#227 Back to Photography

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who sent me encouragement and suggestions after last month’s rant (or whatever you call it). I really do appreciate your comments and I tried to take them to heart. The first thing I did was to get out one of my old travel cameras—a Lumix ZS100 with 9-91 zoom lens. Next I started taking the camera everywhere I went so I could look for photos instead of waiting for pictures to come to me. I also tried to turn each outing into a project. The result has been good fun with photography again. Not all the pictures I’ve taken this month are keepers and there have been no prize winners that I can see. But then many of the snapshots do tell a story and there may be a hidden gem of two in the lot.

This post will highlight 3 or 4 photos from the outings I’ve recently taken. I used the Lumix camera and a Nikon Z50ii with a 28-400 zoom lens. What I hope this post also shows is that even though my journey with Parkinson’s can still be depressing, with the help of some of you and my wonderful soulmate Anne, I can still find value and interest in doing things I can do. 

AROUND THE HOUSE.

I started looking for things around the house to photograph. Some were common or everyday items and some were put together. Here are a select few.

Anne trimming our roses.

Garlic from our neighbors next door.

The pills that are our lives.

The one who doesn't fit guards them all.

AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

Hope Village, the senior community in which we live, has a communal garden area for residents. I took my camera with me on a short walk to the garden.

Sometimes the flower or fruit isn't the picture.

Each unit in the Garden Homes section of Hope Village has its own patio.

AROUND TOWN.

Any time I went to the small downtown area of Canby I took a camera. It’s a very quiet town most of the time, but I surprised myself with what I found shoot.

The middle of the day in a quiet town.

On a hot day even partial shade is good to find.

Pretty Trash

Any guesses? It's one of two metal shaped benches in front of the old city hall. In the summer we call this burned buns. 

THE COMMUNITY POND.

I had to stop at least once at the Canby community pond. Instead of my usual walk along one side of the park, I sat in my car to see what I could catch around one picnic table.

Duck!  Remember I'm shooting this out a car window.

MOLALLA RIVER STATE PARK.

About three miles out of town is a small state park along the Molalla River. I hardly ever go there for photos because I didn’t think there was much of interest for me. I was surprised how much I could find when I really tried.

Artist Anne at Work

River Rescue Boat...We hope it's just practice.

BIRTHDAY LUNCH.

Anne and I took a trip to Salem to join her youngest sister, Charleen, at the Ankeny Vinyards south of Salem. We celebrated Charleen’s birthday with a lunch of pizza and wine. Another chance for photos.

Sisters

Great pizza. Happy birthday!

OLD PHOTOS. And for those of you who made suggestions about my access to old photo files, I have good news. I have figured ways to access some of the external hard drives and I'm working on others. Thanks.

Fence and barn near Taos, NM.

Sweetheart tree in southern Colorado.

Museum door in Taos, NM.

NEXT: Maybe more and bigger projects.

#226: I'm Sorry and a Couple of Stories

Roses from Anne's Front Garden

#226: I’m Sorry and a Couple of Stories

I’m sorry (there I’ve said it three times already) for the very limited photos in this post. There are several reasons for the absence of photos and a couple of them are good reasons. First, I’m having terrible trouble with my new iMac accepting the old programs in my external photo hard drive. Apple no longer supports the iPhoto program I used for years and which worked well with my ten year old iMac. Now I get the program to load either 5% or 21% of my photo library stored on an external hard drive. I need 100% to load for it to be usable. That failed program contains all my stored photos. So, no old photos easily available. Which brings me to the second set of reasons lumped together.

Reason two: Parkinson’s Disease, my new life. Parkinson’s works against photography in several ways. One of my biggest symptoms is tremors, particularly on the right side. Controlled fairly well with medication most of the time, if I try taking pictures when my meds are wearing off or haven’t yet kicked in, shaking will blur many of the photos I’d take. Also it’s difficult to plan a photo excursion not knowing if it will be a “shaky” day or if my balance will be off. One of Parkinson’s non-motor symptoms, though, is my main reason for no new photos—apathy, the loss of motivation or initiative. One of the most debilitating of my Parkinson’s conditions is that I’ve lost the drive to do much. I used to go places just to take photos and now I can barely get myself to go out a get picture of Anne’s beautiful roses. I’m working on the problem though. Admitting that I’ve let the disease turn me into a couch potato that’s beginning to smell is a start. I’m also trying to come up with ideas for projects that require less energy than I used to have and still be worthy of the effort. Hopefully there will be some new photos for the next post. But for now, I’m sorry.     

