Sister to say my photographic life has wide open possibilities.

Now, one of the greatest opportunities I've ever had is about to happen. I will be returning to Cambodia with my friend and fellow journalist Joel Brinkley, who I worked with on the "Living the Cambodian Nightmare" project thirty years ago. We will be visiting mostly in rural areas of the country to show that life for the average citizen has not seen a lot of improvement despite a resurgence of the national economy. Joel is writing a book which I will illustrate and we also hope to publish our words and pictures in print and/or online when we return.

The perspective I have now after "looking back" certainly helps inspire me to understand what "moving on" is all about.

Newspapers: going, going, gone.

One of my three wishes for the Genie when he appears in front of me is to always know the exact right thing to say at the precise moment it needs to be said. The Genie has not appeared and now, when I need those perfect words, I can't find the right ones to comfort or inspire. The best I can do is go out and make a photograph. A Canadian goose in flight. Fly away and be free.

My head and heart are having trouble staying connected this week following the announcement of more layoffs of journalists at the Sacramento Bee. My head knew it was coming, my heart is not as accommodating and aches for my friends and former colleagues who are now tossed into the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed. The process, from this distant point of view, appears flawed..again. No upper management layoffs; only the folks who actually do the work of getting out on the streets to get the stories and photographs get axed. The list is there for all to see on the Sacramento Bee Guild website.

The first person I heard sound the siren of the quantum shift of news dissemination from newsprint to online was the former publisher of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, Barry Bingham Jr. in 1982 when the internet was barely out of the womb. His vision of people reading the news off computer screens instead of newsprint was not readily accepted. He was predicting that new world journalism be round, not flat. And he was more right than he'll ever know. He died in 2006 without seeing the current march of many major U.S. newspapers, like a herd of wildebeests plunging over a cliff in very slow-motion, to obscurity or outright oblivion.

I rarely have dreams that I recall but I had one recently that sticks in my mind. I was standing in an orchard in California and there were no bees buzzing around. The thought I had in the scene was that the collapse of the bee colonies was a siren warning that that the financial world, without the banking and credit markets pollinating as they are supposed to, would lead to world economic turmoil. The bees were fleeing, like coastal animals who sense an oncoming tsunami and move to higher ground long before humans figure out what's happening.

Awakening, I'm at a loss for words.

Iditarod sled dogs

I need to get away from reading bad news. The updates on the tanked world economy and the untenable situation my former co-workers face at the Sacramento Bee with their job futures are constant, sad and unrelenting. So, I'm taking a break from it and turning my attention to something a tad more positive. The 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Sixty-seven mushers leave Anchorage, Alaska Saturday on their 1,150 mile race across the frozen tundra powered by their sled dog teams. This is the Tour de France on snow and ice but unlike the bike race there is no one to hide behind or draft off. The dogs are the princes of this sport. Forty pound bundles of muscle and exuberance. Twelve tied to a sled, running their legs off for ten to seventeen days.

I have a particular interest in this year's race since one of the entrants is a local. Rachel Scdoris along with her dad Jerry live outside Bend and operate a sled dog tour at Mt. Bachelor, 20 miles west of Bend. She is entrant #58 and I'll be watching cable and tracking her progress on the web.

A sad end to Denver journalism

Tomorrow, Friday, February 27, 2009 the Rocky Mountain News will publish it's final edition at the end of nearly 150 continuous years of providing Colorado and the West with great journalism. It's demise cannot be attributed to one cause, although a rotten world economy didn't help. Declining advertising revenues, information drifting to the internet where viewers expect to get their news for free, circulation drop all figure into the mix. This cocktail of economic arsenic is not happening only to the Rocky. In months to come other papers will likely disappear and many others will be reducing expenditures by terminating the jobs of the journalists and ad sales persons, reducing the number of days the paper is published, cutting retirement benefits and wages of those left to produce the content, probably by candlelight.

The Rocky Mountain News was the first newspaper I ever laid my hands on as a boy growing up in north Denver. When I was 14 I got my first job as a newspaper carrier. A delivery truck dropped the bundles of papers in front of my house at 4 a.m. My clock radio came on at 4:05 a.m. The hit song of the day in January 1960 was "Teen Angel" which always seemed to be playing. My paper route which had 120 customers was in a working class neighborhood and so the paper needed to be delivered by 6 a.m. so it could be read before people went to work. In good weather that was pretty easy. In the winter my dad would help me by driving the route in the car when the snow was too deep to pedal through.

