My particular friend

Whoomph! and a half second later, another Whoomph!

Our motor home wobbled as the blast hit us and then hit again. We went outside on Saturday afternoon and saw the contrail in the sky over our heads. Oh, that was the Discovery Shuttle going through the sound barrier - twice - as she returned to Cape Canaveral on the east coast of Florida after doing more than five million miles chasing around the earth at 17,500 miles an hour over the past 10 days.

It was a satisfactory conclusion to a visit we were enjoying with Richard Curtis, above right, the just-retired managing editor for graphics and design with USA Today. Richard and I worked together back in the mid-seventies at the St. Petersburg Times here in Florida. Actually, we both were fired from that newspaper on the same day back in 1975.

And, coincidentally, on Thursday evening of this week the guy who fired me was the honored guest of a Public Television business journal. So here we were, Richard and I, visiting together in the balmy Florida air.

Richard had just completed a week-long workshop to train journalism trainers at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

Both of us went on to bigger and better things after St. Pete. So neither of us harbor any resentment or angst about that awful day 34 years ago when he was called into the managing editor's office while I was summoned to the executive editor's office.

Without any warning, each of us was told it was over for us. We had been running the newsfeatures department at the St. Pete Times, doing some pretty amazing journalism for the time, particularly in writing about consumer affairs. The paper's coverage had recently been lauded by Time Magazine, being held up as an example of community journalism that looked out for the reader's interests.

But our reporting was so aggressive that we had exposed some local advertisers for their shady bait and switch selling techniques. As a result, the newspaper could point to lost revenue as a result of the stories.

Neither Richard nor I had received any warning that we were perhaps too aggressive. So each of us was rocked when we were told it was time for us to empty our desks and leave that very afternoon.

I returned to my desk, shaken, and saw Richard coming out of the managing editor's office. I assumed that he had been called in to be promoted to be the newsfeatures editor, as my replacement. I congratulated him on his promotion. He looked as me as if I were insane. "I was just fired as well," he said.

We had a party that night, with all the staff. And then we set about redesigning our lives.

Richard told me he had had dinner last Sunday with the then-managing editor of the newspaper, Robert Haiman. He actually had the good grace to apologize to Richard for the firing. He said it was one the great mistakes of his professional life. I'm still awaiting the apology to me.

As Richard said, though, it was the best thing that happened to him for it eventually took him to USA Today before it was even born. He was in at the founding of the paper and has left a substantial mark on American journalism.

Cat Connections

We have a motor homing friend who alerted us to the story of Sammy the cat that lives in a post office in Alabama.

"This month while watching CNN News on TV, we saw a story about a cat named Sammy who lives in Notasulga, Alabama.  He resides at the U.S. Post Office and takes comfort on a sunlit window shelf inside the post office.  He is greeted each day by many people who have come to love the postal mascot.  

"One day a grumpy customer reported the furry vagrant as not belonging in the post office because he did no business there.  The powers that be acted swiftly and had poor Sammy evicted with no notice. But one of the town’s residents found a loophole and purchased a P.O. Box in Sammy’s name, thus Sammy had a right to be in the post office because he had Box # 173 and can now legally receive mail.  And mail he did receive!!! 

 "One of the residents helped Sammy read the hundreds of letters sent from all over America.  There were kitty gifts, food, toys and yes, even money.  Sammy decided to donate the money to the local animal shelter to help his comrades get their three squares and a bed.  With his new found popularity, Sammy now lives in the lap of luxury, no longer homeless. The locals feel that his next project may be to run for public office.  The lesson here…………….mess with a cat, get the claws!!   Care to send Sammy a note?  His address is:                   

Sammy the Cat

U.S. Post Office

Box 173

Notasulga, Alabama"

So that's what Chai did. Her lack of opposable thumbs is no impediment but I did have to do the typing, mostly because her spelling is just beyond awful. Here's what she sent to Sammy:

"Hey, guy, I'm quite impressed with how you have manipulated the humans in your little town. Seems to me you are an inspiration to all of us smarter cats and I plan to follow in your footprints.

