Take a break!

No matter what hill you’re climbing or how steep it is, sometimes you just need to take a break so you don’t burn out. Whether it’s a few minutes, an hour, a weekend or a vacation, we all need to sit down once in a while to take a break and gather our thoughts. For many people, it’s a week off in August before the rush of fall.

We hit our pause button every Sunday. In fact, as hard as it is, we don’t even pick up a camera on Sunday or check our email. We just relax, count our blessings, and get ready to resume our upward journey on Monday.

If doors could talk

If only old doors and door handles like this one could talk. After being pulled by more than six generations of calloused hard-working hands of carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, and handymen, the once beautiful curved brass handle on the front door of Meeker Hardware in Danbury, CT, is showing signs of fatigue. Who knows how many coats of paint are on the 125 year old door.

The handle and the door remind me of people. No matter how attractive and useful we might have thought we were at one point, eventually, our parts begin to shift and perhaps we aren’t as strong or agile as we once were. But underneath, there’s still a classic beauty and a sense of dignity that we now call “elegant.”

Like the door, we have a few more cracks and chips than we had before and we have some wear marks that have surfaced. I guess the door’s age makes it easier to accept pink and gray paint for a traditionally machismo store. After all, I’m sure if you dig deep enough, you will find a layer of dark green paint, but then weren’t we a little green once? In fact, wasn’t everything green at least once?

American smile

When I was growing up, I was always told, “Never talk to strangers,” but then I was never one to follow all the rules. If you want to capture the flavor of urban culture, you can’t just photograph buildings, doorknobs and street signs. You have to include people. You need to talk to strangers.

By the time I finish walking through an urban setting with a camera, I have made perhaps a dozen new friends. We may not speak the same language and we will probably never see each other again, but for a brief moment we connected. Other times it will be a lengthy conversation where I will get a glimpse into their life along with a host of images to visually capture their character.

This young man and his friend were standing outside a store when we walked past. We took a picture or two and he just started grinning from ear to ear. So we took some more. Will we ever see each other again? Probably not, but for a brief moment our cultures connected.

What’s your excuse?

Ever been there, tried this?

   C’mon, give me a break.

   I was just going next door for change.

   I used my last quarter to call my dying grandmother.

   I gave my son my last quarter to buy milk at school. Someone wrote “meter broken” on the window.

   All I have are dimes and nickels, no quarters.

   My wife is having a baby - right now!

   And my all time favorite, My friend Tim, you might know him, works for the city and he’ll fix it anyway.

Follow the leader

Saturday was the Scott Kelby annual photowalk. Each July, this Photoshop maven asks nearly 30,000 photographers around the world to work in groups of fifty each to walk a mile or two along a defined route and photograph everything in sight between 9:30 A.M. and noon. We chose Danbury, CT, this year, a largely ethnic community that was in sharp contrast to the very upscale New Canaan, CT, that we photographed in 2009.

As we ventured out, we dutifully followed our leader, but as I am inclined to do, I found too many things to photograph and fell behind a few times. It's a great exercise that we try to do ourselves at least once a week anyway, but this one weekend out of the year, we do it with 48 other people locally that we otherwise would probably never meet, and of course, 30,000 that we know we'll never meet.

It's easy to tell who is on one of these walks for the first time as they arrive with tripods, backpacks and every lens they own. It's fun to watch, especially on hot days like Saturday. One woman carried an impressive, but heavy, tripod during the entire walk and offered it to everyone to use. Sadly there were no takers and she carried it all the way, stopping occasionally to lean on it.

As for me, two cameras, two lenses and no tripod as there are always mail boxes, parking meters, lamp posts, and stair rails that work just as well. Lois carried one camera and lens along with a bottle of water half way through, but between the two of us, we captured about 400 images in less than two miles. It was a great day.