Sometime during the three years I kept the job I began actually reading the paper and looking at the pictures. I thought it would be a cool job to be a newspaper photographer. In fact, a very talented newspaper photographer, a father of a classmate, Julia Moldvay, lived up the street from me. Albert Moldvay worked for the Denver Post and eventually was hired by National Geographic where he went on to cover numerous international stories for the magazine. I remember him showing me his cameras once and holding one of the first 35mm SLR cameras the Post photographers were using.

My interest in news photography lay dormant during my high school years and actually didn't surface until my junior year at the University of Colorado when I took two photography classes from Bob Rhode in the J-school. The Rocky and the Denver Post were around the campus and I always enjoyed every copy I could find.

My parents constantly sent me clipped articles from the Rocky during my two-year stint in the Peace Corps (Malaysia) so I could read what was going on in Denver.

I worked in Denver five years alongside the photographers from the Rocky and the Post. At that time there was a chain of weekly papers, the Sentinel Newspapers, and I had the freedom there to do things I don't believe I would have had at either of the dailies, but the important part was that I could learn by watching how other photographers worked. This was rather important because I really had no experience to go on. Barry Staver, Bill Wunsch, Dewey Howell, John Sunderland, Bill Peery, Steve Larson, David Cupp all had encouragement for me.

The Rocky matured over the past years into a strong example of what a newspaper could do with photojournalism. With commitment from management, leadership from photo editors and amazing talent by the photographers the paper published some of the most riveting stories ever seen in newsprint.

I can still recall the smell of the ink coming off the bundles and hear the sound of the paper hitting a customers front door, a perfect strike from my bike seat. How could I ever imagine that the Rocky would suffer this demise on those cool summer mornings as I pedaled down Berkeley Place with the newspapers stuffed into bags wrapped around my handlebars.

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Can the "arts" survive the recession?

The economic landscape is becoming more desolate day by day. Across all continents, political boundaries, business sectors, and down to the personal level the recession deepens. Jobs are being lost, 75,000 announced in the past few days. The impact is being felt in every facet of daily life and hard choices confront us all.

The "arts" communities in many major U.S. cities are struggling to survive as patrons stop attending music, theatre and dance performances. Half of the theaters on Broadway in New York City have gone dark. In Sacramento, the Sacramento Ballet has cancelled the remainder of their performances at the Community Center and the Sacramento Theatre Company's Main stage.

The dancers in the company are still rehearsing for the performances that can be held at the company's studio and they have taken their plight to the streets and to the internet to help with fundraising.
http://www.sacballet.org/index.php/dancers_take_action

Lt. Col.,Ret. Fred Shadle who has attended every performance since 1962 summarizes the situation precisely. “In my view, we have three major-league teams in this city: the Kings, the Monarchs and the Sacramento Ballet. The ballet is the only one that wins all the time. The only time the ballet loses is when people aren’t there to keep it together."

I have worked with the ballet since 1996 when my daughter was taking ballet lessons and got a role as a "cherub" in the annual Nutcracker performance. She had other roles, Mother Ginger kid, a soldier battling the Mouse King and then moved on to soccer and school activities; I stayed with the ballet to photograph every production until I moved to Oregon in 2007.

Two dancers were always there. Kirsten Bloom and Jack Hansen. Their work ethic was incredible. Though injuries and fatigue were common factors, lack of passion was not. Carinne Binda and Ron Cunningham, the artistic directors of the company always managed to hire a corps of dancers who had passion and the desire to become better ever day. The Sacramento Ballet has always been a place where a dancer could come for a few years, train with Ron and Carinne and then move on to greater professional challenges. So many have. Jared Nelson, Amy Seiwert, Bobby Briscoe, Charlie Hodges, Easton Smith, Colby Damon to name only a few.

In my layman's view this is Ron and Carinne's greatest achievement, why the Sacramento Ballet is one of the finest companies in the country, and one of the great Sacramento community losses should the company not stay afloat.

Everyone has basic needs: food, affordable housing, clothing, education. Add to that insurance for health and property to keep the wolves from your door. Whats' left then, "discretionary income," gets parceled out until the well is dry.