Now a couple of new stories (from my early memories journal) about the old me.

Getting the Canby Speech Coach Job

Anne and I wanted to move out of Brookings on the southwest Oregon coast in 1984 and back to the Salem area. I started looking for a speech job since I’d done well at establishing a team at Brookings. I knew there was a job open in Canby—Wilma Hicks, the well respected longtime coach died early in the ’83-’84 school year of cancer. Jack Watson had taken over as coach and I wasn’t interested in being someone’s assistant coach. When at the National Speech Tournament (I had qualified a student, Steven Leek from Brookings) I talked to Jack and he said that he wasn’t staying at Canby—he was just filling in for the year. It was the Head Coach position that was open. 

From Nationals I called the principal at Canby, Bob Christiansen, and asked if the position was still open. He said it was just closing, but if I could meet him in Canby the Monday after Nationals he’d meet with me. I said I’d be there by 1:00.

Anne, Steve and I got back to Brookings on Sunday and after a few hours sleep I got up and drove the 5 hours to Canby on Monday. The principal and I had a good discussion and I knew I had interviewed well when he offered me the job on the spot. I had to check with Anne, and then I accepted the next day.  Later Bob told me that he had closed the job the week before, but for some reason he hadn’t sent the letter to the winning applicant. He said he felt there was some reason to wait. At another time he said hiring me was the best thing he ever did for the school. When at Canby I coached the team to Nationals 16 years in a row, had a student win first place at Nationals in a main event (a first for Oregon), and made speech class a graduation requirement.

As they say, the rest is history.  

On a personal note, I want to thank those who contributed to the 2024-25 Canby speech team when school funds were low. We helped coach Debbie Groff take five students to District and qualified all five to State.  Even though the school district has dropped funding for the future, there is still money enough in our donations to allow a volunteer coach to go to some competitions in 2025-26. Thank you Anne-Marie D., Sam D., Megan F., Rochelle F., Sarah K., Hannah L., Mary M., Laurel S., and Judy M., for joining Anne and I in providing opportunities for the Canby team for one or maybe more years.

Being Bullied

There were two instances that I remember when I was the victim of bullying by peers. The first was in upper elementary school grades. Leroy wasn’t big or tough, but he was rough from a broken or troubled family. He wouldn’t threaten me directly, but he implied if I didn’t share my lunch or my lunch money or do his homework for him that he wouldn’t be my friend any more—and he wouldn’t like that. The bullying lasted part of a school year. It ended when his family moved away. Before he moved away I did a few coping things like walked to school instead of taking the bus which he rode and staying to work late at school. At least once I got his homework done wrong. But then that meant I had to get it wrong too. I never told an adult about the bullying, but I don’t know what I’d have done if it lasted longer.

The second instance was when I was a freshman at Linfield College. I was assigned a room in the jock’s dorm, Memorial Hall, under the football stadium. The resident’s dorm monitor was football star lineman Fred who ended up a pro. Fred bullied everyone and controlled everything that went on in the dorm. My roommate, a sophomore named Loren, was labeled Number One and I was Number Two. We were supposed to call out our numbers when we were called. I would call out my number, “Two!” and hold up my fingers in a “V” sign with the back of my finger out—like a Victory sign. The jocks were so stupid none of them knew I was flipping them off in the British-way, “Two! F___ You!” I also started sleeping on a fraternity brother’s dorm room floor or on a couch in the Omega Delta Phi House (my fraternity). I moved into the fraternity house my second semester even though I had to petition the school to do it.

These are the only examples of being bullied that made any impression on me and I don’t think I was ever someone else’s example of a bully. 

NEXT: Hopefully something with good photos, old or new.

How I Feel at the End of the Day

#225 Some History and Travel Stories

 

This is not the post that I expected to put up this month, but trouble loading older photos from external hard drives has commanded that I punt that plan. The new plan (this post) consists of a memorial I have wanted to present for years and a couple of stories from my travel book (16 Years of Travel in Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales which is still available on Amazon) intermixed with photos taken recently around the Canby Community Park. I hope you like plan B.

R.S.Baker

The pictures of R.S. were taken in 1978.

My introduction to Robert S. Baker, professor of English at Oregon College of Education, was the summer I went from Linfield to OCE in Monmouth. After four years at Linfield I didn’t graduate because of not having a second year of foreign language even though I tried them all. Instead, I transferred into a fifth year program to get my teaching credentials. That summer session I took a massive load of classes, many were lower division to get me up to speed with the education requirements and meet OCE’s requirements for a degree in English. My Linfield major was speech with a minor in English. I needed several writing classes as well some more extensive Lit classes. Thus I met R. S. Baker.

