Addendum...

So, as she settles into the swing on her playset this afternoon, my six-year-old daughter looks up and says, utterly without preface, "I wonder what's going to happen with Michael Jackson today?"

There was a speechless, if amused, pause on my part before I could manage to say, "Well, nothing I hope. I think they're pretty much finished with Michael Jackson." Which, of course, set her off on an extended rumination, to which she is prone, on "Wouldn't it be funny if an airplane landed on Michael Jackson's grave, and they had to do something, and ..."

I've gotta' ask...

I was studiously avoiding anything Michael Jackson -- both viewing and writing -- but it was a nearly impossible task. The Memorial Service or Funeral or Celebratory Concert or whatever it was (for a short time, I tried to coin a combined term among my friends, "Funicert," but they didn't share my dark humorous sensibilities) was on every network, cable and broadcast, it seemed. There was no escaping the 14 karat, highly polished gold coffin.

Now, there's the aftermath, and having been a creature and creation of the media culture, that means reviewing the ratings. I saw a figure that 31 million people watched the event on 18 networks (one story here) which struck me as actually low. I mean, simple math breaks that down to less than 2 million people per channel, which is decent for a moderately successful cable channel (eg: SyFy just got 3 million for its newest show), but awful for a major event on a big whatever-it-is (four? five?) broadcast network...

And then there's the fact that it was omnipresent. Every broadcast network, every cable news channel and several other cable channels (like E! and TV Guide). There was no where to turn! It was Michael Jackson or SpongeBob. How many of those viewers, like me, were trapped. (Although, I was amused when one network affiliate, during the 11 p.m. news that night, announced that day's soap opera episode would be aired at 2 a.m. Couldn't they just push the plot line a day later?)

Yet, I guess the audience was skewed to the larger outlets, like the broadcasters, so maybe it did get decent ratings, trailing out through the secondary cable channels. But it's a curious set of numbers ... which I guess goes to prove the old truism often used by Reagan (naturally): There are lies, damn lies and statistics...

Again with the Leica...

So of course, in the process of filming (or rather, to be technical, video-ing, or rather high definition video-ing, which is why I prefer "filming" ... just because it's easier) Phil and his work I brought along the Nikon D-80 for production stills and my Leica M4.

A wide view of Phil in his workshop. He is paused -- something he does often to stare at the wood, or his quick, rough drawings, to gain a sense of where he is, what he's doing and (perhaps most importantly) where he's going. Sometimes it seems as if these aren't pauses at all, but the real work. The rapid, often noisy, handwork with the wood is only punctuation to the heavy lifting of thought...

A portrait, of sorts, shot as we were chatting just before I left on the first day of filming. He looks somewhat more severe than he truly is here -- and thus it's really not a good portrait, having failed to fully capture him. However, it does show some of the intensity of thought that goes into everything he says.

Finally, another view of work. This is from the first day also, when he was piecing together larger hunks of wood to form the general shape from which he would carve and rasp out the more graceful form of the piece. Again, he is in a pause, turning the wood, contemplating its place and shape.

Shot with the Leica M4 and a Zeiss 21mm f/2.8 lens on Kodak BW400CN film.

The Way We Live Now...

So, even though I'm still editing the VMI New Market project (using an usual system of editing video as a "silent movie" in essence first, then going back to the interviews to create a narration of sorts -- exactly the opposite of the usual method), I've already started filming on another project.

This is Phil Welch, a woodworker -- really an artist who works in wood -- here in Lexington. I first met him at a party, hosted by someone who had commissioned one of his works: a table in with, instead of conventional legs, a bumble bee's head and legs. It was a really impressive piece, in various tones of wood. In other words, no stain or paint, just different wood tones providing the color.

At the time, I thought that watching the creation of such a complicated piece -- not to mention the artistic effort that went into it -- would be really interesting. So I suggested to him that, next time he had a good commission to work on, he should let me know so I could film it from start to finish.