What seems to me to be missing from the equation is food for the soul that comes from appreciating the cultural opportunities that exist in most communities. Why is it that in tough times, the soul seems to be neglected when the arts can bring a bit of joy and hope for a better tomorrow?

Dancers, musicians, actors, painters, ceramists, photographers are workers as well as artists. They have jobs just like Home Depot clerks, GM auto workers, Microsoft programmers, waiters, waitresses, cooks, plumbers and carpenters. One man or woman's job loss in one sector is no different than a loss in another. When a company's survival is on the line, however, the loss can mean a part of a community's identity is also gone.

I think back to early 2007 when things seemed better (we all know now that storm was already brewing in the financial oceans and heading straight for land). The Sacramento Ballet was eagerly planning and rehearsing for it's first-ever foreign tour, a two-week tour to Shanghai and Beijing, China. Ron and Carinne, Tim Orr, the company manager, twenty-three dancers, a lighting specialist, a stage manager, a newly retired photojournalist, i.e. me, and a group of ballet aficionados had a fantastic experience on the trip.

This was the Sacramento Ballet becoming a world-class company. It was their Super Bowl, Masters, Stanley Cup, Wimbledon, and Daytona 500. Enjoy the show and if you can spare a few dollars, send them to the Sacramento Ballet or to an arts organization in your neighborhood.

Watching the President Obama inauguration

Like millions of Americans who couldn't be in Washington, D.C. for the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, Diane and I joined a group of friends for a celebration brunch. Everyone watched intently and was moved by the pomp
and ceremony, the size of the crowd on the Mall and at the Capitol, and the words President Obama spoke during his address. It was also memorable for the psychological emancipation that was felt all of us witnessing the inauguration. What a great way to start a day and that hopefully will result a redirection for our country. Hope lives. Dreams live.

Archiving history

Thirty years ago the Amtrak Floridian passenger train that ran between Chicago and Miami was in it's final months of operation. Louisville, where I worked at the time for the Courier-Journal, would loose passenger train service.

I began a project to document the Floridian and over a few months in early 1979 I spent days in the Chicago train yards, riding the train and photographing the passengers, crew and an engineer, W.C. Roddy who drove the train between Louisville and Bowling Green, Kentucky.

There was also Henry LaSane, the porter who had worked for years on the railroad and was not sure he'd find another job. He met his daughter at a stop in Wildwood, Florida who came to see him. A sweet kiss from dad and he was back on board for the remainder of the trip.

The Floridian did cease operation later in 1979 due to budget cuts in the President Carter administration.

The black and white negatives have been stored away until recently when I bought a film scanner to begin another project, archiving the photographs I've made over the past 40 years. "Living the Cambodian Nightmare," the Floridian, "Yosemite, A Landscape of Life," The Sierra in Peril, Hunger in California, twelve years of performances by the Sacramento Ballet, and hundreds of family photographs, on and on...

State and local historical societies, university library archives, and many other repositories have been archiving material for many years. The Center For Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona houses the works of Ansel Adams and W. Eugene Smith for instance. The University of Louisville Special Collections has the 1.5 million images and was one of the first collections of documentary photographic history in the nation.

Newspapers have always had libraries and collections of photos and copies of past issues. Some newspapers hold on to photographers' negatives, some release them back to the photographer after a span of time, five years or so. Digital photography has changed everything in terms of archiving. Essentially that is great. Keeping track of digital images is a far more organized affair than film ever was and takes up a lot less space in doing so. But what of all the pre-digital age film of a community's history? What will become of that material as newspapers simply try to stay in business and produce a daily product?

I fear that many news organizations will not even know what they have and will have even less interest and resources to convert even a fraction of it to digital files.

Perhaps the saddest story is of the fate of the 40,000 negatives of the John F. Kennedy era shot by Jacques Lowe. He had them stored in a fireproof safe in a vault beneath the World Trade Center. He died a few months prior to September 11, 2001 so he will never know that the inferno following the terrorist attacks literally vaporized everything.

His daughter writes about the loss: http://www.jacqueslowe.com/lost_negatives.php

I'm really excited about Pete Souza who has been selected to be President Barack Obama's presidential photographer. He's absolutely the right man for the job of documenting the daily events in the Obama administration which will be historical in every sense of the word. This is his second tour in the White House; the first was during the Ronald Reagan years. He and his staff will be shooting digital and in fact, he made the official Obama portrait using digital, the first ever. You'll see it soon in a post office near you. He will not have the archiving issues Jacques Lowe had.

