Some of my photography training wasn’t all that different from what I imagine getting trained at a gun range might be like. Here’s the shutter/trigger. Frame an image like you line up crosshairs. Wait until just the right moment, then click/bang/pew pew. There’s the “shot.” Decisive. Wait for the ONE AND ONLY MOMENT. Hunt. Stalk. It was like pouncing on something, even though you stayed still.

For me, photographing doesn’t feel like that at all. Decisive moments happen, sure, and it matters that I’m set up for them: aware, observant, connected to what’s happening. But what photography actually feels like to me is gathering, collecting, or stitching.

I imagine that making photos is like gathering berries and putting them in a basket. I can move constantly, work smoothly, and consistently. I think of wild blueberry harvesters I’ve photographed. They arrive when the conditions are right, they rake in consistent motion, making adjustments according to their interaction with life. A subtle tug when the vines snag, gentler movements when the berries are soft. I can work that way, too. I try to be nimble, to move regularly, keep trying different angles. When I am working at my best, I recognize patterns, I anticipate and react. I sometimes hit a feeling of flow. Ooooeeee, the sweetness of that feeling.

Photography is really simple when you think about it: we are making choices about what to put inside a rectangle. Picking things to put inside, picking what to leave behind. These choices usually happen quickly, like a reflexive movement. Or, an intuition built from practice. But I think there’s also some kind of recognition of the readiness of the image. Does it feel ripe and ready to be made?

I often make photos even when I’m not so sure about what I’m making. I can pull everything out of my basket later and sort the berries worth keeping. I import into Lightroom and cull based on instinct. This, of course, is the gift of photographing digitally, I can make, make, make. In high school and college, I was in the last cohort of students to learn darkroom skills before I learned digital practices. Since then, I’ve seen countless tutorials, lectures, and podcasts about the benefits of learning lessons from analog and applying them to digital. Sometimes I meet other photographers who sheepishly (almost shamefully) are like, “Oh, I always overshoot, too.” It’s generally looked down upon to overshoot, it’s preferred to be controlled and measured in your work. But I think there’s plenty to learn from the “fuck it, might as well try” spirit of digital. I like when artists in other mediums are loosey-goosey, when they throw paint on a canvas or riff on a guitar. Photographers should be riffing. I want to learn how to riff better.

I thought maybe as I worked, I’d get this out of my system. Perhaps someday, I’d be so locked into my process that I’d be like the photography heroes, those (usually men) who photographed one or two frames, knew they “had it” and tucked their camera into their bag, done for the day. Maybe I’d be like the photographers who waited for hours in one spot until their moment came, like hunters in a blind.

But that’s not me, it’s not how I work. If anything I’d like to figure out how to be less controlled. More experimental. I like being in motion, I like chit-chatting while I work, I like taking photos just to figure out what it felt like to take that particular photo. The best part of gathering photos is that it allows me to think less, feel more. But sometimes, my feelings are wrong. I’ll take some photos that feel off or bad, only to edit and find that those iffy ones were the best in the batch. What would happen if I’d decided my way out of those? What if I became so decisive I’d decided my way out of making something that surprised me or helped me grow?

If I may indulge in one more analogy: the quilt. I like thinking of photographing to make a quilt of distinct images that work together. Most of the time, I’m photographing a photo story rather than a single image. I’m working to answer the classic “who, what, where, when, why” question combo. Or, in photojournalism, the classic “wide, medium, portrait, detail, action” combo. Usually, this takes more than one image. It takes several. So, I’m also making images to be a team, separate squares to be stitched together later. While I’m making photographs, I’m thinking of how they may fit together so that the piecing goes well: is the color in one image echoed in a similar color tone in another? Does one color palette establish itself for this story, can those hues be my guide just like subject and light? Is there a clear mood and tone to whatever I’m making?

It’s not lost on me that I was taught to work like the hunter, a stereotypically male role. I was taught an approach that feels somehow both passive and dominating. And, of course, gathering and stitching are usually considered women’s work: an approach that feels more active, responsive, creative. I’m not the only one that works this way, I’ve talked about it with some photographer friends who were like “hey, come to think of it, I think I work like that, too.” This is especially true for working photojournalists, who can’t always spend a full day waiting for someone to walk into a sunbeam for our one and only shot: we need to deliver a full collection of images and do it quickly. Like all things, there’s probably a happy medium, a both/and. It’s always a both/and, isn’t it? We can position ourselves for magic, build enough skillful instinct to know when and how to leap. And, we also can experiment, gather, move, feel, make.

The images in this post are from a story photographed in 2023 about the Passamaquoddy wild blueberry harvest, tradition, climate change, etc. The story was written by Kate Olson, published in 2024 in Smithsonian Magazine. It was a project I absolutely loved working on. For context, I ‘gathered’ 4,000 images for this story. When I look back at them, I can see myself enjoying myself, experimenting, problem solving, etc, through these images.

The wild blueberry harvest hits it’s peak around this time each year. Wishing a good harvest for all the berry rakers and gatherers out there and a shoutout to all my fellow overshooters.

Welcome to Vacationland! Being a photojournalist sometimes feels like never and always being on vacation. So, I’m probably not the best to be a proper tour guide around Maine, as I don’t often get to experience Maine purely as a traveler. I’m usually exploring while working: bopping around solo, on a time crunch, or budget pinch. But I do see a lot of this wonderful place.

Antique malls and vintage stores, I’ve found, are the best place to stretch my legs on long drives to and from assignments. Also, they’re fun. They’ll be over-represented on this list. What will be under-represented is nature: hikes, beaches, preserves, etc. You’ll have to find those on your own, there are too many to include on a succinct list. I also don’t drink alcohol, really, so you’ll need to ask someone else about breweries and stuff.

With those asterisks, here’s list of places I have enjoyed and/or go to often. I didn’t include lengthy descriptions, but I did add links. They aren’t in any order, organized by region and type. And I bet I forgot some spots. Anyway, hopefully this quick list arrives just in time for your summer trip to Maine. I’m hitting publish on this just before I head out on some adventures myself.

Note: I’m happy to share my favorites, but ONLY WITH NICE PEOPLE, OKAY?! BE ON YOUR BEST BEHAVIOR!

PORTLAND AREA

Eat
Cong Tu Bot / Oun Lido’s - respect the spiciness
Luncheonette
Tandem - it’s worth the line, they make you feel like friends
Izakaya Minato
Small’s - get the caesar with jammy eggs
Taj Indian Cuisine
Miyake
Eventide and Honey Paw - If you only have time to stop in one place in Portland, to go Eventide and get a brown butter lobster roll and then go next door to Honey Paw and order the honey soft serve ice cream with chocolate shell
Terlingua - this is where I go when I want a huge salad, I get the Terlingua salad with brisket
Aomori and Aomori Market - there is a long connection between Aomori (a prefecture in Northern Japan and also where I went to high school, coincidentally) so it’s so nice to see that stately sisterhood manifest in great food
Leeward
Root Wild Kombucha

Do
Washington Baths - get a bowl of their hearty dal after your sauna
Portland Hearts of Pine - we are getting a women’s soccer team, too!
Portland Sea Dogs - I don’t know how they do it, but they manage to make baseball not boring
Portland Museum of Art - The Dead Pearl Diver by Benjamin Paul Akers is one of my favorite pieces
Ferry boat system to Casco Bay Islands
Portland Farmer’s Market - stop by Dandelion Spring Farm, Goranson Farm, and - if you are super lucky - Blue Hill Berry Co.

Shop
Open House - half of my house is from Open House
Judith - best style advice of my life is from Brooke
Viand - Jenny finds the best treasures
Post Supply - my go-to stop for my Wonder Valley skincare
Onggi
Print and Longfellow Books - Maine’s literary legends, I alternate my book purchases between the two
Bold Magazine Shop
GoGo Refill - I get all my provisions here, I especially swear by Dip solid shampoos
Wild Seed Project

Donate
Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition
Maine TransNet
Indigo Alliance

MIDCOAST

Eat
The Lost Kitchen - Freedom - you can stop for lunch and visit the market without sending in a postcard!
Double Grazie - Rockland
Long Grain - Camden
Chase’s Daily - Belfast - the farmer’s market and art gallery in the back is lovely
Mosaic - Camden

Do
Cedar Grove Sauna - Montville - tell Jackie hi for me
Langlais Art Preserve - Cushing - so nice for a walk, but especially cool to visit when the studio is open
Center for Maine Contemporary Art - Rockland
Farnsworth Museum - Rockland - be sure to cross the street to the Wyeth Center and see Pentacost
Waldoboro Inn
Monhegan Island
Read the latest Midcoast Villager and pop in their cafe in Camden

Shop
Curator - Rockland - be sure to also check out their consignment and vintage for kiddos, Little Fox
Rock, Paper, Scissors - Wiscassett - queen of paper goods
Wiscasset Antiques Mall - Wiscassett
The Peaceful Pagan Vintage - Wiscassett
Widener Company - Wiscassett
Owl’s Nest Emporium - Camden - the new antique kid on the block

Donate
Waldo County Bounty
Maine Farmland Trust

DOWNEAST

Eat
44 North Coffee - Stonington and Deer Isle
Tinder Hearth - Brooksville
Brooklin General Store - Brooklin
Burnt Cove Boil - Stonington - this is for people who are excited to crack open shellfish with a rock (I recommend it)
Milk and Honey Kitchen - Northeast Harbor
Cilantro Indian Bistro & Bar - Ellsworth

Do
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts - Deer Isle - I dream of taking a workshop here
Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies - Stonington - go for the art, the church is my favorite. All hail Maine weirdos!
Deer Isle Hostel - Deer Isle - I fear that hostels and affordable stays are dying out, and this is a special one with an amazing garden

Shop
Working Loose - Blue Hill - Cool art omg!
Ronald Harte Antiques - Deer Isle
Swallowfield - Northeast Harbor
Blue Hill Books - Blue Hill

Donate
Friends of Acadia
MDI Wheelers

INLAND / SOUTHERN / ELSEWHERE

Eat
Azul Tequila - Gorham - I finally found good birria in Maine!
Bao & Beyond - Augusta - the ssam is incredible
Krista’s - Cornish
Talulah’s and the Waterford Inne - Waterford
Palace Diner - Biddeford

Do
Nurture Through Nature Sauna- Denmark - the sauna / cold mountain water combo is a dream
Stone Mountain Arts Center - Brownfield
Tear Cap Workshops - Hiram
Magic Lantern Theater - Bridgton - the former theater sunk into a sinkhole
Colby College Museum of Art - Waterville

Shop
Cornish Trading Company - Cornish - the other half of my house is from Cornish Trading Co.
At Once All Agog Toy Store - Cornish
Libby’s Antiques - Cornish
Dunbar and Sons Antiques & Vintage - Limington
Wright Chocolate House - Limerick
Whaleback Nursery Limington

Donate
Standish Food Pantry
South End Teen Center
Wabanaki Reach

ALL OF MAINE / MISC

Maine is home to some of the best bargain shopping, ever. We have more surplus and discount stores than any place I have ever lived. Like, our very own TJ Maxxes but with things like Carhartts, garden supplies, bolts of fabric, etc.

