Tag Archives: family

Tuesday Musings (Yeah, I Know…): Another (Brief) Update

I’ve started this post several times, only to flame out after a few lines. The truth is, I have nothing I want to write. I am in New York again, staying with my older daughter, doing what I can to help her through this most difficult time. That includes little things — shopping for her, keeping the apartment clean, cooking, doing small repairs on stuff that’s been broken for too long — and bigger things, like taking her to the hospital for small procedures and scheduling appointments with various doctors (Nancy or Erin or I will be taking her to those as well).

And I am also here to sit and talk with her, to keep her company, to do whatever simple things I can to make her comfortable and allow her to focus on healing and coping.

She has remarkable doctors and remarkable friends. Her support system is wonderful.

And so is ours. Nancy, Erin, and I have been so grateful to the many caring, loving friends and relatives who have done what they can to ease our burden. And I so appreciate the support I feel and see on my social media feeds, in my email inbox, in my snail mail postal box.

I don’t know how much I will be posting in the days and weeks, to come. I want to maintain the blog, but I also know that my focus right now needs to be elsewhere. So, thank you in advance for your understanding. Trust that I am doing as well as I can. I am taking care of myself, even as I also minister to my child. I am seeking out the help I need when I need it.

Wishing you all the best. Hug those you love.

Wednesday Musings: (No, That’s Not a Typo) Let’s Spend a Flight Delay Together

I have little to say professionally this week, but I have been thinking a good deal about a great many things. So, I’m double-dipping on musings . . . .

On Monday of this week, after a busy weekend in Brooklyn visiting Alex, our older daughter, Nancy and I accompanied Alex back to Tennessee for some midweek events here honoring Nancy. Alex is still in pretty rough shape and could not have traveled alone.

We were flying out of Newark and were scheduled to leave at 2:30 for a nonstop flight back to Nashville. But even as we were driving to the airport, I could see thunderheads forming to the west, piling on top of one another, like hulking gray boulders in the sky. I figured we would be fortunate to get out on time. Hah! Little did I know . . . .

We boarded, taxied, stopped, waited, waited some more, waited a whole lot more. Eventually, we taxied back to the gate, and eventually after that, we were allowed to deplane into the terminal so that we could get food, use the restrooms, stretch our legs, etc. By now, it was 5:00. Again, Nancy and I were traveling with our daughter who has cancer, who is weakened by treatments and generally exhausted. This was already going to be a long, trying day for her. Now it was getting worse.

An hour passed. And then another. The storms finally moved through, leaving the sky fiery and gorgeous. We were allowed to board again, told we would finally be leaving. We taxied, stopped, waited. Again.

We took off at 8:30, six hours late, and by the time we arrived, got our luggage, got the car, situated Alex, and drove the 90 miles from Nashville Airport to our house, didn’t get home until close to midnight. Too long a day. Too tiring. Too stressful. And yet . . . .

We are fine. Alex was tired the next day and had some relatively minor, unexpected issues crop up. But we got through the day in good spirits and in good shape. This musings post, though, isn’t about us. Not really, at least.

You see, the storms that stopped our flight from leaving, grounded every flight out of Newark, indeed out of all three New York airports (and also out of Boston’s Logan and others across the Northeast). When we returned to the gate after our initial attempt to leave, we found the terminal packed with people, all of them in the same situation we were in. I went searching for food and wandered far and wide, trying to find the exact thing our poor girl wanted to eat.

Not once did I see anyone complaining. Nor did I see anyone being nasty or berating gate agents or losing their patience with the crowds of fellow passengers. People were smiling, laughing, striking up conversations with strangers, playing with their kids, talking to their travel companions. You never would have known that every one of them had been inconvenienced for hours.

As I said, this was Monday. September 11. And I was reminded of that terrible day twenty-two years ago, and of the days after, when New Yorkers and New Jerseyans and Washingtonians and Pennsylvanians drew together in the wake of tragedy, treating one another with kindness and courtesy, with compassion and humanity. This year’s September 11th was a far easier, gentler day. We were delayed; we weren’t confronted by evil. But the same spirit of cooperation and good humor suffused our experience.