One of the keys to archiving digital photography is redundancy. Multiple copies stored in different locations. Hard drives fail. CD's get corrupted.

My intentions for my work is to scan, upload to sites out of my home, burn archival DVD's and store on good hard drives. I also have the opportunity to turn over film, transparencies, prints, and notes to some permanent archives. All of the Cambodia material is going to the CCP in Tucson and the Yosemite body of work will be housed in the Yosemite National Park's permanent archive.

Newspapers print the first draft of history, as the saying goes. Photojournalists show what was happening while that history was unfolding. We don't get the luxury of rewrite. The way we saw it is the way it will always be. I just hope that in the future there is that visual history to see.

Farewell to another little friend

By Diane: Today is a sad day in our home. We lost Puss, one of our feline family members to cancer. The disease seemed to come on quickly so we had less than a week to have our last kitty time with her. Puss came into our lives when Allison’s piano teacher got another dog and the combination of two dogs to one cat just did not work. Puss had a great deal of energy and for a time we called her
Jackie Joyner Puss Kitty because she would jump over Noire and race through the house. With age and thyroid pills she settled down. Our cats, Gracie, Puss, and Noire moved with us to Oregon. Now only Noire is left. Although our cats are usually wherever we are, we would call “Pussy Puss-Puss and she would come. She was an affectionate lap cat and always took her fair share of the bed at night. We are grateful to have had the time with her and all the love she gave us. We loved her
right back and she will be missed.

Looking back at 2008

..and some year it was!

Holiday Greetings 1992-2008.

I began making my own holiday cards in 1992 after spending a lot of time in Yosemite and wanting to make use of some of my favorite winter imgages. The project has now evolved into a once a year cottage industry. The photographs are now a reflection of where I am in my life, central Oregon being prominent. The only image where people are involved was in 1999 when I used a Nutcracker ballet with the inside greeting "dance with glee into the 21st century." I hope you will enjoy these photos and will be surrounded by those you love today.

A Squirrel's Tough Life.

Winter has arrived In central Oregon after a late start or what appeared to be late. What do I know about it? I watch the skies, feel the wind and temperature and look out the window. When it's snowing then it's winter. Fortunately the snow has been a light powder, easy for shoveling. Snow shoveling definitely falls in that activity where the law of diminishing returns applies, somewhat like beer drinking. The first one tastes great, the fourth not so much. The first 15 minutes of shoveling gets the heart rate up. An hour into the job is plain old work and not fun anymore. This morning I got to watch one of the gray squirrels that inhabits our backyard and is a constant presence around the base of the bird feeders eating the remains of what the birds drop. His efforts to get at the bird seed were
acrobatic and quite humorous. He made several attempts to shinny up the pole, stretch out and gain a foothold on the feeder. Unsuccessful, he would slide down the pole and hop over to a tree to regain his strength then return for another go at it. I think he's fairly well-fed because he does really well when the snow is not around and I suppose he's got a stash
somewhere in the yard. I haven't any doubt that he'll be back tomorrow. He's supposed to survive on his own which appears he's doing nicely. Maybe I'll sweeten the pot and sprinkle some seeds on the ground. I won't expect any help from him with the shoveling though.

It's December, where's the snow?

The days of fall linger on. A year ago there had been several snowstorms and winter was upon us and stayed until late March. This year is different and most everyone is pleased that winter is taking its sweet time getting here. The annual Metolius Tree Hunt sponsored by the Deschutes Land Trust was held in 50º weather and one group of youngsters from a church youth group was heard singing carols as they carried out their tree.

I have yet to even start my holiday greeting cards although I have every intention of getting them done. After all I have a streak of 16 years going. I hung a few lights on the house, Diane found a nice tree and we decorated it, put up Allison's collection of Nutcrackers and called it done. Ho ho ho.

The Obama victory has given a little hope that the future will be better. I'm not one to go overboard and think that the ship of state will right itself any time soon. Mr. Lameduck Bush can't leave Washington fast enough.
There have been more layoffs in the newspaper industry, the Big 3 ask for bailouts, the stock market can't settle down, no one is buying anything and with Christmas a little more than two weeks away the spirit of the season is about as robust as the housing market.