Reny’s
Mardens - the one in South Portland has incredible fabric

And, of course, let’s take note of some iconic Maine events:

Common Ground Country Fair (MOFGA)
Great Maine Apple Day (MOFGA)
Rhubarb Fest at Snell Family Farm
Maine Maple Sunday
Lobster Boat Races

And if I may, here’s the combo of what really makes an excellent trip to Maine:

Swim in very cold water.
Listen to peepers, watch some fireflies, oooh and aahh over wildflowers.
Check for ticks.
Eat local foods: lobster, wild blueberries, and fresh veggies from a local farm.
Read a book from a Maine author. Stephen King absolutely counts.

My mom claims to have come up with the term “intermittent retirement.” I gave it a google, and it’s certainly an idea that has made it into the lexicon, likely popularized by author Tim Ferriss. But I say we give my mom credit, too, because she’s a smart gal who put the idea into practice.

Let’s start with a definition:

Intermittent retirement (n): planned temporary breaks from work.

We also like the definition of intermittent: something that stops, starts, and starts again, occurring at irregular or regular intervals rather than continuously.

So, intermittent retirement is be a lifelong practice of stepping away from our routine, comfort level, or daily grind. It’s taking breaks, pauses, or adventure to expand and supplement our lives. It’s taking the concept of retirement and redistributing it - with some strategy - to all life stages. These pauses or breaks can look a million different ways: they can involve our work or not. They can be focused on rest, education, or adventure.

** Note: This post was co-written with my mom, Pam Rybus. Her direct quotes are in Italics, but we wrote the bulk of the text together.

The basics.

We all know our systems are silly. They don’t make sense. It’s lame that most Americans just have weekends off. It’s absurd that we have to ask for time off to care for sick relatives or children. It also doesn’t make sense to save up all our leisure, adventure, and rest just for our elder years. Aging bodies can be many different things: we may age with enough energy for the retirement we envision but it’s also possible that retirement could align with physical, cognitive, or mobility limitations. Or, as my mom says “you could croak before you get to enjoy it.” She’s right! We could croak at any time.

There’s also a difference between self-care and intermittent retirement. Self-care is small, daily habits. Intermittent-retirement isn’t something we can do every day, it’s a larger goal for a meaningful step away from work and routine. It’s not something that is available to all people at all times of life, but it’s something we may want to plan or save up for. And we can advocate for it to be more accessible for all of us. We can cheer people on who decide to go for it.

So, retire as you can. Even just a little bit. Intermittent retirement is a permission slip or a strategy to take some breaks and get out there. Spend your weekend leaving dishes in the sink so you can go skiing or surfing. Lay on the couch with a book for a whole afternoon. Take the vacation or road trip. Work overseas or do a house swap. If it’s what you need to do and you can, quit the job that makes you feel so rotten. There are plenty of forces telling us not to do these things, so let this post be a counter-force.

What are some examples of intermittent retirement?

My mom and dad were both school teachers. This provided both opportunities and challenges. They had a very limited budget. But, they also had summers off and the same school vacations that I had. Often, for Christmas and spring breaks, we’d hop in our Dodge Caravan and head South from Idaho to the desert or North to the mountains. We’d backcountry ski, mountain bike, sea kayak, etc. They also found teaching jobs overseas, working in the Netherlands, Northern Japan, and Berlin. My parents also had a deal in which they each did annual trips with their friends: my mom went kayak camping with her girlfriends, my dad skied into yurts with the other old hippies. As they aged and later retired, they bought a camper van and took long road trips. At this point, my dad had limited mobility to do the things he loved most: ski, bike, hike. So, they had the van.

It strikes me that the version of intermittent retirement I’ve landed on is a lot like my parents decision to teach internationally: we found ways to make our work part of the adventure. My assignments and projects get me out in the world in ways that feel deeply, albeit irregularly, satisfying. When I was in college, I did seasonal jobs in beautiful places each summer, waiting tables and living in a tent or employee housing. For many years, I took a month off each spring to do arts residencies. For a while, my goal has been to get better at including rest and leisure in my life. I try to dip at our swim spot on long editing days in the summer or give myself a little time to read before the day begins. I just went on my first surf trip in Costa Rica with my friend Molly, and it reminded me of how important this concept is. I worked my surf skills, having to start over from the beginning but learning enough to feel a bit of bliss in the water. I got to be with my friend and make new friends. My nervous system finally calmed. I left committed to doing a surf trip every year, committed to giving myself some space to keep learning.

When you travel, you’ll meet other travelers who have figured out ways to make it work. My friend Meagan, a restaurant manager, saves up money to regularly quit her job to spend months adventuring. My friend Tasha took a teaching sabbatical to write and rest. In Mexico, my mom and dad met a family from Canada who use a program in which they earn 4/5th of their salary, and can take every fifth year off work. There are schools in other countries staffed entirely with educators who have committed to a traveling life. There are countries in which it’s the norm for parents to have a year or two off for maternity/paternity leave. And there are professions in which sabbaticals are part of the whole deal.

What about guilt?

My friend Hannah told me she was feeling guilty about taking a long weekend off in the same year she’s going to South Korea, where her family is from, for two weeks. She’s a freelancer like me, we are usually feeling a lot of pressure to always be available, to constantly be working to earn our keep and be deserving of our job.

So, I asked my mom about the element of guilt.

You could feel guilty about a cup of coffee. You could feel guilty about a massage. It just has to do with our push culture.

When Tom (my dad, her husband) was diagnosed with heart failure and Alzheimer’s, I couldn’t travel anymore. I felt a lot of difficult feelings when people told me about their trips. I wonder if that’s not dissimilar to the way busy people might feel when you tell them about a trip, ‘why do you get to go when I can’t?’ It’s a feeling of being left out, of missing something. When I would see people who could travel still, I’d think ‘I hope you know how lucky you are.’ But the flip side of that, is that I was lucky. I didn’t have any regrets about having taken all my opportunities to go on adventures. I’d lived in a way in which when we arrived at a pause in my travels, I knew we’d lived fully. When I look back at photos of me and Tom, we were in many different places, our photos are often really goofy! That wouldn’t have happened if we had just stayed home.

Guilt is worth interrogating, though. Guilt can show up when we don’t live in alignment with our values. Are we behaving like assholes, being unkind or entitled? Are we supportive of other people if and when they need a break? Are we burning down our lives just only to find we are still on fire? Are we motivated by some deeper curiosity? Guilt can also show up in our jobs, it can be part of the cocktail of burn out, exploitation, and disillusionment that finally pushes us toward change.

Is this possible now?

Honestly, it’s hard to say. Speaking of guilt, I feel a pang of guilt posting this when things are so impossibly stacked against working people. Cost of living is insane, vacation days are dwindling, it’s becoming harder and harder to step off the hamster wheel of it all. My mom also said, “The world is also so hard. It’s harder to find places that aren’t being blown up or some other fuck-thing.” Things are a fucking mess. So why is this concept worth writing about? Well, this is the life we’ve got. I think it’s worth advocating for a life for ourselves and each other in which we get to actually live it. It’s also worth questioning norms around work, adventure, life, rest - and making choices based on our own values, wishes, and abilities. In the age of tech, consumerism, and capitalism it’s easy to feel like a machine. We’ve got to find ways to not be the machine.

Stepping away has always been hard and complicated. It’s a gamble. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s a privilege. It’s idealized online without an accurate portrayal of it all. For every big and small trip I go on to take photos, there are moments of supreme discomfort: frenzied days packing and preparing, a migraine on the airplane, feeling carsick in a taxi, the confusion of language barrier, the ache of homesickness. Even if you pack up and move somewhere else, you bring your life with you. You still have ailments, disagreements, bills to pay. For their larger adventures like teaching overseas, my parents had to budget, rent out their house, pack up all their stuff, move a dog and a kid, etc.

My mom: This first time we did this as a family, we rented our house out so we could move to the Netherlands to teach. We rented it out for $300 and when we returned, we kept bumping into people who said they lived in our house for chunks of time. Things were broken, the house wasn’t cared for. But it’s not what we remember from that time. We remember our time in Europe as a young family.

I feel similarly. For most of my adventures, I rarely think about the plane delays, the passport issues, the financial strain, the painful pinch of telling someone I’ll miss an event. I think mostly about what it felt like to be in a place, the people I met, the photos I made, the little treasures I brought home from flea markets and antique malls. I think about my moments when I finally figured out a wave, when I napped in the sun, when I was relaxed enough to laugh really, really hard at a joke. I think, and I know, that I’m on track for a life that feels really full.

Resources:

Sites:

While working on this article, I found the site WanderJobs, which has job listings for travelers. In college, I worked spent summers working seasonal jobs (mostly waitressing) in beautiful places and I think I found those listings on CoolJobs.

ResArtis and TransArtists are rosters of art residencies. I found all my art residency opportunities on these sites.

Kindred is a new-ish home swap site. Home Exchange Collection is another option, and I think there are several others.

The International Educator was how my parents found teaching jobs abroad.

This recent trip to Costa Rica got me excited about skill-based or educational trips. My trip with my friend Molly was with Surf with Amigas and I also did a surf trip in India with Soul and Surf. Art and writing workshops seem like excellent adventures, places like Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Maine Media Workshops here in Maine. This summer, my mom will visit Sweden for a Lotte Jansdotter Art and Nature retreat.

Publications:

Miles from Nowhere - Barbara Savage
A classic! Originally published in 1985, couple bicycles around the world.

Adrift - a podcast (and cautionary tale!) of a family who sets off to sea with minimal sailing experience and becomes…. adrift.

We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan
A family saves up and travels around the lower 48 in a camper trailer.

Between Two Kingdoms - Suleika Jaouad
After a cancer diagnosis in her 20’s, she sets out on a road trip with her scruffy dog, Oscar, to meet other people traveling in the realm of illness.

Cory Gerlach’s Radical Path’s substack chronicles his life traveling the world by sailboat.

I once heard that there had been a sighting of Mother Mary in front of what is now a fitness studio in my old neighborhood. I’d trudge over in my leggings and sneakers to go exercise, past the spot where two sisters dropped to their knees at the feet of a holy apparition. It’s a pretty mundane place, partially a parking lot that spends much of the year taken over by piles of dirty snow.

I’ve been thinking about that when I listen to the new-ish Rosalia album, a religious experience in itself, a front-to-back no skips. It made me google the word reliquary (a container for holy relics) because that’s what it feels like. The internet went wild for it, at least in my algorithm, and everyone seems to agree that it’s a religious experience for people who disavow religion. My friend Grace in New York loves it, too, she says it taps into her identity as a lapsed Catholic. She told me about how on a work trip she met a man who cautioned her against it: are the religious undertones dangerous at a time like this?

When I was working on my book about hot springs, this tension between modernity and religiosity came up a few times. I can explain it best in an excerpt from about geothermal temples in India:

One day, I visited a hot springs pool at the edge of the Parvati River, where men came to bathe each morning. They washed their bodies and used toothbrushes to clean their teeth and the back of their throats until they retched. A middle-aged man in a red sweatshirt stopped to visit the holy men who tend a temple and garden just above the baths. “There is value in tradition and also in modernity, but too much of either makes an imbalance,” said the man in the sweatshirt, who grew up nearby. “Too much tradition is rigidity. Too much modernity makes one lose ethics. And one must have ethics. It falls from person to person to make sure they have balance, ethics, and connection beyond themselves and with nature.” We talked about Red Sweatshirt Guy and what he said for the rest of the trip, kicking ourselves for never exchanging names.

