FMTSO - How I Celebrate the Holidays

I was going to avoid this topic because...

BAGMAN (Rudely interrupting me): "Because you're a weenie and you always..."

BUTLER (Politely interrupting Bagman): "Let him finish his first sentence, at least.  He is probably going to make his usual holiday disclaimer about being a grinch.  I know he says it every year but it makes him feel good so give him a break."

Now that my partners have stolen my thunder, I don't know where to start.

BAGMAN (whispering in Butler's ear): "Thunder?"

Anyhow, I was going to avoid it because I couldn't really identify what special ways I celebrate the holidays.  It varies from year to year. 

And I don't have any really good photographs.  I'm expected to take a lot of pictures and every year I file away tons of pictures of people of all ages tearing paper off of boxes.  And holding up the present and smiling appropriately no matter what it was.  It seems fun at the time but with few exceptions...

...like the year Brian got Sally...

 

...the other 56,748 snapshots have no use except as a cure for insomnia.

 

And, Butler is right, I was also going to avoid the post because the false impression that I like to give that I'm a grinch.   But the Universe (or as I like to call it, 'God's sense of humor) seems to have turned the tables on me and given me an annual tradition.  And not one that I'm happy about.

 

 

I CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS BY GOING TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

 

In 2010, I fell off the stepladder while decorating the Christmas tree and broke my arm. 

 

In 2011, I was suddenly attacked by some kind of incredible rash that covered my hands and feet with hundreds of agonizingly itchy welts. 

 

I figured it was just coincidence.  But this year, I was home alone, performing the annual Christmas ritual of hiding presents from curious grandchildren.  In our new house there is a locked entrance to the attic crawl space.  Behind the door is a space that is clear of blown insulation where I've been storing Christmas stuff as well as everything else that I don't have a place for and don't know what to do with but can't throw away.  

 

Note how neatly I store things

Also note baseball glove

 

Two gloves actually, smaller one for Noah tucked behind larger one for Conner.  I point this out because as I put these down, one of the baseballs slipped out and fell off to the right.  So I reached down to get it, stepping to my left so I could reach it and...

 

Concealed beneath the blown insulation was the edge of the supportive walk area

Note there is now a hole there just under the yellow thing

which I think is a sleeping bag that somehow got flung into the insulation

by my flailing arms as my foot went through the floor.

 

LESSON #1:  2 inch plasterboard will not hold 245 pounds of clumsy male flesh.

 

 

LESSON #2A:  If you are going to fall through a floor/ceiling, it is preferable to land on top of high cabinets rather than going all the way to the floor even if it is where we desplay Karen's collection of old bottles.

 

LESSON #2B:  If you are going to land on Karen's bottle collection, it is preferable to be wearing shoes (which, thankfully, I was).   

 

 

Note that this is not my real leg

 

LESSON #3  Even with ceilings, the exit wound is larger than the entrance wound. 

 

My first thought, of course, was that Karen was going to kill me!  That ceiling is less than three months old!  I'm in so much hot water!!

 

Then, with a rush of gratitude, I noticed the soft, warm feeling of blood dribbling down my arm.  Since it was my leg that went through, I couldn't understand what my arm had been doing but there were several superficial scratches on the arm and one really good gash in my left hand.  With a sign of relief, I immediately knew the gash would need stitches.  

 

I was relieved because Karen loves my hand more than she loves the ceiling and the hot water I would be considerably cooler. 

 

So I got to take my third annual Holiday outing to the Emergency Room.  It wasn't that bad and I was able to use a towel to keep from bleeding on the new floors or in my car.  I drove with my right hand while holding the towel-wrapped left one up to reduce the bleeding.  With my hand raised near the window, people I passed all thought I was waving to them.  They smiled and waved. 

 

 

 

Postcript:

 

Only 9 stitches and I'm as good as new.  A contractor friend has repaired the ceiling and we're back to normal.

