Another Perfect One from Accidental Frame Series.

First item on Perfect Docket is that Yours Truly gleefully acquired the drawing table of Late Great Jackie Felix, artist.
YT had been searching on & off for a drawing table for some time, always thwarted by the thought of said drawing table showing up at the studio doors in a FLAT box. Meaning: 500 loose parts, an enclosed allen wrench, and a bevy of tears ... and heartache. Until a rescue operation, as happened with the on-sale elliptical a few years ago.
Thankfully, my patient parents came to the rescue and two hours later voilà - elliptical.

Went to Jackie's studio with LBC and perused her still-full studio teeming with works on paper of all sizes.
Separated top and bottom of drawing table, paid for it, and swept it away into its new creative h.q.
Actually feel the aura of Jackie on it, and know it will inspire the toppermost creative energies to fall out onto the paper at hand.

Speaking of hand, set up next hand model for the next new piece.
And ordered Kat a framed print of the piece that she posed for oso patiently - Flame Hand.

Put in proposal for the next Artists & Models, dubbed Stimulus.
YT's piece, ever-interactive and still incorporating the sale of now-extinct, rare, and precious Polaroids, will be chock full of live Stim Girls, and exuberance.
As is my A&M wont.
I wrote to Polly at HW yesterday that YT has taken part of all but two A&M, and was present as a happy spectator at the first.

YT received a generous grant via NPPA to attend the next Northern Short Course in New Brunswick, NJ.
Ever so excited, it's a wondrous thing to swim amongst one's colleagues and talk shop, pixels,lenses and oso much more for days.
And it's been a long while since YT took on the role of Conventioneer.

Pixel Swim Love.

Flame Hand.

This piece is oso brand new, Flame Hand.
As is my wont, as is my cannot-get-into-studio-mode wont, made a sketch first of the piece and then made it concrete.
Actually, made it with not concrete but one hour's worth of gluing flower petals to Kat's hand - after deconstructing an expanse of Gerber daisies.

CEPA biennial auction happens on April 24th and the section of their site devoted to the biennial hoopla is as lovely as the pub of same purpose.

There is another work in the works and that hand model is reserved. Now waiting for the right flowers to come along. May have to grow them myself, as I did for the exhibition that I had in Olean - hands + all flowers homemade.

Time to make, do, and wend into a late-winter wet snow flaking around the Middling City, desperately, in the op of Yours Truly, needing some fresh new white layers.

Layered Snowy Love.

Sunshine and Windburn.

Totally minding my own art-making business I have become completely windburnt tromping about the Shiney Apple.

Sad to learn yesterday of the passing of poet Gabrielle, a firey spirit who has left this stage too soon. It is a strange modern thing looking at one's FB page and seeing such life, then the slowing down of life, one's last update, and then the sympathetic words from friends.

There is a collection of new images in the little Leica that Yours Truly is happy with, and these might end up in print, on a wall, being the art apple of someone's eye.

That is the hope.

Saw former Middling City residents Dorota, Jason, Justy, and Gretchen yesterday for fun. Gretchen's work was hanging in a building in DUMBO and her work is truly lovely with branches on some pieces reaching out like a partially-captured, handmade forest sample.

Walking through the various galleries Justy and I met up with a gallery owner who he does business with, who was inquiring about making digital files of Robert Frank originals in front of him on his desk - one quite lovely, a compilation of fill stills from a short film made in Nova Scotia.

That is part of the partial magic of yesterday.

More forthcoming.

Forthcoming More Love.

Happy, Spicy.

Could Yours Truly, completely minding her own art-making & looking beeswax on the right side of the Empire State, be any happier this very moment.
I think not.
Firstly, the pesky man who sat alongside me at beloved Café Habana has finally left.
After the several furtive raised eyebrow-raises between me, corner eater (in MY spot), and barista.
He took a few smoke breaks, again to more raised eyebrows.
The last lasting so long that there was speculation between staffers if he might return.
A glance down Prince Street revealed that he of ruddy face and gape-mouthed eating was indeed just a few yards further along the street.
His stare burrowed holes into the left side of my face.
And, as I told the adorable barista, I had to replace my shuffle back atop my reading head to not hear any more sluicing of foodstuffs in his mouth.
And, because of this eater, YT is embarking on yet another new YT-crafted enterprise: Extreme Table Manners Makeover.
This show will be on the road, and will be a slightly different, probably as soon-to-be viral as the dude who documents the disgusting on subways.
After a court of law determined that his bloggings-on about his fellow I think N Train riders was constitutional YT imagines yet more lemmings will attempt to cash in on this reality television show that is life - at times.
But of course YT really intends ETMM as a public service more than anything else.