I put that part in bold, because I still think about it all the time. Much of adulthood feels like positioning myself at the sweet spot along many wide spectrums. I’m a pretty secular person, but I believe in the divine. Rosalia and Red Sweatshirt Guy and Björk (I’ll get to her in a moment) got me thinking about divinity, which is different from religion or even spirituality. It requires no thought, no striving, no study, no weekly attendance. It’s just like: wow, this world! Divinity is awe, an acknowledgement of mystery, or maybe even a lack of control. I usually feel it with nature and art- it’s an all-my-senses kind of thing. It’s usually quite simple.

I’ve had the feeling that I’ve been thinking about everything way too hard, too absorbed in my own head as if this world is figured out like a puzzle rather than absorbed like a sunbeam. Being human is the puzzle, divinity is the sunbeam.

I’ve been a fan of Björk since I heard “Human Behavior” from the queasy back of the cross country van in high school. Her 1993 hit “Big Time Sensuality” just took a spin around social media. In one clip, a listener accentuates the lyrics:

It takes courage, to enjoy it.
The hardcore and the gentle.

(Although, it’s Björk, so it’s more like “it takes coo-hoo-ra-hage, to en-jo-ho-hoy it!”)

The top comment: “she was warning Gen Z to let go or irony and embrace earnest emotions.” Björk, famously in touch with her creativity and rage, is letting us know that it will take bravery to navigate the huge spectrums within a human life and choose some semblance of fun and fulfillment within it. It’s a reminder to occasionally audit my generation’s culture: how shaped I am by technology, that sense of doom coming to fruition again and again, trends, famous people, money, social media, etc, etc, etc, and on and on. Where the fuck is the divinity? (It takes courage. To enjoy it.)

@libruhhhhhhhhhhhhhI DON’T THINK YOU GUYS ARE LISTENING TO HER !! #bjork

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I’ve long been chalking up certain photographs I take to the whims of “the Photo Gods.” Someone walking into frame at the right moment. Wind picking up a strand of hair. A flock of birds. Clouds parting. The Photo Gods usually reveal themselves in the sun and clouds, I can’t control them or earn them. There’s no YouTube tutorial or photo podcast that will be my guide, I just have to be out in the world and receptive to it. A disciple to a fickle world. And, of course, sometimes the Photo Gods rebuke me, smiting me with florescent lights, transition lenses, assignments that feel like an uphill road.

There’s a reason why the Rosalia album has felt like such a cultural need. It reverses a lot of current hallmarks: humility rather than bravado, an orchestra over AI, spiritual love more than romantic entanglement. In Memoria, she sings in Portuguese (translated here):

Tell me if I still stumble
If I’m joyful, if I’m grateful
Or if I still know how to sing
Remind me, please
Of something, whatever it is
That I can’t remember

The first time I heard this song, it had me stopped in my driveway, sitting in my car until the next song, Magnolias. It made me think of my dad. And how quickly I move on from my questions to answers. How maybe it’s helpful to create and to destroy, to have some scrupulousness around what I renew from tradition or accept from modernity. Like, considering a modern sabbath or reading old books. I think there is something we are all trying to collectively remember together. And a part of me worries that wondering out loud makes me susceptible to something dopily dangerous, like the woo-woo world of grifters or some hovering cult of conspiracy. But there’s no harm in recognizing the divine when it happens, believing in something intangible, or finding out if it’s possible to look backward and forward at the same time.

My first year of college was also the first official year of Facebook, when you needed a .edu email address to sign up and you could ‘like’ and ‘poke’. It was the post-letter-writing era and also pre-totally-online era, but we still mined the internet for inspiration. My dream of becoming a photojournalist felt absolutely impossible, I was desperate for someone to show me the way. (It turns out, of course, I had to find my own way.)

It was around that time that I came across a letter by George Rodger, co-founder of the iconic Magnum Photos, a photographer who lived from 1908 to 1995. He had two sons, Peter and Jonathan. This letter is to Jonathan as he considered becoming a photographer himself. I still think it’s one of my favorite things ever written about photography, it might as well have been a letter to me or you. I wonder a little if it’s real, how it made it to the public sphere, and why it seems to only live on an old 2013 Tumblr post. It still means a great deal to me, so I will let it live here, too.

My Dear Jonathan,

I have just received your very interesting letter and I thank you for sending me copies of your first pictures. I liked especially the one you took at Stonehenge when you photographed the shadows on the ground rather than the stones themselves. I wonder what made you do that? Do you know?

Your questions are rather difficult to answer. But I shall do my best and, if you don’t understand just now, I expect you will a little later on.

Your very first question I think is the only on that really matters because the answer to that is also the answer to all the others. You ask ‘What must I do to be a photographer like you?’ If you hadn’t put ‘like you’ at the end of the question, the reply could have been much easier. How can one explain something that is non-technical, intangible, and that comes from deep inside?

As a matter of fact I bought a book written for photographic beginners, that I was going to give you for your birthday. On the first page it says that light travels through the air at 186,000 miles per second and, on the very last page of all, it says that another part of a camera not yet discussed is the viewfinder. So, as you want to be a photographer like me, I can’t give you this book for your birthday. I disagree with it. I couldn’t care less whether light travels at 186,000 miles per second or 186,999. It is quite irrelevant. But I do think the undiscussed viewfinder is all-important.

Of course at the very beginning, you must observe some slight technicalities. You have to if you are going to express yourself aesthetically by means of a purely mechanical instrument - focus, aperture, etc. But these should become reflexes as soon as possible and then be forgotten. They should be as instinctive to you as opening your mouth when you bite at an apple.

Then, with this reflex established, you can concentrate on what you see in the viewfinder for it is through the viewfinder that you establish the link between reality and your own interpretation of it. Remember that. Everything that you see on the ground glass of your Rolleiflex is reality - things as they are. Photography is what you make of it.

You look into your viewfinder and what you see there may be pretty and gay, or it may be sad. Your heart may stand still for the horror of it or your eyes dim in pity or in shame. But it is all reality and you must know what to do with it.

I don’t think anybody can advise how you should know what to do with it, except by telling you to be true to yourself, and that is rather vague.

Certainly you cannot interpret what you see in your viewfinder and make it into a good picture without having the understanding of it. You must feel an affinity for what you are photographing. You must be part of it and yet remain sufficiently detached to see it objectively. Like watching from the audience a play you already know by heart. Unfortunately there is no formula for acquiring this knowing-by-heart, this understanding. It is something that comes from within yourself.

But you can train yourself towards it. And, actually, the basic training itself has little to do with photography.

It depends very much on your own personal knowledge of the world and your ability to perceive and accept how other people live in it. You would never gain very much by jetflighting from one fleshpot to another wearing an expensive camera round your neck like a rosary and expecting the world to stand still while you search for some elusive truth. But try covering the same distance in an old car that is guaranteed to break down every few hundred miles, and see what you end up with! Some say, in fact, the more difficult you make things for yourself the better off you are!

By the way, have you ever observed a chameleon? It is a very interesting animal - rather like a lizard. But besides being able to swivel its eyes right round so it looks backwards, it can also change its colour according to its environment. It is green in grass, turns dark brown as it rests on a log, and changes to deep red as it ambles across a patch of laterite. This is a very useful practice which you might well try to emulate. I don’t mean you should turn a rich coffee colour when you visit Vizagapatam, or turn black in Bangassou, but I do mean that you should acquire the aptitude for not appearing white in either.

Every nation, race or tribe has its own peculiar ethics, its prices and dignities, its foibles and its shibboleths - all very different from your own. but they are just as right and justified in their world as you are in yours. Therefore you should accept these things and the more you know of them the better. Develop your own chameleon touch until you blend into your surroundings and feel as much at home in a Bedouin tent as in marbled halls. There is wisdom in this which will reflect in your pictures.

Learn languages - not only European, but Swahili, Arabic, Urdu. Remember not to be in a hurry East of the Suez - people will only laugh at you. Learn to eat with chopsticks, or with your fingers - without, for the love of Allah, using your left hand.

And, wherever you are, avoid gimmickry. Good photography is based on truth and integrity. The gimmick is only the poor man’s way of excusing his lack of talent - his inability to compose a picture without trickery. Let your picture composition be honest, pure, strong and well defined. It is a matter of design, and the less complicated a design, the more pleasing it is to the eye.

And I think this is really all I have to say to you at this time. It is up to you to interpret the reality I spoke of at the beginning in all of these terms. It is how I see it and what I believe in. I don’t say it is necessarily right. But think about it and don’t be in too great a hurry. It took me thirty years to find all this out. I don’t expect you to digest it in half an hour. But please don’t write next week and say what you really want to be when you leave school is a fighter pilot!

Your affectionate father, George Rodger.

[This is part two of an exploration of the partnered instincts of activism and journalism. You can read part one here.]

When I decided to study photojournalism in college, our professors taught us that this industry would require us to neuter ourselves from anything resembling an overt political conscience. We would need maintain a constant, careful distance. I bargained with the journalism medium: could I still think of photography like a fine art photographer, the kind that wants to imagine new things? Could I still hold onto that side of myself that went to anti-war protests in high school? Can I volunteer? Have bumper stickers on my car? It wasn’t always clear what we were to be distanced from. I still debate sometimes if I am a photojournalist or a photographer, the truth is that I wear different roles for different jobs. I’m a photojournalist lite™.

With so few protections from my employers (no health insurance, no legal support, a day rate below a living wage), it means I need my community. And that demands that I invest in it. Over time, I’ve settled into some of the leeway that freelancing offers. I said ‘screw it’ and took on some volunteer positions, knowing I may need to turn down assignments to do so. I take on varied jobs that ask varied things of me. I can’t control the assignments that show up in my inbox, but I can pitch stories in line with what I care about. I’ve honed a mission I try to contribute to: of all the stories that are made, let some of them be about people who care about their communities and nature, and make decisions that consider the good of the whole. Anyone who pitches stories is using their opinions, concerns, or interests as a guide. Anyone who makes stuff is using their perspective to shape what they make.

The thing is, though, I consider these quiet goals to be my best activism. To have nature, working class people, and rural people present in the media landscape. To try to sandwich photos of my neighbors next to, I don’t know, an ad for a wristwatch or a story about some politician. I worry about what my editors would think if they knew I considered my pitches like some kind of little protest.

Like a lot of people that give a shit about the world, but also feel like the world is spiraling deeper into a set of problems that seem untouchably huge, I end up focusing on what I can impact. The work of photojournalism itself can be quite therapeutic, but not always painlessly so. There’s a lot of self-inquiry: I really beat myself up when I bump up against a shortcoming or limit. And, it’s an recurring act of letting go: we don’t get to choose our own assignments, headlines, or final layout. It’s sometimes hard to balance what I feel I owe to the people I photograph, to the people who hire me, and to myself.

As I wrote in part one, our ethical guidelines are given to us, and sometimes they feel iffy. I was taught, for example, to never accept anything “bigger” than a business card while working. So what happens when I’m offered a cup of coffee at someone’s dining room table? What happens when I’m documenting a workday when everyone brings something to share, do I not bring a dish? It’s hard to accept guidelines that overlook our role in our own cultural ecosystems.

