Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Mango with her magnificent whiskers

Mango's extra-large whiskers crack me up. Somehow walrus genes got mixed in that cat's DNA.

Taco Stand Number 3

I have long wanted to do a comparison tasting of some of Salt Lake City's cheapest eateries: the taco stands. Taco carts started appearing on corners around town several years ago, but up until Friday, I had only eaten from the street vendors once. I had reason to head downtown, so I tweeted up a taco cart meet-up to try out a few new ones.

Taco Stand Number 2

For mysterious reasons that would warm the dead heart of Adam Smith, the greatest concentration of taco stand are arrayed around our nearly-downtown Sears department store. Four different purveyors of tacos, none costing more than $1 (tripe or beef tongue extra), set up their rolling shops at intervals on State, Main and 800 South.

Taco-maker extraordinaire

Five of us, packed an overstuffed burrito, spilled out of Harley's car as he parked at Sears. Over the years, I had noticed that the stand across the street from the department store had the longest lines, even late at night, so that's the one I wanted to try. I didn't make any photos of my three delicioso shredded beef tacos. Harley and Scott enjoyed theirs too, but the taco lady ran out of tortillas, so we trundled over to stand #2 rather than wait for more to be delivered. By the time Rich and Nicole got their plates, Harley had ordered a second round and the taste test was on. At stand #3, Rich upped the competition by asking the taco-maker to select the meats. Taco lady #4 thought it was all completely amusing, especially that we didn't have enough sense to get out of the weather and eat in our car like everyone else (she must have missed the arrival of the circus clown act). She also produced the favorite tacos of the day.

Tacos El Toro

Our winner of the day: Tacos El Toro on 800 South between State and Main.

Tacos from El Toro

However, the taste test won't end there. This is a multi-round competition, with the rules being invented as I get hungry. Watch for twitter and/or Facebook updates for the next convening of the judge's panel. More testers are always welcome. And please recommend your favorite too--a full sampling of all worthy taco carts is the goal.

Reflection in Capitol Reef National Park

Busy! We have generally turned our lives upside down:

1. Arranged to refinance the palace to pay for a lot we bought in Torrey, UT near Capitol Reef National Park. I still can't believe that we ended up in a community not on Highway 89, but having looked almost as long as I drove that highway for the project, and considering the compromises to maintain marital harmony, this is what works for us. It's bare land with excellent water rights, and we are very excited to make this step. The next steps aren't so clear, but we should have title in a couple of weeks.
2. Had a party to show off the proofs. Bryan made some pictures. I was too busy enjoying myself. The first box of books actually arrived the day before, and we put a couple out as a surprise. I am getting over the awkward feeling of watching someone look through it.
3. Sold my first book. I said the first box was for reviewers, and I have been sending them out to various folks. But I got an email before Thanksgiving from someone who said that the only thing her mom wanted for her birthday was a copy of my book. Near as I can figure, I met her at the Sanpete Cowboy Expo. I had just been telling someone about how glad I was that the project had brought me to Phoenix to spend more time with my mom. In a sentimental moment toward moms in general, I couldn't say no.
4. Signed my first book. That isn't going to get old for a while. My brother-in-law had the best idea, though, I somehow found myself on the guest list of the Governor's Art Awards ceremony at the mansion last week. So I took a book to give to Governor and Mrs. Herbert, and I got them both to sign another copy for me, on the page with the State Street/Utah Capitol picture. I love what he wrote, "What a wonderful book, particularly the parts regarding Utah." I hope to fill it up with signatures as I travel around this summer to promote the book.
5. Put together a press kit for the Highway 89 project. For as long as I procrastinated on this, it was not really that difficult once I started assembling the pieces. I'm sending it out to potential reviewers and vendors now that I have it. It's little things, like "Signed by the author" stickers that sell books, but take way more time than seems reasonable.
6. Keyworded 18,000+ images. Getting faster as I build my keyword list. I decided to sprinkle metadata lightly (title and a few keywords) on all my images. Once I rate them, I may go back and add more to the highly ranked ones. As for ratings, I'm liking the system proposed by Peter Krogh: 1 star means "show to client," 2 starts means "best of subject/pose/group," 3 stars means best of session/outing or "pick me!" Four and 5 stars are reserved for portfolio quality and lifetime achievements. I still have another 20,000+ to keyword before I give it up completely.
7. Completed a comprehensive 3-2-1 back-up of every RAW file, an off-site copy and a workflow to move forward. I ended up buying another 1.5TB drive rather than moving files in a hopscotch game across a motley collection of drives. R is in charge of bringing home the weekly exchange of 2TB drives to make off-site back-ups of my working files. This mini-project kept me working on my laptop, disconnected from my DROBO, so blogging has been pretty well shut down. That's about to be fixed.
8. Made my first sales call. Got an order. It was awesome. Did it again. This might not be a complete financial disaster.
9. Cooked some Thanksgiving and did some Christmas shopping. Did not kill Slate for climbing the Christmas Tree. R has firmly secured it, because 14lbs of leaping cat can create a lot of leverage at 6' of elevation.
10. Made room to store 3 pallets of books. Actually R did this while I keyworded or knit or something, but we are ready. And not a moment too soon. My container has already cleared customs, and were it not for a humongous winter storm clogging up I-15, it might have been delivered today. I heard from the dispatcher yesterday, but nothing since.
11. Started planning the next project. If the Highway 89 project wasn't sufficiently overambitious, this one ought to prove once and for all that I am nuts. It's going to be a lot of fun, regardless.

    That's the news from the palace. So close to the finish line, but one last caution lap. I am really looking forward to seeing that checkered flag.

My nephew

I caught up on things today: packing materials to ship limited editions (thank you!), proof prints for the Day of the American Cowboy folks I'll be seeing tomorrow, and pictures from early April of and for my family. This series got sent off today. Now we return to our regularly scheduled chaos of getting Sagebrush Press's U.S. 89 project">first book in print. Drive safe this weekend.

My oldest niece

I spent last weekend with my matriarchal family, gathered in Phoenix. My mother had only girls; three of four (and their children) met up at my mother's palace. And the missing sister had an excuse, living in Melbourne with her husband, a little far for a weekend trip.

I photographed all the niblings (nieces and nephew) one afternoon while the little ones were in the swimming pool. I practically felt naked with only one lens and no flash. A la Harley, we improvised a reflector with the windshield sun protector. This niece is a junior in high school. What's not in the picture is her ankle cast, torn ligament, which is putting a crimp on the varsity softball season. She's a great hitter, so she'll get her spot back. Even so, it wasn't so hard to coax a smile out of her. I'm angling for a senior portrait gig. They can't beat the price.

Mutton-busting, in which innocents are launched for a wild ride for the amusement of others. At least I'm not the sheep. (Mount Pleasant, Utah)

Dear readers, if I have any readers left after my blogging hiatus,

I have been wrapping my mind around a new direction my life has taken, and I have neglected the blog, rather than go on about stuff that isn't really at the top of my agenda right now. And I'm not the kind of blogger who works out her thoughts on-line (as we've learned recently with the Twitter/Cicsco incident, the internet is forever, or memory-persistent enough to not be the place to post half-baked thoughts).

When I started on the Highway 89 project, my single goal was to find a publisher. I wanted them to take my CD of images and make a book out of it. I even got pretty close to a contract, until this fall's economic collapse started taking down big box booksellers and everyone in the publishing industry ran for cover.

Why not go it alone, self-publish? I rationally outlined my reasons two years ago. I still think they are valid in an economy that does not require extraordinary measures. But I had another reason: I equated self-publishing with failure. This attitude is unfair to the many authors who have made riotous successes out of their self-published ventures, but my ego continued to win the argument. My loving husband constantly reminds me of many well-respected authors (John Grisham, Irma Rombauer, Edward Tufte and Mark Twain all did all right in the end).

Sometimes when you ask the universal-power-that-is for what you want, you get what you need (that's sounds so trite, they made a rock'n'roll song out of it). And apparently my ego wasn't satisfied with whisper of the wheels on the highway, or a simple memo from above, so I have serendipitously acquired a publishing company in hiatus. Its first new book will be my own.

It turns out, I'm pretty good at book design. One of my dearest friends is a former editor. The social media network I have developed since I wrote that "why not self-publish" post (mostly as a result of participating in PhotowalkingUtah) has a robust set of people with all sorts of skills. Everything I need is out there, if I'm willing to go find it.

P.P.S If you care to support the reinvention of Sagebrush Press, please consider purchasing this month's limited edition print from the Highway 89 project, or signing up for an email notification when my book comes out this fall.

Salad greens: spinach, Bull's Blood beet greens, staghorn, mache

I had no idea whether winter gardening would actually work in Utah when I planted out these seedlings last fall. On February 28, salad was on the menu, all from greens planted last fall. None except the spinach are greens I would buy at the store, but all are extremely hardy. Despite a collapse of the plastic tunnels, even one little lettuce survived. Last year was experimental; this year I am planning for a major fall planting to feed us well through the winter.

Mache, or corn salad, is a classic French winter salad green, served whole with walnut oil vinaigrette. I had no walnut oil, splashing on olive oil and tarragon vinegar to good effect. The staghorn, or minutina, didn't have much flavor as a fall green, but it brightened up as it matured and is nicely crispy. The Bull's Blood beets are grown for their tops; I will be planting heaps of them this year because we liked them so much: texture, color and taste.

