Evening basketball at Green Lake
Moose River 1979
My dad recently came across and scanned some old pictures from a week-long canoe trip we took in the late 70′s down the Moose River to James Bay, Ontario. It’s a great memory, and something that we did several times, so I put a little slideshow together. We will try and add some captions to the pictures sometime soon. I do remember the canoe having a constant leak that required the attention of whoever sat in the middle.
Projects
Recently added a bunch more work back into the Project Archive since I rebuilt the site last month and tossed a bunch of it out. Still a little shy on description, but there’s some decent projects and images there.
Blog
While deciding what to do about reinstituting some kind of blog function last year, I somewhat ruthlessly deleted the previous databases. However, I am gradually adding a few back-dated posts and images that I found interesting and still had content for.
Irwin's Bakery & Café, near Green Lake.
Seems like forever ago I took these, but it’s nice that they now have a home for a little while. Lots of work, but must say it was a nice change of pace doing all the manual cutting, pasting, etc. to frame them and put all the other little things together. Stop by for some Stumptown coffee and a few of my FREE postcards! Here’s the poster.
This is Wes smiling.
It’s Wesley’s 12th birthday today, give or take a month or two, with more than 11 of those years spent with me. So with that in mind, here’s twelve reasons why I love my dog…
- I love that he doesn’t bark or throw ridiculous yippy fits for no good reason.
- I love that he’s big enough to either wrestle or lie my head on.
- I love that he’s the most well-traveled dog on the planet.
- I love that he gets excited by every new hotel room he stays in.
- I love that he took it upon himself to dive 8 feet off a long sea wall into the Atlantic Ocean to catch a lobster trap. And even though he was cold and tired and the buoy wasn’t moving, he didn’t want to give up.
- I love that he made a B-line sprint hundreds of yards down East Beach in San Francisco just to go say “Hi” to the family having a lovely picnic. Sure, they got incredibly angry about all the sand and food and drinks and blankets tossed about in a fit of loving enthusiasm, but that didn’t dampen his spirits.
- I love that he tirelessly swims after ducks, eliciting cheers from the people on shore.
- I love that he totally freezes up and starts shaking madly in the presence of a cat, as if he got a short circuit and is at a complete loss for what to do. (Update: he seems to be getting over this a bit in his old age)
- I love that he sometimes sleeps on his back, stretched out like a person.
- I love that he doesn’t judge me when I’m being completely disgusting. And even if he does, he has the courtesy to keep it to himself.
- I love that he’s totally unflappable. He’s happy to be or sleep in the strangest or tightest of places, just as long as I’m there too.
- And I love that he makes everyone he meets, happier.
It’s late at night and I’m just remembering the start of Egypt’s revolution exactly one year ago, and also the honor I felt having had the opportunity to spend a little time with their wonderful people a few weeks later. It all began on January 25, 2011, and though progress continues to be difficult, it is amazing to realize that they just held their first public election of a parliament. It’s the first election most of them have ever seen. In my own selfish little way, the Egyptian people have changed me too. This video shows scenes from Egypt, the revolution, and photos of some of those killed in those early days. The song says: My country, I love you my country. Tell my mother not to cry. Kiss her hand and tell her not to worry, I die so that my country can live.
Lori Deschene is an amazing woman that helped herself and then all of us by writing and aggregating simple wisdoms to life’s persistent and most difficult questions. She created the Tiny Buddha, and I can only assume that an inherent good has also turned out to be good business. The latter rarely succeeds without the former. Tiny Buddha has a popular Twitter feed and a new book out, but it was this wonderful video I stumbled upon, that I connected with initially. Lori gives a very personal talk. Quite unexpectedly, she made me stop and think a little differently, and feel a little less alone with a secret I keep.
In fact, in no small way, her story inspired me to revisit what I write, and how I share it. I know a thing or two about being disconnected, and to say I would like to do better is the kind of understatement I state too often.
My website has been a big part of who I am for a very long time—how I capture and share the unique experiences in my life. In retrospect, I think I’ve often mistaken publishing with sharing. After all these years, I don’t feel much closer to being completely honest about who I’m actually putting out there—both online, and offline. I’m afraid to say what I’m actually thinking far too often. I greatly admire those, even the buffoons, that can better get out of their own damn way long enough to make authentic connections and not overly censor their feelings or creativity.
I realize this may only make sense to me, but I’ve spent countless—literally countless—hours over the past couple weeks teaching myself PHP and CSS, just so that I may build a simpler website that enables more than it hinders. Perhaps a very small and indirect step, but it’s one in a gait of many others that I hope will go in the right general direction.
I’m not afraid of much in life, but I am very much afraid of not being able to take something back. This is countered only slightly by the fact that I’m also afraid of wimping out. Despite some of the professional successes I’ve experienced, to my detriment, I think I have become way too accomplished at hiding behind my own craft and cleverness. I wonder if anyone else ever feels this way? And yes, writing even this very little bit, is pretty scary. But I take some comfort in knowing that I can delete it tomorrow.
In fairness to myself, I am prone to over analyze and may be unnecessarily tough on myself at times, and I may now be making far too sweeping a statement. But none the less, despite my values and constant reach for candid and real, I need to do better at being here, without the burden of getting there.
Thanks to Lori and everyone else doing tiny things that serve as great big models for authenticity, and for how, despite all the noise and virtual means, we can better connect with the people around us.
Second round of rough 16mm film tests with Bolex cameras and various lenses. My lovely subjects deserve much better. Starring Jamie and Migee. Song performed by Jamie Tidwell.
Dad, Sue and Wesley on the ferry to Bainbridge Island
peering into the water at Shilshole Marina
Dad and Sue were in town visiting for a few days for his annual checkup at SCCA. So naturally, we spent some time at our favorite watering holes: Shilshole Marina and the ferry to and walk around Bainbridge Island. While they were here, I also shot this little 16mm motion picture film of the two of them pretending to meet for the first time. And of course, Wesley stars.
Just back from 10 days off the grid, hiking alone from the Glacier Peak Wilderness to Snoqualmie Pass. The first three days was spent very much alone, on a trail that hadn’t been maintained or visited in months. Then on the forth day I hit the Pacific Crest Trail and headed south. Within a couple hours I crossed paths with several through hikers heading north, a week from completing what would have been a four month trek from Mexico to British Columbia. Pretty impressive, that. And though I spent considerable time that day contemplating a similar trip, I was none the less quite content with the peaceful lake I had come to for the evening.
While I have done several other backpacking trips in recent years, none of them kept me off the phone, internet and various other digital trappings quite this long. A strange, but no doubt very healthy thing to do more often.