So with some practice, I think most of us figure out a more malleable, situational set of ethics and goals. I try not to be an asshole. I try to be aware of power structures present and my adjacency to them. I prepare my mindset for a job like I might choose the right shoes for a workday: do I need nice shoes or my muck boots (it’s usually the muck boots). I work differently with a politician than I do a farmer, just like I might work differently documenting an introverted person from an extroverted person. It’s more about presence than about rules. It’s enough for me to aim to give each project my attention, curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

If I may, though, repeat a refrain from part one: we can indeed change the world through our inner work and personal action. Our lines of questioning and refining of our own values will show up in our work. But it can only go so far. What it means to be an activist is to pair those efforts for a demand for systemic change. Frankly, it’s embarrassing to not take the opportunity possible to make the world better. It’s lame to bend to fit an exploitative world. But it’s also silly to insist all activism should look the same.

At the heart of it all - as journalists, administrators, citizens, artists, voters, whoever we are- our goal is to find small or big ways to “agitate against power, against privilege” as Omar El Akkad wrote (again, see part one). Journalism needs to re-orient itself against power and privilege, and re-learn that smaller, local, more personal approaches may be the best way to do so. I’m ready for my industry to open up some lines of inquiry about their own ethics, what they owe their workers and readers, and to answer those questions with measurable, meaningful change.

[ This is part two of a two part post.]

I was on a walk when I listened to the voice of Omar El Akkad read the following passage from “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” I stopped walking, rewound my audiobook and listened to it again. He was voicing an internal conflict I’ve had within my work as an assignment photographer, an ongoing conversation I have with other freelancers. About journalism, he wrote:

They say what you’re supposed to do, in this line of work, is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I heard that saying a lot, as a young journalist. Believed in it, too. It’s a quote originally from a piece of fiction, spoken by a character who can’t stand the press.

There’s always been a contradiction at the heart of this enterprise. In the modern, well-dressed definition, adhered to in one form or another at almost every major newspaper, the journalist cannot be an activist, must remain allegiant to a self-erasing neutrality. Yet journalism at its core is one of the most activist endeavors there is. A reporter is supposed to agitate against power, against privilege. Against the slimy wall of press releases and PR nothingspeak that has come to to protect every major business and government boardroom every since Watergate. A reporter is supposed to agitate against silence.

To maintain both of these realities at the same time- of the neutral agitator - requires a cognitive dissonance that can be seen in every corner or the industry. In much of the world, the most prestigious journalism prizes honor public service, which is to say stories that prompt institutional change, send a corrupt mayor to jail, or force the ending of an unjust policy. But journalists themselves cannot call for justice.

Journalism and activism come from the same instinct: an impulse to question, illuminate, witness, improve. But, as El-Akkad says, there is an implied paradox: that journalists can not be activists and activists can not be journalists. But anyone who spends a lot of time learning about the world eventually ends up with a set of hopes and agitations, some motivating principles.

All roles within journalism require a set of judgement calls. Editors and publishers decide what is important, relevant, worth the time and the ink/webspace. Journalists (and their editors) decide what to include, what quotes to select, what details to notice. All of those choices are a form of cultural sculpting not that different from activism.

Newspapers typically supply ethical guidelines to their freelancers. They outline how we can work, instruct us on how to avoid bribes, set style guides on word usage. Usually they show up as a PDF addendum when we sign our contract, or an email update that arrives in our inbox. But what happens if workers’ ethics aren’t mirrored by the publication who hire us? It’s one thing to send out a list of guidelines from a desk after a series of meetings. It’s another thing to spend your workdays working to develop the trust of strangers, especially when publications have eroded the trust of many. I wish it went both ways: that there were ethical guidelines given to publications, drafted by their workers and readers.

So, why do we have to pretend that activism isn’t a part of why we do this? Why are the ethical parameters based on a premise that our opinions can be nullified and our values erased? Is there a world in which editors and contributors can make room for a more nuanced discussion about if our experiences and ideas will disqualify us from quality, fair coverage? Our background, interest, and passion with a subject will either make us a well-suited candidate to tell a story or we need to recuse ourself from coverage. An editor’s job should include making decisions with us on whether a story requires a type of activism journalism, a curious middle-ground (where I try to operate, imperfectly), boundaried objectivity, or recusal. All paths should be offered and considered without reprisal, and workers should be in on that discussion.

There’s also the strange restructuring of journalism that weakens the entire ethical scaffolding. Publications are increasingly owned by billionaires or influenced by shareholders like Vanguard and BlackRock, which makes the conversation of ethics seem almost silly. There’s little transparency about how those financial forces impact journalistic integrity, with an implied focus on what lower-level contract workers do.

Most of us are freelancers, no longer under the protections of what a staffer might be offered: we aren’t in the rooms when decisions (like contracts and ethical guidelines) are made, we have to consider our own safety, are often underpaid, have little control over the final outcome of our work, pay for our own overhead, have no legal protections from our employers, etc. It’s harder for us to say no to a job: it’s unclear if we will be considered for the next job if we raise concerns on this one. If a story is poorly received in our community, we are vulnerable to a retraction of trust from our neighbors while decision-makers remain unscathed. We have a lot of pressure but very little control. It’s something you can only meditate on for so long. My approach has been to work on it internally, an opportunity for personal growth, when really I want to talk about it. I want to see some questions being asked by publishers, editors, administrators- how can they serve the common good? How can they be more ethical? I’m ready for systemic growth within my field, too.

And then, I found myself listening to an episode of “Question Everything,” a KCRW / NPR podcast about journalism, in which Brian Reed was interviewing Sam Sanders. Reed was questioning why Sanders no longer calls himself a journalist.

Sanders: “I think it gets in the way. I think as soon as I’m in conversation with people and I say the J-word, there’s a series of skeptical questions that come after… And it’s like, I don’t want to be burdened with those existential questions about an industry that in general wasn’t always support of someone like me anyway. I think it gets in the way. When I want to be a journalist, I just apply the skills of journalism in my work and I don’t have to Capital J it. I really don’t anymore."

Reed: “I totally understand the impulse to not call yourself a journalist and you are certainly not the first journalist or former journalist that I’ve talked to, especially one of color, who is doing that. My approach has been, can’t we make journalism better or fix it so that someone like you feels comfortable and even proud to use the word. Or is that naive?”

Sanders: “No. I think for me right next to the world ‘journalism’ is the word ‘objectivity’. The pursuit of objectivity. And I think the idea of objectivity is inherently structurally sexist, racist, and homophobic And so I don’t even care anymore to fix our understanding of objectivity. Because why? It was never for me. What word would I want to tether journalism to? Justice? Truth? Fairness? But I no longer want to have conversations about journalism that take me back to an argument over objectivity. No, never again. I am not objective. I am angry. I am angry about media capture and elite capture, and I’m angry about the ways social media platforms and video scrolls have rotted all of our brains. I am not an objective journalist, I am an angry citizen who tries to, from time to time, use the skills of ‘Journalism’ to have good conversations about some of the things I am angry about.”

This was another segment that caught me in my tracks, mid-stride. I don’t know any person living through his particular era who doesn’t identify as an angry citizen, this includes friends and colleagues working in journalism. So, what do we do with our anger? Our citizenship? Our role in our communities? I love my job so much. I know our industry can be better and do better. I’m tired of the dance of trying to figure out when and if I can show that I care. I care! I care a lot!

[ This is part one of a two part post.]

Once, I was on a boat with a woman named Ellen speeding through a fjord in South Greenland. It was early September, but the air was cold and I was wearing my thickest down coat. Ellen offhandedly mentioned something like “you know, like how we don’t have private land in Greenland.” No, I didn’t know that! I’m thrilled to know that! In fact, I couldn’t easily understand a place where no one owns the land. I had Ellen repeat it, and explain it. Her explanation jogged something loose inside me, a new possibility. I wrote about it in my book ‘Hot Springs’:

The entire country is uniquely managed: no one can own land in Greenland. All land can only be borrowed, with the terms of its use agreed upon cooperatively.

As an American, from a nation where a majority of land is privatized, it took me a while to understand how a place could have no landowners, how an entire country could be shared. I spoke with arctic social scientist Dr. Naja Carina Steenholdt, who explained, “It’s rooted in our vision of nature. It’s rooted in the perspective that we cannot own nature, that it can only be borrowed while we live. It’s rooted in very traditional, very Indigenous views of our nature. We still have that view.” Dr. Steenholdt emphasized that Greenland’s approach to land usage, while being connected to enduring philosophies, has a role in modernized life and can accommodate advancement, leading to a functioning society without landownership. Their society, she said, operates on principles of sharing everything: land, food, time, care.

Partway through making my book, which took me to over a dozen countries (USA, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, Iceland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, India, South Africa, and, of course, Greenland) I realized that while I was initially motivated by a love of bathing culture, I was also trying to figure out some alternative ways to think about managing resources. Or even just new ways to think about the world. It’s easy to think our way of living and doing is the norm, but there’s so many norms all existing at once. How easy it is to forget all the possibilities!

I was traveling in a our post-Trump, Covid-altered, capitalism-riddled landscape; learning that Greenland is a place without privatized land, Mexico is a place with collective land management through the ejido system, Hungary is a place where doctors prescribe soaks in mineral-rich hot water (and it actually helps). Many of these places are defined by the presence of ancestors, folklore, nature.

Boy, does that feel different than what I am used to! It’s different from what I see in the news, in techno-dreams of the future, and in the chambers of political leadership. But these realities exist at the same time as book bans and the construction of yet another Dollar General. Now that Greenland is in the news, I know that both Americans and Greenlanders both feel scared of grasping threat of unwanted, unchecked imperialism. Maybe the antidote to the bully is learning about each other. Especially since Americanism has found it’s way into so many corners of the planet (how many Starbucks did I drive past on my way to a public bath?), I hope for a world where Americans can be the ones to consider what we can adopt from other places and people.

The challenge is that learning requires keeping our judgmental side in check. I eventually cut the following passage from my book, worried that readers would judge what they read. But it is an experience I still think about often.

On the way back from the hot springs, the sun was setting and illuminating the mountains. It glimmered in Jens Stach’s sunglasses as he piloted his boat back to Nanortalik, where I stayed in a local hotel. He looked at me and smiled. “Want to see something cool?” I always say yes to that question. He swung past the harbor entrance and motored to a little cove where men ran up and down rocks and tugged on ropes. They’d had a successful day of hunting: two whales in the water. I clamored off the boat and the busy hunters paid me no mind while they trimmed blubber and meat. Later, as Jens took me back to the town docks, I said, “The hunters must be happy today.” And he replied, “We are all happy. Everyone in town will have whale for dinner tonight.”

What I later learned, by talking more with Jens and Dr. Steenholdt is that resources are automatically shared. Once the meat is divided, it will be delivered to every home in Nanortalik, likely starting with the homes of the sick, elderly, or otherwise in need. There are consequences for not sharing, but this social contract ensures that all bellies are full. This kind of egalitarianism felt so casual, it was usually without fanfare. It was expected to be kind. Traveling makes me thinking about the social contracts I am bound by. So many of them are bundled with power, money, individualism. It’s liberating to be in places, like Greenland, who show me a different way.

Earlier that day, I ate mussel soup in Nuunu Eli Olsen’s home in the nearest settlement, Alluitsup Paa. “If someone has a problem with a motorboat or something, we will always help,” said Nuunu. “It’s not like the scene in Dumb and Dumber when he said,‘ Watch my things,’ and the lady steals his things when he goes into a store.”