Here at the palace, food photography gets a scant allotment of time when dinner is ready and I have a hungry spouse to feed. Planning ahead seems to be the key, so I have time to make the salad AND the photos while the chicken is roasting and before the cork is pulled. Or the screwcap, these days.

Kistina Baskett's signature move on floor

In 15 years of UofU gymnastics, I never saw anything like this move in Kristina Baskett's floor routine. She pops over and back, then flips and tumbles the length of the mat again, making it look effortless.

The last three weeks have NOT been effortless here at the palace. The dreaded gomboo (an awful phrase I first heard in Utah) knocked me off my feed, my feet and for a loop. At the tail end of the virus, we went to San Diego for a long weekend, and on the return flight, a family of coughing infectious buffoons shared their virus with R. So the ibuprofen, dextromethorphan, sudaphedrine and guafenesan (we mix our own here at the palace) continue to decorate the kitchen counter. Less said the better on the gomboo topic.

Having missed the Utes' four-way meet, I was back in my seat for last Friday's thumping of Michigan. Actually, Michigan did well in the arena, but when your opponent is pounding down the nation's top score so far this season, even a great effort isn't going to get a lot of notice. This was the first time since Annabeth Eberle competed that I brought the camera. My timing wasn't too bad, considering how little I've been shooting this month.

There are two more home meets. The question hovering about the palace is whether I pick up the next camera (probably a D700), and enjoy some of the low-light goodness before the end of the season. Since I need it before Easter, there's probably no reason to wait to pull the trigger. All a matter of timing, like Kristina's one-handed balancing act.

Angel detail, Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City

What's the last thing on your mind in these final hours of 2008? Updating my website isn't on the top of my list. But I hate it when it gets to February and I'm still sporting that old-year copyright statement. Worse than writing checks with the old year. It turns out there's a number of things in this category, so as I think of them, I put them in my Getting Things Done action list, and the list popped up today:

1. Change copyright date on blog and website.
2. Change copyright statement stored in the D2X.
3. Update my Photoshop action that stamps my copyright on Flickr and blog images.
4. Revisit my on-line profiles (Google, LinkedIn, Technorati, etc.). It's not an annual thing, but now is as good a time as any to do a check-up.

What's on your update list for the new year?

Mango and Slate's first Christmas

The kittens concur: I've had better ideas.

Mango, 7.5 months, 7.5 pounds

The brains of the two kitten destructo team. Mango's body-building routine includes a morning sprint competition followed by sparring practice with her larger, slower brother Slate. Since her last appearance, she's more than tripled her weight. The result is a cat most resembling the acting fireplug Bob Hoskins playing a short, squat sausage of a drill sergeant. No stuffed mouse is safe from her fury. The worst punishment, however, is reserved for the unruly piece of blue fluff.

Slate will return at a later date. He got his tail in a knot when Mango took the fluff away, and his portrait session had to be rescheduled.

Galloping the flag around the arena to start the rodeo in Fairview Utah

I went down to the county office building on the 20th of October to vote early, not realizing that it was the last day of motor-votor registration. The parking lot was jammed, but with an ambiance of good spirits. The county officials had organized a drive-thru registration line, and I saw one worker carrying in literally thousands of new voter registration forms. Democracy in action. It took me longer to park than to vote, and I gladly gave my parking space to the next voter.

The impression of all those new voters stuck with me, and at the end of the day, I signed up to lend a hand today. I will be stationed at a poll in West Valley City. They tell me to plan for a 16 hour day, and to bring all my meals and snacks. My job is to help everyone exercise their vote.

I grew up in sunny southern California, in one of the state's most right-wing congressional districts. It was the heyday of Tom Delay, in a time and place that allowed the symbols of patriotism to become confused with conservative ideology, at least in the eyes of one red-headed little girl. Flag-waving somehow became a partisan statement, and my side lost the flag, or so it seemed to a flack-jacket wearing red-headed teenager trying to find her way.

As I drive America's greatest highway for my project on US89, the people I meet in places like rural Montana (above) tell me that access to health insurance is a constant worry.

More than two years ago, I tossed my solution for national health insurance to a friend who is/was highly placed in Utah Governor Jon Hunstman's administration. In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of busy here. In between the Highway 89 project, I am starting a campaign to bronze Ansel Adams' tripod holes at the Snake River overlook. And I am putting together the charter membership of PhETI, Photographers for the Ethical Treatment of Images. I don't really have time for people to drop the ball, like my friend did with my most excellent plan. It includes near-universal access to coverage, makes small businesses more competitive, and retains a market-based system of personal choice for health care.

Newsflash: we already have a national health care insurance program. In fact, we have at least four of them in the public sector. But you and I can't participate in them, and that's what I am proposing to change.

The federal government insures its employees in all fifty states. It also runs a separate program for serving military and their families. A third program serves veterans and their families. Every state government offers its employees insurance. Between these four programs, with their large pools of participants, we have a pretty good idea of what decent medical insurance costs when the buyer has bargaining power.

Here's the key idea: once I am insured under an employer-based program, I have the right to extend my coverage for 18 months after I leave my job, at my own expense, at no more than 102.5% of what my previous coverage cost per month. It's the law, it's called COBRA, and it applies to (almost) all employer-based medical insurance plans. The 2.5% overhead seems a reasonable fee for the separate billing program to deal with individual beneficiaries, and I imagine that the insurance lobbying talent negotiated that number pretty hard.

So why can't my business buy into the federal or state insurance pool at a 2.5% premium over the government rate? Or 5%. Pick some reasonable administrative cost, and let the private sector benefit from the government's purchasing power. My employees get the same benefits negotiated for the rest of the program, and I as employer can take it or leave it at a guaranteed price. It's a simple idea, really.

No one is forced to buy any program, my idea simply offers access and more choices. It also sets a ceiling on the price: what you as a taxpayer are already paying for your government employees is what everyone pays. It creates an environment for real competition among insurance providers. Everyone knows what the government programs will cost, so insurance companies have to compete on price and service. Don't like the state employee offerings? Buy the federal program or a private policy. Organize your trade society to form a private insurance cooperative. But at least we have eliminated the concept of uninsurability by guaranteeing employer-purchased access to the public employee programs.

Who loses:

Insurance companies have been playing the high premium game with small businesses are going to have a transparent marketplace in which they must compete. Not going to cry about that. Calculating risk over only the pool of a small business's employees is simply a profiteering scheme to rake over profits in an unequal market. Any small business employee could go get a government job tomorrow and be insurance-eligible. It makes no sense to treat these people differently because they work for a small company.

Public governments: if the lore is true that that many government jobs pay less than the private sector, but employees take them because the jobs come with great benefits, the governments may lose good employees to the private sector. I used that argument myself with prospective employees when I was the hiring official in state university system, but they people I wanted to hire didn't come for the benefits. People choose to apply for public sector positions for lots of reasons, so I doubt this is a serious issue.

Large sector private industry uses benefits packages as a competitive hiring advantage over small companies. Since small businesses create the bulk of new jobs and wealth, I'm not too worried about large companies losing their edge over small businesses in the hiring game.

Who benefits:

Incorporated into the cost of hospitalization is the overhead of the uninsured. If someone shows up at a hospital with a gunshot wound or heart attack, that person will be treated, and if the patient is uninsured, and the insured all share the cost as part of the hospital overhead. We who are insured all benefit when more people are insured.

Small businesses: I believe that the unavailability of medical insurance for small companies is a serious brake on entrepreneurship in this country. People with good ideas are willing to sacrifice and risk their assets, but not their families' health. Guaranteeing access to decent medical coverage will unleash an army of entrepreneurs who will create new jobs.

Large businesses: I can see a new market for reselling insurance. Costco, Fedex, Walmart, UPS all have employees in national markets. If they can sell access to their employee insurance pools for less than the public sector and make profit, hallelujah!

My idea is a game-changer. Go forth and discuss. Let me know how it turns out. If you want to make a donation to the "Bronze Ansel's Tripod Holes" fund, I'll be back shortly with details on that program. I don't have time to solve everything all at once.

Rich Legg and model Michelle in the Palace Potager

Rich Legg, aka Leggnet and his wife and uber-model Michelle came over last week to use the garden for new images for Rich's stock portfolio. It was a bit of an agility trial for Rich to find working angles without trodding all over everything. Only a few broken branches resulted, nothing serious. I held the reflector and supplied hand tools and gardening reality checks as needed. Afterwards we collected a nice haul of tomatoes and other veggies. Best of all, they took home a giant zucchini.

Then I went back inside and wrote some more sentences about U.S. Route 89. Like my zucchini, this book keeps growing bigger and better. I just need to keep tending the garden until it's ready, and then invite folks around to share. Which reminds me, if you want to get a brief email notice when the book comes out, please add your name to my super-safe anti-spam guaranteed list. I won't use your email address for evil, ever. Friends don't do that. Real friends like Rich and Michelle, however, will carry your zucchini away.

Sunrise at Swiftcurrent Creek, Glacier National Park

Last month while I was in Montana, I passed my five year blog anniversary. To celebrate, I selected five posts in each of five categories that give a taste of where this blog has taken me.

