The Camera Eye

My mother and sister both got the "artistic" gene in the family and I've always felt somewhat depraved - er- deprived.

Years ago, I spent -what was at the time- stupid money on a camera and lenses. I took the camera everywhere with me. I read book after book on composition, camera settings and technical details. I took tons and tons of pictures.

They all sucked.

After spending countless dollars on film and developing, only to be disappointed by shitty pictures, I gave up.

Fast forward a whole bunch of years. I bought a digital point-and-shoot camera and managed to take a few decent pictures with it, but found myself limited by what the camera could NOT do.

Taking that as a sign that I might be ready for something a little more "PRO-fessional" I bought a Sony Alpha 200 and started rediscovering photography. I also got Aperture as a Christmas gift last year, and that's been a big help. I think part of what I was missing with film was being able to control things in "the darkroom".

For me, digital has been very freeing. I am no longer afraid to take chances, because I don't have to pay to develop my pictures. I can shoot away and not even think about it. I also know that a certain amount of things can be corrected in "the darkroom".

I still have to learn to slow down and THINK about composition and I need to kick the "auto" crutch to the curb, but I have managed to take a few ...ok... pictures. I am really trying to learn to SEE pictures - a skill those of us without that artistic genes really struggle with.

Where the hell was this 30+ years ago?

They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore

(Did I just invoke Greg Kihn???? Shoot me now.)

While doing some genealogical research, in an article about the death (from drink) of one of my ancestors, they made reference to him having been "...in the spy business with Ephraim Dow and that other shining light, Ad Webster."

Now apart from being very intrigued by the reference to the "spy business", I was rather amused at the sarcastic reference to Ad Webster's character. (MCMAWG thinks sarcasm, done properly, is an art form).

I had to know more. Even though it was tangential to the original purpose of my research, (finding Dell) I began to dig into the newspaper archives.

I found a gold mine of amusement.

Apparently, Ephraim Dow was a politically appointed Federal Marshall, and from what I can gather, they were excise tax agents, charged with making sure taverns and places that sold tobacco were properly licensed and paying taxes - the papers referred to him as a "revenue spy" in a couple of places.

It appears that, if someone was charged with Federal crime, they had to be taken to the capital in Albany to be tried. Whomever had to transport them to court got a per diem - even if the charges were dropped. Can you see the potential for abuse?

I also found that the papers took great delight in poking Ephraim Dow:

"Ephraim Dow and His Friends On A Bender - Dow Sentenced to $25 Fine and 45 Days Imprisonment - A Season Of Quiet Seclusion For Him.

The day before yesterday, Ephraim Dow, the attenuated revenue spy and informer was dispatched to arrest a saloon keeper in Geneseo by the name of John Conroy. It seems that Mr. Conroy, who did not have a license, sold two glasses of liquor to Ad Webster and a complaint against him was therefore lodged with US Commissioner Gilbert.

Dow, on his arrival in Geneseo, proceeded to test either Mr. Conroy's or somebody else's whiskey and tasted it so often that the inhabitants of that village were greeted with the sight of a United States official in a beastly state of intoxication...."

I admit to literally laughing out loud at that description. This wasn't an isolated incident - the Rochester Union and Advertiser is full of articles like that. One of my favorite articles takes great delight in Ephraim getting "euchred" by a woman. (I believe "euchred" would be the equivalent of today's "pwned"):

Ephraim Dow Euchred by a Woman

"Mrs. Schleber keeps a boarding house and lager beer saloon on Front Street. The other day she received a fresh invoice of beer and it so happened that on one of the barrels, the stamp had slid over the bung hole, and in driving in the spigot, part of the stamp was driven in with it. This is a gross violation of the revenue law which declares that the stamp must not be torn.

Through some means or other, Ephraim Dow, the revenue spy and informer, got word of this transaction and it was not long before Mrs. Schleber saw his bilious-looking countenance appearing in front of her bar, demanding to inspect the barrel. Permission was given him, and after searching for some time, he could not find sufficient pieces to make a whole stamp for the good reason that the missing portion was inside the barrel. This was, clearly, to his mind, a gross violation of the revenue laws and visions of prospective fees, traveling expenses &c. loomed up before him.