"Allow me to tell you something of my own exploits. I am six years old, according to the human calendar. I'm a trim eight pounds, and I pretty well rule the roost at my home. I also have the unique distinction among all the cats I know of having traveled completely around the world. I left the U.S. in August 2003 from Newark Airport. I flew with the people who like to be known as master and mistress to Seattle, then on to Taiwan. The people in the airport there spoke no English and they were surprised when the mistress refused to allow them to X-ray her red carrying bag because I was inside it. They thought she was saying "Camera" when they asked what was inside. It dawned on them she was carrying a cat when she said "Meow, Meow." So they all crowded around to pet me and then passed me through.

"When I came into Phnom Penh in Cambodia the people at the Immigration counter didn't even know I was there. I just sat in my red bag and didn't make a sound. A year later, after teaching Cambodian people how to play with cats (I had heard the master say the local people eat cats), I left and flew to Thailand where I was very close to the spiritual home of all Siamese Cats. This country felt different to me, mostly because they revere things like cats and kings. Anyway, I flew to Germany, then to Spain before returning to Germany and then back to the U.S. So, you can see, I have seen much more than the inside of a post office. Actually, I have never seen the inside of a post office. So that may be something I'll see if the handlers can show me before we leave Florida.

"Enjoy your life, Sammy. If we drive through Notasulga, Alabama, we'll definitely stop by and maybe buy you a stamp so you can send out a letter.

"Thanks for keeping life interesting. Chai."

Reports Just In from 1955

It is spring-cleaning time in our motor home. We live on a knife-edge, attempting to balance our weight/capacity ratio (we have a carrying capacity of just over 1,500 pounds after we fill our tanks), so our minimalist lifestyle constantly needs monitoring. Like all earthlings we tend to pick up the stuff of life (books, cards, new equipment, Jo's paintings, clothing). So the weight is always exceeding capacity.

I thought you might get a chuckle about some notes I uncovered. They'd been passed along by my brother, Bill, when we visited with him outside London in 2007. He'd found them while closing out my family's home in Scotland after our dad died in the 1990s. They were notes written by my first employer, a photographer, back in 1955.

Wilson Groat's initial apprenticeship agreement (I had just turned 15 at the time) noted that he would start my pay at 20 shillings per week. That's one pound per week. Currently, a pound is worth $1.46. It was worth a little more back then - around $2.40, as I recall).

Mr. Groat took pains to inform my parents that this payment was quite a bit in excess of what the Institute of British Photographers required that he pay me.  He did warn he would deduct from my pay should I waste materials in the course of my duties, however.

Sept. 1, 1955

" Development of films: Good. Contact printing: Very erratic, sometimes quite good, other times poor. Proportion of wastage of paper very bad this week.

"Dealing with customers: Quite good, but Robert is apt to become flustered on occasions. He almost gave one customer 10 shillings too much change yesterday.

"Punctuality: Robert's punctuality is excellent.

"General: Robert is not nearly meticulous enough. He makes mistakes and turns out bad work due to non-attention to details. He has not made a success of the developing and printing for the amateur side of the business which was allotted to him in an effort to increase his sense of responsibility and sense of order. Apart from the  technical side, he has made glaring mistakes in the straightforward sorting of prints, etc. He seems incapable at time of remembering what he has been told. 

"On the credit side, his appearance is always smart, and he is very obliging. He has a pleasant nature, which goes a long way in permitting his superiors (that would be Mr. Groat) to overlook his mistakes. He requires constant supervision at the moment (three months on the job) but I feel we shall see a great improvement shortly. 

"To ensure an improvement, Robert will be subject to the strictest possible supervision in all he does, no matter how trivial, and will not be permitted to work on his own again until we are quite confident he can cope." 