My five (six with tie) most popular posts, based on Google Analytics stats in the 15 months since I installed it. I am chagrined and amused that four of them are off-topic from the Highway 89 project.

• Hell's Angels Prison Run
• Knitting aside - hand wind a pull skein
• Canary Springs, Yellowstone NP
• How to roast a pig - Antelope Island, Utah
• tie: Glacial remix: Yosemite National Park and Condors over the Grand Canyon

Five of my favorite posts

• NZ: Fun close to home (December 2003): I was shooting film in the early blogging days; the photos are from my husband's point and shoot, because I had no scanner.
• Glass & Architecture (March 2005): learning the craft of photography.
• Two-fisted shooting (June 2006): an early remix.
• Bathing Beauty Neon - Mesa Arizona (January 2007): neon on US Highway 89.
• Who are you people?: (October 2007): the first PhotowalkingUtah wrap-up.

Five popular search terms that bring new visitors, linked to their landing pages on the Annalog

• Inis Meain
• live nativity
• Bonneville Speedway
• sluice box
• lobster buoys

Five people I've (re)connected with through the blog

• Phil at A Family Runs Through It, a daddy blogger I met through my own dad
• Patti Digh at 37days. Her new book will have one of my photos
• Rich Legg (Leggnet) is one of the other two original PhotowalkingUtah members.
• Maria Langer An Eclectic Mind, an Arizona blogger, helicopter pilot, and Mac book author, is one of the fascinating people I've met through the blogosphere
• Mary Scriver aka prairiemary lives at the other end of Highway 89 in Montana. We had a great lunch with Mary at the Valier Lighthouse just last month, covering a vast range of topics, from northern lights to heating a 1930s home on the Montana prairies.

Five memorable blog comments

• Am I overly perfectionistic?
• I could understand this comment in Spanish after 2 weeks of language study in Argentina.
• Blog readers know stuff even when I don't
• Was I lucky to be there or just lucky? to get the shot
• I am fascinated with obscure but interesting factlets

Five years ago, I started the blog (it was called Light Torrents back then, then Chromascapes, before I settled on the Annalog) to share my adventures in New Zealand with my family. I had no idea I'd go to Argentina, Ireland, or even Nova Scotia. I had only just hatched the Highway 89 project scheme. When I started blogging, I was just beginning to learn how to work a camera, and how to see the photographs I wanted to make. We had no Flickr or Twitter, much less FriendFeed or LinkedIn. Who knows what we'll have five years from now, or even next year? And the best part is that I can't even imagine where else I'll get to go and who I'll get to meet. Thank you, dear readers, for sharing in this great adventure called the Annalog.

Helga Kolb presents us with her painting

There must be something about the scientific study of vision that attracts multi-dimensional people. Last week I wrote about Dominic Lam's chromoskedasic painting; another famous vision scientist friend is pursuing her passion for painting, and we've got a commissioned piece from Dr. Helga Kolb of our very own.

Few academic vision research programs can find a retinal anatomist, and in 1993, the UofU had a stellar one in Helga Kolb. No major program ever could afford two at once, and when R was on the job hunt, we assumed that the UofU would never want him. Luckily that assumption was wrong, and R got to work with a most-respected colleague for many years, until Helga retired and began painting up a storm.

We saw Helga's first show at the Oasis restaurant some months ago, and R had the idea to send her one of his favorite images of mine. I made this picture at the Louvre in July 2003, with actual film, and I usually print it as a black and white. Helga had free rein, and I love what she's done with it to make the image her own.

Burro and horses about to be gentled by the IWBHA team

As I'm heading out this evening, to traffic school if you must know, a guy in a Comcast uniform raps on the door:

"We are going to be working in your area..." and I think it's a notice that the are going to dig up my streets, yet again. Then he starts his pitch:

"How much are you paying for phone service?"

Me: some ridiculously low number which is probably close to true, but I can't recall exactly and if you are late to traffic school, the instructor doesn't let you in and you have to come back on another day.

Him: "for internet and everything?" and now I realize that he's a salesman, not a lineman. Then he blows it: "We are signing up a lot of people in your neighborhood.."

Dear Comcast guy: I know that's what they teach you in door-to-door salesman school, but it backfires at the palace. I am not a sheep. I don't care what my neighbors are buying. Showing me their completed order slips only annoys me. Would you reveal my order to someone else to make a sale? (answer, duh, yes.)

I'd never experienced this sales approach before I moved to Utah, and I have no explanation for it. Do people really fall for this strategy? I once had a sales pitch for some service (lawn care, curb number painting?) that went along the lines of "your neighborhood services will be consolidated to this date," implying that I had to go along with the herd and they would be along momentarily to collect my credit card data. That didn't work out too well for them.

If you want my currency, put it in writing: the benefits of services offered, and cold hard figures. If you want my trade, you'll send the truck back out to hook me up. Major hint: since we don't look at tv, offering a cable package won't help your cause. Leave my neighbors' business out of it. And when I say I have to go, don't stand on my porch as I'm putting the keys into the car door. It's rude. And I can't be late to traffic school.

A gift from Dr. Dominic Man-kit Lam

While I was out having fun on Highway 89 last month, R was in Hong Kong for a science meeting. He wowed them with his most recent Keynote tour de force, after having fought through the nonsense of AV people who insist he transfer the presentation to the official computer, then discover they can't run the movies, etc. Happens every time, but I digress.

While in HK, R caught up with an old Texas friend, Dominic Man-kit Lam. Scientist, artist, entrepreneur, philanthropist: Dominic's doing it all and all at once. I knew him as a Baylor College of Medicine professor, but Texas wasn't a big enough stage for Dominic, and for some years he's based his empire out of his hometown Hong Kong. In between establishing himself as a vision scientist and a famous orchidologist (a real word), Dr. Lam invented an artistic technique using photochemicals that was a subject for a Scientific American article. Now his artwork has been commissioned for the Beijing Olympics, and he might very well save the world with his patented edible vaccines.

Slate and Mango

I've had some requests for updated photos of Mango and Slate. These kittens, now almost four months old, can look so sweet, cuddly and innocent. It's a lie. Just this week, they discovered that the bathtub is a fun place to play, because they can romp and slide down the curved sides. It's an old porcelain tub, and the banging of paws and heads gets pretty loud. And the rubber ducky barely survived:

Battlegear for the Provo Freedom Festival Independence Day parade (from the Provo Photowalk

The year is more than half over and I am at 40% completion on my resolutions. That sounds good until I look at the difficulty level of the ones that are left. There's no guessing what July will bring. I never would have predicted when I started June that I would have 2 of the last essential Highway 89 project images in the bag. June was a hard month on vehicles: I was hit by a deer in Choteau, then totalled my own car, so I haven't been ranging as far as usual. So goal #1 for July is a new craft to bear the HWY89 plates. With the price of gasoline, Toyota ought to be on their knees when they see us coming. As for the rest of the year's resolutions:

1. Get in shape More biking, gardening, life. Heaving a 30 lb camera bag through airports does wonders for your triceps. Not sure how to declare this done.
2. Baseline mammogram done.
3. Find a publisher I need to send out another round of queries, now that the next two chapters are done. I'm working hard on the remaining chapters, which are coming together very well. Lots of library time in my future.
4. Learn to ride a horse I have ridden in the arena, from walk to trot. More importantly, I have saddled and bridled and unsaddled Barney. I learned that some horses are direct reined (pull on side to turn) and some are neck reined (rein pressure on opposite side from direction of turn), and that switching is like learning to drive in New Zealand, which I accomplished once too. I'm going to cross thisone off the list, even though it's going to be a life-long pleasure to achieve greater competence in the saddle.
5. Take more salsa lessons Done, but more of more would be (still) fun.
6. Install CS3 done.
7. Establish a systematic keywording workflow I have actually done some keywording in the last month. Uploaded about 400 keywords, so far so good, but not systematic yet.
8. Launch snappola.com I might just leap-frog right over this one. Working on a plan right now.
9. Shoot the wedding dress remix Last month I did a test in the basement. Then I went to Arizona somewhat unexpectedly at the time I would have made the photo at my outdoor location, which means I will wait until location number 2 is prime and hope I am in town for that
10. Make a Turducken it is way too hot to cook. Shelving this one until fall.

I made progress, but 40% still isn't a passing grade. Likely I have almost six more months. Next year, I will better define binary questions for my resolutions: done or not done. "Get in shape" vs "do cardio x times per week". Clarifying exactly what the goal is helps focus the efforts to achieve it.

Slate at 9 1/2 weeks

I passed a milestone today. I've written 50% of the first draft for the Highway 89 book. Even better, of the part I've written, three chapter are edited and pretty much done.

When I worked at the UofU, I went to a media training session with Ken Verdoia. That was at least ten years ago, and I often think of his main message: "know what you want to say, say it, stop." There's so much I could say about the advent of middle-class tourism, the mystique of the road trip, the reinvention of the west. But I can't say it all at once, and it won't all fit into the book I envision. I do know what I want to say. It's not a blank slate, so far (fingers crossed, etc.).

I did get some more tools for the second half. I bought the most expensive thesaurus at the big box bookstore, one with a hard cover. I gave up on the on-line versions. Visual Thesaurus is kind of entertaining, just not while I'm writing. I used up my favorite spiral bound pad (top binding only, please), so I got another. I have tons of pens (Uniball Vision fine black. If I could get the purple ones by the box, I'd use them instead). Even though I am loving the Mac authoring software, Scrivener, I output the first draft by long-hand. Writing with pen, paper and my 3x5 index cards narrows my focus to the question: "what do I want to say?" Then I write down the answer.

