One more day of work before my “Christmas Break.”  Even with the uncharacteristically warm days New York really “glams it up” with the lights.

….I see Spiderman playing the saxophone late on a Sunday night.  Another sign that I am back is the fact that I have not had a minute to post this for a full week.

It is 1:28 p.m. on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  At mass this morning the priest said that we are entering the season of Advent, and that it takes a lot of work to prepare ourselves for the birth of Christ.  We want to cling on to the old instead of making the painful, but liberating choice of forgiving past hurts and breaking negative patterns.  He said that we can all talk a good game about what we are going to do to change, but unless we take concrete action in which we specifically map out and prepare our days to include what we intend then it is all for nought.  As I sit next to century old negatives and my digital camera is perched next to a 1/2 century old Brownie film camera I am doing my best to get some last minute work done before traveling back into the city.  By “work” I mean sharing photographs with people that I pledged them to long ago.  I am starting off with four people that I “owe” photographs to.  One choice hopefully in the right direction.  Then on to the Shoreline East and Metro North.

And so it is.  Thanksgiving is here, and in a flash is gone.  Just like this 25 + lb turkey of which only bones remain.  The photo of the rose and tulips are from my mom who helped decorate our home in Guilford, CT for the 2o of us sitting around the table while my dad was the cook.  I am grateful for family, friends, and the freedom to experiment with photography!

I saw my first snow of the season tonight and can’t help but get excited for the coming of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This photo is of the wood for the stove in my family’s home in Connecticut.  There’s nothing like being in a warm house on a cold night.

November 22, 2013

John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s drive through Dallas in the black presidential convertible on this day 50 years ago was America’s brutal rendezvous with destiny.  His assassination shattered a sense of calm confidence in a nation not yet divided and torched by the Vietnam War and the revolution which drove us to the United States of today.  The question of motive in the assassination is trumped by the contingency of circumstance: What if it was rainy and the convertible’s cover was up?  What if Lee Harvey Oswald missed the imaginary bulls-eye he placed on the head of America’s first and still only Roman Catholic president?  What makes it all the more surreal is that this loss was captured on film and photographs, from amateur to professional-none of the footage short of a masterpiece by the mere fact that it documented in color America’s most charismatic president meet his most untimely end.  Sure there are the scandals of the tabloids which trumpet John F. Kennedy’s affairs to an ever-voracious audience.  The nagging question too, of how legitimately he was elected in the first place–how much help came from the mafia in getting the votes needed to beat Nixon.  These personal and political questions are of great significance to the world, but for me all I can think of is that a baptized Catholic, a man who however imperfectly professed in name and deed his allegiance to Jesus Christ was killed…one could even say crucified, and what a tragedy that is.  Tragedy that trite word of convenience that does more than hide the spattered American blood that still flows for a nation of people still not divided, but far from unified.  And so we continue to bleed.  Rest in Peace JFK.