A friend confessed to me just today that he was “afraid of shots,” but was seriously considering getting his COVID-19 vaccination. He said he’d seen that I got vaccinated Monday Aug. 23. What he didn’t realize is that I got my third, or “booster”, dose of the Moderna-made vaccine. Update, August 25: a day after…
Continue reading →Final update for this situation: Abby has been home since Friday, Sept. 3. She continues to get stronger and more alert, she expresses a healthy appetite, and she is eager to do the exercises the physical therapist showed me. There is always a potential for a setback, but I will care for her and nurture…
Continue reading →Abby and I were finally able to travel again after a 20-month hiatus due to the pandemic. We chose the beauty of northern New Mexico. I wrote a comprehensive trip report, The Summit, here (link), but here are a few extra thoughts. Taos is a mess It has been my displeasure to watch charming towns…
Continue reading →Early May was sunny and perfect for the baseball, softball and tennis playoffs I covered, but by the middle of the month, a consistent rainy pattern had set in. I made several photo walks around the patch after walking the dogs. At work, I’m shooting and writing well, and feel like I am succeeding in…
Continue reading →I am pleased to welcome my long-time friend Mackenzee Ellen Crosby as the summer 2021 intern for The Ada News. I lobbied for her to get this position, and so far, she has delivered. I believe I first met her when her eighth grade class at Ada Junior High won a bet to collectively give over…
Continue reading →Here are a few images from our home in the bucolic splendor of southern Oklahoma.
Continue reading →I apologize for not posting more often. May is always like that – playoffs, proms, graduations – there’s lots of stuff to cover for my newspaper in a very short time. But I am not dead or in a mental institution. I’m right here, and here are some images from what’s been going on.
Continue reading →A confluence of conversation this week got me thinking about aging. “You never change,” someone told me as I was covering a playoff softball game earlier this week. It’s true that I haven’t changed all that much in the nearly 33 years I’ve been at The Ada News. Some of that is by chance, and…
Continue reading →Thank you everyone who asked with concern about my wife Abby. She had a rough winter and spring, but seems to be very much back to her usual self lately. This morning, for example, she asked for grits and runny fried eggs, which is a long-time favorite or hers. I am fine as well.
Continue reading →I was at a public gathering recently, and someone in the group said she’d lost 30 pounds recently, 30 pounds she said she’d gained during the lockdowns associated with coronavirus. She told us she lost the weight using the Optavia diet. I was impressed by her achievement, but that diet involves lots of cabbage and…
Continue reading →I got my second coronavirus vaccination this week. My arm is very sore and I have some muscle aches, but that tells me it’s working. I posted on social media this week that my peach trees had gone straight to leaves this year, and did not appear to be making blossoms, which, according to my…
Continue reading →I have been on vacation all week, and Abby and I have really enjoyed being together all the time. The weather turned warm, and for the first day of spring, I chased down a few images of our redbud tree. Also of note, my plum trees are putting on blossoms, but my peaches are going…
Continue reading →My social media followers know that Abby was released from the hospital last week, and while she was sketchy for a day or two, it seems like she is fine now. It was nice to return to work, and a normal life. The stress of missing Abby and not knowing the outcome of her illness…
Continue reading →Good news: today I got my first coronavirus vaccination. I received it at a vaccination event sponsored by The Clinic and the Pontotoc Technology Center where I teach photography. It was the Moderna brand. So far, the only side effect has been the most common: soreness at the injection site. Abby is still in the…
Continue reading →Abby is in the hospital, and she and I are both very stressed by the fact that I can’t join her. Like people across the globe, including Abby’s daughter just two weeks ago, hospital stays are in isolation due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic (a phrase I have learned to type in my sleep.) Abby…
Continue reading →I recently elected to add some fish to my diet in hopes of getting my wife Abby to eat healthier, or in some cases at all. Important caveats include the idea that the fish is noted as nutritious on its own merits, is caught in a sustainable fashion, and is prepared in a healthy manner…
Continue reading →Film photographers might be familiar with a handy rule from the days without automation or exposure meters: the “sunny 16” rule. It gives a rough suggestion for exposure, f/16 at the reciprocal of the film speed, which with 100-ISO film would be 1/100th of a second. I like the idea of “sunny sixteen” much better…
Continue reading →The road rumbles around us. Brilliant New Mexico sun shines through the windshield. Brilliant October blue sky surrounds us. In the seat next to me, she sleeps. On the truck’s MP3 player is this song, Piercing Quiet by Tritonal. It resonates in me. Listen here as you read… “The world’s in constant motion And…
Continue reading →Our next door neighbor’s efforts to corner the chicken market seem to be coming along nicely. In addition to his 32 chickens, he recently added five guineas and a puppy that he says will grow up to guard the henhouse. They’re all fun and fun to photograph.