I’ve lived in the Southeast for more than thirty years now. And still, when I tell people that I’m originally from New York, I am often told how unfriendly people are up there, or how fortunate I am to live among the welcoming communities of the South.

And in some ways I am fortunate. Nancy and I have had a wonderful life in our little blue corner of Tennessee.

But let’s be very clear: In my experience, New Yorkers are no less friendly than Tennesseans, they are no more prone to rudeness, they are no less considerate, they are no less community-minded. In many respects, they are MORE considerate of others, more accepting of people on their own terms, more inclined to go out of their way in service to the well-being of those around them. I have lived in New York and New England, California and the South. No region has a monopoly on courtesy. No region has a monopoly on ill-mannered boors.

And for those who believe the New York metro area is populated by unfriendly, unrefined jerks, think again. Need proof? Spend a flight delay among the region’s people.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Monday Musings: Family Update

We are in New York this weekend — an impromptu trip to help our older daughter who is suffering through some rough side-effects after her most recent treatments. We are dealing with a lot right now. Her most of all. I won’t get into details, but I will say that the situation remains serious and difficult, and all of us — mom, dad, sister, patient — are struggling.

Through it all, our older daughter, Alex, has been remarkable. Remarkable. Courageous, wise, positive, resilient, matter-of-fact. I have been humbled by her strength and spirit again and again and again. And Erin, our younger daughter, has been amazing as well. She has been the rock on whom all of us have leaned. She, too, has been brave and brilliant, knowledgable (from her work in the health care field) and compassionate, a point of stability and also a constant source of humor and light.

I will resist my usual impulse when writing about my children, which is to deflect all credit for their amazing qualities toward their mom. Yes, they both remind me so much of her, and display so many of the attributes that drew me to Nancy years ago. But the truth is, I recognize myself in both girls as well. They are a blend of the two of us. Parenting them has been the great joy of our lives, and we have done a good job of it.

People write not-so-flattering things about Millennials and Gen Z-ers. It’s easy to find articles online and in papers about the shortcomings of the generations that have followed us older folks. I don’t see it. Alex’s friends — all of them her age or younger — have been incredible. They have offered her care, support, and companionship. They have taken her to appointments, cooked for her, picked up prescriptions for her. Back in 2021, when Alex began her first chemo treatment, and started to lose her hair, one of them drove down to Brooklyn from Maine so that she could get her head shaved as Alex was having hers done.

There is no greater point to all of this post. Not really. We as a family have been going through a hard time for two and a half years now, since Alex’s initial cancer diagnosis. We have had more than our share of setbacks and we honestly do not know what will happen ultimately. All of us want to be optimistic. All of us need to be realistic. Reconciling those two impulses isn’t always easy.

In the meantime, though, we are spending time together. We were in Colorado as a family in July. We are in NY with Alex now (Erin was here all week before we arrived, and Nancy was up here the week before that). When we leave tomorrow, Alex will come with us to Tennessee for a ceremony honoring Nancy’s service to the university there and unveiling her official portrait. After that, we’re not entirely sure, though we don’t think that Alex can be alone for the time being. So, at least one of us will fly back with her. Maybe both of us.

We do what needs to be done for the people we love, because love demands no less, because they deserve no less, because we know they would do the same for us.

Be kind to one another. Tell the people you love how you feel about them, how much you appreciate them. When you need help from others, ask for it. Just as you wouldn’t hesitate to come to the aid of those you love most, so they would not waver in their support for you.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Monday Musings (On Tuesday): Feeling the Loss of Jimmy Buffett

Living And Dying In 3/4 Time, by Jimmy BuffettThe news of Jimmy Buffett’s death this past weekend, hit me surprisingly hard, and I am still trying to figure out why. Buffett, the “Roguish Bard of Island Escapism,” as the New York Times called him in an online obituary, was a strong musical presence in my life. I have been listening to his music for more than four decades, I own a bunch of his albums, and over the years I have learned to play many of his songs on my guitars (none of them is particularly difficult to master). But the truth is, if asked to name my top five or top ten or even top twenty-five favorite bands and musicians, he probably wouldn’t make it onto any of those lists. So why do I feel as though I’ve lost a friend?