R calls this kitten the Great Blank Slate. He won't be working at the Genius Bar, that's for sure. Like Randy Pausch, Slate thinks he should be having fun. With my 3x5 cards, books, hair. Slate hasn't tried the keyboard yet (Mango loves helping R with his MacAir), but that's because he's too busy galloping around the house. Slate is easy-going, and he's only fallen off the sofa once.

They won't be kittens for long. If I can keep them from disconnecting the wireless and chewing up my notes, I might just finish this book before Mango is a grown-up, serious cat. Slate, on the other hand, lives in his own version of Wonderland--he's trying hard not to grow up at all.

Mango

Getting kittens was not on the list of New Year's resolutions, but they sure are fun. Mango weighs 950 grams. Her brother Slate punishes the kitchen scale at 1.2 kg, but she doesn't take much guff from him, dishes it out right back. And she won't share her mouse toy with Slate, even though they do everything else (eat, sleep, visit the litter box) together. I made incremental progress on my goals, but I can't cross anything else off the list this month.

1. Get in shape A little biking on my new bike, enough to count.
2. Baseline mammogram done.
3. Find a publisherI am letting the queries sit while I finish up two more chapters. Third is done, and I am editing the fourth. Once I finish, I will send them along to the publisher that is reviewing the first two, and hound some new ones if I don't hear back. And the fifth chapter is about half way done. I wrote a lot of words in May, and I can see the actual end of this project. Not sure whether finishing or not finishing is a more alarming prospect if it isn't sold first. I am finishing it regardless.
4. Learn to ride a horse I spent the best part of a week on this task, starting from the ground up. Since then, I've ridden Fran's horse Barney and her new pony Chocolate Chip (Cookie for short). Next goal is to learn enough to babysit Fran's herd. I cleaned a hoof last weekend.
5. Take more salsa lessons Done, but more of more would be (still) fun.
6. Install CS3 done.
7. Establish a systematic keywording workflow No progress since I last updated. It's time to just do it.
8. Launch snappola.com I'm still exploring an Internet shopping cart.
9. Shoot the wedding dress remix did a test in the basement. If it works half as well outside, it will be fabulous.
10. Make a Turducken Oh Millie?

Like I said last month, progress, not perfection, is the measure. June should have a bit of travel in it, so I need to make some hay while the sun shines. And feed some hay to Barney.

Remix: daisies

As a non-native Utahn, I have been watching the FLDS drama unfold in Eldorado, Texas with great trepidation, and numerous questions. Recently I observed in the SL Tribune that one of our elected officials does not oppose the idea of legalizing polygamy. I address the following questions primarily to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who needs to have a plan if he's going to seriously propose legalization.

This post isn't just about the FLDS dramarama: Muslims also practice polygamy, and probably others would care to give it a go. In principal, I agree with legalizing polygamy. I don't care who someone sleeps with, so long as he or she is an adult capable of giving full consent. At minimum, I would like to see a governmentally recognized contractual relationship between parents that clarifies the responsibility for children that issue from any relationship. When I lived in Texas, the state Attorney General was very diligent about collecting child support from every dead-beat father, married or not. In the end, the state's interest in marriage is about property, not sex, so I have some questions about the mechanics of polygamy.

Mango and Slate, first day home

After his divorce, three cats remained with R. And I had Lucy. When we (meaning R and I) moved to Utah, only two cats could go with us. How many times has someone come up to you in your life and said, "I'm going to get a cat this weekend?"

It happened to me twice in 8 days, the month before we moved. One person exactly described R's black cat, and Whisper ended up with Roy, who went home to eat bacon & mayo sandwiches with her at lunch. Julia and her son took Breena, the blind siamese mouser, who needed a friend just when Julia's son took ill. That left only Kalki. Kalki and Lucy flew on a plane to Utah. Lucy bit him in the butt at the vet's kennel while they waited for us to drive from Texas to collect them. We try not to blame Lucy, but he died the first month we lived in SLC. She always was a one-cat household kind of girl. And she never really accepted R as a full member of her household in the 13 years we all lived together.

All those years, to console R, who loved cats, we would fantasize that someday we would get a grey kitten and an orange kitten, and they would play together and keep each other company when we had to travel. We said good-bye to Lucy, and we waited for someday.

Someday is today. Meet the siblings, Mango and Slate.

Rocky the turtle visits through his window

Earlier this spring our next-door neighbors asked if they could cut a hole through our mutual fence, so that their turtle Rocky could bask in the morning sun. We now have a screened opening with a sliding privacy door at turtle-level behind our deck. I haven't seen Rocky use it, but I am assured that he does in clement weather.

Mustangs at the Cedar Mountain Horse Management Area, Utah

Last week at the wild horse gentling workshop, I learned that when horses are beginning to understand a new task, they make chewing motions with their mouth and tongues, which gives a new meaning to the phrase "something to chew on." During the chomping and pondering, it's a good idea to let them have some time to think it through for themselves.

When I left last Tuesday morning, I told R not to worry, there was no way I would go into a pen with a wild horse. 36 hours later, I was surrounded by a couple hundred of them and I felt no fear, even knowing they could have trampled us in a moment if we did something to upset them. I signed up because I wanted to learn some practical beginning horsemanship; you might say that starting with mustangs is an over-the-top way to get that knowledge. Probably so, but I now can safely navigate around a nervous horse, find its favorite spot for scratches, put on a halter (with a cooperative animal), and clearly communicate my status as the leader of the herd of two. I probably won't have much call to teach a horse to make an inside turn in a round pen, but I now know it is reasonable to expect a well-trained horse to come when called, to stand for saddling and grooming without being tied, and eventually to take its cues from my reaction to something new, rather than freaking out. And I have a slight appreciations for how hard it would be to reach that level of training, for me more than the horse.

Some other lessons have relevance for everyday life. I ask the horse to trust; it will trust so long as I am trustworthy. These animals are smart, and they don't forget a lesson, so make sure to know what I want to teach them, and thus avoid a prolonged period of trying to unteach behaviors I don't want. Don't punish refusal to obey, but give consequences the horse understands. Stop the training session on a high note--if necessary, back up to something the horse already knows and reward it well. And that patience comes from having right-sized expectations, and being willing to set aside those expectations when the horse has other ideas. Even horses have bad days.

I have long believed that we teach people how to treat us. That certainly held true for the horses and burros. The trainer's alpha mare attitude wasn't the simple dominance I had imagined, nor was there any pleading or placating with the horse. The correct approach required clarity of intention, simple communication, and choices for the horse. Consistency engendered respect, not fear; calmness rather than anxiety; confidence and trust, not confusion. Revising the bumpersticker about dogs and their owners: I would like to fully be that person a horse would need me to be.

Mustang foal in a BLM short-term holding facility

This little one has a better than average chance of getting adopted, because people, unbelievably, will choose horses based on coloration rather than personality or conformation. The white on the head and legs makes this one more desirable by some. You can adopt this one and mama at Salt Lake Wild Horse and Burro Facility. You can also come see the halter-broke adoptee mustangs and donks we've been gentling all week at the Wild Horse and Burro Festival in South Jordan. The auction begins at 6:30 tonight. And neither Daisy nor Spud is coming home with me, so bring your trailer and collect these sweethearts while you can.

Wild horses in their paddock at Butterfield Canyon

The difference in the horses' demeanor at second day at the Festival of Learning's mustang gentling is striking. They still blast out of the trailer like uncrated Tasmanian devils, but once they are back in their separate training zones, they settled right down. No more crashing into the panels or panicky loping the perimeter. Mostly they just stood calmly and waited. With appropriate direction, I got in the round pen with a gorgeous little buckskin on his second session, walked up to him and scratched his head.

I spent one session yesterday watching Brent work with an absolutely petrified mare in her first gentling session. For twenty minutes she tested every junction in the panel fence, worked herself into a sweat trying to run away from him, which is sort of hard to do in a round pen. Every time she ran away, in just a few seconds, there he was as she came around the circle. After a while, he started giving her direction: first to simply turn away, then to turn back, over and over until it dawned on her that he was controlling her movements. Then she began to relax, accepting him as the lead horse in the pen, and within an hour he had her turning toward him on a vocal command. The next step will be to convert that vocal command into slowing the turn toward him, stopping and facing him. Then he can start to approach her with the halter. It's slow, but I see how it works. The human must be the alpha mare in the herd (even a herd of 2) at all times.

In the evening, after a dozen horses had received their lessons and three new burros had been gentled, we went out to the Salt Lake Wild Horse and Burro Facility where some of the BLM's herd of horses is held for adoption. The manager gave us the full tour of the place, and then took us into a couple of the pens WITH the horses. The mustangs are separated by age and gender. The young males were kind of curious as we walked through their pasture, but the 2 and 3 year old females immediately surged toward us. I watched one of the trainers as the horses surrounded him, and he didn't have enough hands to give all the scratches and pets to everyone who wanted them. I tried to take pictures, but pretty soon I had four horses around me wanting attention. I had to keep reminding myself, these are wild animals. Easily spooked, but they were accepting us on their terms so long as we didn't act like predators. I didn't want to leave them, and they seemed to feel the same way, because about 60 of them followed us down the hill to the gate. If they had decided to rush the gate, it would have been interesting, but the handlers steered them off. We saw a few mares with new foals, having been brought off the range already pregnant, and 15 more burros.