Continue reading →It’s not exactly a paradox, and it’s not exactly ironic, but it is frustrating. How do I justify my love of exploration and photography in spectacular places like Antelope Canyon, Arches National Park, Yosemite, and White Sands, yet still feel contempt for the way these places have become desperately overcrowded? Part of my problem with…
Continue reading →I’m not pushing this one to social media for inobvious, murky reasons. I read, and I blew. My sister says she despises the phrase “these uncertain times” and the word “unprecedented.” Newspapers struggle to survive, and soon we will get all our news from Snapchat. All reporters will look like puppies and baby deer. A…
Continue reading →In my travels as a photojournalist yesterday, I drove down to Tupelo, Oklahoma to cover a baseball game, but found that it had been suddenly rained out by a rather spectacular, and spooky, thunderstorm. I turned around and head back toward Ada, thinking I would stop in Stonewall and photograph their softball game so the…
Continue reading →My wife Abby and I got our hair cut today. I gave her a lift into town at lunch time. When she was done, our haircut professional, Layce, cut my hair. On the way out of the house, Abby and I grabbed the mail, which included a small padded envelope. When we saw it was…
Continue reading →Hawken, our Irish wolfhound, cornered another opossum tonight, or possibly cornered the same opossum he encountered two weeks ago. Hawken’s bark is unique to the situation: it is forceful, loud and urgent, and is meant to get the attention of the animal he is addressing as well as us. I have no desire to kill…
Continue reading →I was cleaning up some computer files and folders recently when I came across images from our most recent anniversary trip, The Winding Road. I must have been hungry, because I gravitated to an image of a dessert Abby and I shared at our favorite restaurant in the world, Madrid, New Mexico’s The Hollar. “Honey,”…
Continue reading →After a rather intense couple of days covering the news, I was able to pad my tension with a bit of good news: the garden center at Walmart had mature-ish tomato plants to I could replace some that I lost to cutworms or the weather. I was able to plant three Better Boy plants and…
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I was recently honored to once again help jury some East Central University Mass Communications students’ senior presentations, specifically those students who emphasized visuals like photography, graphic arts and design. It got me thinking about my college days and earlier, and about what I imagined I wanted to be as an adult – “what…
Continue reading →“Everybody in this town knows you, and knows who you are and what you do.” The 2020 coronavirus crisis has had a crippling impact on the entire world. Entire industries have collapsed. One that comes to mind is the airline industry. Travel has plummeted beyond crisis levels. Some airlines have parked 95% of their fleets,…
Continue reading →There was a time in my life, around my college years, when I imagined that total isolation, on a mesa in a home built into the cliffs at the end of the Boys Ranch Road northwest of Amarillo, would be the way I wanted to live. *** As I wrote this, the phrase “no contact…
Continue reading →There is an effort underway to reopen the world after shutting everything down due to the pandemic. Is this going to work? I’ve been mute recently. I encourage my friend Mac to write more on her blog, but at the same time, I don’t. Maybe I’m discouraged. Abby had a couple of dangerous health scares…
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