 

But I can't wait to see what happens next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Shootout - Best Friend

I was planning to skip this one. 

BUTLER:  "How is that different from two months of not posting at all."

"During the last two months, I just blew off everything.  This week I actually considered it and then planned to skip it."

BAGMAN: "You're crazier than I am, dude."

BUTLER: "May I ask why you planned to skip this one?"

After considering for a moment, I respond, "I came to the conclusion that I don't have any best friends."

BAGMAN (mocking loudly): "Aw Boo Hoo!  Poor you!"

BUTLER (with subdued anger): "You are hitting a new low in making up justifications for self-pity."

Now it is my turn to be angry.  "No, dammit!  I knew I shouldn't try and explain this.  I don't feel the least bit unhappy about it.  I've always had all the friends I ever wanted but I'm an introvert and I am confortable with that aspect of myself.  I have friends all over the place because of blogging but if I had close friends in real life, I'd have to go and have lunch or coffee with them and, to be honest, that stuff doesn't excite me anymore.  I'd rather read a book or go walking in the woods."

BAGMAN:  "You're definitely crazier than I am, dude.  We need to party more!"

BUTLER: "Actually, Baggie, I can kind of understand him."

BAGMAN:  "So what are you going to post for the shoot out, Loner-Man."

"A couple of people that I considered to be "best friends" back when I was more extroverted."

BAGMAN:  "Yea!  Booze and pot sure did extrovert you!"

So anyway, this is Ley Armen.   We hung out together a lot in college and for a few years afterward.  We followed the folk music scene in Boston -- got stoned and drunk alot -- saw Bob Dylan when people still thought he was a kind of weird because his lyrics were hard to understand.  Lee and I had a pact whereby if either of us ever got stuck anywhere, we could call each other anytime and the other person would drop what they were doing and come get us unstuck.  

 

This was Ley during a partial eclipse of the sun in Provincetown.  We had a million great times together although I can't remember half of them and probably shouldn't document the other half.  But Ley was also an amazing soul.  He served two years as a hospital aide in lieu of service as a consciencious objector during Viet Nam.  Unlike most hippies who just dodged the draft, he went straight to the recruiters and met the requirements.  During spare time at the hospital overnight, he developed an amazing plan in a huge notebook -- to move into the wilderness, buy a spread of land with a steam he could use for a power source, and build a self-sufficient farm.   And lo and behold, he then married one of the most beautiful women I knew, moved to Maine near the Canadian border and did it.  Raised sheep, goats, chickens,and three - I think - boys.  Fought bears and blizzards.   We communicated for a while but drifted apart.   A few years ago, I learned that he had passed away from stomach cancer. 

 

BAGMAN: "Yeah.  Ley was my kind of guy!"

 

Then there was

 

 

Eddie John

 

Eddie was the exact opposite during the same approximate time -- college and somewhat beyond.  Eddie was assigned to the same dorm room in my Freshman year.  During the next six or seven years, we were roommates in more apartments than I can count.  I lived with Eddie in more places than any other person.  Eddie was a straight-arrow, tea-totaller.   He might have a beer once in a while but never tried pot.  But he was also the most non-judgemental person I ever knew and never once complained or questioned my actions or behavior.  Sometimes, he rolled his eyes.  

 

BUTLER:  "Yes, sir.  Eddie was really my kind of guy."

 

Heart disease ran in his family and he died of sudden cardiac arrest before he reached 30.  I spoke at his funeral. 

 

BAGMAN:  "So this is your post about best friends?!   Two guys from the distant past?  Both dead?  And you are trying to tell us that you're not pitiful?!"

 

I don't bat an eye.  "Yep.  I'm glad they were in my life.  I loved them.  I miss them.  But I'm perfectly happy to hang out at home either with my family or by myself."

 

BUTLER: "How do you bat an eye, anyway?  I might have to do some research on that.

 

Friday Shoot - Shallow Depth of Field

Entering the B&B studio, I ask, hopefully, "How did the stuff we shot yesterday turn out?"