YT is here in the Shiney Apple to make art.
YT is here to find art.
YT is here to look.
And think.
This is what is called a freelancer's vacation - grabbed when possible.
And working on the road.
And coming up with making-over ops.

Onward to the museum where the mother of YT was wounded two summers ago on trip with YT - New Museum - to see some conceptual work by one Urs Fischer.
Mirrors, body parts, wack scales of objets - a recipe for titillation.

Onwards.

Artful, enterprising Love.

Toxic White Crap @ Co-Op

Egads.

Yours Truly, minding her own subset of business at the co-op, was shocked - shocked - to see a mound of mini marshmallows resembling a mound of mushrooms or somesuch other type of mold emerging from a chafing dish.
YT was getting some morning coffee and to the left was this assemblage of toxic sugar crap, an ill-advised topping for sweet potatoes.
YT loves sweet potatoes and would never top them in such a manner.
A little curry powder, yes.

Was contacted today by NN regarding my image of the candlelight vigil at Merge, for usage on the Buffalo Rising site.
Of course I was happy to oblige.
I will be donating a small new piece to a benefit for Merge and the family of the boy who was killed on Monday - an appropriate piece that is, quite literally, about Love.

Also donating to the CEPA auction, as is my historical wont.
This year is the tenth of this biennial incarnation.

Time to make, do, and make much joy via pixels.

Love of Love, Love.

Frogs, and Rainbows.

Yesterday, minding my own business, as is my steadfast wont, at a gig at the Middling City's dank City Hall, I spotted a field of green.
Specifically, it was a florescent, deep office on one of four hallways to left and right, east and west off the main lobby.
Searching for more individuals doing photographically-interesting things for a publication, I spied the field of green.
I meandered into the office and asked a woman back by the windows who collected the hundreds of stuffed and statuesque frogs.
Her daughter, she told me, many years earlier, had bought her a frog figurine for Valentine's Day. And so began her hobby.
This is a recurring theme of collectors - sometimes it all began with a gift from well-meaning someone.
So now all the clients she sees in her City Hall office, she says, bring her all kinds of frogs.
There was one made out of coal, a stuffed one that a client kissed so that she'd meet a prince, and frogs of all shades of green - and various sizes.
The vibe in the office was light, happy even, a far cry from the adjacent hallway where cold, dark chairs line the walls as individuals await their time in dreaded traffic court.

Speaking of such, Yours Truly received in the mail this week my suitable-for-framing, green certificate from Driver Improvement Program.

Last night drove up to Rainbow Rollerskating Rink for a triad of birthday party - with three other roller chicks.
Veni, vidi, rolli, and after the onslaught of dance music from the 80s and early 90s there was some cake, conviviality, and an onsite bouncehouse.
Once some pesky children cleared out of the bouncehouse, I suggested to Sherry it would be a primo op to bounce, not roll.
So bounce we did.
And this will, as I predicted, be an excellent addition to my plans, hopes, and dreams of having a Perfect 10/10/10 celebration.

Perfect, bouncing Love.

Newbies: 10 10x10 for 1/10 Show

This past Friday, 1/8/10 (luckiest numbers of Yours Truly are 18, and 10 so this was an auspicious date), made some new work with the handy help of hand model Heady - a good-natured beast ever so patient with requests to soften a thumb, to hold arms up in an awkward position so that the light (photons, as we say in the photo trade) may work its magic.

The final result is a suite of ten, for a show at the end of this month at Studio Hart, curated by Molly Jarboe and also with collaborative pieces by Lisa & Andrew - pomes in print and picture.

The images are black & white, each printed as 10x10. No glass, they're printed on durable material and loving the accessibility/immediacy.

Artful Jubilant Love.