As with so much of the music I listen to, I was introduced to Jimmy Buffett’s songs by my oldest brother, Bill. This was long before Buffett’s fans came to be known as “Parrot-Heads.” It was before the song “Margaritaville,” Buffett’s biggest hit, had even been written or released. There was certainly not yet a chain of restaurants named for the song. Buffett had yet to become a bestselling author, or a musical icon, or a billionaire, all of which he achieved over the course of his career.

This was back in the early 1970s, when he was still a rather obscure country musician, albeit one with a terrific sense of humor and a unique sound. Bill played me songs from albums titled A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean and Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. Some of the songs were irreverent and funny (“Why Don’t We Get Drunk” and “The Great Filling Station Holdup”), others were memorably beautiful (“Come Monday” and “He Went To Paris”) and still others were just plain fun to listen to. Buffett’s studio musicians, whom he dubbed “The Coral Reefer Band,” were skilled and versatile, feeling equally at home with country, rock, reggae, and ballads.

So, yes, I enjoyed his music. But his loss means more to me than that. I mentioned earlier that I play several of his songs on guitar. I have for decades. I regularly performed some of them in college, when I played with my dear friends Alan Goldberg and Amy (Linenthal) Halliday. We played “Sugar Trade,” a song Buffett wrote with James Taylor, and “Wonder Why We Ever Go Home,” yet another beautiful ballad.

During one memorable night in the student pub, Bill came down from Boston to see us play and to perform a few songs with me. Bill was a skilled harmonica player and had a band of his own that performed regularly in New England. He and I played “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a song I usually played during my solo set. Bill had prepared meticulously for our set; I hadn’t. I messed up my accompaniment to his harmonica solo in the middle of the song, getting the rhythm wrong and forcing him to adjust on the fly. He was gracious about it, but to this day I can’t listen to “Son of a Son” without cringing at the memory.

Jimmy Buffett’s music, more than that of most artists, touched me personally. I associate it with family, with friendship, with some of the most wonderful memories of my college days, with the comfort and joy I still draw from playing my guitars and singing — for myself, for Nancy, for our daughters.

And for some reason, I remember with incredible clarity an evening when Bill was playing Jimmy Buffett music not only for me, but also for my mom and dad on the stereo in their living room. He put on a song called “God’s Own Drunk,” a song originally written by Lord Buckley that Buffett covered brilliantly on Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. It is actually a story more than a song, and it is spoken over a slow country blues. It tells the tale of a man who, while guarding his brother’s moonshine still, partakes of some powerful booze and then encounters a bear, “a Kodiak-lookin’ fella about nineteen feet tall . . . .” I remember my father and particularly my mother getting such a kick out of the song, and Bill looking so pleased to have made them laugh.

As I say, Buffett was a musician and songwriter whom I enjoyed and respected, even though I was never a fanatic, never a Parrot-Head. His music has been a golden thread through my life for more years than I care to count. I’ll miss him.

Have a great week.

Monday Musings: Confessions Of A Boring Old Guy

A few weeks ago, while we were vacationing in Colorado, I got high. When I was young — high school, college, and into grad school, I used to get high a lot. Too much, probably. But upon marrying Nancy and starting to pretend to be an adult, I gave up weed. For a long time, I was fine with that. I didn’t miss it. More recently, that began to change. I was curious: would I enjoy getting high now, as an old man, as much as I did as a kid?

Surprise! I did! I enjoyed it a lot. I took a gummy — a fraction of one, actually. I’m fully aware that today’s marijuana is a lot more potent than the stuff I was used to in my youth. And I ate the gummy with a clean conscience, since the evil weed is legal in Colorado. When I have the opportunity, I will do it again.

Why the confession?

The other day, I ran across an article in the New York Times that basically consisted of writers confessing to stuff they do that is of questionable morality and, in some cases, legality. Some of the testimonials were fairly mild — playing violent video games, shopping at Amazon. Others were more serious. One writer confessed to being a serial shoplifter. Another likes to drop acid at concerts. My confessions aren’t likely to be nearly so entertaining, but still I figured, yeah, I do some embarrassing stuff, too. So, why not?

For the record, as much as I dislike Amazon and lament the site’s impact on the literary marketplace, I shop there, too. All the time. All. The. Time. What can I say? It’s cheap, quick, convenient. I’m not proud of this, but this post is all about honesty, right?