BUTLER: "You don't remember how to use your camera, do you?"

"That bad, huh?" I answer, crestfallen but not surprised.  It takes awhile for the eyes to remember how to look and I was also shooting quickly so I wouldn't lose sight of Daisy who was running around the trail behind our house.  

In fact, I paid so little attention to the camera settings -- except to put it on aperature priority (thanks, Rebecca).  But I did not bother to notice that it was still set on bracketing from a month ago so that 1/3 of the shots were overexposed and 1/3 were underexposed. 

BAGMAN:  "I've got an old Kodak Instamatic you can use.  It's in a box somewhere."

I turn on the computer and look yesterday's attempts at shooting shallow depth of field and, after a moment of private greiving, delete them all.   Time to turn to the archive and pull out some stuff from the good old days when I had some idea of what I was doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that's about it.

 

BAGMAN:  "What a wimpy blog, Dude!  You haven't even bothered to insult me one time!."

 

BUTLER:  "And you have not even taken the time to do something cute with your header picture."

 

"Give me a break, guys.  At least I showed up and I wanted to save some time to look at what my friends have done with their blogs."

 

BUTLER: "You are going to be envious."

 

 

 

Friday Shootout - Black and White

BAGMAN:  "It's about time you showed up!!  You...you...you!"

BUTLER (suggesting a G-rated word for Bagman): "Slackard?"

"Sorry, guys," I apologize without sincerity, combining it with a rationalization.  "First I had to get rid of the box that Bagman had been stored in before the odor permeates the new house.  Then I got lost trying to find the studio and kept walking into the laundry room instead. 

BUTLER: "What about the box where you kept me during the move?"

"You did a nice job while you were in storage," I admit.  "Karen decided to use it to replace the wardrobe that got broken in the move."

BAGMAN (Glaring at Butler): "Suck up!"

"Anyhow, guys, let's get started.  The topic for today is black and white photos of our town."

BAGMAN: "I'd rather be in a box."

Bagman leaves, Butler puts moisturizer cream on his hands and is, therefore, useless on the computer, so I continue without them.

My hometown.  Hmmph.  I guess my real new hometown is a place called Hanahan. 

 

I still think of myself as living in Charleston because it is easier to explain.  We actually moved from Mount Pleasant which is a more stuffy, fru-fru kind of suburb to Hanahan which is a more blue collar, down to earth kind of suburb. 

There are about 13,000 people in Hanahan and most of them are police officers.  If you mention Hanahan to anyone around here, the first thing they say is, "Be careful not to speed."   But I never know when I am driving in Hanahan anyway because county lines and town lines in this part of South Carolina intertwine like a bed of snakes.  People keep getting together and incorporating little towns to avoid paying County taxes and politicians keep drawing different county lines to make sure they contain people who will vote for them.  Average people like me never know where they are because every time I drive around a corner, I find a sign telling me I am in another town.

 

Revenue (probably more from traffic fines than taxes) has built a fairly nice municipal building which includes everything -- administrator, mayor, police, fire, court -- one stop shopping.  

 

The official town seal consists of a heron under a tree although, so far, I have seen no herons since I left Mount Pleasant.  I have seen some trees.  

 

The seal also says "Circa 1973" which means, I assume that the town incorporated sometime around 1973 -- don't they know the actual date? 

 

I try to think of something else to say but Butler pokes his head in the door.

BUTLER: "Bagman's gone into another box!"

"Damn!" I exclaim, realizing that I've been cursing more than usual, lately.  "Doesn't he know where the bathrooms are in the new house?!"  

We rush off to get him and as we run, I realize that I'm not sure where the bathrooms are either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Hometown Shootout -- Interiors

BAGMAN (as I first walk into the B&B Studio):  "Grab your camera, Dude!  Come upstairs!! I've got some great interior shots for you!!"

"No, Baggie," I say, calmly.  "The theme-makers specifically asked that we try not to use our own homes."