I saw a unique type of kindness everywhere in Greenland. When taxis were in short supply at the airport, a passenger paid for everyone to ride together. Without a word, another guest at the hotel in Nanortalik filled my teacup, remembering the type of tea I liked. A woman in town let me carry her heavy shopping bags to her home, without fuss or refusal. I realized I was witnessing a certain grace in both the offering and acceptance of kindness. “It’s actually not really customary to say thank you in Greenland,” said Dr. Steenholdt. “It’s just expected that we help each other. It’s just how we have to be; we have to help each other because we have such harsh surroundings. It’s always a give-and-take situation. Everybody contributes.”

[ You can find my book at your favorite bookseller and you learn more about it here. ]

I used to post these on Instagram, but I like it here better. Because this is my little corner of the internet, I make the rules and the rules for these lists are: books can include any book I read this year (not limited to 2025 publication date) but shows, docs, movies, and music I’ve limited to those released this year. They also aren’t in any order.

Books

This is the year I got really into I tracking my reading on Storygraph and I love it so much.

Anyway, these are the books I’d recommend to anyone, my purest and truest favorites of the year. These are the ones I clutched to my chest as soon as I finished and thought about many times after the last page:

These are the books I greatly enjoyed that I think lived up to the hype:

These are the books I loved but would only recommend to true freaks like me. They come with content warnings!

Shows and Documentaries

When I’m at home with a free evening, I usually stick to my Jeopardy! (and sometimes I force my friends to watch it with me). But I did watch some proper TV, too.

Movies

I spent a lot of time this year softly falling asleep a bunch of old classic movies, you can see my list of favorites here. There’s still a lot of movies on my list (I can’t wait to see No Other Choice when it’s available as well as Atropia, even with it’s mixed reviews).

Music

It was a great year for music. I also saw some great live shows - what a lucky girl I am!

What did I miss? I know I’ll hit “publish” and remember something super special. Anything you loved from 2025? Let me know what you recommend.

Wishing you a peaceful, creative, and fulfilling 2026!

One thing I’m known for is really bringing the party down by shifting the conversation towards something intense. I can’t help it! It’s somehow baked into the person I am. I like breaking trail towards the stuff with substance. I feel like posting about grief in the no-mans-land days between Christmas and New Year’s is a bit of an interruption to the fun, but here goes.

When my dad died, it happened suddenly. For a while, I knew what to do because I could only do the basics. I called the people I needed to call.I booked plane tickets home. I walked around the woods and cried until I couldn’t anymore.

In the years leading up to that day and the few months since, I had to figure out some things that would help me through the Aging Parent Era and the Grief Era. I’m not a therapist and I’m new to this. But from the beginning, I’ve always wanted to be clear and open about what I was experiencing because I believe so much of it is shared in some way. And I’ve found myself recommending the same set of things.

The Aging Parent Era (or, the “Someone You Love is Facing the End” Era):

• Make a playlist with your close ones, focused on their favorite songs. I made a playlist with my dad as his Alzheimer’s worsened. I prompted him to remember favorites from throughout his life. Tom’s Ultimate Playlist has Peggy Lee from his childhood, the Rolling Stones from his bad boy high school years, and Lightnin’ Hopkins from his Blues phase. I can listen to it whenever I need to feel closer to him.
  I also am glad I wrote down his bread recipe and know how to make his homemade salad dressing by heart.

• Storyworth. Maybe you’ve seen ads for it and I’m an evangelist for it now, too. I set my dad and mom up with an account each, and it sent them weekly prompts to write about. Sometimes I chose the questions and sometimes Storyworth automatically selected great ones. They both wrote about memories, preferences, lessons learned, etc. A subscription comes with a beautiful printed book of the questions and responses when you are ready.

• Palliative Care. A palliative care doctor is different than other practitioners because their sole focus is balancing a patient’s wishes for their remaining time. Quality of life is the priority. I’ve been surprised to talk to people navigating mortality who haven’t known it wasn’t a resource, and others thought it was only for the “very end.”
  Typically, palliative care is suggested for any person given a terminal diagnosis. My dad’s palliative care doctor helped us as a family meet my dad’s priorities (like going on a trip or continue exercising) and also prepare for what was ahead. On the day my dad died, she helped my mom and me navigate the strange experience of a beloved’s death.

• Therapy. THERAPY. As soon as I realized that I would be navigating the decline and eventual loss of a parent, I started searching in earnest for a therapist that would be a good match for me. I found her. She helped and is still helping. I’m a very different person than when I started, in the best way. I often imagined that my grief was like a big balloon that would need to be released throughout my life. Better to let it squeak out slowly over time then in one painful, ruinous burst.

• I started doing this meditation thing where I’d lay in my bed with my hands on my chest and hold a vision of my dad (sometimes other people) in my mind or heart. I’d let that vision of him of him move through different eras of life, sometimes based on photographs or actual memories. I’d imagine him as a little kid or rebellious teen or a guy in his 40s who liked to bike and ski. My dad was my dad for only part of his life: there was a lot of his existence that I wanted to incorporate into my grieving.

The Grief Era:

Grief reminds me of the children’s song “Going on a Bear Hunt:”

We can’t go over it
We can’t go under it
We’re just gonna have to go through it

Honestly, it’s all so individual and connected to specific circumstances of the death or life change: who was lost, how the change occurred, whether it was expected or sudden, how complex the relationship is, etc.

• Consider clear, direct language about both illness and death. These topics are hard to talk about, I’m okay with any way that people can find to speak them. And sometimes we’ll mess up. For me, I prefer words like “die” and “death” over euphemisms. I like it when people use my dad’s name, Tom, in conversation. It feels good to speak of him in a real way. I am open about the way he died, telling the story about how it happened and the dual diagnoses that lead up to that day (you can read about that here).
  I am also a believer that, when appropriate, it can be meaningful to write about cause of death in an obituary. Because it can be taboo, we often have curiosity or avoidance around death. People sometimes avoid speaking directly because they want to prevent hard feelings. But any grieving person is already experiencing so many emotions they can not be avoided. And anyone who is not actively grieving may benefit from brief contemplation of the reality of death.

• Make a shrine or altar. We made a shrine for my dad both at my mom’s house and mine. It had photos of him, his wedding ring, his watch, packs of his favorite gum, the three tums he laid out by his bed every night, candles, flowers, notes from friends, an envelope with his handwriting. It was where we put things that were so personal or specific to him, they needed a place of importance. Every night we lit candles and I gave him my thoughts.
  My friend texted me recently about a college friend who had died. It hit her hard, but she didn’t know what to do about the grief. They weren’t as close as they had been. Making a shrine is helpful for this strange type of grief, too- the one where you feel hit with sadness but might not be able to make the memorial, or the relationship contained distance or pain.
  Before my dad’s death, when I’d experience miscellaneous or incidental grief throughout my day, I would sometimes light a candle in the evenings and think about the sadness I’d absorbed: an acquaintance’s new diagnosis, violence on the news, the friend who lost their job.

• A creative outlet. I started a collage journal about a month before my dad died, and suddenly after he died it felt like all I could do. One day, his best friend came to visit and it broke my heart, so I went upstairs to cut and glue through my feelings. Making things seems to help me move through the strangeness of it all. Right before his burial, I mixed essential oils with a base oil to bring to the funeral home so they could anoint his body before his burial.
  Photography has been a help, too. When my grandmother was moving from her home in Ennis, Montana, I photographed her belongings. And when gathering back in Montana for her memorial, I started photographing another series that helped me understand how we would now step into her role as family historian. (I also wrote about her for “the Lives They Lived” in the NYT.)

• The song that gets you through. For me, it’s Change by Big Thief. Right after a turn in my dad’s prognosis, I was stuck driving through the backroads in South Africa by myself with no phone service. Just me and the road and this song over and over, sobbing. The music felt like an excavation project.
  I sent it to my mom after my dad passed and a family friend sang it at his memorial. And in October, Big Thief ended their show in Maine with a big sing-a-long to Change. Good art can bring about some needed catharsis. Some people like to listen to posts or read books about grief. My go-to is music. It gets me out of my head and into my feelings.

• The Grief Deck. My friend sent me this artist-made deck of prompts about grief, each card has an art work and a meditation or action that can help move someone through loss. It’s the first one I found that felt realistic and not pandering.

• Rest. We have full permission to fall asleep or lounge around whenever it is safe and needed. Rest and naps are key survival components even when we aren’t grieving, but my biggest “grief symptom” has been exhaustion. I maintained a lot of my stamina throughout my dad’s illness and in the organizing phase that comes after someone’s death. But now I just want to be less capable and more able to identify when I don’t have to be so “on it” and sharp. Let me be off and soft.

I saw an interview with musician Neko Case about how she felt that forgiveness isn’t a state you achieve, but an atmospheric condition you find yourself in. I feel that way about grief, mine feels like a set of weather patterns that might not feel like another’s climate.

This experience is both individual and collective. My job is to recognize what’s mine to bear and should be shared. I also know that I will have other griefs that will knock me sideways. I may look back at this post and think how silly and naive I was about it all.

My dad always said, “Better than a sharp stick in the eye!” to which we always were like, “Literally everything is better than a sharp stick in the eye.” We don’t know about the sharp stick until it’s in our eye, and I think that’s how a lot of life and grief is. We can only do so much to prepare for it, and even with our preparations we still need to go through the storm. But I’m grateful, still, that I battened down the hatches and invited other people under my umbrella. Thank you for joining me in the rain.

From September 2024 to February 2025, I spent about six months working with New York Times reporter Jan Hoffman about the surge of meth use in Maine. Since it was published in April, it’s become one of the projects I get asked about the most. The topic is a bit of an outlier for me, I typically work on softer stories about people and nature, art, travel, and the like. But editor Matt McCann trusted me with this story, and gave me the time and parameters I needed.
Sometimes when I receive an assignment, my editor will send me a complete draft to work with. In other cases, like this one, the reporter is researching and building their story at the same time I am photographing it. Jan spent a lot of time on her own conducting interviews, doing research, and building on her extensive experience as a health reporter who has covered addiction for many years. We spent a lot of time together getting to know people in Portland, Maine’s East Bayside neighborhood. This included helpers, like Bill Burns, and people, like Kailan, who use methamphetamine and other substances.
I spent a lot of time with Bill as he responded to acute needs in the community or in the car while he drove people to the methadone clinic. His work exists in a bit of a gray area: he used to run the local shelter, but swears he isn’t a social worker. He works for the police department but makes no arrests. He thinks deeply and cares a lot: he knows statistics in the same way he understands poetry.
I met Kailan on Halloween, she arrived to the methadone transport in a plush, furry jacket. She reminded me of Margot Tenenbaum. I took her photo in the sunshine with her sunglasses and fabulous outfit. Later, I photographed her smoking meth, crouched in the snow under the protection of her winter coat.
Projects like this really stay with you. I had more follow up questions and people had asked me questions that I couldn’t answer. So, I decided to head back to Bayside. I brought some prints for people involved in the project and both Bill and Kailan gave me their time to talk about the article including what it felt like to participate in it.

BILL BURNS

What it like to be a part of this article? Us showing up and you showing us your world?

It felt like… what’s the novel with Virgil as the guide into the inner spirals into hell? Dante’s Inferno. I was the guide. That’s where we are all day, every day. And so it was like, “Okay here we go.” How can I help to communicate something important and significant about what is happening here? The way you and Jan treated the folks that we were talking to gave me no pause whatsoever. Some stories are not as evocative or representative of the real experience of people. We were really lucky to be getting people to talk as they did and to allow their pictures to be taken and their quotations to be included.