I am not without some energy. In fact, I've completed a project that was long overdue. I began photographing Yosemite National Park in 1988 in advance of the 1990 centennial of this marvelous place. A book "Yosemite, A Landscape of Life" was published and I continued to shoot there for several more years. Yet, all the film, transparencies and digital files were not in a single location. A few of the best pictures had been digitally archived but the vast majority of the material was dormant. No longer. For the past month I've looked at every image and scanned the essence of a decade long project. It's a relief to know
where everything is. I've compiled a gallery on my website http://archive.jaymather.org/c/mather/gallery-list. Viewing the images is about the same as reading a short story in a magazine or an in-depth article in your Sunday newspaper. People still read don't they?

Now, if I can just get excited about the holidays...

November, the month of change.

It's time for change and it's all around me. The presidential election was the finest example of a sophisticated democracy
and hope fills the air and airwaves as Obama's election is discussed endlessly. I keep wincing at the volatile stock market, the dismal decline of the newspaper industry, layoffs, corporate closings and pleas for the government to bail out the automakers.

It's all about the same thing, change, as in nothing will ever be quite the same again. It's now five weeks since my second knee replacement surgery and I could not be more satisfied with the progress and relative ease of the recovery. Visits to the physical therapist are over and progress from here on will be self-inflicted. Another change I'm ready to roll with.

Sisters, itself, is changing. For what passes as news here is the reconfiguration of an intersection in town and the opening of a new grocery store. The grand opening was today with a ribbon cutting, music and free French bread to customers. I stopped in to have a tour and overheard one man speaking to another, "I've seen more people I know in the last half hour than I've seen in the last month." You might think we're hard up for entertainment. Possibly true. There isn't any snow for skiing or other winter activities, cycling is essentially done and hiking, for those who can, is limited to the lower elevations.

The snowbirds are leaving in their fifth-wheels, motorhomes and trailers. The rest of us are figuring out what to do with the shortened days and longer nights. I took advantage today of semi-decent weather to get out of the house and explore. Twenty minutes east of town the desert sky brings a totally different perspective. On a warm and windy morning change is in the air.

Jay's website.

O.K. So what have I been up to since the last post? I've ventured into the rather mysterious world of website creation. Seeing an ad on some page somewhere for a DIY website application that didn't cost an arm and a leg ($30) I bit. In the process I learned about domain name registration, hosting, FTP uploads, some html, root folders, resizing QuickTime files and importing my PhotoShelter galleries. A couple of "help me!" calls to godaddy.com the site finally appeared. I know it's not the slickest, seamless and elegant site on the web, and there are some amazing sites. It's enough bang for the buck for now or until I acquire a ton more knowledge. Please have a look and thanks! jaymather.org

The importance of documentary photography

Colin Powell, on yesterday's "Meet The Press," endorsed Barack Obama to be President of the United States and referred to this photograph in his eloquent statement. More than just making an endorsement he rejected the "anti-Islamic" prejudice that pervades the negative campaign rhetoric.

Powell said, "I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo-essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in you can see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American, he was born in New Jersey, he was 14 at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he can go serve his country and he gave his life." Photograph for the New Yorker by Platon.


The editors at Vanity Fair have a gallery of what they consider to be the greatest "news" photographs ever made.One in the collection is this photo, left, from the Viet Nam wa by Nick Ut, Associated Press. The images are well worth seeing and contemplating their historical relevance. As with any list that attempts to define the "best of," there is plenty of room for debate. The real importance is that these images and many more like them are remembered and still being discussed. My top 25 list would include Alfred Eisenstaedt's image of the soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square, 1945, Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Gestapo Informer,"W. Eugene Smith's Minimata mother bathing her child,Stanley Forman's Pulitzer Prize image of a black man being stabbed by a white man with the American flag,, Dirck Halsted's photograph of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and the Challenger shuttle explosion.
What troubles me now is that the next great news photograph may not be seen. Given the plethora of on-line 24/7 news sites that change several times a day, blogs and other means of journalistic expression, it will be harder for new photographs to enter the general consciousness. Many newspaper websites now include "pictures of the day." There are also specific websites dedicated to showing great photojournalism. The trick is that you have to know where to go to see what's being done by the world's photojournalists. http://boston.com/bigpicture/ is one of the best. The Digital Journalist is the best site displaying work of photographers out in the field today. It's published monthly. Noteworthy in this month's issue is the work by Callie Shell on the campaign trail with Barack Obama. Should he win these images will take on an even greater historical value. When you think about the value of documentary photography consider the world without it.