BAGMAN: "But!  But!!"

I must admit that I'm sorry to turn Bagman down because I don't have a lot of interiors from Charleston.  It is interesting how shootout themes often expose my preferences or lack of preferences in certain areas.

But I have a few from Charleston.

Interior of the Downtown Market

(a must stop for tourists)

The Powder Storehouse at Fort Moultrie

(no smoking -- offenders will be blown up)

The Charleston County Emergency Operations Center

(not many people get to see this...although it fills up

with emergency preparedness personnel during hurricanes)

Yana's Restaurant

BUTLER: "Hey!  That is in North Carolina.  You can't use that!"

"I often break the rules and pretend my hometown extends beyond the local borders," I argue.

BAGMAN:  "Then come with me upstairs!!  If we can break that one, we can shoot inside our own house!!!  Besides it's not really inside our own house!!"

I ignore him.  I ignore Butler as well.  After all, I really don't have alot of interiors in Charleston itself.

Addiction Treatment Center

under construction in Greenville, SC

"At least it is in South Carolina," I protest, innocently.

BAGMAN:  "But but but!!"

The small one-room flop where I once found my cousin

who had been out of touch with the family

for 40 years.

And the opposite extreme...

The Vatican Museum in Rome

BAGMAN:  "That does it!  You have to come with me!!"

"We are NOT shooting more stuff in our own house, Baggie," I argue.  "First of all they asked us expressly not to do it and secondly, people will think that I never leave the house anymore!"

BUTLER:  "That is pretty accurate if you are going to be honest with yourself."

BAGMAN:  "Besides!  What I want to show you is not really our house.  Well, sort of our house but like Alice in the Looking Glass, it is kind of our house in an alternate dimension.   So it doesn't count as our house."

So I follow Bagman, partly out of curiousity and partly because he has grabbed my arm, leaving oily finger prints, and is dragging me up stairs to the children's foom. 

BAGMAN (lying down on the floor next to the wall and forcing me to lie down beside him): "The kids taught me how to do this!!  Don't be scared!! Just put your feet on the wall and walk up it!  You can do it and it takes you into the alternate dimension house!"

I'm not sure whether I'm getting intrigued or whether I'm just willing to do anything to stop Bagman from manhandling me, but...

I tentatively take a step and am amazed and terrified at the same time to find myself walking up the wall between two doors.  

BAGMAN:  "Great!!  You can do it!!  Now the only tricky part is to move over to the livingroom where you can move from the wall to the ceiling!"

"We're going to walk on the ceiling?  What about gravity?"

BAGMAN:  "It's an alternate universe!  Haven't you been listening?!!  This is not your house anymore and in this new house, the ceiling IS the floor!"

All of a sudden, I find the Talking Heads singing inside my head:

"You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?"
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house..." 

BAGMAN (snapping me out of my musical revery):  "Pay attention!  You could fall off here!!"

CAREFUL!!

And then suddenly, we are on the ceiling. 

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?

We move through the livingroom

It's very narrow in places

BAGMAN (Beaming happily):  "So what do you think?"

"It's pretty bland up here..."

BAGMAN (correcting me) : "DOWN here."

"Well it still seems to need some decorations or furniture," I complain. 

The front hallway seems a bit more decorated

"And it makes it easier to change the batteries in the fire detector when it's placed down near the floor," I admit.

BAGMAN:  "Wait till you see the bedroom!"

BAGMAN:  "We can put a hot tub in here!"

I'm thinking what a great idea that would be when my cell phone rings.  Karen is returning home form Sams with Kay and Noah and wants me to unload the car.  

POOF!

The spell breaks and I go tumbling down (or up) landing, unfortunately on my head.  Fortunately, I land on the bed.   Unfortunately, Bagman lands on top of me. 

"You really need a bath," I tell him.

BAGMAN:  "It's not even July yet."