If I had a place to take her, one of those mares who chose me would have gone home with me last night. She's healthy and doing fine in her herd, but she deserves an adopter who can give her a happy, useful life. This is a serious responsibility, and I respect the people who can do it. I also suspect that the reward of a happy mustang is worth the effort.

Wild burro and me (Canon G9, ISO 1600, photographed by a participant with my camera)

I saw some amazing animal-trainer interactions today at the Intermountain WIld Horse and Burro Advisors' Festival of Learning: a wild mustang learning to come to a hand signal, another going from bouncing off the corral walls to a halter in under two hours, and this burro accepting hugs and scratches, a halter, and a clipper treatment in one session. Yes, I am in love, but with another burro, a yearling who rested her head on my shoulder and demanded to stand between two of us to get more attention.

Even when five trainers and about 30 participants were working in separate pens, the arena was quiet, except for the occasional snorting of a horse. Each trainer had a different technique, from making hand motions to communicate to the horse an impression of cacti and granite walls in the landscape, to stroking the animal with a 10' long bamboo pole. Each one got results. The common trait was an absolute certainty of authority in the corral, giving the horse confidence of its place in its new herd. Repeatedly, these wild animals burst out of the trailer into the corrals and then progressed through the fear to a calm and curious acquiesence, until their attention span was exhausted, and they were returned to the stables. Tomorrow the same horses will come back for another session - it will be fascinating to see how much they retain. One of the trainers said the refresher part of the lesson will be very short, because mustangs are very smart. On the range, it's learn fast or die.

These horses and burros are up for adoption this weekend at the Festival in South Jordan. I have no land, corral, shelter, or any of the other items the BLM requires of adopters, and it's not my time to have one of these animals in my life. After today, I can imagine that time will be sooner rather than never.

Tomorrow I take the full photographic arsenal.

Apropos nothing in the text, just a pretty spot in Wyoming*

R forwarded me this story from MSNBC about the degradation of air quality in rural Wyoming as a result of the rapidly spawning gas industry during the last few years. Nothing we couldn't have predicted.

Since 2003, I've watched how the BLM's "oversight" and the gas industry exploitation have impacted Sublette County, everything from dangerous meth-high equipment drivers on the highway to ripping up miles of virgin landscape to lay pipelines. The industry spokespeople are asking for trust and cooperation to solve these air quality problems. Have they earned that trust? Sublette County should have seen this coming. In fact, the county commissioner called the ex-governor a "whore for the industry" back in 2003. Them's fighting words. I hope the good folks of Sublette County has it in them to fight hard, because the Wind Rivers are some of the last great country left.

Meanwhile, the BLM is reviewing a proposal to allow 4,000 more rigs in the field. The formerly gorgeous winter landscape of the Wind River basin could end up like the Wasatch Front on a bad inversion day, and we'll have only ourselves to blame.

*Granite Creek Falls in the Bridger-Teton National Forest

Fleeting spring colors

Monthly progress report on those New Year's resolutions.

1. Get in shape Yet more excuses.
2. Baseline mammogram done, with a follow-up repeat and an ultrasound. They now have lots of pictures on file for next year's comparison. Apparently, being called back for a second look is very common, enough so that there is scientific literature on the medical consequences of so many healthy women being exposed to the stress of a call-back.
3. Find a publisher More queries are out right now. Waiting is hard.
4. Learn to ride a horse I met Barney. Fran put me in the saddle, and led him around the corral so I could see the world from the saddle. I'm signed up for a workshop on gentling wild horses next week. I need to find a place for lessons on pre-gentled horses.
5. Take more salsa lessons Done, but more of more would be (still) fun.
6. Install CS3 done.
7. Establish a systematic keywording workflow I updated this project last week. Ready to move this task to a higher priority, now that I'm back from Moab.
8. Launch snappola.com I'm exploring an Internet shopping cart right now.
9. Shoot the wedding dress remix still waiting for the snow to melt. Have a volunteer model for the project.
10. Make a Turducken Oh Millie?

Three completed, substantial progress on four more. And I went for a walk today. Progress, not perfection, is our motto. The year is only one third over.

Monica

The Moran Eye Center had a reception last week to honor my guy and one of his colleagues with new endowed professorship ranks. The best part was that R's daughter Monica flew in from El Paso for the party.

Before we went up to the Moran, we did some traditional father/daughter shots, then popped this one off to show Monica's new fantastic new tats. That's more than an SB800 worth of ink there, folks. And she had the big one done in one go. Tough gal with a golden heart.

I was forbidden to bring the gear to the reception, so I have no pics of the two of them leaning against the wall while the chairman described all of R's accomplishments (it was a long part of the talk). Each of them delighting in the other's company, trying not to laugh during the serious parts. He is so proud of the woman she has become, but she's still his baby.

Mill Avenue Bridge, Tempe, Arizona

Here we are, the first quarter of 2008 gone. I made a photo or two, like this one at the Mill Avenue Bridges, the original route over the Salt River to reach Phoenix from Tucson (although that is the new bridge. The old bridge carries the east/soutbound traffic). I'm still plodding through my January resolutions, and I need some help with #8 (Snappola). I am looking for a web shopping cart, of which there are about a million options to sort through. Here are my requirements:

1. Installable by a mere mortal (uh, me). I did my own MT installation and upgrades, so I have some skill, but software is not my profession.
2. Decent documentation (see #1)
3. Active user community or reasonable support if I buy a license
4. Does not require customers to create an account. This knocks out about 90% of the ones I've looked at (Zen Cart in particular). I hate having to create an account if I buy something on-line. Why would I inflict that nonsense on my customers?
5. Easy to integrate with MovableType (preferred) or WordPress.
6. Runs on XMission's servers (unix-based)
7. Integrates with PayPal
8. Bonus points integrates with a third-party bulk email service.

As for the rest of my resolutions, I have nothing to cross off the list, but some progress to report along with the usual whinging.

Melting snow waterfall in Kolob Canyon, Zion NP, March 2005 (Nikon D70, Adobe Lightroom 1.3)

Another archived photo that I set aside long ago because I didn't have the skill to get what I "saw" in the image file out of Adobe Camera RAW. The new ACR capabilities of both Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 rock (there's a bad pun for a Zion photo). I can see how easily my catalog of treasures might distract is already distracting me from my keywording goals.

On the topic of goals, I blogged about my 2008 list because I really do want to achieve them. Since my ego doesn't care for public humiliation, I'm harnessing that false pride for motivation to keep moving forward. I checked off two items in January, which I declare is a great start.

1. Get in shape I 've lost 6+ pounds by following a low-carb, low calorie diet. I've increased my cardio a little, and upped some weights on the machines.
2. Baseline mammogram no progress
3. Find a publisher Earlier this month, I met with an editor/literary consultant, Dawn Marano. She was recommended to me by an author friend who has seen much of my project. Dawn helped me strategize on where to send it and to refine my pitch. I sent the query out to three places; one has bounced back in record time. I plan to send out two more queries this month.
4. Learn to ride a horse waiting until spring weather
5. Take more salsa lessons we signed up with Salsa in Utah, been dancing twice. Twice is more.
6. Install CS3 done.
7. Establish a systematic keywording workflow I've posted about Lightroom, again and again.
8. Launch snappola.com I sent my business plan to an MBA friend who knows people with capital. Snappola doesn't require capital, but I always envisioned it as the segue to a larger, more expensive start-up scheme. I'm going to let this simmer on the back burner for a while.
9. Shoot the wedding dress remix wait until June, or July (when the snow melts!)
10. Make a Turducken I forgot to ask Millie to put it on her schedule

Even though February is a short month, with two Highway 89 trips on the calendar, I could find time to call the radiologist and my next door neighbor. Might even take longer to think up an excuse for my March update than to just make the calls. I heard a wise and annoying phrase: "what matters is not what I want, but what I do." Wanting, wishing, hoping is nothing without actually doing. In other words, back to the basement gym, the phone, the post office. I can accomplish my goals, one step at a time.

How are you doing on your 2008 resolutions?

Installation of the new front door in early January

I've been living in a bubble for a couple of weeks. Literally. The contractor draped the front of the house with heavy plastic. The theory was that the guys would be warmer while they worked. If it's sunny, it will help; it hasn't been sunny.

One complication is that it catches the snow, (falling snow, sliding snow, melting snow, frozen melted snow) between the pergola beams, which gets quite heavy; heavier than the pergola was designed to support. After the first big snow, week before last, R laboriously knocked off it from the underside.

About 8" of snow fell at the palace last night and this morning. We were getting psyched up to go deal with it (rather) late this morning, when someone started pounding on the door. It was Adam (the guy in orange above) and Ramon (carrying the back end of the door). They'd been sent out on snow detail. Because we live in a bubble, we didn't realize until much later in the afternoon that they'd also cleared the driveway and sidewalk. These guys rock.

As soon as the bubble comes off, I will make some photos of the glass that went into the lights (the holes) in the door. For a while we had cardboard and masonite, but the glass inserts were installed last week. The photos will look much nicer without the bubble background. I won't miss the bubble. I might miss the guys, even if they didn't shovel for me.