"Taking Santa to Connecticut"

Having holly jollies.
This Holiday card rendition, made on the last magical trip to the Shiney Apple.
Magical Love.

Driver Improvement Program (D.I.P.)

Yours Truly plunged into Driver Improvement Program passionately, with gusto, yesterday. For threefold reasons:
1. Point reduction.
2. 10% off car insurance for several years.
3. A suitable-for-framing certificate, to appear in the mail, allegedly, in six weeks.

Notes from yesterday, thirteen pages in the nice little gray moleskin that's been to the Shiney Apple.

Driver Improvement School.
12.19.09

With the spirit, or in the spirit, of journalism, reportage, I show up at D.I.P. in Hamburg along with seventeen other sullen individuals.
Everyone seems to be between the ages of 25-55.
(Final attendance count 22 total, 17 women.)

Instructor D:
Break 10 min. morning.
Break 10 min. afternoon.
45 minutes for lunch.

In case of emergency, like if the boiler blows up, go out the same way that you came in.

Me and the girl to my right (in gray cowl neck sweater), laugh.
Nobody else laughs at the thought of the boiler blowing up but Cowl Neck Girl tells me that she will commence praying for its demise.

(YT leaves coat on. How shaky is this Hamburg Town Hall boiler situation.)

(page 2)
Complicated directions about filling out form - press hard to make four legible copies in for Town Clerk.
10% off collision and
4 points off.
6 weeks from time Court Clerk sends form until we get our certificates.

Woman to my left reeks of ...
Vodka? Literine? Rum?

Instructor D:
You'll take many courses in your life but this is the only one that will possibly save your life.

(YT scans back all grad school, college, high school, elementary school courses and is fairly certain those attendant life skills and life lessons gleaned could is some direct or indirect manner saved the life of YT.)

Page 4, turn to, questions we may have about driving in general.



(page 3)
Any questions about driving, Instructor D asks.

Listerine Lady =
Who has right-of-way in a roundabout.

(We are currently situated about one hundred feet from one of Hamburg's famed roundabouts, not to be confused at all with the double helix death machine on Harlem Road just outside Middling City.)

YT asks Instructor D about how long one should stop at a stop sign.

(This is, in sooth, why YT is here in the first place - a special birthday surprise from an overzealous officer of the law in Hamburg who noted that YT hesitated after a stop sign, checking left and right to see in which direction one might chance upon the MC. Hesitation is weakness and officer pounced.)

Instructor D:
Full cessation of movement, not a Hamburg stop, rolling 10 m.p.h. through a stop.

Cowl Neck girl is suddenly rocking herself.
(She will continue rocking the remaining several hours, apparently rocking herself to consolation.)

(Max. occupancy 52 persons)

Instructor D:
Use caution
(Instructor D rides a motorcycle.)
Some officers want to be hotdogs, and make a name for themselves.



(page 4)
Cowl Neck Girl, after Instructor D asks who thinks they are good drivers says she's a good driver because she's Cautious.

I had also raised my hand so Instructor D asks me. I say I'd take Cowl Neck Girl's answer to another level, to raise it to the level of paranoia.

Instructor D's eyes widen noticeably.

I give examples of things I see every day driving in Buffalo.

(YT mentions people driving through red lights, a near-daily sight, and people driving the wrong way down one-way streets - a weekly sight.)

Most people will be in six accidents.



(page 5)
Instructor D mentions compassion.

(YT likes this very much.)

Doing everything reasonable.
Personal responsibility.
In driving there is not front of the line.

Dim, truck-driving girl tells a story after Instructor D asks who was recently in an accident.

When I was in Buffalo, near downtown, she begins, near that bridge (she means the Peace Bridge), the guy in front of us hit slush, slid into us and we ended up in oncoming traffic.

(It's only 9:40 a.m.)

The heartbeat of this whole course is_____anticipation.

VIDEO!



(page 6)
Instructor D:
Surgery, like driving, is a full-time job.



(page 7)
(Inspired by some artwork commissioned by National Safety Council, YT draws a four-part diagram (to be scanned later) showing eye/ear/nose/hand.
It represents, iconically, the senses, the four things that we need as defensive drivers.



(page 8)
It's now 10:16 a.m.

Now it's 10:35 a.m.