Putting on his most dignified air, he told Mrs. Schleber he should have to arrest her. This lady, however happens to be a rather muscular woman and she told Dow if he attempted anything of that kind, it would not be many minutes before his face would resemble a freshly plowed field.

High words ensued between the parties accompanied by sundry pushes &c. in which Dow got the worst of it and his departure was a trifle more accelerated than he desired."

In addition to making questionable arrests and snagging a per diem, he was also known to shake down the populace:

"Them Dow Fellers" Again

For some time, Ephraim Dow and his pals have kept more or less quiet but appear to have broken out again and are now in the hands of the law. It seemed that a day or two since the bilious-looking and attenuated frame of Ephraim put in an appearance at Mary Eagan's saloon on Monroe Avenue, telling her that he had come to summon her to appear before Commissioner Husbands. At the time, Mrs. Eagan was too sick to move.

On Wednesday last, he returned in company with Nicholas Krauk and Aderiel E. Webster, and according to the evidence of her daughter, Maggie they told Mrs. Eagan if she would give them $5, they would make the matter all right".

Since he was politically appointed, the newspaper appeared to be looking forward to his departure from office:

"...The public in this part of the country ought to be highly elated that they have such an active, enterprising individual as this Dow, who is always alive and ready to protect their interests, notwithstanding the fact that he costs the taxpayers considerable money in the long run, by hunting up cases that have no foundation to rest on, and taking himself and a whole string of witnesses to Albany, for which he is entitled to draw ten cents a mile and a dollar and a half for each of them, besides other emoluments which could only be obtained by these means. Dow would be an ornament to a community - of human cormorants. The people will be compelled to endure him but a short time longer. He belongs to a political race who's days are numbered".

Can you imagine anything that eloquent, sarcastic and scathing - never mind funny - in USAToday?

Skool Daze

As I teeter on the brink of once again becoming a "stoodint" I can't help but think back on my previous experiences with education.

Even though I was in school back when there were only thirteen stars on the flag, the thing that still stands out most was the excruciating boredom. Not surprisingly, I didn't do all that well in school - I just skated by. I ignored the course work and aced the tests.

I admit it - I was lazy as hell, but if I had a nickel for every time I heard "We KNOW you can do the work...." I'd be typing this on my laptop on my yacht on the Mediterranean. I just wanted to scream "OK, if I know I can do the work, and YOU know I can do the work - WTF is the point of me doing it??? Am I a student or a trained seal?"

The curriculum was cookie-cutter and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, like they were programming robots, not teaching people. Students are individuals, not something to try to stuff into a template.

When I had a teacher who challenged me (there were a couple), or I found the material interesting, I excelled.

The other negative aspect of boredom was that I tended to get in trouble - for lack of anything better to do. Every year between third grade and maybe my sophomore year in high school, my mother got called to the school at least once. (I know, that's probably hard for you to believe...)

If that all isn't bad enough, let's throw one more strike against me into the mix: One of my character faults has always been issues with authority. I never was one to grant respect just because someone had a title, or to do something "because I said so". (Needless to say, Catholic school was NOT a good fit for me....) (Even today, this "flaw" still causes me grief, but I'm completely unrepentant!)

It's only more recently that I began to realize that the one thing they don't teach in school is how to THINK. Time after time, I see people around me -some with a lot more education than I - who are very good at making decisions and giving answers as long as the situation fits neatly into a little preprogrammed box. As soon as things get a little off-kilter, they're lost. They don't know how to really narrow things down, to drill down to what the real issues are and are incapable of original, creative thought.

Maybe that's what I truly didn't like about school - everything was predigested and confined to very narrow parameters. There was no room for originality or creativity.

Oh well, it all worked out in the end.

Even though I really had no direction, I knew in school that I didn't want to sit behind a desk like my dad - I wanted to make things. I focused on my shop classes and Carpentry in vocational school. The housing market was in the toilet when I graduated, so I ended up going in my second-favorite direction: metalworking. For the last thirty years or so, it's paid the bills and been "berry berry good to me". Even now, I see I was right - a desk job would have been sheer misery and my job does allow me a great deal of creative outlet. (Now if I could just do something about my issues with authority and my tendency to get myself in trouble...)

But after thirty years of that, I feel I need fresh challenges again - I'm just sort of sleepwalking through my days.