The Summit Electric sign on 4th South, Salt Lake City

I finished an important deadline-driven project yesterday, felt like the guy in the Bose commercial, blown back in my chair from the effort. So today I did one hundred little tasks, mostly readying my system for the Adobe Lightroom switch-over by transferring files to my back-up drive and extra DVD copies. I burned at least 15 DVDs today, maybe 20, all raw capture files.

Apple's Time Machine cannot hit my doorstep soon enough. Or else it's going to be a rack of swappable drives. I have been uncharacteristically hygienic about my file organization, and I can find stuff, but too many LaCies slow down the system, and I just filled another 500 GB unit. I'm going to try to hold out for the Time Machine by shifting some stuff around, but I need to be at the front of the line when Apple releases them to the world. Somehow, I don't see an Apple store overnight party like the IPhone though. Or that the mad rush will take out Apple's on-line store like happened when R ordered his MacBook Air on Tuesday.

As for my file system, I can find stuff, if I remember that it exists. My upcoming keywording project is looking like it will be time-consuming AND worth my time investment. I didn't exactly forget that I shot this, but then I shot other stuff and then I moved on. Moving on isn't forgetting, really.

In between burning 15-20 DVDs, you can clean the house; finish, hand wash and block a sweater; reorganize your bookshelves and the yarn you bought at Christmas and on Monday; wrangle some electrical subcontractors; do some laundry; repair stuff with Superglue and generally knock back dozens of little annoyances. It's a suggestion from the GTD book, just doing stuff that takes under 2 minutes, rather than adding it to a to-do list, that really works for me. Because once done, these tasks can now be forgotten, really. Deleted from the mental hard drive, like some photos I'd rather not talk about.

Neon burger joint sign, Bountiful, UT

No chocolate shakes, french fries or cheeseburgers for me for a while. I once invented a 1,000 calorie per day fast-food only diet. I'm not recommending it, just noting that it can be done:

Breakfast: Egg McMuffin (300)

Lunch: Subway Turkey and Ham Sandwich, no mayo or cheese (290)

Dinner: Wendy's single, no mayo or cheese (390)

Total: 980 calories
although for the sake of nutrition, it might be a good idea to up that to 1,120 calories and have a 12 oz orange juice at breakfast (140).

Happy Day 10 of the those New Year's resolutions.

P.S. I wish they would fix the letters in that sign.

Randy, Ramon and Adam

These guys are working outside on my house. They are tough. Today (35 deg) they turned off the propane heater because it was too loud, interrupting their music. And who knew DeWalt made radios? But I digress.

We Photowalkers are not so tough. The Temple Square shoot at 24 degrees was enough cold for a while. So we are moving indoors to work on our portrait skills. Rich has found us a venue, we have models, backdrops, at least 5 sets of lights, and many planning to attend.

The most exciting part for me is how many absolute beginners are planning to attend. I didn't help start Photowalking to meet self-annointed experts- there are plenty of other photo groups in SLC brimming with them; what we need is enthusiasm, creativity and some laughs, with enough experienced hands around to make sure no one gets hurt by a falling light stand.

We are also going to set up zones where we can test out gear owned by fellow members. There will be large Canon and Nikon contingents. Bryan has promised to bring his ring light, I've got some odd filters, even the Olympus folks will get a table.

Now that we are up to 62 people on the team, I'm bringing name tags. It will be nice to finally get to see people without all their winter outerwear, and to associate Flickr ids with real names and faces.

Please join us! Always room for one more.
Saturday 12 January 2008, 11 am to 2 pm
Gateway Community Church - 584 E 12300 South, Draper
All the Details

Page 39 from Katy Comes Next

When I was little, I loved the book Katy Comes Next by Laura Bannon. Katy is a sadly worn doll belonging to a little girl named Ruth. Ruth's parents own a doll hospital, but never have time to fix Katy. Then one magical day, the parents close the shop, fix their daughter's doll and let Ruth pick out a doll's trunk full of new clothes.

I used to pore over all the drawings and choose my own outfits for Katy. My mom let me check it out from the library almost every time they had it, and patiently read it to me over and over. Sometimes she'd say I'd have to leave it at the library so other children could have a turn. Amazon, seller-of-all, turned up a not too ridiculously priced copy when I remembered to check last month. I ordered it and the Fort Sumner Municipal School library copy is mine.

When something becomes an iconic memory, re-visiting it as an adult bears some risk - it might not be as charming, beautiful or grand as I remembered. However, Katy Comes Next is just as wonderful as my recollection, and I had a great time sharing its reappearance with my Mom over the holidays.

Thinking about this long-lost treasure, I asked myself, "what books would I replace first if the house burned down?" I don't think it's necessarily the same as the books that have had the great influence on me, or even the ones I have read the most. Some have information I consult regularly, some give comfort just by being at hand. So here's my list (with links to the Amazon database for more info):

Bill Johnson's Big Apple restaurant

We returned to Salt Lake to find the front of our palace draped in plastic in an attempt for the remodel to proceed despite the weather. Two electric space heaters running all night added a grand 5 degrees above the ambient 17°F; the propane torches they guys rented the next morning were much more effective.

The space heaters, regrettably, run on the same circuit as my computer. Before the electricians sputtered in disbelief and took decisive, mission-creeping action, my computer, my office space heater, our freezer, porch lights and furnace were all on the same circuit. We discovered this fact when a compressor and power hammer added to the line tripped the breaker. Now the furnace has its own circuit. But my computer popped off three times before I unplugged the space heaters. The contractor and I reached a consensus that 5 degrees really wasn't worth the bother.

Before we left Phoenix, I hunted down some more neon. There are actually two Bill Johnson's Big Apple restaurants; this is the Van Buren location. The sunset colors started to develop nicely. The only problem was that the sign wasn't lit. So I went inside and asked, "what time does the sign come on?" and the manager blinked, said, "when I switch it," and did just that. If nothing else, photography has emboldened me to ask silly questions, often with great success in response.

It's a small thing, to step up and ask for help, but fear is such a huge barrier in art-making that any small victory is worth celebrating.

What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

- from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

The book's discussion about making pictures, lots of them, in order to be able to make the pictures only I can make, has helped me rebound from innumerable failures and discouragements. It might be the best $10 I ever spent on photography.

New Years Fireworks at Tempe Town Lake, Arizona

Many of my dilemmas about photographing U.S. 89 have had the same solution: pay attention to what is right in front of me. I have wanted one more photo from the Phoenix area and I came down on this trip with the idea to get "it", and having no idea what "it" was.

I look for subjects that link the highway's history to the present, and especially stories about how communities along the route are reinventing themselves. The New Years football events are the big thing in this area, not something that I could find any angle of interest. That is, until through an unlikely coincidence, I met someone just this week who explained how it all ties to the highway itself.

Alternate take on the Santasaurus shoot

Christmas cards were only mailed yesterday and today. Most will be late. I let R pick the one I printed; this one is the #2 choice.

We are back on the road tomorrow, Highway 89 of course. That, and I am still disentangling my site from our company's MT installation, so I might not be blogging for a few days as Xmission redirects the host over the holidays.

2007 has been a spectacular year for me and my work. One of the best things has been what's been happening right here. New visitors, new friends, from so many different aspects of my life.

When Bryan, Rich and I organized the first Photowalk in SLC, I had no idea it would take off. This morning our Flickr pool had 43 members, and I'm sure we will grow again in January with the indoor studio event. Here's some of the new people I've met through Photowalking:

Annie, Harley, Laura, Paul, Scott, Trevor.

I did the 37Days Artist Trading Card Challenge as a lark, and now look who's visited the Ann-alog:

Annie, Cindy Jones Lantier, Kikipotamus the Hobo, Nina, and Rick.

One of my most popular posts this year had nothing to do with photography, but rather a knitting tip for hand-winding wool. It's good to be able to contribute something to the greater Internet depository of craft instruction. Google-Giver-of-All knows how frequently I consult the oracle myself. These bloggers stopped in to look:

Eliea, Lisa, and Teeni.

Then there's the Other stuff (like my main topic, photography...). From all over the globe, meandering their ways through the web, these folks took the time to comment and enliven things up here on the Pixel Remix:

Airhen, Denise, Jay, Kevin, Lisa, Pete, Scott, Tracy.

Near and far, thank you all for being part of the greatest year of my life. Best wishes for a happy holiday, and even better things in 2008.

Kitty Pappas neon, Bountiful, Utah

Kitty Pappas is one of the last old-time steak houses on northern U.S. 89 in Utah. I've eaten there, about a year ago, with my good friend Sharon, who is having surgery and is in my thoughts a lot today.

Also on my mind: Robert Plant and Alison Krause, Raising Sand, heard it? Get over to ITunes, I'll wait. If the songs weren't so sad, I'd be playing them all the time instead of Virgin Radio. Somehow, we don't exceed our bandwidth limits.

It warmed up today, above 40deg F, which put my outdoor refrigerator out of commission. In a moment of desperation before a Christmas party for 75 at the palace some years ago, I realized that 40 degrees outdoors was the same as in the electrified-at-my-expense, space-limited whitewear in my kitchen. The porch makes a fine pre-chiller for a case of room temp soda, just don't forget it and let it freeze.