I also play stupid games on my phone. Not violent ones — I don’t enjoy those. But dumb, wasteful, pointless? Check, check, and check. I play them daily. I do all the silly daily-goal tasks, I accumulate . . . stuff — whatever the game tells me I ought to accumulate. And I enjoy the games immensely. I am ridiculously pleased when things go well, and comically frustrated when they don’t.

I really, really enjoyed the Bridgerton spin-off, Queen Charlotte. Yes, I did.

I have a stunningly large baseball card collection. It numbers between 15,000 and 17,000 cards, the oldest being from the 1950s and the newest being from the early 2000s. I started collecting when I was five years old, and I still have many of those original cards. And I will admit that when I was a kid, I stole a few packs of baseball cards from a local store. Not proud of that at all.

I have watched the entirety of The West Wing — from series pilot to series finale, seven season’s worth, 154 episodes — at least ten or twelve times. What can I say? I love the characters, have long been a political junkie, and think that Aaron Sorkin writes like a god. I will also admit that during the George W. Bush Administration, and again during the Orange Guy’s Administration, I took refuge emotionally in the Bartlet White House.

I have a TERRIBLE sweet tooth. I manage to control it for periods, and I eat well in other ways. But oh, how I love my desserts. Candy, cookies (I love, love, love cookies) ice cream, cake, puddings. I just took a break from writing this post to eat a bunch of Nutella straight out of the jar. My favorites? Chocolate chip cookies, Twizzlers, any ice cream with caramel or butterscotch in it. There are a few things I don’t like — cheesecake, desserts with nuts in them, anything pumpkin flavored — but usually, if it’s sweet, I love it.

Yeah, okay. Most of this is pretty tame stuff. I don’t drink to excess. I don’t cheat on my wife. I don’t drop psychedelics or break the law or lie on my tax returns. The fact is, I’m pretty boring. I’m a nice guy. In most respects, I always have been. When I was young, I was the kind of guy women wanted as a friend, but weren’t drawn to romantically. I wasn’t in any way edgy or “dangerous” or exciting. I also wasn’t tall or good-looking, which didn’t help . . . .

But that’s okay. The same qualities that make me a bit boring also make me a good husband, a good dad, a good friend. I’ll take that any day.

Have a great week!

Monday Musings: Family, Soccer, and the Women’s World Cup

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about Title IX (which became law a half century ago) and the impact women’s sports have had on our culture, our society, and my family. I received a fair number of comments on that post, most of them from women whose lives had been changed by their own involvement in organized athletics, or from women who completed their schooling before Title IX was enacted, and who regretted missing out on such opportunities.

Erin and AlexMy mind has been on Title IX again over the past month, as Nancy and I (and our daughters, while we were all together in Colorado) watched the Women’s World Cup. Soccer has long been a very big deal in our household. Our daughters grew up playing, first in weekend league soccer and then through middle school and high school. Both of them were accomplished players. Both of them continue to love the sport. And so we all look forward to the World Cup — men’s and women’s — the way we look forward to holidays and birthdays.

For those of you who are not fans of soccer — “the beautiful game,” as it is called in other parts of the world — this year’s Cup matches were played in venues all around Australia and New Zealand, the co-hosts of the tournament. And with the exception of a few blow-outs in the earliest stages of the competition, the matches were incredibly competitive and exciting, and were played with all the skill and artistry one would expect from some of the best athletes and finest footballers on the planet.

AlexWorld Cup soccer — men’s and women’s — begins with what is called group play. The field of thirty-two is divided into eight groups of four. Each group plays among themselves, three matches for each team, and they get three points for a win, one point for a draw, and none for a loss. The two teams with the best record from each group advance to the knockout stage, so called because there are no ties, and the loser of each match is knocked out of the competition.

Yes, the U.S. Women’s team, four-time winners of the Cup, two-time defending champions, and, historically speaking, the traditional powerhouse of women’s soccer, was knocked out of the tournament in the round of sixteen, after just barely making it through group play. And after that, American media and, no doubt, many American fans stopped watching the Cup. We were disappointed in our household, too, but we kept watching, because the play in match after match was just that good.