I thought going into this story that it might be hard to find people to tell us about their meth use. But I was surprised that people were very open with us from the beginning. I was often surprised by what I saw, like the day I went on the methadone clinic transport and there had been a death in the community the day before. Each time someone get in the car, they would be informed about the tragic death and a natural rhythm happened. They would cry, people would talk about him and share memories. They’d also make a plan to check in with other people or get additional care to help with sobriety plans now that there was this added element of grief. It was a level of care I didn’t expect.

The first time you or I were to experience something like that, they’d send us to grief counselors or something. Years ago, all your friends would come over. They’d bring you a covered dish or something. And all those street friends just did that for the person in need that day. They just knew. What grief counseling?

You don’t outsource that care.

Exactly.

I’d like to ask you one of the big questions I’ve been asked repeatedly about this story. I was so focused on gaining consent throughout this project, and recalibrating that consent as someone was using meth because I knew their headspace would change. I was so focused that I didn’t think about any legal ramifications about someone being pictured doing something illegal. Was I putting people in danger by making and publishing those photos?

From what I know, there’s nothing they could be charged with. If you are smoking meth and someone took a picture, no one is going to prove that. Nothing is going to happen with that. I have to say, I don’t turn away when someone is using in front of me. With folks with addiction issues, we don’t tend to turn away. People are often using spice [a synthetic cannabinoid], which has this legal gray area. But a lot of my role is telling people this isn’t the time or the place to, say, be shooting up or hitting a crack pipe.

You say you aren’t a social worker. You work for the police department, but you also let people know that you will not be arresting them. You provide transport and get people to the care you need. So the question is, what is Bill? I came to think of you as Bayside’s dad.

I’ve always seen you as a father to the community. Both Keke and Joann have accused you of thinking they are like your children, and I’ve always said- is that such a bad thing? Someone cares about you? - Jennifer, Bill’s colleague.

If you know one addict, you know one addict right? Knowing what will work with everyone struggling with addiction is impossible - as Seamus Heaney once wrote “no song or play or poem can right a wrong inflicted and endured”. What is possible is endeavoring to see and understand the complexity before you and find a way to what’s possible. Before humans invented alphabets, Loren Eiseley reminds us we read the stars, the seasons, we guided our lives with rhythms that bound us to the natural world. Today, those markings are harder to find and for someone in the throes of a vicious, life-grabbing addiction, it is essentially impossible, the codes so inscrutable and unfamiliar that even trying to untangle them becomes a Herculean task, or is it Sisyphean?

And yet, during WWII Navajo soldiers, speakers of an inscrutable language themselves, broke codes that helped us defeat the Nazis. Our work is about breaking codes and nudging, always nudging people towards a healthier life of purpose.

I think if I was in this job for a long time, I would harden, I wouldn’t always have the discernment about when to be soft and when to be stern. I think it’s a discernment about what situation needs what approach. Sometimes people need love and sometimes they may need discipline. Maybe it’s both.

It’s an odd position because I’m not anybody’s caseworker, I’m not anybody’s therapist. I don’t have those roles. I don’t want those roles. We are trying to get people from point A to point B. Everything that I am doing is about nudging people in a healthier direction. Sometimes that looks like RKTs* (*Rice Krispie Treats, which Bill makes at home and brings on Thursdays on the methadone transport), sometimes that looks like a burger, sometimes that looks like kicking someone out of the car because she’s threatening someone else. People need love and limits. It’s a question of trying to hit the right buttons. There’s no formula, it’s all alchemy. A lot of it is just throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks and creating different community. So much of it is palliative. And there’s great beauty in palliative care. It does mean not having the fantasy of “curing.”

Even after years of this of this work you still have belief and hope when people say, “I want to make a change” or “I want to get clean.”

Yeah. It’s an external expression of an internal ambivalence. I think everybody’s kind of ambivalent. You’ve seen it, they’re in the world. And in that world, like there’s gallows humor and there’s a bravado. They’re telling us very similar stories about how much dope they did, how great oxys were. And when people get sick of the ride, they really do, you know? There’s a capacity for change.

In the timeline of working on this project, I photographed an assignment where people were eating caviar one day and the next I photographed someone smoking meth under their jacket in the middle of the winter. Sometimes I felt discombobulated. I had a little trouble synthesizing those disparate realities. But you have to do that every day. Does it ever feel surreal and strange? Or is it easy for you to compartmentalize those things?

For me, I don’t think about things in those terms. It’s not about compartmentalizing. It’s about acknowledging that life expresses itself in various ways. It’s a blessing, I have a daughter who is traveling now. A great wife, a dog, a job. I have people I really care about. I have great colleagues. And it all exists together.

KAILAN

You told me earlier that you felt like being a part of an article gave you a feeling of closure.

I have to make the right steps towards housing and getting myself more on the clean and narrow. I’m kind of tired and I’m ready to put this crap down. You can only go so far, and after a while it really starts to wear thin. And you know, while I still have an addiction, I have enough strength in me to find other resources. I have enough strength to find a psychiatrist and a doctor. And with a little limelight on my story, who knows what the scenario might be. And that’s the kind of closure I’m thinking about. I’m sensing that people care.

You left a big impact on me. One of the things I have thought about is that you and I have the same birthday. Do you remember talking about that?

When is your birthday?

Mine is November 8, 1986. When is yours?

Mine is September 29th.

I thought we had the same birthday! But are you also 1986?

Yes! But you know, [when I am using meth], it’s like you might be meeting me or my inner, or my inner’s inner.

I remember so clearly taking pictures with you in the snow. I only know what it feels like to me to be on my end, taking pictures. What did it feel like for me to be there taking photos?

You made it really comfortable. You do. You made it feel less like a job. I didn’t feel like the camera was really very much at all. No, it really didn’t. In fact, you were still there, just yourself in the moment that I think you missed a couple of opportunities.

I think you are so right, sometimes I am just listening and I forget to take pictures. What were the moments when you thought I missed?

I think when I was in the backseat of the van, telling Jan about my story.

(At this point we are both laughing.)

When the story came out, the day that the paper came out, did you get to read it?

I think it was mentioned. And no, I didn’t like run to try to find a copy. And then when somebody said, “Did you read it yet?” and I was like, “No.” But someone gave me the middle of the paper.

It’s just been such a hard day today. You know, I woke up early and couldn’t find my stuff. It was really aggravating. And my friend came over but I wanted to go to the clinic but he wanted to take me away from that. Why would a friend want to do that to me?

One of the things I think about is that we showed up and spent time with you and made an article that goes out into the world. But everything keeps happening. You still woke up today and have been having a hard day, but there’s no one there taking notes or photographs. Are there things that have happened since then that you wish I or other people knew?

God, I feel like I’ve had that thought. I’ve had a few little bright light ideas, like oh, I wish I’d told them this or added this. But I can’t think of what they were now. I wish I could add that some of our resources feel like they may be closing. Not just that, but there are things I don’t have yet that I need. It just means I need to buckle down even more so to ensure that I’m secure. Sometimes the things that need to happen the most, we end up doing the opposite because we’re just so used to living this vicious cycle type of life. You know? It’s like procrastination. You just do the opposite of what really needs to happen. It’s a lot of pressure.

Do you have a picture for what stability would look like for you?

Yeah. The other day I walked past the apartment that we had when my son was a toddler. I feel so bad I lost all that. I just think “What happened? How did I lose all that?” I sometimes feel like the whole scheme is like we were all really set up for failure almost.

Is there anything that is giving you hope or making you feel better?

You. People like Bill.

Can I ask you one more thing about when we were taking photos? It was really important to me that I asked you, as we were taking pictures, if it was okay that I take pictures. I always wanted to even know what I was doing and feel comfortable with me there. But why did you say yes? A lot of people would have said, “No, you can’t take a picture of me smoking meth.”

Oh, I expected that. I really did. I guess, like some people were shocked by it afterwards. But you guys were doing an article on that specific thing, of course you are going to be curious. So I expected it.

A lot of people told me that they thought you were really brave.

That’s what I was hearing, too. But I don’t really get that part.

I think it’s because it’s not something that a lot of people see. But it’s something you do, I’m assuming, multiple times a day. I think some may wonder how you felt comfortable sharing something that other people may be uncomfortable with.

Oh, and maybe they were wondering how I’d be so ballsy to go against the law. It’s because I know what’s really going on below the surface and how this all came about. I know what happens behind the curtains that no one can see behind. And I know I’m not the bad guy.

Thank you to Bill and Kailan for their generosity during the original reporting for the New York Times as well as for this little follow-up piece. Many people in Portland gave us their time and stories.

You can read the articles in the New York Times here and here. In June, I also worked on a story with Jan Hoffman about contingency management programs, a new program to address stimulant dependency, which you can read about here.

Despite Casablanca being my senior prom theme, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one in the Boise High School senior class who hadn’t seen it. In fact, I finally watched it last year for the first time. It lives up to the hype. Lately, I’ve been feeling a disconnect to current shows and movies, they seem so fast and shiny! All I really want to watch is Jeopardy! and classic movies. I wish could report that I am watching them perkily sitting up with a bowl of popcorn, with rapt attention and a critical mind. But I’m not. I’m watching them all slumped and cozy in my bed, usually watching them in, say, thirty-minute increments. The pacing is so much slower than current media, a three-minute establishing shot will have me lulled to sleep. Sometimes I barely make it past the seemingly endless opening credits. I keep my peepers open as long as I can, then start it up again the next night.

But, I’m still getting something tangible from my sleepy screenings. There is so much inspiration. The costumes! The interior design! The mid-Atlantic accents! The intrigue! THE FONT DESIGN! I think any creative person should be watching oldies but goodies. Actually, I bet they all are, and I’m late to the Criterion Collection Party.

Here are my favorites that I’ve watched so far.* So far, I’ve been primarily watching movies I can stream for free, but I may graduate to paying a few bucks for the really good ones. If you have recommendations for old classics, please send them my way!

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

This is the one. I love it. Ava Gardner is a vision (the other lead actor is devoid of any charms, but no matter- Ava makes up for it) and the outfits and interiors are spectacular. What is most notable to me is the clear influence of surrealism: the compositions look like Dali painting and the lighting feels like day and night at the same time.

The Red Shoes (1948)

This movie has already received a lot of love. I think I saw that it’s Greta Gerwig’s favorite movie. It’s about a dancer torn between her career and romantic love. It’s also about magical red shoes that dance through what feels like a psychedelic fever dream. The hand-painted intro credits alone make it worth a watch.

My Brilliant Career (1979)

This is like Australia’s Little Women. Based on a novel of the same name from 1901 written by feminist writer Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (who went by Miles Franklin). Judy Davis, who plays Sybylla, has the most amazing hair. I just adored it.

Lilies of the Field (1963)

This is the movie for which Sidney Poitier became the first male Black actor to receive an Oscar. He’s incredible in it, playing the capable and independent Homer, a nomadic handyman who stops by a monastery. The nuns believe he has been sent by God and Homer wrestles with their expectations. It’s such a joyful movie!

