Checking in...

Bad blogger. I'm still here, even though things have been quiet. Well, I'm here, but I'm not there. I'm in Phoenix for a bit. Long drive. I intended to write as I went, but I haven't perfected that mobile work flow.

It was a beautiful drive, not without its challenges. I'll spare you the details while also trying not to be too cryptic. If you're driving the smaller roads of eastern Oregon, you want to be in the moment, focusing on that region's intense and immense beauty. An upset stomach on lonely stretches of road can take you out of the moment.

It seems fitting, and all too bloggerly cheesy, that the cicadas emerged this year after their...it's not a slumber, right? A birth? Sorry grammar folks, I should have a letterhead warning above - there be monstrous violations of grammar and sentence structure here. Interesting time to be on the road, passing through towns and communities trying to sort things out.

My experience was overwhelmingly positive. More on that later. Until then, I'll leave you with a link to a wonderful New York Times article about life in the city, and how that great metropolis belongs to the young right now. I loved reading it and seeing the images, and if I were in my early 20s, there's no place I'd rather be. (Asterisk asterisk - Finland, Norway, Denmark, that was poetic license, please don't take it too seriously. If I wake up tomorrow in the body of my 25 year old self, I'll be saying the same thing I always say - gosh, I hope Finland, Norway, or Denmark need a flailing, aspiring, American documentary photographer.)

(The photographs in that NYT article are amazing. Ian Lewandowski. Chloe Pang. Flo Ngala. Richie Shazam. Daniel Arnold. There are 3 photos in that article that would make me say, ok, my work is done here.)