It's time to reinvent the MCMAWG.

(A few years ago, I thought about going into teaching, but decided I didn't want to be just another hamster in the wheel handing out pre-digested material that conformed to the NYS Board of Regents draconian standards. Too bad, too, because I think I would have liked it - I like working with kids and challenging them to THINK. For what it's worth, my son told me he thought I would have made a good one).

The Brilliance of Alfred Hawthorne Hill (1924-1992)...

...(better known by his "stage" name Benny Hill).

I'm not sure why sometimes I'm reluctant to admit this, but I am a huge fan of Benny's work. I guess it's because far too many simply see him as a dirty old man.

I think part of the reason is the culture gap between England and the US. What's acceptable in England (home of Page Three girls) is seen as - at best- crude, here in the Puritanical US.

In just dismissing him as a lecher, they're missing the brilliant, dead-on parodies and the chameleon-like talent he had for assuming all sorts of personas. While many of these were larger-than-life and ridiculous, they were still completely believable. I also think that most people who dismiss him never really watched the show. How could they do so and not admire the razor sharp wit and clever wordplay?

What they also apparently miss is that, even though there may be skimpily clad women in a sketch, it's Benny (and/or Jackie Wright) that are the butt of the joke, not the women. The underlying joke was always that men will make complete fools of themselves when there are attractive women around.

Yeah, I found the dancers to be kind of crass - but remember, here in the States, we had the "Solid Gold" dancers on at around the same time and they were almost as bad - and yeah, some of the racial stereotype portrayals make me cringe a little, but none of it was ever mean-spirited. Insensitive, perhaps, but completely without malice.

I suppose there are those who dismiss his humor as highly derivative of burlesque, but that was deliberate on Benny's part - that's where he cut his chops, evidenced in no small part by him changing his name to honor his idol Jack Benny.

What I think is also cool is that most of the humor translates - across time and culture. My son, at four years old, used to come downstairs on a Saturday morning and shove one of my Benny tapes in the VCR. I can also imagine the ridiculous slapstick humor being understood and appreciated by someone who doesn't speak English. Anyone can watch Benny do a pratfall and get the joke.

I think this world full of malicious and/or just plain stupid humor could use a Benny or two - if only to remind us to remember to laugh at ourselves, once in a while.

Let me tell you about my dad........

The earliest memory I have of my dad was when I was....I dunno - three? I either had had a nightmare or was too troubled to go to sleep. Apparently I'd watched something on TV about Martians or something, because I was gripped with fear about them invading. I said something to my dad about it and he merely shrugged and said "If they wanted to invade, don't you think they'd have been here by now?". Now that may not sound very reassuring, but to me, the logic was unassailable, and whatever my concerns might have been, they vanished like smoke.

When I was four, I tripped and fell and cut my arm on some broken glass. Dad took me to get stitches, and promised me a new squirt gun if I didn't cry. I cried. He bought me a squirt gun anyway.

Nineteen sixty seven brought a new town and a new school. The day before my first day, he walked me the four or five blocks, ostensibly to make sure I knew the way and was ok with it. On the way home, we stopped at the little dairy bar by the school and he bought me a milkshake. That was special - guess it must have been if it still sticks with me forty three years later.

At eight years old, he finally managed to cajole me into riding a two wheeler - something I'd wanted no part of prior to that. He also took me across the street to the ice rink in the winter and taught me to skate. He took me skiing.

That was my dad.

I don't have many early childhood memories about my dad - or much else, for that matter - but he just seemed to always be there, solid and dependable.

As I got older, I remember the occasional fishing trip. We fished for hours and didn't really say much more than "pass the worms", but it seemed like we didn't have to. Drove my mom nuts.

My dad was, indeed a man of few words, but when he spoke, it had weight. Whenever I fucked up, (often...) my mom's tactic was to get physical. That never worked. My dad, on the other hand, would just sit you down and talk to you. By the time he was through, you felt like a piece of shit for whatever transgression you'd committed. I'd rather have had mom take the belt to me. THAT, I knew how to deal with.

Sometimes, he was a man of less than a few words. Once, some of my genius buddies and I got busted for bombing cars with snowballs and my dad had to come to the police station and get me. He didn't say a word, all the way home - that was the longest four block car ride of my life.