The fact is, the Americans were not the only favorite to make an early exit. Germany, another perennial contender, who have twice won the cup and are ranked second in the world after the U.S., didn’t make it out of group play. Neither did Brazil, ranked eighth in the world, Canada, ranked seventh, or France, ranked fifth. Instead, teams like Colombia and Australia made historic runs deep into the tournament, and several teams — Jamaica, Morocco, and South Africa — made their first trips ever to the knockout stage. Ultimately, the tournament was won by another long-time power in women’s soccer, Spain who won a taut, action-filled, at times frenetic final against England by a score of 1-0. But any of the four teams that made the semi-finals — Sweden, Australia, Spain, or England — would have been first-time winners of the Women’s World Cup. That hadn’t happened since the very first women’s tournament in 1991.

ErinDespite American disappointment, these developments actually constitute incredibly good news for women’s soccer around the world. Title IX paved the way for the U.S. women to become a dominant team, and in many European nations, where traditional football is THE sport, women’s teams have access to facilities and funding. But in other places this is simply not the case. The Jamaican woman faced so many financial hardships in their preparation for this year’s Cup that they literally had to rely on crowdfunding in order to participate.

Tournament success for teams that have previously had little to celebrate can only boost support for women’s soccer, and women’s sports in general, all across the globe. And while sports may seem trivial given the challenges and dangers woman face the world over, anything that increases opportunity, that builds confidence, that unites people in community, that shines a spotlight on the glories of strength and resilience, diversity and teamwork, aspiration and freedom, can only benefit women and girls everywhere.

The U.S. team will recover from this year’s disappointing performance. (And by the way, the team’s early exit had NOTHING to do with being “woke” as some buffoons on the right have suggested. It had everything to do with the team being relatively young and inexperienced, with the coach being timid and uncertain, and with the front line failing to capitalize on scoring opportunities. The U.S. women were “woke” in 2019, when they won. They were “woke” in 2015 when they won. Just sayin’.) They will win other World Cups and other Olympic gold medals. But their path to victory is only going to get harder, because the competition is only going to get tougher. That’s as it should be. As women’s athletics gains greater and greater attention, as the financial obstacles they face diminish over time, teams in sports like soccer will move toward worldwide parity. Which is also as it should be.

In the meantime, I am already looking forward to Olympic soccer next year — men’s and women’s. And before then, I have Premier League games to watch!

Have a great week!

Monday Musings: A Walk in the Rain, and a Quest for Solace

This is one of those weeks when I really have no idea what to write. The idea of the Monday Musings posts is that I compose something based on what I’m thinking about. But this week . . . well, let’s just say I’m not prepared to do that.

Sometimes our thoughts are not meant to be shared. Or they’re not ready for public viewing. Sometimes they are too private, too hard, too raw.

Those of us who depend on social media for professional purposes are, of course, all too aware of the many, many problems inherent in the medium itself. We struggle to find ways to reduce our lives and careers to digestible units. We strive to come across as upbeat, to announce our successes with the proper blend of pride and humility, to paper over our disappointments, to reveal enough of our private selves to appear accessible but not so much that our posts come across as creepy or maudlin or inappropriate.

I have actually shared a lot over the years, perhaps more than I should. I have written of professional letdowns, personal loss, mental health issues. At times, I’ve wondered if I’ve crossed some line by being too honest, too open. More often than not, I am come down on the side of candor, believing that perhaps my own struggles, whether private or professional, might be illustrative for others. I’ve thought that by revealing a bit more of myself, I might help someone else.

Earlier this week, I took my usual morning walk along the rails-to-trails path near our home. It was raining. Not a soft drizzle, but a substantial rain. I put on rain gear and I walked anyway. I had the path entirely to myself. I did my usual walk — three and a half miles; nearly an hour — and I didn’t see another soul, which is pretty unusual for this route.

The night before, we’d had a frenzied series of storms, one after another bringing pelting rain, angry winds, and a near continuous dialogue of lightning flashes and grumbling thunder. But by morning, the worst of the storms had passed.