There was just much discussion about tractor-trailers and amount of time it takes to stop–
my question.
CDL (that's Commercial Driver License to You, oh uninitiated, non-D.I.P. person) guy who drives for UPS he, in Ohio, hauls three trailers sometimes and it takes him five miles to stop.

(Really, YT wants to ask, five freakin' miles.)

VIDEO.



(page 9)
Instructor D looks at clock above where Town Justice would sit – it's now 11:13 a.m.

It's 11:34 a.m.


The criminal-looking boy to the left is drawing interlocking hearts.

3 on top – with shadow.
2 on bottom – with haloes.




(page 10)
1:26
How Ilio DiPaolo died – fused ankle bone hit by Chevy Chevette on a June night, torrential rain.

He gimped along, Instructor D states.
He died.

Then, how a cow was killed
by a motorcyclist.



(page 11)
1:35 p.m.
VIDEO.

YT makes Instructor D laugh again
1:52 p.m.
by telling him example of
speeding excuses.
QEW, me passed by other vehicles – how that excuse
didn't work.
(chuckle)

risk of death.



(page 12)



(page 13)
Reasons vs. Excuses


+
And therein lies the documentation of D.I.P.
After page 13, after approximately 1:45, after the class of 22 voted to forge onward and not take an afternoon break, it became obvious that the remainder of the course, post-lunch and under the micro-bursts of flourescent light, would drag on in a seemingly interminable manner.
And YT, ever being a student most diligent, wished to show respect to Instructor D who really is a kind and serious man.
YT thanked him on the way out as we all laid our evaluation sheets in front of him.
Overall - Excellent
Instructor - Excellent
And onwards.

Compassionate, Self-regarding, Driving Love.

TWA @ JFK

Minding my own business, as is my wont, made this image upon landing at The JFK and looking across at the vintage TWA terminal whilst waiting for Ellie's ride who would be carting Yours Truly into the Shiney Apple.
A snap, and a snap, and then a man in day-glo security vest approached YT to say that it was absolutely not alright to make any images of the TWA terminal.
YT was most surprised and asked the question that officers of all genres the world over are always indeed equally shocked to hear - Are you kidding.
No, he was not kidding.
So here is this image, made during the last art-seeking foray, and holiday card image making.
The image made and about to be mailed out embraces both serendipity, and the lighter side of the season.

YT just accepted a slot on Hilbert College's Board of Professional Advisors for their Digital Media and Communication for the next eighteen months.
Always happy to help disseminate all info of the dig variety.

Time to wend to Sweetness 7 for the YT-crafted Motown Holiday Feast from 7-10. Proceeds to a family in need on the west side.
Baked two varieties of cornbread, with buttermilk, for when does one get to pour a whole quart of buttermilk.

Love of Giving.

New Museum - And the Whiff of Irony

In the inbox of yesterday came an advisory and gift suggestion from New Gallery on The Bowery - a first aid kit.
This is absolutely ironic as in the Summer of '08, while there with my beloved parents on a three-day arts and Resto Week extravaganza, my mother slipped and fell in New Museum and what was a lovely visit turned into something from the story boards of The Three Stooges.
My mother fell on their slippery concrete steps.
I saw the fall and ran to her, and instantly knew she'd broken something - from the angle (photogs get angles, amongst other fine points), and from having broken bones and experiencing that post-fall flu-like symptoms sensation.
I rushed to the so-called concession counter for some ice to make an ice pack.
There was no ice.
I was told that there was ice up on the top floor, off a conference room.
Can you get some, I queried.
Alerted by YT, a staff member went in search of A FIRST AID KIT and came up with nothing.
Finally a custodian showed up with some ice in a plastic bag, and a stretchy bandage was located.
There were no accident report forms and a half-sheet of paper was what was provided for information about the facts of the accident.
A get-into-New-Museum-free pass was handed to my mother, who promptly handed it to me.
My mother refused to go to the hospital, and (probably in shock) insisted she was alright, and we flew out later that night after a light dinner.
The next day she went to the hospital, was casted, went through weeks of physical therapy.
So now New Museum has created (rather ridiculous) first aid kits for renewing and new members.
Can't wait to tell my mom this later at the fam feast.