I hear the garage door opening and Karen's car driving in.  Walking through the house on carpet, avoiding furniture, I glance from time to time at the ceiling.  Life seems so much more simple and uncluttered up there.   Maybe I'll walk on the ceiling again sometime.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Friday Hometown Shootout -- Rule of Space

11.2 Kilometers per second or 34 times the speed of sound!  How to achieve escape velocity in order to get my camera into space...

BUTLER: "Not that kind of space!  Didn't you read the tutorial?!"

Actually, I did read the tutorial and it made perfect sense.  In fact, I've known about the Rule of Space for a long time.  

BAGMAN:  "So what's the problem?"

The problem is that  since this is another week when most of my photography was limited to picture taking of kids in bathtubs and stuff like that.  So today turned into another archive search and...

...I discovered that I have amazingly few pictures that illustrate the Rule of Space.   Hardly any, in fact.  I have thousands of pictures on my computer (all of which now get backed up automatically all the time) but I could only find 4 that seemed to fit the theme.

And some of them -- like the one above -- I had to re-crop!  Although re-cropping made it a better picture.  Not a great picture - but better than it was before.  

And I recropped this one as well although not so much.

The Fan, 1979

The Fan was taken in 1979...back when I actually practiced, occasionally, the rule of space.  I hate it when I browse through my archive and come to the conclusion that I used to be a better photographer than I am now.  

This last one is reasonably recent (April) -- and it does help a little because it reminds me that the Rule of Space doesn't need to be overdone.   Sometimes you just need a little space. 

BUTLER: "Yes. You can combine the Rule of Space with the Rule of Thirds!  You probably missed lots of good examples when we went through your archive yesterday.  Let's go through your archive again and see if we can find more. 

"Sorry, guys," I reply.  "But Kay is waking up and I need to practive the Rule of the Diaper."

Friday Hometown Shootout - Handmade

I've been buried in grandchildren this week.  But I did find a "handmade hand" -- and since I inherited it from my grandfather, it might be considered a hand-me-down handmade hand.

Joseph Cowell, my grandfather, sculpted this while studying in Paris.

He said he used his own hand as a model.

We keep it on the mantle over the fake (propane) fireplace.  But I take it down often because the surface has a great feel to it.  And sometimes I use it as a paperweight. 

Which makes it a well-handled, handy hand-me-down handmade hand. 

BUTLER (to Bagman):  "Mark finds more and more ways to embarass us."

BAGMAN (to Butler):  "Yup.  Ya gotta hand it to him."



Friday Hometown Shootout - Fences

Gates and fences --  Unfortunately, I spent most of my time this week playing around with a Picture that Tells a Story for an upcoming shootout.  I wasn't confused...I just had an idea that was too much fun not to play around with...

So I've probably shortchanged this week a bit.   Mostly older stuff as well.

1972 - Fish Drying on a Fence, Colombia

BUTLER: "That's not a fence...it's a rack for drying fish." 

2001 -- Vietnam Memorial Wall, DC

BUTLER:  "A wall is not a fence.   If you liked that picture yoyu should have used it when the theme was reflections."

"I'd forgotten about it until I ran across it today," I replied.

2008 - Fence of Men

BUTLER:  You don't actually have any fence pictures, do you?"

BAGMAN: "Give him a break!  I'll accept this as a fence since he has a poetic license."

"Okay!  I give up," I say, surrendering.  But I do have some pictures about some of Charleston's most famous gates and fences -- even if I don't have pictures of them."

Philip Simmons (1912-2009)

Philip Simmons became a world famous iron worker, constructing iron gates and fences throughout Charleston.  In 2010, I was riding around with a friend and colleague who used to live next door to Simmons and took me over to his workshop.  Later, when I uploaded pictures from my camera, I was disappointed with them...but here are a few. 

A cemetary gate in his back yard that he had been working on.

(It was later placed to mark a historic African American cemetary)

Herb in Philip Simmons workshop

Herb in front of a photograph of his friend

(Fantastic portrait photography - not mine)

And then I have a couple other shots....