I do remember working in the darkroom developing roll after roll of film. Wilson Groat found the cheapest way to process the film was to fill a clay pipe with developer. I would clip the rolls of film to rods and hang them in the pipe, agitating when necessary. The damned film often would slip off the clips and end up at the bottom of the tank. As a result, I'd have to fish for the escaped film with a long rod, dragging the film up the side of the tank. You can imagine the quality of the negatives when they would be printed after this scraping exercise.

Mr. Groat submitted a second report  six-months into the apprenticeship. I was still being praised for punctuality and turnout.

"General: A gradual improvement is noted, and steady, if somewhat belated, progress is now being made. An improvement in Robert's sense of responsibility is also obvious.

"In an effort to give him some encouragement, his pay was recently raised. This award is not to be considered as an award for merit, and indeed, will be withdrawn if satisfactory progress does not continue. He is still substantially exceeding the margin of wastage of materials permitted, and his increase in pay means he will be open to make good this wastage to a greater extent than previously. Invariably, such wastage is caused through neglect of commonsense working arrangements which by now should be second nature to him. 

"I feel if we are absolutely rigorous  in the matter of debiting him for his misdemeanours  of this nature, the inmportance of clean and tidy workmanship to the job in hand will be brought home to him."

I stayed with Wilson Groat for a year, and he promoted me to being his sidekick photographer for weddings. While he shot with the plate camera, my job was to shoot with a lovely little Leica 35mm camera. I would capture "the moment", the casual shot, the experimental and the creative stuff. Then I'd have to develop and print it.

I left him after a year for the siren song of journalism. I was employed for 30 shillings a week at The Daily Herald in Edinburgh. My principal task there was to brew 20 cups each of tea per day for the chief (and only) reporter and the circulation manager.

The picture at the top of this blog, by the way, was shot of me at age 18. By that time, I had moved on to The Scotsman, the national newspaper of Scotland. Reporters and lesser mortals like me would take off on weekends to climb Scotland's mountains. This was a winter climb of  Ben Cruachan on the western edge of Scotland.

Stepping Back in Time

We stepped through a looking glass and came out two hundred years ago. It was a wonderful journey.  And it all started because our motor home died.

Jo and I drove our RV motor home half-way across Florida to a rally in Wauchula. We arrived at the campground, went in to register, came out and when I cranked the engine, it died.

Fuel pump was dead. We eventually were towed to a repair shop (this process took five hours from start to finish) where the owner of the shop had to drop the full (80 gallons) fuel tank under the motor home. He did this after a few hours and retrieved the dead fuel pump which was built into the fuel tank. It took him another hour to locate a similar pump and Jo and I drove off to Tampa (185 miles round-trip) to retrieve the new (and expensive pump). By now, I was muttering about not having much fun.

But here's where lemons began to become possible lemonade. On our way back to Wauchula, we saw an encampment on an escarpment off to our right. There were hundreds of tents and tepees. And a sign indicated there was a pre-1840 re-enactment scheduled for the next day and Saturday.

We tracked down information about the event on the Internet when we got back to the repair shop. By now, the mechanic had jacked up the rear of our home and it was going to have to stay that way through the night. When we went to bed, we definitely had a tendency to want to slide off the bed. As we lay there, I felt a little bit like Lenin or Ho Chi Minh in their tombs, all propped up nicely so the visiting public could walk by and pay homage.

We made it through a nasty night of coldness. The temperature dropped to 23 degrees F. When we awoke there was a coating of frost on our car and on the hundreds of tires that we slept among in the yard.

Jo made coffee and cooked bacon and eggs (difficult to do when they want to slide forward in the pan). And then we headed off to the re-enactment in Alafia River.
We were among the first to arrive and we strolled among the more than 1,200 re-enactors as they were just getting up and setting their pots and pans on the open fires all through the campground.