Just back from cheering onwards this year's thousands of Turkey Trotters, coffee in one hand, and a small and enthusiastic dog in the other.
Some stopped to pet said caninus fervidus, nobody (thankfully) wished to sip my coffee.

First call du jour:
Me - (sitting at laptop, looking over news, Googling Starbucks Elmwood then dialing)
Starbucks Employee - Hello, Starbucks, this is (blank), how may I help you?
Me - Hello? You're open? Thank god.
Starbucks Employee - Yup. (mumble)
Me - Bye.
Starbucks Employee - Goodbye!

Today is the birth anniversary of bon vivant/wise woman Gramma Vickie, and that of cousin MJ - of same creds.
What did these two share.
Yours Truly will tell you - the much-admired, oft-compelling trait of candour.
YT grew up in gorgeous Gramma Vickie-made frocks, with dolls in same, spending long springs or summers down south in Atlanta with Victoria and Ed and their magical garden of tropical lushness.

Ever-thankful for the ability to be thankful, gratitude the foundation for all.
Love, Thanks, Cheers.

The Shazam Project.

The latest in a series of Perfect Ideas Crafted by Yours Truly: The Shazam Project.

I just recently unveiled this to Deb who liked it enough, but YT realized the patter, the sell, must be improved upon for this Perfect Idea/Project to soar, to tantalize like a well-lit Vegas buffet.
Although, ultimately, more healthful and satisfying than said buffet.

The Shazam Project, for proponents of the iPhone and the app Shazam (and other, lesser smarty-pants phones):
Look at the ten last Shazamed songs on your iPhone.
Purchase, download, and burn them onto ten discs.
Share and/or swap discs with ten friends.

My own ten, presently, are:
- I Feel Love, Donna Summer.
- Stereo, John Legend
- Takin' Care of Business, BTO
- Dream Weaver, Gary Wright (longtime guilty pleasure, had to Shazam it in a 21st-C move to ownership)
- Sometime Around Midnight, The Airborne Toxic Event
- Last Parade, Matthew Good
- Berenice: Cadrò, Ma Qual Si Mira, Cecilia Bartoli
- Situation, Yazoo
- He Loves Me, Jill Scott
- Imma Be, The Black Eyed Peas.

Now that is a Perfect blend.
Time to wend toward the hallowed halls of art moderne for a meeting of brunch minds.

Shazam. Love. Burnt.

Color me pun intentional, and color me quite transfixed by this image made by Yours Truly that was once believed - wrongheadedly - to be better as black & white.
What the photon freak was YT thinking.
This is a sublime image in color.
And therein lies a happy, lovely discovery of today whilst applying in a somewhat delightful, frenzied half-assed artist fashion for a NYFA grant.
When YT got to the part about "Have you ever applied to this here federal arts awarding confection" YT got all flustered, not recalling if it was a yay - or nay.
So I said No.

My art statement was a blistering rendition and retooling of another arts statement of not too long ago. This time it seemed important to mention two of my huge influences in the special extra bonus cultural section - Ana Mendieta and Maya Lin.

Onwards.

Time to make and do some more.
Time to revel in that special energy that puts the bon in bon vivant - and head to Hallwalls for a nice evening of something raucous and experimentally jazz.

Onwards, Love - in heady arts statements and oso much more.

Yours Truly is invited by a filmmaker to hop in front of his camera with mine own to do some landscaped images around the post-industrial disaster that was once Bethlehem Steel.
Pending.
What will be important, he says, are what shoes you're wearing.
Indeed.
And on the personal landscape one knows my feelings about shoes, and the shoes around and about.

∞

Neil Young sings away the negative molecules and suddenly it occurs to YT that really missed is Dragon Boy.

Onwards.

Landscape Love.

Yours Truly indeed loves trads and onesuch is the annual writing, by YT, of The Lore and Allure of Columbus.
For an exciting new twist YT writes the following whilst in the back row of Hallwalls black room - a.k.a. theatre performance claustrophia chamber for the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core gig for yours truly is a masterful multi-tasker.


Thinking of the nautical, historical, and nonsensical as Larry and team of four others recreate his - and those of free jazzerific others - jolting and multi-layered compositions seems appropriate.
And within the sound waves audience members just in front of my flying little fingers cannot hear a jot of the mad Mac keyboard clicks.
A Triumph.