Baker taught a graduate level composition class needed for a fifth year program. I had made my way through Linfield’s English requirements by writing essays—I even ghosted essays for frat brothers for extra income. This one class would be a snap. The summer class was made up of many working teachers getting needed hours or degree requirements and a few undergrads with me somewhere between the two. After some basic class info, professor Baker gave us an in-class writing assignment. The topic was a personal essay about something easy to write on. We turned our essays in and I thought, "Easy peasy."

The next day we all showed up and Balker chose a paper to read to the class—he chose my paper. What a great thrill! He read the one page paper aloud, then looked at me and said, “Mr. Jones, this is a f***ing piece of shit!” He outlined all that was wrong with my writing  and tore the paper in half and threw it in the bin. He read a couple more papers, not as bad as mine, but still weak. He assigned us the next essay and I walked out crushed!

I did better on the next paper. Half the working teachers did not show up for the third session. Those of us who stuck it out worked really hard. I know I never worked so hard for a “B” in my life, but I learned. 

Over that year at OCE I had R.S. for every class I could. When I went for my Masters at OCE (now Western Oregon University) I took more classes from Baker. I was one of numerous R.S. Baker disciples and he became a friend. We’d talk in his office crowded with books and go to jazz concerts together, Not only was Robert S. Baker an outstanding teacher who helped us get the best out of ourselves, I consider him one of the major influences in my life.

Bio

Born Robert Samuel Baker in 1926 in Weed, California. His elementary schooling was in Salem and he graduated from Vancouver HS, WA, in 1944. R.S. spent time as a Merchant Marine and with the Army Signal Corps where he was stationed near New York City where he developed his love for jazz. After his stint with the Army, he went to Pacific University in Forest Grove, graduating with a degree in literature in 1953. He earned his Master’s Degree in English at the University of Chicago in 1956. Baker started his teaching career at OCE where he taught for 31 years. While teaching he published numerous articles in publications such as The Nation and Commentary. He remained a jazz devotee with special affinity for female vocalists. He died on June 26, 2004, and will always be remember for his influence on so many teachers.  

Attack of the Ducks

While touring the far northwest corner of Scotland, from

Durness east towards Tongue, we had one of our most unusual

animal encounters. We were attacked by a flock, herd, bevy, covey,

gaggle, crowd, or what ever you call a gang of crazed ducks. I had

gotten out of the car at an ocean overlook to photograph the view

and was soon accosted by a group of local ducks, at least they all

quacked with a northern Scottish brogue. They kept up their

begging behavior as I walked across the road, but left me when

I headed down toward the beach.

After about ten minutes of picture taking, I walked back to 

the car. Anne had rolled down her window and was shouting 

at me to come feed the ducks who had been pecking the car 

door under her window demanding a ransom of cracker crumbs 

for her release. I found some Carr’s Cheese Melts (our  favorite 

cracker) and lured away the mob who I discovered would fight 

each other to eat right out of my hand. We were several miles 

from even a small village in the remote far northwest corner of 

Scotland, yet the ducks were able to eek out an existence by 

gang attacking tourists. Clever birds!

Attack of Ice Cream Crazed Gulls

In Llandudno (clan-DID-nu), Wales, we hit an absolutely

gorgeous stretch of weather--clear skies, 80 degrees, almost no

wind--in mid April. After golf one afternoon we walked from our B&B

down to the waterfront and then out the Llandudno pier. It was too

early in the season for most of the pier shops and attractions to be

open, but the ice cream shop was doing a brisk business in the fine

weather. We each bought a cone and continued to walk out toward

the end of the pier making jokes about a long walk on a short pier.

Without warning, a gull swooped down and hit Anne’s cone holding

hand, knocking the ice cream and cone to the ground. A couple of

gulls pounced on the dropped cone with relish. 

After seeing what happened to Anne, I guarded my cone 

much more closely. I saw a gull dive at me and turned to the side,

but the gull hit me with a wing and knocked my glasses off. It might

have been the same gull who hit Anne or a different one, I didn’t get

a chance to ask for identification. In trying to keep my glasses from

a watery grave off the pier, I dropped my ice cream cone to the

great delight of another couple of gulls.

Without ice cream cones we walked back to the beginning of

the pier and noticed locals standing next to protective buildings

enjoying their sweet treat. When we told our B&B hosts about the

vicious attacks, they apologized for not telling us that the local birds

were a “tad aggressive.” Tad aggressive! Our military needs these birds!

NEXT: Your guess is as good as mine.