They greeted us warmly. Each person was wearing the rough clothing of the period. Men were in their coonskin caps. One old timer looked splendid in his hat made from a timber wolf.

We made our way through the camp to the Indian section (dozens of tepees). A particularly colorful tepee caught my attention. I was admiring and photographing the structure when the owner and his wife stepped out and invited us in. He told me he was a Blackfoot, although he had some McGowan blood from Scotland in him. "The Blackfoot all were considered troublemakers among the other tribes," he said. "So that, along with being a McGowan made the other tribal people here question if they wanted to set their tepees near ours," he said with a laugh.

His name was "Smarter Than Horses" he said. But he said the white man had changed his name to just 'Smart'. He introduced his wife, a Shawnee woman, petite with light hair. She told us her Shawnee name is "Pegs of Wood" But it too had been abbreviated by the whites to "Pegs". They had come down from Ohio.

They shared with us how the tepee is built initially with four tent poles. Other tribes use three tent poles initially. But he was sure his four poles were superior. He explained how the vent at the top of the tepee can control the draught so they can have a fire going inside the tepee.

We strolled on and heard singing coming from a large tent. We ducked under the canvas flap and found ourselves inside a bonafide classroom. Youngsters sat at wooden desks with their rough-woven coats, while some of the young girls wore pretty pinafore dresses and long woolen stockings. A man and his wife were teaching them about the battle of Culloden (1745) in Scotland. These kids were being treated to a genuine "You Are There" moment in history. The man sang them a song he and his wife had written about the battle - the last battle in which the Scots fought for their freedom against the yoke of the English King.

He finished his lesson, sang a prayer, and certificates were handed out to each of the children, along with letters that could be given by the children to their various schools so they could be credited with attending a school program. I liked how the children were totally captured in the moment.

We walked around in the now-warming sun and enjoyed chatting with the enactors who seem completely into the moment. When I came upon a woman who was cooking a turkey over a spit on an open fire, her sister was photographing her with a digital camera. She begged me not to take a picture of her while she held the digital camera since that would not be authentic to the time period. I did note, however, that most of the people did carry a cellphone. No watches were visible, however.

We stopped into an eating place and I had a "Prairie Dog" while Jo had a piece of fried dough. My dog was a Polish sausage, dipped in dough and deep fat fried. The owner of the establishment said he had found the recipe for the dough in a young lady's journal from 1793. He adapted the recipe and Jo said her's was excellent. I had a rootbeer (all natural, of course). They are not allowed to sell modern drinks like Pepsi or Cokes.

A young musician took the stage to provide a demonstration of fiddling. He initially played a one-stringed Asian instrument and made it sound very much like an American fiddle. He did that, he said, to illustrate the point that, in music, we all are one. Then he picked up a borrowed fiddle from the 1800s and played it with gusto.

This adventure took our minds of the uncertainty of the sickly motor home. So it was a delight to drive back to it and find it restored to full health.

We then drove off to enjoy our rally... a little late. But better late than never.

If you are still with me, you might be interested in the photo album of the event. You'll even be able to click on a couple of movies I shot in the classroom and of the musician. If you click on the picture at the top left of the blog, that will actually take you to the photo albums. Enjoy.

End of Western Civilization

I'm struggling with my own culture war. I have seen the end of western civilization as we know it. It's not a pretty sight.

Jo and I drove north to Tampa, Florida, for the annual RV show. Not that we are interested in buying a new motor home. But - just like with sailboats - it never hurts to look. You always find interesting ideas.

After spending some times in the vendor booths - hundreds of them - which try to sell you everything you don't need, we stumbled into a pet store. Yes, there are specialists who do nothing else in this world but pander to the nuttiness of the American dog lover. They were selling pooch carts, with screened-in beds on wheels so you can take your dog for a "walk". Isn't this why dogs have four legs? Anyway, there are dozens of dog carriages to meet every size of pooch. And They don't leave it at that. There is a variety of dog clothing, with rhinestones and bling that a blind man could see.