If YT were to be one of the musicians, and do not all audience members engage in some degree of transference of audio-visual and wishful, she would be the drummer - either one, for there are two.
YT would have no patience to be the sax playing Ochs, but Satoko Fujii, playing keyboard (YT cannot bring herself to ever write the word synthesizer after mourning the loss of vrai drumming in the early 80s and all) and piano is quite electricifying.

So about Columbus.
Like Jesus, he was probably a Libra.
YT has just celebrated another 10/10, and sometimes the birthday falls on this curious U.S. holiday. YT shares 10/10 with my niece, Katharine, ReUse founder Michael Gainer, a former neighbor (Marilyn Rutstein), and others, like the one-year old baby met at this past Saturday's wedding.
And also like YT, he is Italian - whereas YT is that and Polish. A hearty Middling City blend.
Columbus's gig was exploration on a boat and just as the lunar surface was recently crashed into by NASA in a frantic search for the presence of water to replenish what is quickly - astonishingly - dissipating, he was searching for spices, newness, and more land to colonize for grandiose hopes and schemes.

That children are still taught the names of his party's three boats is also astonishing as most people don't know about nutrition, how to properly operate a motor vehicle, how to speak a second language, or how their city/state/federal governments operate, or how to get their complacent asses to a voting booth.

Of course Columbus did not discover the Americas; what he did was colonizing, good self-centered colonizing to the chagrin of tens of thousands of native people.

But less about Columbus and more about YT.

When people discover, like Columbus, that YT loves Westerns they always ask Why.
Like kabuki theatre, a western is a simple scenario: movement across a forbidding terrain, struggle of man v. man/Nature, landscape longshots, the formation of order/civ/towns.
(Larry Ochs, long pause, I'm thinking. One more before we take a short break.)
All musicians take a Short break, no matter the length.

Maybe this is why people dig the Columbus story.
A man and his crew and three boats hit the seas and land upon a place and six hundred and sixty or so years later we still find ourselves squaring against Nature, ourselves, the forces of the universe.

Universal, Particular Love.

Latest in the Accidental Frame Series, on 9/9/09 to be more precise than this firing-off.

Spent time yesterday pre-BigU football season opener documenting the practices of tailgaters - with a writer in tow.
She will be creating a slideshow for the web of the captured images and quotes flying through the air like proverbial footballs.
Some played football, some kan-jam, some beer pong.
Yours Truly has never tailgated so finds this a curious practice as there's food to be had inside the venue.

A favoured, documented menu was created by the blended family (half for UB, half for Pitt) that consisted of Rice Krispies Treats and margaritas.
Another fav was the site of the homemade cooking cart where a guy who calls himself Tumbleweed made Dutch oven eggs.

Post-gameshoot went to the region's diverse and vast food emporium (where one is as likely to find patio umbrellas, scented candles, as well as scallions) for provisions and a semi-annual Diet Pepsi.
At the fountain drink dispensing station YT encountered DP that was mainly soda water. Dumping out the cup and trying another DP spigot suddenly there was an elderly man standing to my left, with an outstretched arm holding a cup.
It seemed he was reaching for the same beverage choice so I said There's something wrong with the Diet Pepsi.
And he, in one brilliant flash, said
There's something wrong with everything.

Ah, the Wisdom of strangers.
Off to Great Expectations Book Group for sustenance of all sorts.

Love of Sustainability.

Planes.
(Immediate soundtrack: Alexi Murdoch's Dream About Flying)


1.
Yesterday, while sitting at the edge of the lake where it meets the river, and the sea (really great lake) wall, too, spotted a small reddish plane slowly wending from north to south.
Immediate memory shifted to the fore, another plane, about two decades ago.
A friend had an idea, one that Yours Truly did not completely admire, the friend's plan, not the friend, of picnicking during an air show.
An air show is so never a thing that YT needs to see.
There was a child-era rocket-fuelled showing of jets down in Georgia where YT spent all of her warm-weather months in and around Atlanta, Marietta, Smyrna and the like. This was probably enough, a single air showing of bridled aerospace power and gall.

