I LEFT MY CALIFORNIA BIRTHPLACE...
.... MORE THAN 40 years ago, bound for Alaska's Inside Passage. Like each of my adventurous parents, bidden over a century earlier to "GO WEST TO CALIFORNIA," I was bitten by a"GO NORTH" condition from which I was never destined to recover. Still, it visits with haunting images of seascapes and frozen mountaintops, the silence of an ice flow, the animals, and not least the tough, discerning people I was honored to meet and whom I can safely call, "My Friends, My Glory," a concept I borrowed that contains no less the honor I bestow with no less my humble gratitude.
This is a favorite image. I rescued it from a slide I took with my first camera, a Minolta film (of course!) camera more than 50 years ago. It stunned me, and more, it returned me to the meadows and mountain slopes of my childhood, and far into my 30s.
I returned to "America" (The Lower 48) by way of two glorious New Mexico years. Finally, finally, I settled into Kansas's infamously disparaged "Flyover Country." I am aware that my new image is attached to a place and people where farmers chew straw that moves to the rhythm of their cow's mandible. Furthermore, they, we, live blissful lives void of social systems. hierarchies, trends, likes, and thumbs up and down. I lived in the most wonderful loft in Wichita's Old Town for six years in the center of a Blues Bar community where my girlfriends became some of my life's greatest joys. Pub crawls and the music of feeeeeling the Blues blew my mind many nights filled with laughter, snakes bites, Scotch, and dancing.
CHIMAYO NM CHAPEL
VISITED FAITHFULLY BY
THE AFFLICTED
ME NOW... DAUGHTER OF THE MIDWEST, BIRTHPLACES OF MY PARENTS: Margaret Lucille Miller and William Henry Stephenson.
Some of us, the lucky ones, remember "home" as a place where we return with a sense of constancy and safety. Others see "home" approach as touted or exploited as well-intentioned "Hallmark Days." To those unable to hear the timbre of a parent's voice or those who choose not to encounter it again, the celebrations can descend into hell. I live in the former camp. My father's voice left my young life when I was two except for minor greetings between my ages of two and five. He lived in a forbidden dark room in a sanitarium, isolated because of the tuberculosis that plagued him. My mother's voice lingers as she fought the demons of cancer and lost.
Perhaps, dear reader, you can imagine my feelings when I rummaged through an old, deep pile of images my mother labeled, "Susan." It shocked me! That's me, burbling from the wicker baby carriage, my brother posing in front, hand resting on a treasure. The year? 1944. The place? The city of my birth, San Francisco. Then WAIT! My father took that picture! He reached deep into the finite, linear place where I stood and touched me that day. This day! Today! It was another silent conversation, but this time, this time I had a major takeaway. My mother took snapshots but this is a composition! I love compositions. I make them too. This one is perfect. This image is a composition! It is a gem, it's the finest jewel in my crown! MY FATHER TOOK THAT PICTURE!
Today I live in a small Kansas town built and populated last century by the ingenuity and wealth of industrial giants. My husband, David, and I, Ferguson, our little Scotty companion, and Abriham our Giant Schnauzer purchased a hundred-plus old mansion and we occupy every corner. Our basement was the favored spot for poker games for the good old boys. We still have the hitching post outside our side door, the carriage house is still intact minus the wood stove. Tree chandeliers still glow in the living room and dining rooms.
Enough, enough about me. For now. I understand that the average attention span is about 30 seconds, the average reading "preference," is "easygoing, please!"