Having seen this, my spirits were already on the downslope. Now we entered the aisles of motor homes. This is a big show - very big. There are maybe thousands of motor homes, trailers, fifth wheels, pop-up. These range from tiny i-trailers, as they are called. These are 12-feet long and have a pop-up tent over the kitchen which is at the end of the trailer.

We visited with a whole host of the iconic Airstream trailers. These are aluminum tubes and have a cool efficiency about them. They are highly priced but tend of be superior in terms of utilization of space. We have a couple of friends who are minimalists. They've been scouting Airstreams for that moment that is not too distant when they can slip the bonds of working life.

We came up upon a two-story 52-foot-long motor home that was hanging off the end of a mammoth Freightliner truck. It's second floor pops up when you reach your destination so the motor home is 19 feet high.
A bit excessive, I thought. But pretty incredible.

We made our way down the line of mobile homes and came to one with a $850,000 price tag on it. It had a porch that could actually be wound down from what was the side of the motor home. The porch was about eight feet deep by 12 feet long. A 32-inch LCD television popped out of a slot in the wall so you could have your TV out on the porch. I wondered why it isn't good enough to step outside your motor home and sit on a chair on the ground. Does life indeed get better when your porch is four feet off the ground.

We visited the top of the line Prevost line of motor homes. These are in the $2-million-plus range. You are asked to remove your shoes as you enter. What you discover, however, is the granite floor (can you imagine the weight of this 45-foot-long tile floor?) is heated so your feet are kept cozy on a cool day. Outside the motor home a 52-inch TV pivoted from the wall of the coach so you can watch your shows while sitting outside.

Perhaps all this hoopla demonstrates the eternal optimism of the American consumer - or manufacturer of consumer goods. But, to me, it all seemed just another example of American excess.

Meet Georgie

Georgie is a nice enough guy; a little short of a full load. But he's a decent kind of guy. He is our neighbor in the campground. He works hard at Walmart and at the local middle school where he's a janitor at both places.
Georgie (not his real name) likes to come out of his disintegrating trailer and sits with me while I rock on my chair outside our motor home. He stays too long – perhaps because of diminished mental ability or diminished social skills – and I have to retreat inside because Georgie just wants to hang around too long.
He was born in Indiana and has worked in Ohio. Then his mother and stepfather brought him to Florida. And here he is. He's 49 years old.
I did chuckle the other day when he asked where I have been in the world. I told him I've been to 35 countries and then named a few of my favorites. He considered this for a bit. Then he said, “my mom took me to a water park in Tampa when we came to Florida.”
So Georgie is my personal challenge while we live at the park. I have taken him under my wing with my job to help him understand a bit more of our world.
He generally wants to tell me about his work schedule. And he does work hard – or, at least, he works long. He says he doesn't get much respect for his work. And he thinks his jobs might be in jeopardy because of the collapsing economy. He says he doesn't understand this because he sees so many people coming into Walmart every time he's in there. When I try to explain low margin marketing, poor Georgie doesn't connect to the notion that Walmart works on volume and makes a tiny profit on every piece of merchandise. So I still have lots of work in this area.
Georgie does like the cat and the cat likes him. She climbed on his lap yesterday as we sat in the sun. The cat nuzzled into his armpit and then gave him a little love bite. She has a tendency to do this when she likes the body odor. He thought that was nice of her.

