Innocence

Imagine the ringmaster introducing, "Galaxy Girl as she performs acrobatics, handstands and aerial gymnastics on top of a flexible pole 120 feet above the ground. Yes ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Galaxy Girl will take your breath away as she perfectly executes unthinkable stunts on her sway pole with no net, harness or safety apparatus."

The innocence of a child amazes me sometimes. It reminds me of how blissfully unaware a person can be of anything else. As adults we so often have a myriad of things going on in our minds that are more distracting than the event in front of us, but a child can look up and watch a "Galaxy Girl" sway in the air and just enjoy the moment.

As we grow older, I think we yearn more and more for those blissful moments, as brief as they might be. Maybe all we have to do is watch a child.

Up close and personal

It takes a lot of practice, but one thing I love to do is get up close and personal to photograph someone just having a good time.

I saw this lady at the Big E just clapping and singing to the nostalgic sound of a group on an outdoor stage. I sat down in the empty chair next to her, and we chatted for about thirty seconds, until she was comfortable with me. I just told her to stay in her groove, and she did.

The Big E's Jackie the johnitor

On those days when you think you've got the crappiest job in the world, and you just want to scream, think of Jackie the johnitor. She is a ladies room attendant at The Eastern States Exposition, or Big E, a mega-state fair for the six New England states. Normally, I would ignore a "Poop" shirt, and certainly would not photograph it, but her job was to keep the ladies room clean, and what a delight she is.

We chatted for a while as she finished lunch at her post. She was thankful for the job that she had and made the best of it. She had a smile for everyone that went in or out, and it was reflected in her full tip bucket.

As for John the johnitor, he wasn't smiling, and neither was his tip bucket.

Wow!

Monday, we had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a hitch of eight Budweiser Clydesdales at the Eastern States Exposition, or the “Big E,” in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Now, I am not a small person but to me, these horses were huge. Their feet were longer than my size thirteens and twice as wide, but can you imagine what they must look like from stroller height?

Whenever we have one of these rare opportunities, we shoot from all sides and all heights from over our heads and down to our ankles. We photographed their feet, the harnesses, their drivers, the wheels, their noses, and even their bobbed tails. While it may seem like overkill to most people, the results are incredible.

Photographers often develop a level of concentration that seems to bond with the subject as they begin to see nuances and details that no one else sees. From ankle height, behind the hitch, I watched the boy in the stroller until he connected with the massive horse in front of him, and all he could do was say, “Wow!” It was my last shot of the Clydesdales, but it was the best.

Are you ready for some football?

Finally, the 2011 NFL 2011 season kicked off last week! It seems like we’ve been watching ads for it since the Daytona 500, in February. Weekly football pools abound, odds makers publish their numbers midweek and fantasy football teams are almost as important as the real teams. We turn on the television at noon Sunday and watch games from all over the country until 11 p.m. Monday evening, we are glued once again to the game of the week broadcast all over the world, regardless of who is playing. And, of course, everyone "knows" their team will again, or finally, win the Super Bowl at the end of the season.

One thing that amazes me about football fans is that they establish an unbreakable team loyalty early in life, and they remain loyal regardless of where they live now or how the team performs. We live in a regional market whose loyalties are mixed between the New England Patriots, the New York Jets and the New York Giants, but I was raised in Cleveland, so my heart always goes out to the Browns. We also cheer for any team that beats the Pittsburgh Stealers, Cleveland’s biggest rival.

As for Lois, her identity as a Baltimore Colts fan was stolen many years ago when the team packed up in the middle of the night and was trucked to Indianapolis. She will not recognize that act of piracy, and therefore any team that plays the Colts is effectively playing alone, even though they might lose. The only exception is when they play the Pittsburgh Stealers.

What about you? Have you maintained your hometown loyalty, or did it move when you moved?

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Boys will be boys, especially when it comes to water. While I was out photographing the flash floods last week, I drove past one of our local soccer fields and found these guys having a great time on their newly created lake, while it lasted.

Events like these are often our best memories as we look back on the fun we had when we were kids. Like these boys, we never thought about what might be in the water. All we cared about was making the best of the moment. I mean, how often can one canoe across the neighborhood soccer field?

One man, obviously more responsible than me, called out to them when they were doing backflips off the goalie cage and suggested they get out of the water because of the possibility of bacteria. I told him I couldn’t see any through my lens, so he left. Why let the opportunity for a good memory go to waste?

Kent, Connecticut

Simply elegant is the best way to describe the small northwestern town of Kent, Connecticut. Like so many Litchfield County towns, it's an area where artisans and people of note live who don't want to be noticed. It is also right next to the Appalachian Trail and a common stop for hikers to rest and replenish equipment and supplies before they continue their journey. For one of its fund raisers this year, the town library is selling raffle tickets for a Porsche Boxster. (Note to self: I don't live in Cleveland, or Allentown, anymore.)

Main Street, is pretty much the only street. Old homes are now upscale clothing boutiques, galleries or antique shops, for the most part. There are about three blocks of sidewalk restaurants, delicatessens and coffee shops priced like Manhattan. While they are crowded on the weekends, during the week, locals just sit under the umbrellas and read. Everyone I spoke with was very friendly and enjoyed being photographed, which is unusual.