But then the air show of two decades ago, recalled in a silent powerful flash.

There we sat on a thin stretch of grass, facing the lake, along with hundreds of other watchers.
We picnicked out of a basket, on a blanket.
YT had an uneasiness, and kept reminding the alongside pal of this, that people die at these events.

And then.

We watched as a small airplane went nose down into the lake. Silently straight into the water, and then large pieces of the plane, split apart, separating and falling individually into the water.
There was gasping, a collective disbelief, and then the scanning of the skies just above this breakage to see if, perchance, the pilot had just done a ridiculous and expensive stunt, wrecking a plane for some deconstructive expression, hanging over the proceedings in a parachute, poised for a watery landing.
But no, this was a public and tragic death, witnessed by hundreds on a sunny afternoon, who then traipsed silent and shocked to cars parked far away as more people were coming into the park for the air show that had ended with Coast Guard boats looking for a lone survivor.

And, of course, being literate as well as image-ridden, said to my friend I told you people die at these events.


2.
This day of infamy, of unfading tragic anniversary when things crashed and then stood very still.
Yours Truly was watching Henry, TonyC's dog, and TonyC was stuck on the west coast of the USA for an extra week, trying to wrangle a rental vehicle to come back as flights were strangled to a halt.
Besides watching Henry, and spoiling him, was watching the morning news on 9/11 as I spoke to a colleague.
YT believed that what I was watching was an anniversary for the World Trade Center bombing a long time ago, when terrorists pulled into the parking ramp with explosives. When Elba and her officemates and thousands more were brought by the Red Cross to the rooftop, before walking miles back down to the street.
And YT called her while she was on the rooftop and she assured me that she was alright.
But that was winter.
And the image on the television was sunny, like the day that we were in.
A crisply-lit autumn day.
It was, and as me and my colleague watched the news and the image of the burning tower in our respective homes the second plane hit.
I was 400 or so miles away, in the heart of the Middling City but everyone reached out to one another.
It became important to connect with those who are loved in the Shiney Apple - immediately.
To hear their stories.
The first time I flew to the Shiney Apple post-9/11 was about a month or so after, to see and stay with Dorota in the happy loft on Broome, and our pilot took us over the WTC site, dipping the plane so that we had a phenomenal view of the pit that was left.
That first day back, YT bought the ring that reads Compassion.
A constant reminder, it is hoped, to carry Love, Compassion, Wish.

Reminder, Love.

As is my wont, there was Yours Truly, minding mine own photographic business and documenting the amazing feats of a group of people.
Today it was IT types.

Who was the famed precursor who stated that Ninety percent of what it means to be a successful photog is the rearranging of furniture and the like.
What I would add, after a majority of life years in the business of making photons bend to my desires and those of my clients, is that the photo business is mainly talent, as well as a knack for the moving of furniture and the dispensing of fear and self-consciousness when the need arises to scale belltowers, jump onto risky window sills that open out to the world below, and scramble across floors of questionable cleanliness.

After the shoot with the group of smarty-pants was asked to document the re-org'ing of the quad outside the Big U's older, city-edge campus.
Exactly the spot where YT et many al's once rested our weary undergraduate bones in front of huge plate glass windows in the Fillmore Room where a fireplace blazed away.
Where YT picked up her daily NYT across the way, in the bookstore, and watched passersby in the quad, crisscrossing the walkways under semi-oldgrowth trees.
Where infamous precursors at UUAB (where YT was Cultural & Performing Arts Chair for four years) did folk and rock shows for a portion of the masses.
And where students frequently tossed handfuls of student papers to fuel the fire.
YT recalls a small scandal whereby a rival publication burnt to a crisp copies of one of the papers where YT worked hard as reporter/poetry editor - The Alternative Press/Alternative News Collective mentored by Tolstoy College's wondrous Charlie Haynie.
Ahhh, the mems.
And O the bulldozing crisscrossing of tire tracks as the quad is revamped, its mechanicals being modernized.
I noted a breech in the construction fence, and that it had none of the usual warnings about having to wear a hard hat in the area and such, and went around said fence to make more advantageous images of the Progress in Progress - an inescapable phrase from when the Middling City was being subtly blasted up and down Main Street to create its semi-sub-way.
Progress in Progress was a slogan that was painted on a wooden barricade that YT had to navigate around in the teen years to go to classes on this verysame campus.
YT asked the handler du jour if the large and cleared center space would, perhaps, be a lovely new fountain that might, ideally, attract some of the ducks that enjoy nearby Glen Falls Park.
He did not know.
YT asks those types of semi-unanswerable questions.