Always carry a camera

Nothing fancy, just a camera, but if you don’t carry it, you’ll miss the shot. There are days when it is just fun to walk through an area of a city, any city, and just shoot whatever you like. People, pigeons, architecture, feet, windblown flags, reflections, and iconic symbols of our culture, like a telephone booth or a parking meter

I have found the camera to be a great cross-cultural conversation starter with people normally outside my comfort zone. I have also learned that it gets the attention of security cameras outside banks, inside rail terminals and in the produce department of the grocery store.

Yes, I have learned that it’s not about the camera, the lens, the perfect exposure or the best composition. It is totally about the moment, and if you don’t have a camera, any camera, you’ll miss the moment, forever. Thank you, Jay Maisel.

Startled!

The eyes have it no matter how ugly everything else is. Our eyes are amazing in how they work and what they communicate. Surprise, sorrow, joy, fear, confidence, doubt, truth, love and hate. The invisible is made visible in our eyes. Have you ever challenged someone’s integrity by saying to them, “Look me in the eye and say that?” It’s hard to lie when you’re looking someone in the eye. The slightest movement instills a sense of doubt and can make a person wish they could take those words back. A stare can be riveting.

Some would argue that my little prehistoric friend is ugly, but I would argue, look at his eyes. He’s more afraid of us than we are of him. Always focus on the eyes. They speak volumes and are more truthful than words. Words are just words, but the eyes are the windows to our soul. When the shades are up, everyone can see inside.

Conspicuous by their absence

The butterfly chair is one of those classics of the fifties that was the focal point of so many rec rooms, patios, and swimming pools. It was fun to see someone sit in it for the first time and even more fun to see them get up. Ironically, the people who gravitate to these chairs now are the ones who bought them in the fifties or who inherited them from their parents. It's one of those nostalgic things from our past that triggers so many memories of friends and family who sat in them at one time.

These three chairs in particular are under a tree in front of Lois's father's boyhood home in Cuddebackville, NY. They have seen generations of family reunions, weddings, holiday parties, and memorial services, too. The house and property are still in the family, lovingly maintained by her cousins. We visit the home about once a year, usually on the fourth of July, for a family gathering.

Each year the butterfly chairs are under the tree waiting for Uncle Rusty to tell endless stories that entertained us for hours. He knew everybody's hot buttons and just the right time to push them. I remember how he would make a statement about something, usually political, just to get someone worked up into a rant. You could tell by the sparkle in his eye, that he did it on purpose.

Lois's earliest memories of her namesake aunt, were of her sitting in one of these chairs. Aunt Lois and Aunt Ellie would sit there and gossip back and forth about relatives as they walked by. It was always about how they had changed since the last time they were at Cudde. Between the two of them, they knew everything about everyone in the family past and present, and they were never reluctant to share it.

The chairs are still there, but their three main occupants are gone, yet as we look at the picture, we still see Uncle Rusty, Aunt Lois and Aunt Ellie, conspicuous by their absence.

Untarnished

I remember as a kid having to polish my mother's silver whenever we were going to have special guests for dinner. It was a messy process as the black tarnish on the surface seemed to always end up on my hands rather than the polishing cloth. Sometimes I had to use a soft brush to get inside all the grooves in the handles or around the edge of a serving piece. Even though the utensils were stored in silver cloth, they always needed to be polished before they were used again. No matter how hard we tried to defeat it, the tarnish was always there.

As I look at this vintage set of silver from a railroad dining car hermetically sealed to avoid exposure to the air, I'm reminded at how little it took to tarnish our silver place settings. Similarly, no matter how hard we try to keep ourselves polished and shiny, it only takes a little exposure to "bad air" to tarnish us. No matter how pure we are inside, if we are tarnished on the surface, it jeopardizes the integrity of what is inside.

Do you see what I see?

No it isn’t Christmas, but aren’t these two ladies a riot. I mean standing back-to-back, disconnected and out of touch, on the edge of the reflecting pool, one facing east to the Lincoln Memorial and the other west to the WWII Memorial and the Washington Monument. I wonder if, when they got home, they asked each other what they saw.

While it is funny, isn’t it how we often communicate with each other? We try to explain things from an entirely different perspective. One sees Lincoln sitting in his chair overlooking the length of the pond while the other sees a nearly 600 foot obelisk towering above the mall, yet they both saw Washington.

