Guggenheim....Fellows.

 Ok.  They DIDN'T sober up.  I was on my local college campus helping out in the Art Club Art Auction. The phone rang and it was Anne Tucker, congratulating me.  I'm standing in the hall with nobody to hug.

  I'd gotten the email a month or so ago, informing me, but then it started dragging.  Like Christmas in the first grade....and your parents keep moving it.  We'll do it Thursday.  No, Saturday better.  Monday for sure. Did we say Monday?  Some things came up.  How about Wednesday?  Oopps.  Conflict.  Middle of next week suit everyone?  

  Still.  I know about what suffering is and isn't.  What to ignore and what to monitor.  Quit worrying.  You live to serve this ship.  Enjoy this perfect life and row well.

  Meanwhile...chopping wood and hauling water.  Light show across the street subsides as the Sun works North.  White trees come and go.  Dogwoods spring open.  Lots of dancing and film flow by.

  Fighting Knives with Flowers.  Leaning out over Blackford Creek with a pair of scissors counting

Dogwood bracts.  3:30AM Pyrocatting some HP5/8X10 while having a darkroom country dance jam.  Loving working in the silence of the night while the planets creak overhead and Lucy snoozes under the bed.                                                                                                                                                         .

 Many fingerprints on this.  So many folks reminding me, encouraging me.  ( Or telling me NO.)  Plus me.  I tend to gnaw away at things decade after decade.  I will name them later, but they know who they are. Gotta love those human beings. Charles Sowders who taught as he learned.  John Beck at Sam Houston and his unbending discipline to the process.   The Good Doctor Sneed.  Len Kowitz.  Geoffrey and Bryn at Fotorelevance.  The sharp-eyed Cindy Willis sitting beside me at Fotofest, watching reviewers..judging them.  Mark Baldwin at Borealis Press.  My Soulmates Rita Lombardi and Katie Leanne Wintters.  Anne Tucker.  Ron Gleason.  Roy Flukinger.  Chris Johnson.  Ted Orland.  Ansel.  Patrick Kelly.  Caleb Bell.  Chris Leahy.  Ken and Kim Tomio.  Mom.  Mac Miller.  Judy Tedford Deaton.  Arif Khan.  Phyliss Kennedy.  Students by the row and calamities who arrived with gifts in their claws.  Every dance partner who went around the line of dance with me while I worked things out.  Iris Davis.  It's a great privilege and responsibility.  Hope I remember to stand up straight and act right.

  Many thanks to the Guggenheim folks who have made this possible generation after generation.  We're the excited new kids on the back of the line, jostling and fidgeting around..but far to the front, we can see Ansel and Weston.

What a life.