New bumper sticker concept.
The Semi-unanswerable Questions-Progress in Progress.

PiP Love.

Much earlier today, like in the post-asscrack of dawn hours, read on NYT iPhone app that thee Teddy Kennedy departed for the big cocktail-laced politico event in the hereafter.

Yours Truly mused or de-mused with a twinge of regret that I never photographed him but there is a lovely memory attached to him.

Perhaps inspired by a few political rallies that YT attended with her parents in the 70s, and the occasional hanging with the last wave of hippies at an impressionable age (a practice that continued until about the age of nineteen), decided that, upon hearing that Teddy was coming to Buffalo's god-awful Convention Center as a stop on his campaign trail, skipped school to see him.
Went with one of my best schoolpals, MarjorieX, and bussed it downtown, in our political tweed blazers that we reserved for our political activities.

Downtown we went, amid a crush of people to see not only the Democratic challenger to Jimmy Carter, but to see a real-live Kennedy. I think we were firmly set in both camps.

Being young, and cute in our tweed blazers, we were spotted and singled out by some members of Kennedy's campaign and were not only given oversized Kennedy in 80 placards, but Kennedy in 80 t-shirts, if we agreed to wear them immediately. So we stretched them over the blazers, proudly and suddenly thrust into an important background sea of Kennedy supporters.
And YT, they perhaps did not know, or did not care, was too young to vote.
But if I had had the op, and once I did, voted straight-ahead Dem.

So there MarjorieX and I were, subsumed in political fervor, merrily skipping school and truly doing something otherworldly and important. Screaming and clapping as we were so moved.

After the rally, we queued up on the street along the motorcade route and held up our placards.

The limousine carrying Teddy came to a stop directly in front of me and MarjorieX, and YT had a second-long and shared glance – between me and a member of the Kennedy Clan.

Through the tinted limo glass, across a span of thirty feet, between haggard street fighting and campaigning rockstar politician and idealistic/pome-writing teenager there passed that human energy of watching/watcher, and a shared belief in the possibility of a democratic world, a happier life and a world beyond the confines of a limited high school in the suburbs of the Middling City: a world where experience and talent outreaches privilege.

And this was before YT owned a decent SLR. These were the days of borrowed cameras, the salad days when the passion had not yet taken complete control.

Privileged Love.

Encounters of Profundity.

A scintillating new series crafted by Yours Truly for your erudition and enjoyment, much like the whole of epinw, and the ever-illustrative Accidental Frame Series.

EoP 1.
Whilst working on a story for the Shiney Happy Mag, a Pulitzer-worthy piece on some select Middling City dives and the like with Sherry as winggirl, encountered one Eric. Eric is nephew of a former boss.
Eric is a hellion of a certain genre, and tippling nearby is Eric's dad, as well as some others who had just been out boating in and around the picturesquely Perfect waters of the Old First Ward.
We are all talking at the bar, me taking important notes as well as photographic images of the scene, when suddenly Eric informs me that I am juvenile.
What Eric meant is that YT appears to be youthful - as my hair was pulled back and I was in an oso good mood, laughing with Sherry on our barscursion.
Our four eyebrows lifted skyhigh and then I asked him what he meant.
You know, he said, you're sophomoric.
Another compliment.
And YT took it as such.

EoP 2.
Whilst minding my own business and crossing the Peace Bridge, came up to the paying lane at a rakish angle as there was a rash, last-moment lane change.
The man in the tollbooth was suddenly outside his booth, waving frantically and saying something.
When I got closer to hand him dollars, not loonies, nor toonies, he, in a wild-eyed fashion, handed YT one of those individually-wrapped LifeSaver© mints - congratulating YT on attempting a great job (in facetious tones and undertones of irony), whilst approaching said booth.
Another compliment.
And YT took it as such, as I did the mint.
I did not eat said mint.

Minty, complimentary Love.