A season of change

Central Oregon is well into the seasonal change of fall. Unlike many other regions of the country where deciduous forests show a rainbow of colors this area is limited to the yellows and reds and then only in a few locations. Yet the beauty is there especially when contrasted with the Ponderosa pines. Today I went out to find what I could since it will be my last outing for awhile. The orthopedic surgeon and I have a date tomorrow and he says he'll bring his "A" game for my knee reconstruction project. Back In June before the first surgery I went out to photograph the spring wildflower bloom so it made sense to me to get out for a shot at the fall colors. From Santiam Pass to the Metoilus River I found more than I expected. The peak hasn't arrived yet and is probably ten days away. By then I will be happy enough to simply get off the bed to walk around on the deck. I'm anxious to get on with the last of the surgeries and into a year of rehabilitation. I've had what I hoped for thus far: an unremarkable recovery. I'm expecting a repeat of that. By the time this country elects a new President, celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas I'll be quite mobile again and relieved to that the worst is finally behind me.

The Oregon coast

After Allison was settled at the University of Oregon Diane and I headed for the coast, two hours west. It was our first excursion that way and there wasn't enough time to see all the lighthouses, beaches and interesting towns so we selected to visit the Sea Lion Caves north of Florence, the Yaquina Head Lighthouse
and the magnificent Coast Aquarium in Newport, a fascinating exploration with fish and other marine life swimming around you as if you were fifty feet down in the Pacific. We stayed a couple of nights in Newport, hunkering
down to try and recover from the long process of getting Allison to school. We walked out to a bluff overlooking the Pacific and the seven-mile long Nye Beach. People strolled on the sand which I found visually interesting. We were glad to get home and have a week of completing some home tasks before I head back
to the St. Charles Medical center next Monday for my second knee reconstruction surgery.

As always, click on any image to see it full-size.

Allison begins her college life

The time between Allison's high school graduation in Sacramento, a rite of passage, and her enrollment at the University of Oregon, a larger rite, has gone fast. Not fast enough for her, however, as her last days in Sisters seemed endless. Diane and I were prepared (as in weeks of preparation) and anxious for her to finally get to the campus and settled in her dorm room in Eugene. We are melancholy watching her leave home this time. It's not that we've not been down this road before as Allison has always split her time with us and her birth-mom in Sacramento. This time is different. Allison will not be living in Sacramento or Sisters. There are lumps in our throats as we ferried her things from the car to her third-floor room in the LLC (Living-Learning Center) which is across the street from Hayward Field, the iconic track and field venue. She and Diane unpack boxes and arrange he clothes in the small wardrobe. My job is to get the computer and t.v. functioning (and to make some photos of the event). Her roommate, Alesa, from nearby Springfield, is already setting up her side of the room. With the situation basically in hand we leave for the rest of the afternoon, drive to our hotel and collapse on the beds. Moving day is wearing, plain and simple.




Our plan to meet for dinner in the dining commons doesn't happen because 5,000 other kids and parents have the same idea. Our last meal together until Thanksgiving is deli sandwiches. We will see Allison once more before we leave Eugene and head further west for a few days on the coast before returning to Sisters. In my head I am still going through the years of memories: elementary school plays, ballet classes and Nutcracker performances, soccer, piano, camping, and a trip to England in 2003. I let myself go back even further to first bike rides, first day of school, a skiing accident resulting in a broken elbow, and several "brave girl dresses" she earned for enduring some of the most unpleasant days of her life. Then there is moment Allison, at age three, gets her first doll, a Christmas gift beautifully wrapped in a big box. The doll cries and it's eyes blink when it's moved. Allison has the box in her arms and waves it around and the cry is audible within the box. Her nose and eyes squish together and she innocently asks, "How a box could cry?" The question tonight is "how a Dad could cry." There is no loss here to mourn, rather a great success. It's a quiet moment of reverie as I contemplate Allison's transition into adulthood. I'm proud to shed that tear.