1987 - Alcatraz

2009 - Hilton Head, SC

2009 - Charleston

That's it for this week -- it's 10:12 am -- and while I dislike using Facebook more and more, I'm still undecided whether to buy a bit of it's stock when it goes public at 11:00 a.m.  I do know that if I buy any, I'll sell it by the end of the day...on the other hand, I've developed a set of personal investing rules over my last year and a half of following the stock market and this would break about 75% of them.  

If I were smart, I'd build a quick fence between me and my computer.

BUTLER: "Yes.  Build the fence.  Don't be a sucker.  Follow your rules.  Don't touch it!"

BAGMAN:  "Zam!  Kapow!  Do it, baby!  No risk, no reward!  Put a little adrenalin in your life!"

Friday Hometown Shootout - Silhouettes

Silhouettes (silhouettes)
Silhouettes (silhouettes)
Silhouettes (silhouettes)
Ty-oh, oh-oh
Two silhouettes on the shade
                    The Rays. 1957

BAGMAN: "The Rays?"

BUTLER: "A singing group in the 1950's -- hit the big time with one song and then faded out  of sight.

BAGMAN: "How are we supposed to know that?  We were 11 then."

"I only remembered the song, not the group, " I reply, entering the entertaining conversation as I enter the room while overusing the word 'entering'.  "I used to watch the original "Name That Tune" television program with my grandmother."   

BAGMAN:  "Did they have television back then?"

"Black and white, three channels, rabbit ears,"  I say.  "But I didn't have a camera yet.  The first silhouette picture I could find in the archives dates to 1968."

The hermit of Dismal Key - my dad.

(Sometime back when I was a neophyte blogger, I did a series on my dad who was a hermit in Florida's 10,000 Islands -- and an alcoholic like myself.  I linked it above just in case you have too much time on your hands and want even more blogs to read.)

BUTLER: "Come on, Mark!  Linking to your own old blogs?!  Give your ego a rest!"

BAGMAN:  "Hey!  Butt out, Butler!  I like his ego."

BUTLER:  "That's because you are his ego."

"And while I was going through silhouette archives, I found this one from 1969."

Santa Monica Sunset

The little boy standing between the two women...

BAGMAN: "I was in love with them!"

BUTLER: "You were in love with everybody!  They were just fortunate that they were able to resist your doubtful charms."

Anyhow, the little boy standing between the two women had the distinction of being with me when we jumped in the mud puddle with Jim Morrison.  (Another old blog which my ego links here despite Butler's appropriate protestations).

BUTLER:  "Do you think we might just get on with the Shoot-out and stop confusing people?"

1972 - Santa Marta, Colombia

BUTLER: "If you start telling more stories or making morel links, I'm going to start singing Bruce Springstein's Glory Days at the top of my lungs!  Stop living in the past!"

"Aha!" I respond with insecure bravado.  "But the past lives within us even in the present."   I pause and then admit a bit wistfully, "Besides, I took better pictures then."

2009, I don't actually remember what this is.

Silhouetted Water

I'm sure I've posted this before...but I like it and it fits.

And finally...

BAGMAN: "About time!"

...a questionable picture I took last week:

Statue at Brookgreen Garden, SC

Does this qualify as a silhouette?  Do silhouettes have to be black?  I suppose I could look up the definition.  Or I could photoshop this and make it black?  But it seems like of silhouetteish, somehow. 

BUTLER:  "Say goodnight, Gracie."

BAGMAN:  "Goodnight, Gracie."

PS:  While looking for old links to the stories about the archive pictures, I discovered that we did a silhouettes theme in 2009.  So I could have simply re-submitted: Silhouettes back in 2009.  On the other hand, I think some themes are good to repeat and, frankly, this time around I remembered all kinds of stuff that I didn't think about in 2009.  

I think we should reschedule the theme "Silhouettes" for April, 2016.