Jo and I have committed to remaining at our Florida park until the end of May because of the accident and the repair time necessary. So we are hunkering down. We find we miss the ocean and we have taken to loading our chairs into the car and driving to the Gulf of Mexico where we relax in the shade of a palm tree and listen to the waves lapping on the shore.
The joy of watching Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Ibis and Wood Storks, as well as Pelicans makes for entertainment. The other day we came upon 70 White Pelicans. These enormous birds have a wingspan between 8 and 10 feet. They collect food in a completely different way from the Brown Pelicans. Browns like to glide across the water at about 15 feet. You watch them point their beaks downward as they spot fish. Then they simply fall out of the sky like pterodactyls. They catch the fish easily and then sit on the water while the flip the fish around in their beak so they can slide the live fish down their throats. Whites, on the other hand, works as a group to surround the fish. They swoop in for the kill while the fish are in a ball in the water and they collectively scoop up the food while swimming on the top of the water.

Chai's Blog

I don't know about you folks. But the utter insensitivity I experienced this afternoon takes the biscuit. Let me give you the facts.

At 4 this afternoon, I was sitting on the dash of the motor home when a plethora (I believe that means a large number, according to the boss) of mutts began to circle in front of our home. There's this nice little grass open space - usually used by dogs that walk by and pee on, I might mention – and there were suddenly nine or ten dogs parked out there, no more than 12 feet from my nose. They got in a circle when a large lady with an elastic stocking on one leg began coaching the owners of these vermin.

Lord, it was hilarious to watch these pathetic creatures as they circled their owners and seemed to actually pay attention. Can you imagine. They paid attention when they were told to “sit” and to “come”. They always were rewarded by treats when they performed like trained seals, by the way. Tssscchhhh! They can be bought off so easily.

I sat there on the dash and watched these goings-on while I licked my genitals. This is the equivalent of a Muslim throwing shoes at a president. It is my way of saying: “You are nothing but a dog!”

The lesson went on for an hour. There was a moronic bulldog. You know the type: Teeth that don't really fit correctly. They pretend to look ferocious but they're really kind of sad creatures. There was a tiny Yorkie – no more than a pound in weight. I could have taken him down so easily. There were two huge puppies that seemed to be a cross between a bloodhound and a German Shepherd. Now these were a little scary – mostly because I would have had some difficulty bringing them to heel. Maybe I could have done it one at a time. But I doubt I could have managed both simultaneously.

There was a German dachshund with her belly scraping the ground. She needed to be put on the barbecue and then put on a bun with some mustard. A poodle rounded out the top bunch (the rest are not worthy even of mention). There's something really dippy about a poodle. Why do they permit themselves to be carved up with these silly-looking pom-poms?

The boss took me outside and put me on my leash. Oh-oh, that got their attention. The instructor with the elastic bandage on her leg became a wrangler and had a hard time getting these pathetic mutts to pay attention to her. They all were intrigued by your's truly. I just sat on the picnic table and kept an eye peeled for any rogue pooch that might go off the reservation and think he might try his hand are being a hero by threatening me. Fat chance!

In other adventures, the parental units loaded me in our snazzy new car and drove me across the state of Florida this past weekend. They were off to visit an old friend. Turns out the old friend now has a West Highland Terrier. I recognize the boss has a thimbleful of Scottish blood left inside him. And he really seemed to like this Scottish dog. He told a story about a terrier like the one we were visiting who is honored by a statue in Edinburgh, Scotland. The dog was named Greyfriar's Bobby. The dog apparently was so loyal to his owner that when the owner died, he lay on the grave of said owner every day for a number of years until he himself died.

I was VERY nervous about having to share a house with a pooch. But, I must admit, the dog actually was kinda of interesting. First of all, she's a "she" and that seemed to make us mates at a certain level. She had a nasty tendency to sniff my butt as I walked through the house – my God, how I hate that.

But we actually did get along. She kept trying to be buddies by presenting me with her pull toy. I think she believed she and I could co-mingle and be friends. It just isn't in my DNA that I would ever be a friend to a dog. But, if the time ever came when I had to choose a dog with whom I might share a house, I definitely could be lured into living alongside Schotzy, the West Highland Terrier. She doesn't bark and she definitely didn't try to dominate me.

So that's my first attempt at blogging. It is hard to get the paws on the correct keys. Hope you like it.