I’ve never lost fascination for the design simplicity of Edward
Hopper’s "Nighthawks," the timeless 1942 exploration of space, light
and complexity of human interaction. Perhaps the most striking
secondary impression of the narrative painting is the austere
surroundings in which he placed the three customers, a different
perspective from my Subway customers.
            
Modern diners with back-lit menu boards, self-serve drink dispensers
and counters that are only for placing orders, are built at four-lane
Interstate crossovers or in rows of fast-food drive thru lanes that
serve only to further eliminate human interaction except for more
frequent cell phone use.
            
Hopper’s diner was long ago demolished. The narrative of human contact
continues to be the subject for artists, even when the subject’s are
Subway or Dairy Queen.

Spent most of the day inside a classroom and firing range as part of a series of classes on gun safety and use as part of a permit process.

Indoor ranges are dark places where little is heard through ear protectors and safety rules are strict. Under perfect conditions I’d place a few strobes in front and to the side of the subject, add a camera downrange and fire them with Pocket Wizards.

That didn’t happen. The best I could come up with, shooting candids without flash, is the moment when exhaust gas and burning powder is expelled at the moment of firing. Still a triumph, under these conditions.

I drive by this just off the highway pizza restaurant sometimes several times a day always aware of it well defined rigid lines and shape. Of course, there’s always the neon “OPEN” sign and back-lit name plate that sometimes are more obvious when balanced against the when balanced against the early evening sky.

Today’s rain added a depth of color and tone to the building and its environs  making it much a more profitable subject for study. Finding the right balance for exposure and slight Photoshop magic required several trips past it today to find the proper light and empty parking spots.

I’ve written before about the flags on the Mains Street bridge over I-71. Today I discovered one of the men who maintains the near-pristine display walking the length of flags and ribbons making sure they were properly attached or lightly damaged from the elements.

I’m not sure if it’s a bad habit or the right thing to do. I find it difficult, especially on a clear day, to pass by a roadside memorial without stopping. There’s a strange moment when I’m crossing the road against traffic or standing in the highway between passing cars searching for the right spot to stand when I think of myself as the next marker at the same place and what I fool I am for even attempting to shoot the photo.

Roadside memorials are common in Ohio. The state typically removes any installations on a major highway right of way angering the families who reinstall the crosses and flowers until that stage of dying that necessitates public observance passes. Most of the rural ones slowly fade and disappear. The most unique I’ve seen is at left. The tree’s wound is healing itself slowly sealing over a photo of it’s victim placed in the gash by family or friend.

Today’s photo, at top, is adjacent frames at a site I found near Coshocton yesterday while traveling on assignment.

Early celebration in Columbus, Ohio, by a Gator alum with a “Two bits. Four bits.” cheer as the OSU-Florida championship game begins.

I’m not a real fan of bowling although I did once break 200 during phys ed class in the eighth grade when bowling was considered an athletic activity for middle schoolers. Probably had more to do with a bowling alley around the corner from school than stronger muscles and bones for adolescents. The bowling alley and the school are both now gone. The bowling alley became a series of storefronts. The school, what was then called a junior high school, was demolished to make room for a city building.

I miss the building because of the great memories it brings me and how it helped define me.

My father told stories about attending the school when it was the only high school in town and how a graduating student decided the best way to celebrate the final day of school was to ride his horse through the halls of the two-story building.

A group of us would sometimes spend our lunch money for a loaf of cinnamon bread from the bakery across the street from where I morning buses dropped us. We’d eat the center out of the still warm bread, ripping the heart out like breaking open a watermelon just for the sweeter center. The spicy dough would sit in our bellies through the noon hour when we would bum food from the girls in the lunchroom.

I returned to the building after three years, nine months and 18 days of military duty to attend Sante Fe Junior College, a perfect place to begin my second attempt at higher education. It was there where I discovered Anais Nin and the Turner Thesis.

The boys in our class were recruited to make sure the bowling alley’s pin machines
functioned properly. This required a short training session at the
beginning of the year which included a safety lesson about the
automated ball return and pin placement device. More science and
engineering instead of athletics.

The scientist in me learned there is a simple order to bowling. Ten pins, one ball, two tries, 300 points rarely scored. I thought of it as more of a physics problem that athletic prowess. Place the ball on a certain path with enough energy in the proper direction and there was no reason to not have a perfect score each game. The variables could all be measured, quantified and repeated. A great science class. It never worked out that way for me although I was one of a few to score greater than 200.

I love storytelling. Especially vivid oral histories like my father’s tales of World War II and his travels to the Aleutians where hands froze to metal rails, and about Shore Patrol in Morocco, and flying home-made kites from the fantail of his destroyer, and the same destroyer having a running gun battle with German tanks on the short cliffs of North Africa, and the days he floated in the Mediterranean Sea after his destroyer was sunk by a torpedo plane, and leave time in New York when my mom rode the Orange Blossom Special up the coastline for a brief tryst in a port-side hotel nine months before I was born. And the tales of watching race cars run on the beach at Daytona before there were oval tracks.

Intricate stories told with colorful detail to complement the aging black and white photos in his photo album. He never denied my requests to hear the stories day or weeks later. When I was older I wondered why he never seemed to tire of telling the stories. I was much older, with children, photos, and stories of my own before I understood his patience.

I was months old before he saw me, his first born. He’d been reported missing in action while floating in an oily sea only to be found days later gangrenous from swallowing the poisonous water littered with the remains of his ship and shipmates. My mother thought for weeks she’d be a widow and I’d never know my father.

He’d survived the battles, returned to the war and arrived home safe at the end, his future and family intact. Now he would sit in his chair, first born in his lap thumbing through photos in the albums, just happy to be able to tell the stories. He rarely talked of his friends who died or complained of missing my first year. He was always happy just be there, to tell the stories.

Today’s photos are far from being as significant as my father’s tales. I spent several hours this morning shooting Ohio State University football fans at the airport on their way to the championship game Sunday night in Arizona. More than 16,000 Buckeye fans were expected to move through the airport today. Almost all were dressed in OSU scarlet and gray with a scattering of black sweat shirts and jackets carrying the OSU logo.

It was easy to find photos in the long lines of scarlet clothing, Buckeye necklaces, and helium filled balloons. Finding the smaller details were a little more difficult. My photographic choices were TSA workers struggling with the overload of a full DC10 charter at 8 in the  morning, including one fan who used a pom-pom as an additional ID tag on the luggage. A small detail in a day long story of fan adoration and dedication.

I’m not sure how many details I now remember from my father’s stories. The broad strokes are there, sometimes refreshed with memories from mentally thumbing again through the album with so many of the photos now removed. The album was circulated among his surviving war buddies who kept some images for themselves. He gave away some to his destroyed ship’s historian. A few just disappeared. The album now sits almost empty in my brother’s collection of family memorabilia, a tattered record of stories told just for the telling, having survived, just for the telling.