Dueling cameras

Photographers and reporters were everywhere a few weeks ago when sixth graders from Hill Field Elementary in Layton were invited to decorate a the tree in the Governor's mansion.

While I caught the photographer across the room in this shot, he caught me too -- and his shot ended up on the front page of the Deseret News on December 2.

The Governor's at the right, in between addressing the kids and holding the ladder for those who decorated the upper branches and giving them a tour of the mansion -- a very gracious host.

Forgive the gap between entries. A new grandbaby and a son's wedding have been getting priority.

Merry Holidays!

A week in the life

Someone asked me last weekend if I was enjoying my job.
My answer -- a yes -- was woefully inadequate.
In the week prior (OK -- let me include 10 days for effect) I'd followed bison around while visiting with people who'd come out from Pennsylvania for the action. I'd photographed people voting and people counting votes and people protecting votes and people celebrating the votes they'd received -- in a day where work started at 9 a.m. and ended at midnight. I'd learned about school district programs and successes. I'd photographed beautiful fall colors, I'd listened to the gory details of the job of forensics specialist. I'd wept with a Vietnam veteran while he told me what it meant to be honored after all these years. And then I wrote about it all.
Yes, I'm enjoying my job.
Here's a taste of my October 29 to November 6:

More pictures that I've taken from Davis County events I've attended in the course of my work, can be seen at http://daviscountyextra.blogspot.com/.

Knowing it's there

I know some very dear people who have some very dark clouds in their lives right now.

For some, it's been stormy all day. For others, a perfectly blue-sky day turned into a dark, dismal storm without much warning.

I took this picture just a few weeks ago just a mile or so from my home.

It tells me that even when there are dark clouds -- really dark, threatening, dismal clouds -- there is sunshine just behind them.

And whether that sunshine comes out now or tomorrow. Whether the sunshine comes to you or you go to it, whether you have to wait or whether you are surprised when the sky suddenly opens up, it will bring you warmth. And beauty. And peace.

Just know it's there.

NY's finest

We got to see New York's finest in action when we visited last month. First, the men of the NYFD when they showed up at our daughter's apartment building to check out the smell of gas.

They made quick work of the problem -- a stove left on in a main floor apartment, and after watching me watch them run in and out with their picks and shovels while my husband and daughter ran up and down with boxes and suitcases, one was so observant as to figure out what I was thinking.

"Your daughter will be fine," he said reassuringly.

Second, the men of the NYPD, as they blocked all passage from anywhere too near the UN during a summit of 20 nations that included an appearance and remarks from the President of our very own nation. The police very effectively, though politely, kept us riffraff away from the limosines with the motorcycle escort and guest vehicles and ambulance as it hustled into the UN complex.

Effective and polite are the words that come to mind in both cases.

Thanks guys.

Where in the world?

The fun thing about these pictures is that they were not taken in Europe. They were taken in a city settled by Europeans, however, and you can tell. It is a great heritage and it is great to have benefited from their architectural and cultural traditions as we've developed our own.

Any guessses on where these sights were seen?

The ice cream man

One of the absolute delights of working as a newspaper reporter, is the chance to meet people from all walks of life with all kinds of stories to tell:

The teacher who just graduated and got a job teaching first grade at the school where she went to first grade, with her first-grade teacher just down the hall.

The farmer who turned his farm over for a conservation easement and opens his corn rows and turkey pens up to schools so city kids can see where their food comes from.

The young man who wanted to be on the city council since he was seven and earned the spot over more experienced competition and works 26 hours a week to help his city.

The woman who turned a pile of rubble at the end of a parking lot in her apartment complex into a garden with the help of kids in the complex (and then got evicted -- but that's another story).

But today I want to tell you about Gordon Christensen.

I first met Gordon when I sat next to him at a Veterans' Day event last November. First he handed me a poem typed on blue paper and cut with serated edges that said something like, "it isn't the journalist who gives you freedom of speech, it's the soldier..." I thought to myself, he doesn't know I'm a journalist.

But that wouldn't have mattered.

Then he gave me a clothespin with a tiny washer glued on it and told me it was a washer and dryer. Then he told me about the ice cream social he does every year to celebrate the creation of the ice cream cone and how it started in his yard but now is a city-wide event. And when he found out my daughter was born on the same day as his ice cream social, he gave me an envelope filled with poems and stories and a $2 bill and told me to give it to my daughter. Then he gave me a quarter with something of significance stuck on it, which sad to say I've both lost and forgotten. (I tried once to throw away the washer and dryer thinking I would never see this man again, but while it was still in the garbage can I got assigned to do a story on a young man that turned out to be his son and since I had to call Gordon up for a couple color questions, I thought I'd better be able to report that I still had it -- so I pulled it back out. It's safe in my drawer again.)

The next time I saw the older gentleman -- a proud veteran -- was at a Memorial Day event, when he told me he liked the story I'd done about his son, but wished I'd included his daughter-in-law's maiden name in it so her family could get some credit too. And he reminded me about the ice cream social.

So I was thrilled to be assigned the ice cream social just last month, where I saw him in action -- seated on a chair off to the side of the event that now included live music and a car show, as well as his traditional free ice cream. Kids got their cones and then wandered over to where he told them about how cones started.

Here's Gordon in action:















When I talked to Gordon between readings, he pulled a copy of the story I'd written about his son out of his shirt pocket. He told me how he liked to show it to people, but he'd have liked it better if I'd included his daughter-in-law's maiden name. It was cut with serated edges.
And then he gave me a dime with a pin glued on to it. "It's a dime-and pin," he said, making it sound like "diamond pin."

I still have it.