As I walked, rain tapped on the forest canopy, on the brush around me, on the woodland floor. And also on me, on my raincoat. The rhythm was the same, but the tone was different, as if I were a tympani tuned to a different pitch. Most of the birds I usually encounter on my walk were hunkered down and silent, though a male cardinal flew across the path, chipping ecstatically. I have no idea what had him so excited. Streams, newly replenished, chortled among the trees, happy to be running once more.

And through it all, I walked and thought and tried to find peace, solace, strength, inspiration — anything really. I suppose mostly I wanted a path out of the musings that had gripped me for days. The musings I was, and still am, in no state to share. Nothing came.

No, that’s not true. I did feel at peace while I was walking. I did find inspiration for this post in the sounds and sights of the rain. And maybe to ask for more is to ask for too much. There may be magic to be found in a summer morning walk through a warm rain, but I don’t know if there are miracles.

This is another strange post, I know. I have written several in recent weeks and months. Times are hard. Some weeks I can find something to write about, a thought thread that distracts and even entertains me. Other weeks, I can’t be diverted. Life holds sway and I can’t pretend to care about other stuff.

Next week, perhaps, I will write something less strange, less cryptic. The women’s World Cup is winding down, and I have wanted to write about that. Maybe I will. Next week. In the meantime, you have my apologies for the vagueness, the navel-gazing. As I say, life is hard right now. And my walks in the rain can only last so long.

Have a great week.

Monday Musings: Digital Technology, Ansel Adams, and the Joy of Modern Photography

As I mentioned in a post last week, Nancy and I just spent a week and a half out in Colorado, seeing our girls, hiking, and unwinding. It was a good trip, and, as is my wont, I spent a fair amount of time capturing photo images. I shared some photos last week, but those were just the ones taken on my phone. This week, I share some of the images I captured with my big rig, my Canon 5D Mk IV, with a pair of truly excellent lenses — a 24-105mm f4 L and a 16-35mm f4 L. To most of you, the lens and camera info probably won’t mean much. That’s fine. I thought a few of you might be curious.

The Crags Trail, by David B. CoeI spent this past weekend going through my photos, processing the images, and selecting a few to put in a rotation of favorites that show up on my computer desktop and in my screensaver slide show. And as I work through these images, I have been thinking about photography in general and where the technology that is now available to photography hobbyists has taken us.

When I started getting serious about my photography, we were still in the film age. (Kids, ask your parents.) I would load a roll of film into my camera, take photos — usually thirty-six exposures per roll — and, upon reaching the end of the roll, would then rewind the film back into the little metal cylinder and remove it from the camera. At that point, my control over the image would reach its end. I would take the film to a local store, or perhaps send it directly to one of the Kodak or Fujifilm processing centers scattered around the country, and wait to see how my photos came out. The wait was frustrating, the cost pretty outrageous.

Florissant Fossil Beds NM, by David B. CoeSome stores and processing centers were willing to consider special instructions — “please over- (or under-) expose slightly” or some such. But to be honest, I wasn’t good enough at that point to know with confidence that ALL my images would need the same special treatment, and so I just sent my film in and hoped for the best. More often than not, I was disappointed.

Mueller State Park view, by David B. CoeKnowing what I do about the history of photography, I now understand how strange that consumer film process actually was. The old masters of photography — Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, and most notably Ansel Adams did not leave it to Kodak or Fujifilm or any other commercial entity to develop their images. They held fast to every step of the creative process, from image capture to production of the final print. Photography as an art form was not limited to a mechanical blink of creative inspiration. Rather, it relied upon a complex and time-consuming manipulation of that initial capture, to turn the photo into exactly what the artist envisioned. Adams in particular used an approach he called “dodge and burn,” relying on a masterful understanding of darkroom tools and chemicals to darken certain parts of an image and brighten others. He and his contemporaries would never have dreamed of placing themselves at the mercy of film development labs.

The great irony of this lies in the freedom now granted to amateur photographers like me by digital dark room applications on our computers. My photography workflow may rely on digital technology, but in every other respect it is more similar to the experience of the old masters than it ever was in the age of film. Like Ansel Adams, I no longer have to hope that my images were perfectly exposed. I can make adjustments to the original images, balancing light and shadow, compensating for exposure issues in some quadrants of a capture while using the original lighting in others. I can, in other words, do a digital “dodge and burn.” (I used to use Adobe’s Lightroom, but I grew disenchanted with their subscription model of “ownership.” I now use DxO’s PhotoLab, which allows me to do everything Lightroom did, but at a lower cost.)