Good Morning (1959)

I’ve read that this movie is most often remembered for it’s fart jokes, and the movie is peppered with little trombone toots. It’s several small plot lines about a neighborhood in Japan, and the small worlds inside each home. For example, a central plot is about two young boys who go on strike, refusing to speak until their family buys them a television. I was pretty enamored with the color palette of this movie: the light quality, use of patterned texture, etc- it makes for a muted but colorful world.

I Married a Witch (1942)

A witch from the 17th century returns to pester a politician. That’s probably enough to get anyone hooked, but also Veronica Lake is a DREAM. No wonder she was the it girl with the hair everyone wanted. And her voice! This whole thing is silly and campy and would be a perfect spooky season watch.

Blithe Spirit (1945)

This one is also for spooky season: a writer commissions a local woman to conduct a seance, and it stirs up the ghost of his first wife. This movie won a lot of awards for it’s special effects. The ghost(s!) are green and sassy and do all sorts of silly things.

Summertime (1955)

As the trailer says “Venice in all her moods.” We’ve also got Katharine Hepburn, too, as a “spinster” who is curious and creative from the get-go. We get to delight in seeing Katharine have a blast on vacation with her cute outfits and new friends.

Roman Holiday (1953)

I think everyone else had seen Roman Holiday except me at this point. I can’t tell you how many time I’ve thought of Audrey Hepburn’s princess tantrums since watching this movie. It’s fun to see her sample from “the entire menu of fun and romance.”

Wuthering Heights (1939)

For fans of the “bratty little curls” in Cole Escola’s Oh! Mary. We have Laurence Olivier, who is simmering and dramatic. But I also went on a side quest to learn about the lead actor Merle Oberon, navigated Golden Age Hollywood by hiding her South Asian heritage. She is now considered the first Asian person to be nominated for an actor for Best Actress.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Twisty and turny! I was genuinely surprised by the ending. Marlene Dietrich is SO COOL in this movie, and an absolute babe at 55. Perfect for anyone who loves procedurals.

Lifeboat (1944)

I’ve read that this is considered to be Hitchcock’s most overlooked film. Tallulah Bankhead, in her most famous role, stars as a journalist who sees being stuck on a lifeboat her perhaps her most epic story. The assortment of survivors is tested when they realize that that one of them is a Nazi. This sent me off into the internet to read about Bankhead, who was a firm supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, an open bisexual who had Billie Holiday and Greta Garbo among her lovers, and was known for refusing to wear underwear during the filming of Lifeboat.

Rear Window (1954)

This has been one of my favorite movies for a long time, and I rewatched it for maybe the fourth time. I’m including it simply because it’s the movie that made me think “huh, maybe I should be watching old timey stuff.” It’s also such cool, classic Hitchcockian premise: a traveling photographer with a broken leg thinks he’s witnesses a murder from his apartment window. Lesson to be learned: some of the best stories happen close to home.

The Third Man (1949)

I’m adding this one as an honorable mention, because it is so effective at making me fall asleep, I’ve tried watching this several times and always end up snoozing. I can tell it’s very good, but the pacing is like a dang lullaby. Recommending it for someone stuck in a sleepless night. Eventually I’ll finish it and finally get to see Orson Welles’s famous “ta-da!” moment.

*Note: there’s often one part in every old movie where something is painful: sexism, racism, an old offensive term, etc. I find myself able to find worth in these movies despite those moments, and I’ve done my best to avoid movies in which the themes themselves are overtly rotten. It’s one of those “many things are true at the same time” things.

Delights:

• I’ve been using “the Brick” to block social media apps, and I highly recommend it. I like having a physical way to turn on and off the most distracting elements of my phone.

• I really love these Japanese chia seed konjac gummies that I get at our local Asian market. They have a firm jello consistency with the slight crunch of the chia seeds. I’ve tried the peach and grape flavors and like them both.

I’ve never been good at photographing my own life and family. But, inspired by the spring wildflower bloom, a few years ago my dad and I decided to recreate one of our favorite photos of him from the ‘70’s. He’s laying in a meadow, totally blissed out.

My dad, Tom Rybus, died while out walking on his favorite trail on September 2nd. His heart suddenly stopped working a few steps after saying he’d like to go further. My mom was with him, holding him and saying goodbye. She told me the sky was blue and hawks were overhead. Their dog, Ruthie, laid with him. His friends came to the trail to be with them.

He’d been diagnosed with heart failure and Alzheimer’s. I’d been bracing myself for a long, slow decline and I worried about seeing him suffer or disappear. My heart broke in advance. But as he aged, he became more content. He stopped to marvel at flowers, especially any yellow flower. When I talked to him on the phone a couple days before he died, he repeated how happy he was with his life, how he had no regrets, how grateful he felt. This was something he said almost every time I talked to him. He was a geography teacher, who often understood the world in maps and demographics: at 77, he told me, he’d surpassed the average American male lifespan. He’d already gotten more than most. I think we all feel like we’d wanted more time with him, we didn’t want him to be slowing or forgetting. We wanted him to be on his bicycle or running long distances forever.

The most important thing to me right now is to honor his whole life. His little kid self, who loved the soft cotton fluff at the top of medicine bottles and had a favorite red sweater. His teenage self who spiked the punch bowl and loved the Rolling Stones. His athlete self who loved outdoor endurance adventures. The parts that I knew best: his father self, his teacher self, his old hippy self. My parents were committed to living an adventurous life: they taught in the Netherlands when I was a baby, Northern Japan when I was a teen, and Berlin when I was in college. We biked in Alaska, sea kayaked in Canada, and camped in the Idaho mountains. We backpacked around Thailand one summer. In their retirement, my parents drove their van down to Mexico in the winters.

I’m amazed by how many people have texted me or called me with memories and condolences. And how many people have come by my parents’ house. Our grief is all interconnected: my dad was their friend, family member, colleague, teacher, or neighbor. Some people have told me that he was proud of me. I know he was. But I think it’s important to say how proud I was of him. He learned how to be different from the household he grew up in. He was a loving person: gentle, kind, and thoughtful. He was so good at listening.

When I was a little girl, everyone called me “Little Tom.” I had bright blonde hair – white and downy, like a duck’s belly – and the same nose as him. In some ways, we are still similar: we have hearty appetites. We love very strong coffee, traveling, books, spicy food, and nature. I studied anthropology, just like him. We sleep with our wrist crooked under our heads, and wake up with numb hands. We are both dog people, through-and-through. But no daughter is the same as her parents, I’m no copy or shadow. He was one of a kind.

My dad loved baking bread. He used the same bread bowl he’d gotten in his hippy days, homesteading on the Washington Palouse. The bottom was cracked in the 70’s, but he glued it back together and it remained his favorite. He liked teaching people how to bake bread, believing it to be an essential skill that men especially should know. He used the same worn recipe, a print out from a website that he’s modified. I’d love to share with you if you’d like to bake it in his honor:

Tom’s Artisan Bread (makes two loaves)

4 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2.5 teaspoons dry active yeast
4 tsp salt
3 1/3 C warm/hot water

Directions:

Step one: Combine the flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl and mix to combine. Add water and mix well. The dough will be very sticky and shaggy-looking. Cover the bowl and set aside at room temperature for 18 hours (my dad often tinkered with this timing).

Step two: Generously flour a work surface. The dough will have risen and will be covered in bubbles. Transfer the dough to the work surface and dust it with flour. Fold the dough in half, and then form the dough into two loaves by cutting it in half, then stretching and tucking the edges of the dough underneath the balls of dough.

Step three: Ensuring the workspace is well-floured, let the dough rise for about two hours. Cover with a floured towel.

Step four: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Place a lidded Dutch oven or deep heavy duty casserole dish (with lid) into the oven to preheat. My dad preferred lidded cast iron pots.

Step five: Carefully remove the hot baking dish from the oven. Remove the lid and gently turn the dough ball into the ungreased baking dish, seam-side up; shake the dish so the dough is more evenly distributed.

Step six: Either one at a time or in two baking containers simultaneously, cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake until the crust is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the loaf from the baking dish and let it cool before slicing. Tom’s favorite way to enjoy his bread: with two boiled eggs and a slice of sharp Cougar Gold cheese, with a huge green salad, or with jam and butter.

One of my favorite songs of all time is I Zimbra, by the Talking Heads. The lyrics go like this:

Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride

You get the idea. It goes on like that. You’ve probably have seen David Byrne singing it like a fugue state or magic spell, at the point of Stop Making Sense where he’s sweated through his big gray suit and is down to his shirtsleeves. God, I love that song. It’s a wiggly, obsessive boogie woogie that makes me feel alive and electric.

At first glance, I Zimbra seems like it’s written from another language, or like overhearing a shouting match from another room. If you’ve heard David Byrne speak about the making of I Zimbra, he credits the lyrics to Hugo Ball’s Dadaist poem Gadji Beri Bimba. I’ve been thinking about Dadaism a lot lately, a movement created in Switzerland during World War I in response to the absurd horrors of war and the soured promises of systems that promised to make life sweet. They mocked the nonsense of brutality by making nonsense art. It protested how the powerful attempt to make war and exploitation seem logical, when such cruelty can only be illogical. When the world seemed fucked up, they responded by just fucking around.

If David Byrne is my favorite guy in a big gray suit, Paul Reuben’s Pee Wee Herman is my favorite guy in a little gray suit. I’m from a Pee Wee family, where I watched Playhouse while home sick and we danced to Tequila! on our tip-toes at my cousin’s wedding. I’ve had to come to the defense of Paul Reuben’s many times, a man before his time: someone who chose a creative life of queerness and absurdity, often at the cost of his personal life and reputation. In the documentary that came out at the end of May, “Pee Wee as Himself,” a lot of dedicated fans like myself got to see some of his early ventures into artistic weirdness as a young person. As Pee Wee, he created a cheeky, kooky guy that has his own absurd world of play. His character give permission for other people to be strange. That’s how to live fully, I think.

Sometimes I find myself feeling a little panicked. Where is Dada when we need it? The world feels blisteringly absurd and scary: are we meeting it with enough weirdness? Are we waving our freak flags high enough? Did we misplace them or digitize them or hide them because they’ve become contraband? I have a pin from a local artist that says, “support your local weirdos.” I think I’m pretty weird, but I could get weirder. I want to grow, but I don’t want to soften too many of my edges.

I’ve been mulling over what dadaism could look like in photography or photojournalism. I know what it looked like historically: it looked like Man Ray’s famous surrealistic images, Mina Loy’s love of lampshades as artistic muse, and Hannah Höch’s collage universes. I question if photography is a medium that applies itself well to Dadaism. Is there room for a silly protest within imagery now? Honestly, I have no idea. I fail at visualizing how I could make it within my current creative style. It’s fun to think about. And I like starting with the idea that dada, or a generalized embrace of nonsense could be a life skill, coping mechanism, or mindset. Dada almost feels like the antithesis of anxiety. There’s something powerful about being a goofball freak in the face of fear.

When I can, I go to a weekly craft night down the road from our home in rural Maine. I’m not a particularly crafty person but I’ve been using scraps of fabric and thrifted ribbon to make rosettes, which look like awards for nothing. Every time I show them to someone they always seem baffled, like, “Huh, what are they for?” I make them for fun! For nonsense!