From the air

I promise one of these days I'll have more time to write. For now, a look at Syracuse, Utah and the Black Island Farm Corn Maze and the Wasatch Range ... from ... you guessed it ... a helicopter. A helicopter with no door on the side. Yes.

Another day at the office

Do I have the best job or what?

Mini miracles

As if it isn't miraculous enough to be able to fit 1,000 pictures on a little one-by-one memory card and put them on your computer in seconds and have little tiny pictures of each photo for you to pick from and tweak if you're a tweaker and send out to friends and print for mementos -- but then you can get word that someone on the other side of the world is enjoying them too.

This is a miracle beyond words.

It's a new miracle. One that wasn't around 20 years ago and that makes those of us who were around 20 years ago drop our jaws at the wonder of it all.

So to celebrate I'm putting more pictures from my little one-by-one memory card that are now one of thousands and thousands on my little-bit-bigger-but-still-surprisingly small computer, and I'm disseminating them to the other side of the world.

These are pictures that I took on the other side of the world. In greeting and as thanks.

Good to the last shot

My faithful friend finally gave out on me. We've been together for exactly four years. It was in August of 2006 that I took the first shots with my digital SLR Canon, after trying out a digital point-and-shoot Kodak for eight months and after being one of the last to admit I had to switch over from film.

The life expectancy of these early SLRs is 40,000 to 50,000 shots and we made it to 58,464, the last 10,000 without autofocus, but still making great automatic exposures of everything from flowers to oceanscapes, from people to fireworks.

I'm fiercely loyal to something that's served me so well, and it still sits on my desk with the black finish worn in spots and the dust showing in a few corners. Though it won't turn on anymore, it never let me down. Even the last shots before the error message came up and the LCD blanked out for the last time, were keepers. Shown above, a few of my last thousand-or-so pictures. Below, just out my bedroom window on an August morning, picture number 58,452.

Walking at night

It's just about impossible to get a good picture of people walking at night. Even my fellow gallery photographer who just bought a many-thousand-dollar camera that can reach ISO (sensitivity to light) numbers of 100,000 or something astronomical says so.

Still, I had to try.

I tried with a flash, without a flash, with a tripod, without a tripod, with a high shutter speed, on automatic, with close-ups, with distance shots, with a Nikon and with a Canon.

But the most important thing wasn't getting the picture. The most important thing was the walking at night. They were doing it, as others around the country have been doing it, to raise money to fight cancer. Many of them had friends with cancer, many of them had family members, some of them had survived the devastating disease themselves. The little votive candles in bags along the way honored those who couldn't be there and wouldn't.

But spirits were high and determination was evident as they walked and walked, doing something -- anything, to try and help win a war that's seen some victories and wants to see more.

I honor those who are fighting the fight. Those who raise money for it and those who fight it with everything medicine has to offer and every hope faith can bring.

Keep walking.

Caught

I have looked at these pictures many times, but only just now -- a year later -- noticed the bee making a be-line (bee-line?) for the flower.

I could not have caught that moment if I'd tried.

Rather, it caught me.

Happily ever after

It has to be a first. And I congratulate the writers of the recently released movie, Knight and Day, for breaking the mold.

For once, in a romantic comedy/adventure romp, the wedding went ahead as planned. No flattened wedding cakes, no musicians with emotional problems, no brides changing their minds at the last second, no embarrassing in-law speeches, no lies being admitted in front of the masses, no ruined dresses. Whew. And yeah.

It was the dress part my daughter and I were worried about.

Early in the movie, Cameron Diaz tries the bride's maid dress on, gets several compliments, then manages a chase scene or two without a spot of dirt. Still, when the bombs are dropping and everyone's running for cover on the island, we know it can only be bad news for the dress, which we'd earlier seen her tuck into a black handbag.

And while our husbands were watching the action ("what handbag?"), my daughter and I were watching the black handbag with the dress as it escapes with its owner in a helicopter and ends up someplace in Austria.

I can't tell you more without seriously affecting the many surprises in the plot, but I'll just say the short wedding scene was such a relief I didn't mind the destruction that followed every other place they went and every other vehicle the two touched and every other person who might have been a threat.

Weddings are ruined way, way too often in movies. And those of us who've been in them or who've tried to make them perfect for those we love have a hard time seeing the humor in their ruination.

Seriously, did any woman anywhere laugh when Matthew McConaughey crashed that beautiful wedding cake in that movie about girlfriends? Or why couldn't Sandra Bullock have come clean with the family before she was at the altar in that movie about US/Canada work permits?

I'm all for drama, but let's give the 50 percent of the audience who thinks weddings are dreams come true a little breathing room. Sigh.




Speaking of weddings. I attended a perfect one just last Saturday.
Congratulations Maria and Rich!!

The picture tells the story

I didn't ask the girl sitting on the floor with her crutches about what happened. But I think I know. I think that maybe just the day before, or maybe just a few hours before, she was one of the girls standing in front of the windows and dancing. And maybe she slipped or maybe she landed wrong or maybe she was hurrying somewhere too fast and tripped on something or someone she didn't see.

But she didn't go home. She's still there, watching, learning, waiting until she can join in the kicking and cheering. And in the meantime being disappointed.

I've tripped before. Not maybe the kind of tripping that requires crutches, but the kind that means something you tried to do didn't work. Maybe even you failed.

So you have to sit and watch other people who maybe weren't so clumsy or unlucky, and hope you learn what they're learning, even though you're sitting on the floor.

And then you get up and do it all again. Because it's no fun sitting on the floor. And even when there's always that possibility that you're going to tumble again, you know you just have to get up and dance.