Florissant meadow, by David B. CoeMore, I no longer have to decide before going out in the field what sort of film to use. I can take an image that I know will work in color and follow it up immediately with one that I know I’ll prefer in black and white. Converting an image from color to grayscale is as simple as clicking a box. I love that freedom.

To be clear, I do all I can to avoid over-processing my photos. We have all seen photographs that look so “perfect” as to be unrealistic: hyper-detailed, garishly colored, lit with unconvincing evenness across shadow and sunlit feature. I have no desire to produce such images. Even with a digital darkroom at my disposal, I still wind up with many images that don’t work. The ones I add to my “favorites” constitute a tiny fraction of the images I take.

But I have control over the work I do. From image capture to production of the final image — either in the form of a print, or a computer image I can enjoy every day — I make the photograph exactly what I want it to be. And the truth is, the very best images I produce are pretty high quality. I would put my finest photos up against those of most professionals. That sounds like bragging, but it’s true.

Most important, I engage in a creative process that I enjoy, that I find challenging and deeply satisfying. My photography scratches a “creative itch” that is very, very different from the one I scratch with my writing. It is one of my great passions.

I hope you enjoy these images, and I wish you a great week.

Monday Musings (On Tuesday): Our Family Trip

As I write this, we are winging our way back home after a week and a half in the mountains of Colorado, west of Colorado Springs. Nancy and I rented a house in a little town called Florissant, just a couple of miles from Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Our younger daughter, Erin, who lives in Denver, joined us for the first weekend and then went back home for work. Nancy and I spent several days alone in the house, going on long hikes each morning and chilling on the back patio of the house each afternoon. On Tuesday, our older daughter, Alex, flew from New York to Denver to spend a couple of days with her sister, and then on Thursday the two of them drove back to Florissant to spend a long weekend with us.

We had a marvelous trip. Our visits with the girls were lovely and fun, filled with laughter and good conversations despite the difficulties we face as a family right now. We watched a ton of Women’s World Cup soccer. Nancy and the girls worked on a puzzle that proved nearly impossible, and finished it our last night in the house. (No, I didn’t help. I rarely do puzzles. I’m colorblind, and jigsaw puzzles are a particular brand of hell for those of us with that affliction.) We read. We enjoyed the hot tub that came with the house. We enjoyed a couple of meals out. We enjoyed many a home-cooked meal (learning the hard way that cooking rice at 8,700 feet is VERY different from cooking it at sea level, or 2,000 feet, or even 5,000 feet).

The hikes Nancy and I took during our days alone were gorgeous. We did a couple in the National Monument, walking through mountain meadows and groves of aspen and lodgepole pine. We did one spectacular hike on what’s known as The Crags Trail, in Pike National Forest. The hike started at 9,500 feet altitude and ended at 10,500 feet, atop a rocky dome with a 360 degree view of the Rockies. And we did a couple of beautiful walks in Mueller State Park, part of the terrific Colorado State Parks system. All told, we walked 25-30 miles in four days — nothing extraordinary, but enough to make us feel that we had explored the area thoroughly. Along the way we saw birds and coyotes, a palette of wildflowers and tons of lovely, albeit hard to identify, alpine butterflies.

The weather was great the entire week. Cool clear mornings, warm afternoons that were punctuated each day with dramatic thunderstorms, and cool nights. One evening, we watched a storm roll up the valley straight toward our house, forks of lightning dancing along ridge lines and illuminating the sky. Another day we had a hail-storm that dumped enough pea-sized pieces of ice on the patio to allow me to make a “snowball” or two.

As I say, things continue to be tough in our little world, and we don’t anticipate them getting much better, at least not anytime soon. But we still share a ton of love. We still know how to laugh and enjoy one another. And we can still appreciate the beauty and light of nature, of companionship, of family.

I return home feeling full, renewed, joyful and also bittersweet. Under the circumstances, I could hardly ask for more.