Last Friday, I found myself rooting for a contestant under bright lights, with humble Maine roots and big smile. She was Kara Peruccio, a professor from Bangor on the Alex Trebek stage, bantering with Ken Jennings at the podium before winning in final jeopardy. The coolest part? She wasn’t the first in her family to be on Jeopardy: her twin sister had been on the show twelve years before. I went into the weekend rooting for Kara and the genius Peruccio sisters, knowing I’d have to wait til Monday to see if she’d get a streak going.

I started watching Jeopardy a year or two ago, after my dad was diagnosed with dementia and I wanted to work on my own memory recall. I’ve become hooked: the game is cozy and nostalgic and I love it’s friendly world of competitive nerd-dom. But there was a swirl of attention around another Maine contestant that weekend, as Jordon Hudson, stepped onto the stage to vie for the title of Miss Maine USA while her boyfriend, former Patriots coach Bill Belichick snuck through a side door to watch from the audience.

When there’s hubbub in Maine, I might get a call to photograph it. The pageant world is outside my typical subject matter. This assignment felt exciting - I like jobs that feel like stepping through a portal. It’s always interesting seeing a group of people wholly consumed by something that’s rather new to me. So, I went to the Holiday Inn Portland - By The Bay where paparazzi sat in chairs at the base of the lobby staircase, lifting their cameras when pageant contestants sauntered by in a gown and slippers or carrying a snack. Some of them covered their faces, others - like Jordon- knew their angles and smiled towards the camera. She walked past me once, I photographed only three frames. Pageant officials had denied me official press clearance and issued murky rules that felt impossible to figure out. It was okay to photograph in the lobby and maybe okay to photograph in the hallway, but definitely not in the ballroom where all the action was. All rules seem to suspend once the event finished. Jordon got third place. The winner Shelby Ann Howell, Miss Bangor USA, beamed under her crown. Some contestants seemed to be in sweatpants within minutes of the judge’s ruling. Others wore their sashes out to their car.

I think for most photojournalists, there’s pressure for our work to be consistently profound and meaningful. But sometimes, I just want to be a visitor in another, more bedazzled dimension. I want to have fun. And I enjoyed getting to know the pageant universe. I met beauty queens and their family members. I met coaches, who help contestants finesse their looks and poses. I asked one coach, part jokingly, if she’d ever take on a weirdo photojournalist for a day, to turn me into a queen. She said, “Absolutely, we could do a lot together!” and gave me her business card. I imagined big false lashes fluttering against my viewfinder.

I photographed this story with a flash, which I’ve been doing more of recently. I’ve been a natural light photographer exclusively until 2023 when I ordered a ProFoto A10 that has become a great little tool - I usually carry it in one hand with my camera in the other so I can still feel like I’m just bopping around. I’ve realized it’s nice to have a flash in situations where the light feels flat or gloomy, like in the Holiday Inn Portland - By The Bay.

On Monday’s episode of Jeopardy, Kara Peruccio lost in her second game of Jeopardy. I guess at least one person from Bangor was victorious. Although - some trivia- I did see that Miss Bangor USA, now Miss Maine USA, was allegedly born and raised in San Diego.

You can read the full story in the New York Times here, written by Scott Cacciola (thanks Scott!). And thank you to Christy Harmon for this assignment.

Delights:

• My friend Denali Sai Nalamalapu published a book, called Holler, about rural activism. I loved how she used a graphic novel format for journalistic storytelling.

• I was interviewed by Michael Howard on the Foto Podcast, which has emboldened me a bit more to share about what I’ve learned in my work, both in the episode and here on Substack. You can hear it wherever you listen to podcasts. If you listened to the podcast and have any follow-up questions, feel free to leave any questions in the comment section of this post.

My friend and I were chatting about the self-help industry this weekend, and ooooo we both had stories! Once, my assignment photographing a self-help personality was cancelled after they sent a long, rampaging email mocking her staff and peers. Similarly, friend told me about a popular podcaster who arrived at a speaking engagement in a messy state: all hopped up and in a cruel mood. They seemed more in need of help than equipped to dispense it.

These gurus got my friend and I talking about the hero’s journey. The story structure of an adventure - typically one given, not chosen - with unforeseen obstacles and a lesson that leads to glory, victory, or resolution. But heroes never seem all that happy- their rewards are fame, wealth, greater responsibility, and a further distance to fall. Exorbitant wealth and fame are fickle, and they seem to spoil whatever and whoever they touch. There’s no real comfort in them, no lasting or enduring ease. I wonder if once you become a professional hero, the role becomes too calcified to allow for the flexibility that life requires. The real world is distant from up there on that pedestal.

More realistically, we’ll experience not the hero’s journey but the learner’s journey. The state of being human. Life is less about a pathway to redemption and more about cycles of order and disorder and reorder, and every time we find ourselves in that cycle it looks different. My friend told me a teacher explained that it may be unending, but it can help simply to recognize where we are in the pattern.

I’ve been thinking about how my job as a photojournalist is to meet someone at various points of the falling-apart, putting-back-together parts of humanity. What we could improve upon, as storytellers, is realizing that most stories don’t end, they keep going. It’s more of an ellipses than a period. Our job is to portray as much nuance and complexity as best we can. Sometimes, I question how well I can do that in images. And I worry that we’ve been too complicit in elevating heroes who end up just being human after all. Or, on the flip side, portraying problems without possibility. If I can use a music metaphor: the song can be happy or sad, but we need to hear all the notes. The backup singer is just as needed as the lead vocalist.

One of my favorite speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. is a sermon given in 1968 called the Drum Major Instinct, in which he warns against the pull towards the front of the metaphorical band, rather than finding our own instrument and playing it well. What happens if we march past everyone rather than finding our place alongside each other?

And you know, we begin early to ask life to put us first. Our first cry as a baby was a bid for attention. And all through childhood the drum major impulse or instinct is a major obsession. Children ask life to grant them first place. They are a little bundle of ego. And they have innately the drum major impulse or the drum major instinct. Now in adult life, we still have it, and we really never get by it. We like to do something good. And you know, we like to be praised for it. Now if you don't believe that, you just go on living life, and you will discover very soon that you like to be praised. Everybody likes it, as a matter of fact. And somehow this warm glow we feel when we are praised or when our name is in print is something of the vitamin A to our ego. Nobody is unhappy when they are praised, even if they know they don't deserve it and even if they don't believe it.

[...]

It is the drum major impulse and longing that runs the gamut of human life. And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in. Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff.

[...]

There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. And that's where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct.

[...]

Nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

[…}

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

Thanks for indulging that long excerpt.

Sometimes thoughts or themes eddy in my mind and they stick around until I put them somewhere, like a good conversation or maybe now here on Substack. This week, I mulled over the idea of perpetual self help in pursuit of heroism and how quickly it flattens us. And how alluring these archetypes can be in journalism or storytelling. Or just in our lives. I got the Radiohead line “Ambition makes you look pretty ugly” stuck in my head. It’s not ambition itself that can be ugly, the type of ambition that is in service to our inner selves or an outer duty can be gorgeous. It’s needed and worthwhile. But the machine of ambition, the kind of upward mobility that only goes up and not out, or to the side, or stop when it’s time? That’s when it can be corrosive. There’s a privilege in examining ambition, but I also think it’s needed if we are to take on the learner’s journey. Or arrive at some kind of contentedness.

There’s a saying in my family: “so much for heroes.” We’ve found ourselves saying it a lot lately: when the politician gets caught up in a scandal, when the pop star says something disappointing. People seem to get into a lot of trouble, that whole order and disorder, chaos and ease thing is awfully real. I’d rather have public servants, or people who say “actually, I have enough money”, and more articles about background singers or the third-chair violinist. I’ve never been on a yacht, but it doesn’t seem that happy up there. I have, however, been on many rowboats with smiling people rowing towards or from a day of satisfying work. Perhaps I want to dream about the rowboat. And dispense of the pedestal.

Delights:

• Fiona Apple’s cover of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold:

• This SNL skit felt personal and had me giggling:

When I was 14, we used to do calisthenics at the start of 4th period. We’d stretch our arms out into a T shape and touch opposite toes, rotating at the hip and keeping our arms straight. Our backs and tummies made appearances above low-rise jeans.

I often think about how we are always practicing for something upcoming, a moment around the corner that today’s life calisthenics may help out with. I started thinking this way when I was 21, when three sudden grand mal seizures landed me in the hospital. A scan showed a mass in my brain, some swelling, and bleeding. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so calm about it all. Lots of scary words were being used, ones that should have made me feel a tightening sense of doom. Instead, I felt fully capable. What if I had been practicing for this without knowing it? At that point, I’d had a decade of chronic migraines, I was familiar with the territory of illness. What if all that pain could be helpful for once? What if I could be good at being not okay?

Anyway, the story of my brain blob is a story for another day, one that now feels tucked in the past and a little too intense to bring up. But, here I am writing a Substack and I might as well think about why. It’s more practice! Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect isn’t real. But it makes something.

When I first graduated with my photojournalism degree, I felt simultaneously full of confidence and completely freaked out. I wasn’t the best photographer in my graduating class by far, and I had a lot of work to do. So, I started self-assigning little projects to myself. For a while, I challenged myself to find stories within a two-block radius of my little apartment in Missoula, Montana. I photographed the local Lutheran minister and the workers at a tattoo parlor. I still felt like I needed more practice, especially dealing with weird light and (sometimes even weirder) people. I started a blog in the height of the blog era in which I’d photograph and interview a stranger every week. I called it “Who I Met.”

Then, over a decade later, when I was planning on photographing and writing a book, I was seized with anxiety about the written portion. Despite writing an entire novella at age 11 about being a passenger on the Titanic, I am not a writer. I have no business at the keyboard except emails and Lightroom commands. The idea of comment sections or book reviews made me queasy. So, I started pitching stories in which I would photograph and write. A few of them got picked up. I somehow survived the tortuous heave of writing and vulnerability of internet reviews. I made my book. The exposure therapy helped.

It’s common practice in photojournalism to self-assign personal projects. It’s usually how we communicate to ourselves and to our editors the most clearly. It’s how we say, “this is who I am and what I’m interested in” or “think of these projects when you assign stories to me, this is how I can shine.” But those are also the instances in which we get to take the biggest risks, maybe mess up a little, give ourselves more time and leniency. Which leads to discovery.

The best projects, whether assigned to us or assigned by ourselves to ourselves, are the ones that make us alternate between going outward and going inward. I’ve become quite practiced at that outward reach: towards people I’m photographing, the communities I visit, different lighting scenarios, and the business of it all. I’ve also become accustomed to the inward work: checking my ethics, examining my feelings, and following lines of inquiry about how and why I work the way I do. Intertwining my work with my psychology. I like to think my photos demonstrate the external efforts, but I’m terrible at sharing the internal gunk and the personal discoveries. I could use some practice.

And is it worth it to share? Do I need to shout into the void? Probably not, but perhaps there is some value in listening to our lessons and taking some notes, then scooting the notebook across the desk to other students. Bending towards one another to check our work and share what we learned.

Delights:

• Storygraph for keeping up with my reading as a less-corporate alternative to Goodreads. Shoutout to founder and CEO Nadia Odunayo for making something great and to my friend Hannah Yoon for recommending it to me. Find me on Storygraph here.

• A great documentary about sex researcher Shere Hite.

• Sharon Van Etten’s new album. No skips.

• Amy from Amyl and the Sniffers and her righteous rage (warning, swears).

  

  @amylandthesniffers @amylandthesniffers ♬ original sound - amylandthesniffers

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