By the time we finished lunch, we only had an hour left to do a Main Street photowalk. Because we see things differently, Lois went up one side of the street, and I went up the other. After a half hour, we switched sides, and as expected, we each captured images of stuff that the other person never saw. Needless to say, it's a fun place to photograph and just enjoy a peaceful, relaxing afternoon in a town where no one cares who you are, or who you aren't.

Remember 911

September 11, 2001, is one of those dates that most people, especially in the northeast, remember where they were and what they were doing when we were attacked. My dream executive job had been eliminated a month earlier, and I was on my way to an interview when the World Trade Center towers were hit. When I arrived, I learned that daughter of one of the people that I was to meet with, worked in the World Trade Center. Needless to say the interview was cancelled.

Nearly three thousand lives were lost at the Pentagon, the two World Trade Center towers and on United Airlines flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We were under attack, not by a nation, but by a fanatical group of Islamic terrorists.

While we often focus our attention on the planes that flew into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, we need also to remember the untrained instant heroes on flight 93 who overpowered its hijackers enough to divert the plane from its intended target in Washington to crash in a remote Pennsylvania field saving perhaps thousands of lives. 

Almost immediately, American air space was shut down. Every plane was ordered to land at the nearest airport and those enroute to the United States had to turnaround or land outside the U.S. Forty international flights landed in remote Gander, Newfoundland, alone. Air Force fighter planes set up a perimeter around Washington, D.C., and were under orders to shoot down any plane, military or civilian, that failed to respond to communications.

Since then, we have been waging a war on terror, not only outside the United States, but within our own borders as well. My Utmost for His Highest author, Oswald Chambers, said in his devotional message for September 10, “Crises always reveal a person’s true character.” I wonder how many people who gave their lives helping others on 9/11 read those words before they went to bed on 9/10.

In the past day or two, there have been more than forty television specials reliving the events of September 11, ten years ago, and the heroic stories of those who lived and died that day. But we must never forget the more than six thousand of our troops who have died in action fighting terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since then.

I think one of the greatest tributes to those who responded to the call on 9/11 is that when we are in a moment of crisis, when we need a hero to help us in an emergency, we immediately call 911.

Do cats swim?

We had a flash flood race through low-lying areas in Southbury today flooding homes, golf courses, athletic fields and pastures in a matter of hours. Everything was fine this morning when people went to work or school, but at eleven o’clock, calls went out to residents near the river telling them to get out as there was a rush of water coming downriver, fast. When we arrived just after noon, the fire marshal was putting in a call to the power company to cut electricity less than a week after it had been restored. It peaked by one o’clock and by five it had receded from all but a few of the low lying homes.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like for someone to come home after working all day only to find their house filled with mud and silt from a flash flood that came and went in the few hours that they were gone. Residents said it was worse than the floods they had after Tropical Storm Irene. In fact, life for most people affected by high water during Irene had just started to return to normal.

I think these two cat bird baths say it all. They were outside the door of a house filled with a couple of feet of river water, for the second time in less than two weeks, and the third time this year. Like the cats, people must be hanging on by their toes to stay afloat, especially when they live on Flood Bridge Road.

The "uncanny" chair.

Chairs come in all shapes and sizes and are made of every conceivable material known to mankind. Some are designed to never be sat on, and others are designed for us to sit on all day. Some are designed for a specific task, or function, while others just focus on form. And of course, there is that ubiquitous white plastic chair that we find all over the world.

While we all have our favorite chair, there is something special about a rocking chair. A rocking chair is one of those peaceful places that you can go to be alone, to dream, or to get lost in a good book, or in the case of Cracker Barrel Restaurant, make your thirty minute wait for a table more palatable.

We found this rocking chair at our local flea market resting in the middle of a plate. What caught our eye at first was the seat, one end of a tin can. Then we realized someone used the rest of the otherwise useless can to add form by cutting and curling small strips of tin to make the arms, back, legs, and rockers of the chair. It was too large for a dollhouse and too small for a doll, but someone put in a lot of hours shaping it into a chair that had meaning to them.

State of the economy

There is so much that comes to mind every time I look at this picture. Regardless of your political persuasion, unemployment is high, economic growth is low, and Fed Chairman Bernake's solution is to print more money.

I just hope we never get to the point where we need an ATM next to a gumball machine for that afternoon sugar hit.

Power outage, Connecticut style

A week ago, tropical storm Irene blew through the Northeast dumping rain and dropping thousands of trees across power lines. Although the storm lasted less than a day, many areas in Connecticut are still without electricity.

The Red Cross came in and set up several shelters around town. They offered not only their customary emergency services but charging stations for cell phones and Ipods, as well as access to Wi-Fi. Everyone that I talked to was coping well with the loss of power, but it seems they all struggled with the loss of Internet access. It was their connection with the outside world that they missed the most.

We went to the library and the parking lot was packed, not with people looking for books, but instead, an Internet connection. There was a white board outside that had the library's rules for charging mobile devices and hooking up to Wi-Fi. Any restaurant or fast food place was packed with people hooking up to the Internet.

I think our favorite was the overflow crowd outside our local Starbucks on Main Street. The staff inside doubled in size to keep the cappuccinos flowing. No one was concerned about losing power, just connecting with their friends online.