Tag: United States
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THE FIVE CENT BELT
At eight years old, I found myself living aboard a leaking boat in Alaska, taken suddenly from my mother by my father. In that strange and quiet world, a five-cent belt became more than just something to hold up my pants—it became a small anchor of comfort in a drifting life.
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THE EPIPHANY. THE MENTOR. THE INSPIRER.
In February of 1986, I was lying in a hammock somewhere on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and I was deep in thought. A Honduran environmental organisation was paying me to photograph the national parks and document some environmental issues. I kept swaying in the hammock during the heat of the day awaiting better light toward late afternoon … swaying and thinking. I wasn’t happy. I realised then and there that I really didn’t know diddly squat about photography. I had been masquerading for the past five years as a nature/environmental…
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AN AMERICAN ROLE MODEL
Eight years ago, millions of black American youth woke up the day after the Presidential election and said, ‘Wow! Some day even I can become President’. Last night, millions of American girls went to bed thinking, ‘Wonderful. It sure looks like some day even I can become President’. This morning millions of American youth are waking up and thinking, ‘Holy cow! I can be a bigot, a bully, a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a Fascist, a serial liar and an imbecile and even I can become President of the United…
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VALE WOLFGANG
I thought I knew a thing or two about photography, love and life … until I met Wolfgang Hoffmann. He became my mentor and taught me pretty much everything I know about photography and a fair bit about life and love as well. Wolfgang passed away yesterday from congestive heart failure. I met Wolfgang almost 30 years ago to the day in the summer of 1986. I was a new grad student in the Department of Agricultural Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and ventured down to the dungeons of the…
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ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
‘Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.’ Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire In the summer of 1980, I had the best job ever. I was a park ranger at North Cascades National Park in Washington. Part of my job was ‘trail patrol’ and for one day a week…
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MASSACRE AT MYSTIC
Now that Thanksgiving is over and today is Native American Heritage Day let’s look at what happened after that peaceful gathering in Plymouth in 1621. During my early years of schooling in Wisconsin, I learned of how Native Americans welcomed new immigrants and taught them to plant corn and catch eel and thus survive in the New World. Relations between the Native Americans and the Puritans appeared to be good and the two co-existed. Fast forward a few chapters in my history book and I learned that Native Americans were being…
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ON THE CORNER IN WINSLOW
I was standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. Seriously, I was! I had just finished watching the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and got off the train in Winslow. My Peace Corps mate, Denny Hildreth, lived in Winslow and worked for the US Forest Service. He was no girl in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me … but I took the ride regardless. My college buddy, Jerome Welnetz, came from Galveston to join us. Jerome had visited me in Costa Rica and Denny, Jerome and…
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California Odyssey
In December of 1979, the road once again called me. It was a time to head west, a time for vagabonding, a time to visit my birthplace and meet with my grandfather and father after 11 years of absence. My travels would take me to the Pacific coast, to Southern California, to the San Jacinto Mountains, to Baja California, and to Mazatlán, Mexico. I would see 11,200 kilometers of the road in 32 days. 7,200 of those kilometers would be by hitchhiking. In the evening of 21 December, I found myself…
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DOWN UPON THE SUWANNEE RIVER
Spring Break. April 1980 Spring break is a time to head south and party on some Florida beach. After weathering a Wisconsin winter, I had Spring fever, no doubt about it. But I wasn’t keen about the beach party scene. So some mates and I decided to go canoeing in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. My hometown mate, Dan Hartman, lashed a couple of canoes on my dad’s Vista Cruiser and drove from Amery to Stevens Point to pick us up. My mates, Steve Eklund and Jay Peterson, were joined by our neighbours…
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