I don't even ever remember him raising his voice. As a far better writer than I said: "His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand".

When I was about fourteen or so, my dad and I were at the camp, cutting wood. Off in the distance, I heard my father call me. He'd cut himself with the chainsaw. I led him to the neighbors and we got him to the doctors and patched up, but what struck me and stuck with me, was that that was the first time I'd heard fear in my father's voice. My bulletproof dad?

Every so often, a facet of him would emerge that would surprise me - once, when my mom was away, he grabbed some burgers and stuff and a couple of people from his office and we had a picnic at Lake Delta. This was puzzling to me, because this was something we never did. Was my mom holding him back?

Then there was the time he lost his job - to keep the money coming in, he took a job as a short-order cook. My dad! My desk-bound, suit & tie dad! Funny part was, he found out he loved it. Had there been any money in it, he may have stuck with it.

I gradually grew up and stopped being such a fuck-up...at least I hope he saw it that way.

He taught me to drive. We still went to camp, and fishing occasionally, but I had a social life now. Besides, we had time.

I came home from somewhere one day and one of my buddies told me they'd taken my dad to the hospital. When you're twenty two, life isn't scary, and I assumed he'd accidentally cut himself again. Nope. Heart attack. Too many years of no exercise, high stress, too much weight and too many cigarettes.

The heart attack actually had a bright side - as part of his recovery he began riding one of my bikes, with me. Role reversal, of sorts. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, they'd found something more ominous than the heart issues: lung cancer. I got to learn what the word "metastasized" meant. The day they confirmed that it had spread, I just remember him telling my mom and I that he loved us, as we sat in some dismal hospital room.

I still had no idea how serious it was. When you're 22, death is something that happens to other people - old people.

He started chemo and radiation - and began gobbling Tylenol, like they were M&Ms. I'd lay awake at night, and listen to him shuffling around the house - unable to sleep - and wonder "Why him?". If anyone deserved it, it was me.

I drove him to his radiation treatments - I don't think he needed me to drive, but he wanted the company...and it was a bit of a bonding time. We made small talk. Nothing serious, but it was kind of like when we went fishing - we didn't need to say anything.

He got weaker and weaker and ended up back in the VA hospital.

I still had no fucking clue.

One night, as I was leaving, he looked up at me and, for the first time in days, his pale, blue eyes weren't clouded by the drugs. He was there, all there. He smiled and waved goodbye weakly. I went home.

The next morning, I got a phone call: He was dead. He was 53, I was 23.

"I wasn't there that morning, that my father passed away".

I went home and got on my bike. It just seemed like the thing to do. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from me. I flew.

The years have rolled inexorably onward, but sometimes, 23 years just melts away and things are as fresh and as raw as 1983 - except made worse by all the things he and I missed out on in the interim.

"I didn't get to tell him, all the things I had to say".


Simple things, like:

"Meet your grandson."
"Let's go have a beer".
"I bought a house."
"See? I didn't turn out half bad..."
"Hey, let's do that backpack trip you always wanted to do..."


"I just wish I could have told him...."

The Death of Civility

Lately, I've been wondering about the rudeness and inconsiderate behavior I see all around me.

My first thought was "Am I just getting old?" Well I am, and I wondered if I am now going through what every generation goes through as things change around them. " "Kids these days....."

To a degree, that may be true, but it's not exclusively in young people that I see it. It seems to span all generations and socioeconomic demographics. There are polite young people and rude older folks and vice-versa.

Now, I'm not advocating a return to the rigid rules of etiquette of the nineteenth century -or any other time where the interaction between people was framed by class distinctions. What I'm bemoaning the apparent death of is what used to be called "common courtesy". Holding a door for someone behind you. Leaving a gap between you and the car ahead of you at the stoplight to allow someone to pull out of a parking lot. Acknowledging the people who wait on you in restaurants or cash you out at the store.

"So what"? "Who cares?" On the face of it, it seems trivial, but what really disturbs me is what it implies. "You don't exist - it's all about ME".

This petty selfishness is spiral in nature - from letting a door go in someone's face it's not that big a step to road rage and worse.

This lack of respect and awareness of the others around you seems to be growing and seems to be related to population density.