The outdoor kitchen was nearly complete on Monday, when the gutter guys took their lunch break. They got their microwave oven out of the truck, set it up on the landing, and cooked themselves some hot lunch. Better than sandwiches, they told me. One of them even brought a can-opener. I'm good with it, because it rained last night, and we have no more puddles on the porch. If this project doesn't finish soon, we might need to provide the guys with a sink.

Christmas memories at the Domain, Auckland New Zealand

I took this picture back in 2003, when this blog was a new thing, and we were in New Zealand. I was shooting film then. 84 rolls in 12 weeks seemed like a lot (it was at $20 per roll by the time I developed it over there). I didn't have access to a scanner until we came back, and this one has languished in the files.

I've always liked it, perhaps more than it merits. Maybe because I can remember how great it was to be out for the Auckland Christmas celebration after R broke his leg and we were choppered out of the backcountry. Or the girl laughing at her dad in the seat as the shutter snapped over and over. I'm biased on this one; maybe it is a good picture. I wanted to use it for the 37Days trading card piece, but I couldn't make the text work with the image. Oh well.

It's 75 degF and raining in Auckland today. That weather didn't seem exactly like Christmas in 2003, even for a Cali girl like me. Nor does it seem like the holidays around the palace this year. There is the construction, and then we are leaving for US Highway 89 stuff. We haven't put up a single holiday ornament nor strand of lights. Simply hasn't been any time. Not even a cookie has been baked. I'm going to eat tamales in Arizona this year and call it good.

Second year party girl with a gift from her grandparents

Two of my nieces study ballet in California, so we went last weekend to their season premiere of the Nutcracker. They danced beautifully, of course, and I also got to experience the pre-performance routine at home. Their mother (my sister) is expected to prep the second year party girl with a Shirley Temple-style hairdo for 8 performances. Then mom does their make-up (no lipstick until costumes are put on at the theatre), bundles them into the car, and delivers them into a room full of giggly girls all twirling around on top of each other.

Hobosaurs-Home for the Holidays

I've got a pack of 25 of these 5x7 cards I won't be using. Inside is blank. The copyright watermark does not appear on the printed card. Since I'm not reprinting this design after these are gone, I don't want to put it into the e-shop on my main site. $25 plus priority mail shipping for the lot, including envelopes (that's a 33% discount from my regular price). Drop me an email if you are interested. Updated 2007.12.07: SOLD.

Demolition at the palace

My favorite song from Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others. The house is a mix between Spanish Mediterranean and craftsman bunglalow. Doric columns are wildly wrong in either case. What else is wrong is that one guy should not be able to slide the column out from under the porch roof it is supporting, regardless of how much they need to go. No tools, just a big guy to carry them off. I suspect that they have gone to our general contractor's museum of ugly bits that might come in handy, but trust me, there is no home worthy of them.

Springville, Utah

If I write a philosophy book someday, one of the chapters is going to be about how no matter how much you improvise, sometimes you have to break out the lard. I've been trying for 20 years to make pie crust. I won't recount all the disappointing attempts I've made, just let it be known I've tried with butter, iced water, shortening, pastry flour, ad nauseum. The results weren't bad, but they weren't great. And rolling out the pastry wasn't "simple as pie" on any attempt. Until I tried lard. I didn't want to try lard. Who, except the initiated, would voluntarily eat the fat surrounding the pig kidney? Now that I'm in the club, I'm not going back. Two perfect crusts on two attempts. And get this, you foodies - easy to roll, and no scorching. The dough handles completely differently than any crust I've ever made with butter, and tastes BETTER.

Regardless of your crust of choice, here's a simple way to improve your standard pumpkin pie recipe. Replace about half the milk or cream in the recipe with buttermilk. And add a dash or two of ground cardamom to your spice mix. The result is not so sweet, and the obligatory whipped cream will now be a contrast, rather than just more goo. If you are really adventurous, spoon some warmed dulce de leche on top instead of whipped cream. For the decadent, I can recommend saucing with a splash of Kahlua. Sadly, our pie is all gone.

Cold but willing subjects (f8, 1.0 sec, ISO 400, Noise Ninja)

R's side of the family sent its delegation for Thanksgiving, and we trundled them off to Temple Square to see the lights on Friday. Despite the cold, they were willing to pose for a few photos.

Book research, box 1

With 4 rounds of printing, and a trip to the Post Office, I am crossing off a major item off my GTD list of projects. So now it's back to distilling the factual material I have gathered on my travels on Highway 89 into something usable.

I plowed through a pile of books, magazine and newspaper articles, brochures, and PDFs of web pages before we left for Montana, but the new stuff is piling up. After I cook some goodies for the holiday, it's back in my chair with a stack of blank 3x5 cards. This method actually works for me far better than a computer, because I can sort through them while writing, using my hands to organize my thoughts. It works sometimes, "take the body and the mind will follow." And all of my driving and shooting notes are from my hipster PDA, so I can work with all of the material at once.

How many cards, facts will be enough? I won't know until I'm done. At least another box. This one's full. Like I plan to be, about this time tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

My new career as a back-hoe operator

Persistent badgering paid off, and I got to live out a long-held fantasy to operate a big yellow digging machine. Happens to be the one used to demolish my front yard. Perhaps the fact that I am paying for the digging machine had some influence. Travis was very patient in showing me the controls while Peter took the pictures. The hard hat and orange vest are model's own supplied equipment. I only picked up two scoops before I let the on-the-clock professionals take charge again. Maybe there's a place in this world for heavy equipment fantasy camp. Issue out commemorative hard hats, build stuff and tear it down again, over and over. They made sure to set the digger where I could do the least amount of damage to my own property.

They are really nice guys, though Travis did start earlier today than the agreed-upon 7:30, probably because they wanted to cut out early on a Friday. At least they are showing up. But still, lest the remodel project becomes my new hobby, I am fleeing. Heading south for a few days, see if there's anything to be seen down my favorite highway. Where I will be up at work earlier than Travis, and I won't get to cut out early. But he gets to drive the digger. Mike, the general contractor, said next week I can help with the concrete. I think I'll pass.

I was talking to some health professionals on Highway 89, it doesn't matter where. This phrase has taken on a much broader meaning in my personal lexicon than I realized when I first said it. And you can quote me:

Nevada Falls Remix

Remember that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens her eyes and Oz is in color? Just magic, at least it was when I was a kid.

I have apparently lost my mind, because I agreed to redo my husband's official website. The risk to marital harmony notwithstanding, as it will surprise no one that neither party takes instruction well, we have negotiated a trade for services that is equally advantageous, and I badly want what he will do in exchange. More on that later.

Bear Lake from the new rest stop above Garden City last weekend

It's a rainy Saturday morning. No errands. So what's a girl to do?

1. Haircut - take off 3 inches, catch up with Thomas the hairstylist/bass musician about his reggae band. Thomas needs a Facebook or MySpace page for the band
2. Blog hygiene - notice the updated blogroll? When I uploaded the page on restaurants on Highway 89, I noticed some other stuff I needed to fix. Working on it.
3. Listen to the Virgin Radio stream - to discover that the English have pulled off a miracle in Rugby World Cup Wishing I were in Scotland to see the AllBlacks thump the French in their quarter-final. When we were in New Zealand, I caught the fever. I love how the major powers refer to the other teams as "minnows." RWC2011 is in New Zealand: I'm going.
4. After reading the PhotoAttorney's blog for the first time, check that my Flickr account setting retain all my digital rights. They do. Whew. I thought I set it up that way, but then I couldn't remember. I hate that, when I've done something, and then forgot, and then waste time redoing it until I discover it's done. Oddly, GTD doesn't discuss this.
5. Copy files from CF chips to get ready for this evening's Photowalk. I'm going, even if it's snowing. That's why I have a golf umbrella and handwarmers.
6. Procrastinate a little more on the monster panorama I'm going to stitch of Bear Lake. I took the images last Sunday, including the one above, but I haven't started the photo montage.
7. I think I'll go knit. The Durrow sleeve cables are amusing, now that I've got the gauge working (ripped back to the start 3 times, ouch). Now for a real trick, I am doing both sleeves at once, mirror images. Concentration, a few rows at a time. And American Routes is on. That will keep me from the pano for at least a couple hours.

See you at 5 pm at the Salt Palace.

Elements from my Hipster PDA

Yesterday, my friend Greg saw my Hipster PDA and couldn't believe I was married to my gear-head husband. I like my gear just fine, but my GTD implementation is delicously low-tech. I use a combination of a Circa binder rooted firmly to my desk and a stack of 3x5 cards, mostly plain white with a few color-coded cards, bound with a rubber band.

Gathering up my wits and gear for a 4 week journey to Montana, via Highway 89, of course. Second trip to Montana in 10 days, bad luck on the timing, but this one will cover the same 1200 miles in 28 days rather than 5. R has fishing gear and his computer. I have two new 8 GB compact flash chips thanks to the special at Strobist. We are good to go.