I wish you a wonderful week. Reach out to the people you love. Hold them near. Don’t wait to tell them how you feel about them.Our daughters Nancy atop the Crags View from the Crags Nancy and me Mountain view

Monday Musings: Thunderstorm Memories

As I write this, a storm is moving in. The sky has turned an angry shade of purple-gray, and thunder rumbles frequently, close enough to reach me through windows closed against the oppressive heat, but far enough away that the house doesn’t yet tremble with each clash. The rising wind and first huge raindrops cool the air — welcome relief. Lightning flickers, and I hunger for the sweet, clean scent of ozone and fresh rain. I leave my computer to step outside for a few moments.

As a small child, I was frightened by thunder. I suppose most kids are. My father would come into my room during nighttime storms and sit with me, both of us counting the intervals between lightning flashes and thunder’s response. With his help, I overcame my fear and grew to love thunderstorms as much as he did. A gift. One among so many, more than I could possibly count.

Afternoon storms were a staple of Mid-Atlantic summers, reprieves from the hot and hazies of my native New York. We thought those days brutal, scorching. Little did we know what the future would hold for a climate-altered world. But I remember — as a boy and then a teen — going outside onto our front steps to watch storms roll in, much as I did just now. If my brother Jim was around, he would join me, and we would scan the sky, watching for forks of lightning, savoring the caress of splattered rain.

Years later, he and I would have a different sort of thunderstorm experience, in a cirque above tree line in California’s King’s Canyon National Park. We had planned a hiking trip into the backcountry, biting off far, far more than we could chew. Our first day of hiking was too strenuous for both of us — miles of steady, steep uphill walking, both of us carrying forty-plus pounds of gear on our backs. In the middle of the afternoon, storms rolled in, the Sierra Nevada sky churning. We had no choice but to take shelter, though by that point we were surrounded by low, stunted pines, huge boulders, snowfields, and little else. We got soaked, decided to make camp there so we could dry out. But as night fell, more storms moved in, and one of the cells settled directly over our campsite. Roars of thunder followed right on the heels of brilliant flares of lightning. And we huddled in a tent — one of those old ones, held up by metal poles. Frankly, we were fortunate to survive the night. We woke up to fog, fresh snow, and temperatures way less than half what they’d been when we left our car the previous morning.

Nancy grew up on a dairy just outside of Boise, Idaho, and we still go back to the Boise area to visit her dad, her brothers, and our nieces and nephews. That part of Idaho is essentially sagebrush desert reclaimed through irrigation, and though mountain ranges loom in the distance, much of the landscape between Boise and the Snake River is flat. So when thunderstorms move through the area, there is nothing to mute the sound or block one’s view. Miles from where one stands, daggers of lightning stab the terrain. And thirty or forty seconds might pass before thunder growls in reply, an afterthought, surprisingly clear and loud.

Shortly before Nancy and I left California to move to Tennessee, we paid one last visit to Yosemite National Park, one of our favorite places. It was a gorgeous early summer day, and though we’d made a point of going in the middle of the week, the park was still unbelievably crowded, as it usually is. We spent a little time in Yosemite Valley, but the crowds were worst there, so we passed most of the day in the higher elevations around Tuolumne Meadows, an area of dramatic mountain vistas, deep evergreen forests, and rolling alpine meadows. As is the theme of this post, a series of thunderstorms rampaged through the park that day, bringing high winds, pelting rain, and a fusillade of grape-sized hail that I feared would shatter the windshield of my old Toyota Corolla. I didn’t have much experience with hail at that point in my life, and in the middle of the storm, curious and foolish, I opened the car door (we were parked at a viewpoint) and stuck my hand out. The little buggers hurt, and when I said “Ow!” Nancy looked at me as if I was the dumbest guy on the planet and just said, “Well, yeah.”

There have been lots of other storms of course. When we reached Tennessee, we realized that thunderstorms are different in the Southeast. Some spring and summer nights, the sky flashes continuously for hours at a time, and thunder claps are so frequent they overlap to form an unceasing grumble. I’ve never experienced this anywhere else. It’s one of my favorite things about living here.

The storm that began as I started writing this has continued. Rain still falls, the sky glimmers and thunder echoes across the hollow in which we live. But the hummingbirds are feeding again, so maybe they sense fairer skies heading this way.

I wish you a week of cooling rains, dramatic skies, and fair winds.