When I go up north to camp, I'm always pleasantly surprised by how friendly and polite people are, how unhurried they are. The larger the municipality the more this goes the other way. Walk past someone in New York City, on fire, and they won't even notice.

As melodramatic as it sounds, is there really much hope, when we can't even be civil to our neighbors - much less someone halfway around the world, with a different language and culture?

For a few moments after 9/11, I saw people actually acknowledge each other, and show a little respect.

That didn't last too long.

So maybe there is something to it and I'm not just getting old and crochety.

Now get off my lawn.

Mentors.

"It's not whether or not you fall in the shit - but how you get yourself out of it". I found myself quoting those wise words yesterday - thirty some-odd years after have had them said to me by one of my earliest mentors - the late Jim Higgins.

I was all of about 20, working in a small, local machine shop. Jim kind of took me under his wing and taught me a lot. I liked working with him because whenever I screwed something up (usually on an hourly basis) and I had to "go to confession", he'd just say "Why you goddamn dummy....Ok here's how we're going to fix this..." He was a funny character - tall, skinny, gangly. I have no idea how old he was, but I'm thinking he was at least in his sixties. He had snow white hair and a mustache to match - except where it was stained yellow from his ever-present cigar. He had a crooked, snaggle-toothed grin and an absolute cackle for a laugh. He told me all kinds of funny stories about the people and the things that had happened at that shop. (Jim had been there a long time).

He taught me other things too - things about how to manipulate people. He told me one time that they had a foreman that everyone hated. The guys in the shop got together and chipped in to buy him a very nice cashmere sweater and presented it to him at the Christmas party. They got the owner of the shop nothing. The foreman was gone shortly thereafter. Pretty crafty.

One night Jim, Dick and I (there were only three of us on second shift) were all hanging around Jim's bench where we spent our breaks... except break was long since over. The owner of the shop came in and, before he got beyond the end of Jim's bench, Jim jumped up and started yelling at him about something the day shift guys had done. When all was said and done, he had the shop owner telling Jim that he'd look into it and backing away. As we walked away from our "extended" break, Jim looked at me and said "Did you notice how he didn't notice we were on break when we weren't supposed to be....?" ....and he cackled loud and long.

I miss him.

A few years later, I was working at a steel mill and another veteran took me under his tutelage. Al was his name. He didn't teach me much about being a toolmaker, but boy he taught me the ins and outs of working in a union steel mill. If anyone knew how to work the system, it was Al.

He was an odd duck. If he liked you, he'd give you the shirt off his back, but if he DIDN'T like you, he was merciless. He used to be a heavy, heavy drinker. He'd bring in a quart of vodka a night in his Thermos and it was empty when he left. Fortunately, by the time I met him, he'd mended his ways.

He was the one who explained to me that, if you were in the mill, they could force you to stay (for overtime), but if you were home, they couldn't MAKE you come in. He said "If they try that shit, just tell them you've been drinking, and you'll need a ride in - but then they'll send you home for being in an unfit condition, so they might as well not come and get you". Flawless logic.

Vacations were handled in a rather unfair fashion: no more than two guys were allowed to be on vacation at the same time, and the vacation calendar was filled out by seniority. By the time the calendar got to me, (low man on the totem pole) everything between Memorial Day and Labor Day was long gone. I really wanted to take a certain week off in August, to go to a motorcycle rally, but it didn't look like there was any chance of that at all. If someone "vacated" a week on the calendar, it was supposed to be trickled down through the seniority all over again. Al, of course, had a solution: he told me to take a certain week in December (that he wanted) that was open - and because he had quite a bit of seniority, he'd take the week I wanted. At the last minute, he said "we'll switch - at that point, no one else will want to make plans at the last minute and they'll let it go....." He was right, of course, and I got to go to my motorcycle rally.

One time, we got written up for being on break when we weren't supposed to be, but wise Al, worked the system and made them take back the write-up. He claimed we'd been working on a breakdown and had worked through our break, so we took break late. Since they hadn't seen us sit down....they had to take back the write-up.

Now, some twenty-odd years later, I find myself in a bit of role reversal. We have a young engineer, who comes to me for advice from time to time. He's a good egg and a very sharp cookie. I find myself telling him things like "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" and "It's not whether or not you fall in the shit...."