I also have a new cell phone. In addition to the TMobile contract that I labor under for another 18 months. We won't go into why I can't get a TMobile signal from my kitchen, and have to stand on my porch to use my phone. Or how the awful customer service at Cingular drove me to TMobile. Instead, let's discuss why I needed a second phone from Verizon. There just isn't any GSM signal out there, "there" being where I travel on my project. Not at the rim of the Grand Canyon. None for miles between Page and Flagstaff. I think they just got some in Sanpete County. I love this story about "the" guy in Montana with an IPhone, using Chinook Wireless to provide roaming on an AT&T phone number with a Los Angeles area code. No AT&T store in Montana, no Apple store either.

I'm not even a chatty phone person, and now I have 2 cell phone numbers. Not to mention two chargers... I'll keep the GSM phone for international travel, and use the Verizon line out on the Highway 89. But no IPhone for me until I can use it wherever I roam.

An exquisite litte treasure: Banksia after a rainstorm, Kings Park and Botanical Garden, Perth, Western Australia

The entire Getting Things Done process has paid off in one unexpected area - a near-cessation of "treasure hunts," by which I mean a frantic search for some object/phone number/scrap of paper. I could loudly lament hours of my life that I've wasted looking for "stuff," except I think it's probably the norm for most of us.

Hold a generous end of the yarn between two pencils and begin wrapping.

To the non-knitting audience: some yarn is sold pre-wound into a skein that dispenses from the center, corralling the unused portion into a tidy ball. Other yarn comes in hanks or coils and needs to be wound into a ball before use. We don't want a simple ball because as the yarn unwraps while knitting, the ball tends to spinning away from the knitter (onto the sofa, floor, into the proverbial kitten's mittens). For about $100, you can buy an apparatus to wind center-pull skeins, but I don't knit enough to warrant the purchase. So I came up with this easy way to wind a pull-skein by hand. Which I present to the knitting blogosphere with gratitude for the generous sharing of experience found therein. Photographed in my cardboard studio box with the two flash set-up.

A joyful bundle of things gotten done

Monday was my three week anniversary on the Getting Things Done program. I can see the great things that are resulting from my changed behavior. HOWEVER, there are some nasty surprises David Allen doesn't mention in his book:

News announcer on Ireland TV

Not sure what he was thinking about putting that tie with suit. I was getting a cold last June, taking a rest in the hotel room after a not-so-profitable dawn outing in Galway, when I saw this guy presenting the news on the tv. I like the moire from the camera sync. It matches my mood at the time.

Wildflower abstraction - 2004

One thing I've learned: I need to remember to "restock the well" that feeds my creative process, hopefully before I completely deplete my resources and exhaust myself. Usually, this requires only a small amount of time devoted to off-topic, aimless diversion, free-association, and fool speculation.

Julia Cameron's work recommends "artist's dates" at least once a week, a goal I have a hard time meeting. But I did some profitable blog browsing yesterday, which resulted in finding out about the OUT/EX film series. The films were all based on found footage repurposed by the directors to tell their own stories. Each piece dredged up a new stream of memories and associations.

Perfect for frittering the day away

What I'm reading:

• Photo Business News & Forum,
• Hackszine a new venture by the folks behind Craft Magazine's blog,
• Last of the Donkey Pilgrims by Kevin O'Hara, which is responsible for my intense longing for a donkey of my own,
• Rocket Studio's site is chock-full of inspired PS work,
• American Sign Museum: Data points on the neon ranch project hatched earlier this week,
• 43 folders home of the Hipster PDA, which is working better than ever anything I've tried to get organized.
• Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific because I couldn't find his book on Patagonia

What I'm knitting:

• Durrow in a spring green
• Blanket Coat from Sally Melville's The Knitting Experience: Color in Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes hand-dye bulky yarn, Redwood Forest
• Socks for me, a turquoise, brown, orange variegated Opal with some Knit Picks turquoise solid for toes, heel, cuffs (almost done)
• Socks for R, Knit Picks Essential Sock Yarn in cocoa (ripped back and in a pile of string)

What I'm working on when not frittering time away on above:

• revising the book proposal
• training materials for VisualShare
• Printing and matting a full set of the Remix Series so I can carry it around town
• Filing taxes for me and the company
• Sending out queries and promo materials
• Scheming and scheduling the spring and summer shooting I want to do for all my projects

I don't think Nile Tiles counts as working. The Geoff Show counts so long as I listen while I work. But I'm the only one counting, and it's my opinion that counts.

Victory is near at hand for the pig roasters at Antelope Island

1. Have a dream and two birthdays Millie has wanted to roast a pig for at least as long as we've lived next door to her. Millie and Joel both know how to celebrate the achievement of a new decade. Millie, Joel and Marilyn organized Millies' dream into an actual plan (with shopping lists, recon trips and invitations) when they were celebrating something else a couple months ago.

Lucy in May 2006

Lucy loved jazz music, especially the melodic, blowsy, swinging standards, sax and trumpet. Definitely not drum solos. Ben Webster, Art Farmer, Miles Davis in less boppy phases, Gerry Mulligan all passed the audition. If there is a heaven, Lucy is sitting on Gene Harris' piano and Coleman Hawkins is blowing "Body and Soul" into her ear. It's a small comforting thought, though I'd much rather she still be in her chair.

She came to me when she was 8 weeks old, chased under the fence by my neighbor. I let her sit outside all night, until the next evening, because a pet seemed just too much in my crazy life. The next night, I heard her cry, saw her cute little white chin and paws, and relented. Not before she bit me though.

Lucy liked to sleep in her basket in the winter sunshine, to chase her wiffle ball and to spy on the neighbors through the windows. She hated cats so bad she chipped both fangs by running full speed into glass doors. She flew on a plane once, to come to Utah. In our first house here, she would perch on the newel post of the stairs to look out the window when she waited for me to come home. She was still here when I got back from New Zealand, and all the other times I had to leave her behind.

Seventeen is old for a cat, especially one with Lucy's list of problems. Three years after a stroke is amazing. She took going blind better than we did watching her bump into things. She was a tough old girl and even on her last day, she wasn't planning to go. I could have kept her another day, another hour, but none of us could handle another seizure and we had to say good-bye on the 20th of August.

When my friend Marlene lost her cat and dog in the same month last fall, she said that the house felt strangely empty. I greeted Lucy every time I came into the house, gave her pets when I took a break from my computer, held her every morning while I did my little writing routine. Since I've been home all day, she would come sit by my desk, in her blindness, just because. Empty is hardly the word. It's like a sucker punch to wonder where she is and then remember.

I'm glad Lucy isn't suffering any more. She was the amazing wonder cat in her miraculous recoveries but she couldn't last forever. Even so, I wasn't ready to let her go.

That neighbor who chased her under the fence 17 years ago used to say, "Annie darling (that's what he called me), we think we take care of those pets, but they are really God's little angels he sends to take care of us." Lucy the fur-coated angel, eyes blissfully squinting, grooving with the jazz legends. Thank you, Lucy, for taking such good care of me. I miss her so.

Self-portrait

Shooting a self-portrait without a mirror creates a new set of difficulties, only partially overcome in this example. I wanted to document the braids and I wanted to do it myself. And here it is.

Everyone wants to know how long it took. Jamie was really fast, less than an hour and a half for 17 braids. She started on camera left, went up to the forehead, then did the other side the same way, finishing with the middle, slightly assymmetrical. Yes, it hurt during the braiding, hurt some to sleep, and is hurting less today. I am really looking forward to having my hair out of my face for Nahanni, regardless.

We leave on Saturday, not tomorrow, which gives me another day to finish details at work, and clean my optics. What a panic when we discovered R and I had the date mentally wrong on our departure, and what a gift an extra 24 hours has become.

And the pendant was a gift too, ain't he sweet?

Tomorrow we go celebrate the news on his grant score - 150 - good enough to pay the house note for 5 more years. Congratulations, Dr. Bobbola! And wait till you see his 'do for the river!

From the Sublette Examiner, Thursday, September 18, 2003

Sublette County Commissioner Bill Cramer said, "This proves what I've said all along, that the ex-governor was a whore for industry."

He was responding to revelations that the State of Wyoming and the Exxon Corporation had secretly joined forces in 1997 to defend against Sublette County's challenge to the Wyoming Department of Revenue's valuation of Exxon's gas production.

According a story by Cat Urbigkit in the Examiner, "Former Governor Jim Geringer's administration had aligned itself with Exxon against the county, but the existence of the 'joint defense' agreement hadn't been publicly revealed."

Under the administration of new governor Dave Freudenthal, who had campaigned in part on the mineral taxation issue, the Sublette County case will see the light of day, with Board of Equalization hearings scheduled for January 2004.

Meanwhile, Geringer's former cabinet-level Department of Revenue head Johnnie Burton, who had a major role defending the state's position, is now heading the federal Minerals Management Service in the Department of Interior.

Geringer himself is now an executive with ESRI, a software company providing GIS tools to many players in the minerals extraction industry. An ESRI press release quotes him as a big promoter of GIS technology in Wyoming: "Geringer says the goal of these efforts was to increase communication and data sharing between and among various agencies at different government levels-federal, state, and local-resulting in better management and greater efficiency in government."

Why did Geringer forget to mention data sharing with the likes of Exxon? And how has Burton incorporated this "greater efficiency" of data sharing with private companies into the federal administration?

From the draft of my last will & testament:

Article 13: Common disaster: In the event my husband and I shall die as a result of a common disaster, or under such circumstances that it cannot be determined which of us died first, it is my will that, and in such event, my husband shall be determined to have survived me.