I think it also describes how many different ways we see our Government today. So many people are standing back-to-back ignoring what the other person sees. Regardless of your political persuasion, whether you face left or right, our nation is so divided that it seems like it will never come together again. Does anyone there see what we see?

It's time to rise and shine.

Oh, the iconic rooster. For some, it's a reminder of betrayal. For others, it's an alarm clock without a snooze button, and for a city slicker, it's a reminder of rural life. Since 1740, wrought iron roosters have peacefully perched on church weathervanes throughout New England, and yet it is one of the first animals a farmer will warn you about when you walk through a barnyard, as they love to attack ankles and shins for no apparent reason.

Sometimes, though, you get lucky and find a lonely wooden rooster leaning against the barn just waiting to be noticed. It reminds us of country, but without the sound. It's iconic of a new beginning, and a new opportunity to rise up and make a difference. Let your day shine!

Staying cool is all about choices

Once the initial shock of a heat wave sinks in, we begin to expand our options for coping. For the first couple of days it was AC, shade, water, fans and avoid the outdoors at midday. As the week wore on, we began to test the temperature a little bit and walk outside, feel the air and go back in. But now that it has been here a while, it's time to make some serious coping choices.

We can only stay inside so long before the walls, as cool as they are, begin to close around us. Suddenly, we see a new set of coping mechanisms - raspberry ice, ice cream sundaes, and root beer floats. Normally, many of us would be concerned about the impact on our waistlines, but in hot weather this is not an issue because the choices on the window have moved beyond a quick fix for a sweet palette to an abundant list of coping mechanisms offering relief from the heat.

As for the diet? We can do that anytime, especially in winter.

Think like a sunflower.

I'm always amazed at the ability of our bodies to deal with temperature extremes, yet wonder why we are so reluctant to cope with them. We can fly from Central America to Montreal on a winter day and experience a hundred degree or more temperature change and cope by putting on a coat. As long as we don't live in either place, we adjust without a complaint. Yet, when we experience temperatures twenty degrees or so above the norm where we live and work every day, people flip out, especially in the northeast when it hits triple digits. What happened to that coping faculty that we had this past winter when temperatures would swing sixty degrees during the course of a day?

While our bodies adjust, I guess our minds do not. Each one of us has a mean temperature that we like and once we go above or below our "comfort" level, it becomes a point of irritation. Some like the heat of the sun while others wait, often impatiently, for the cool.

I guess we're like flowers in some ways. Some flowers reach up to the sun and bask in the heat while others hide in the shade and wait for it to cool down. Like people, the two never seem to cross.

Cool, clear, water anyone?

All day I've faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water, cool water
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry
And souls that cry for water
Cool, clear, water.

I don't know about you, but we have been have been hovering above and below triple digit temperatures in the Northeast for a couple of days now with no relief in sight. It's time to sit back and chill with Marty Robbins and enjoy that cool, clear, water.

Never lose your grip!

Yes, it’s Independence Day, the day we celebrate the declaration of our independence from the British Crown, in 1776. It seems no matter where we go or what we do, someone is flying an American flag. Many organizations follow the military’s example and fly their holiday colors, or flags that are significantly larger than the ones they fly every day.

It is one thing to fly our flag proudly and get a rush every time we see a particularly large flag lit by the sun and waving in the wind, but it is another to grab hold of it and hang on almost daring someone to tear it out of our grip. While many people are concerned about the long term impact of our nation’s political divide, current fiscal and monetary policies, economic stimulus, under and unemployment, and an old war against a new kind of enemy, we must not forget that we are the most admired democracy in the world.

As a nation, we have incredible resolve. As individuals we have an incredible ability to hold our grip. Together, we have an amazing legacy that must never be destroyed.

I can dream, can’t I?

Golly, I’m not sure if this blog is for husbands or wives going into the summer holiday weekend. I mean, who is really having more fun here, the toe tapping wife, or the tap dancing husband? Maybe it’s the model in the chair.