This is Phil's drawing for the commission he called me about: a large jewelry box in the shape of a woman. The final piece will be only slightly smaller than life size, with a torso serving as the box, about a foot-and-a-half or two feet tall. I guess the final piece will be about five feet tall. It will hang from brackets on a wall.

The drawings, as perhaps you can see here, are not really detailed diagrams, but more a way for him to work through ideas. Nothing is set until he really starts working the wood. However, wood being wood, as he has explained to me, once you commit to a certain shape and structure, you're pretty committed.

Here he shapes a leg. He rasps and sands the pieces like this by hand, slowly drawing the shape he wants out of the wood.

Phil's actually very humble about my film. He constantly wonders what it is that he's doing that might be interesting to watch, and constantly apologizes for, as he puts it, "not much happening" as I film. Meanwhile, I'm looking through the lens and watching him think and create ... long pauses as he stares at the wood, then rasps, then touches, then rasps again, then looks, steps back, steps in. It's really quite exciting in its way. If he only knew.

Also, I have to say he's a delight to interview; the absolute opposite of a bad interview. No question goes unanswered or inadequately considered. "What are you doing today?" might lead to an extended philosophical consideration of whether what he's doing should really be considered "art", or just "artisan" or maybe even plain old "work." Or it might just result in a review of his efforts. Usually both...

Of paper hats and legacies...

Caty, 6, asked me today to make her a paper hat, like the one in old storybooks, all pointy at the top and made from newspaper. Luckily for me, my father was having lunch here at that moment, and I sent her to him.

You see, before he became an academic and college president, my Dad worked in the journalism business too, starting as a copy boy at the old San Francisco Examiner (where I would later enjoy a photo internship) in the 1930s. When there, he learned how to make paper hats from the printing machinists, who would fold a double-page piece of broadsheet paper into a square hat to protect their hair from ink. It was always a small miracle to me to watch him make them when I was a child, and I thought it would be a double benefit for Caty to ask him for a hat: He'd be rewarded for his grandfatherly knowledge, and she'd be occupied and happy.

But the years have passed (he's 87 now) and it's been a while since anyone (me) asked for one of those hats. He had a hard time remembering.

Fortunately, I had preserved the last one I asked for. It hangs in a place of honor in my study, made from a yellowed, 14-year-old Commentary page of The Washington Times. I fetched it, brought it in and, from my memory of watching him make them and by carefully unfolding my treasure, figured out how it should be made.

Of course, with the internet, it's easy to find instructions on how to do ... well anything. But the idea of learning from living memory, not to mention family memory, to do something is special, I think.

Of course, there is one problem: how long before one won't be able to find a double-page piece of broadsheet newspaper?

Scenes from life...

Two new images, again because I can:

Here we see the cat in residence in a local bookstore, Books & Co.

This, I think, is a pretty good symbol for the pleasures of living in Lexington. The store has always had a cat about, a nice homey touch, but one that is hardly unique here. The antique dealer on the next block over, for example, brings his golden retrievers to work every day, where they sit outside the front door of his shop eagerly greeting passers by.

Also, this is one of two independently-owned bookstores in town ... within a block of each other. I wonder what the statistics are on book shop presence per capita, let alone two that are not chains. (One, by way of explanation, deals more in used books, while Books & Co. sells mostly new. Both, needless to say, carry our book, Rockbridge.)

Shot with my beloved Leica M3 and a 35mm f/2 on Kodak's BW400CN film.

This is the graduation ceremony for St. Patrick's Preschool, operated through our local Catholic church. Our youngest attends, but won't graduate to kindergarten herself for another two years. I enjoy this shot because it looks to me like the DaVinci Last Supper of kid mischief. (Adding to my amusement, in the background to the right is a wood carving of the famous DaVinci picture.)

Shot with a Nikon D80 and 17-55mm f/2.8 lens...

It makes a body think...

From the new Life.com site, a photograph made in 1939 by Hugo Jaeger, who worked as a personal photographer to Adolph Hitler. This is Hitler's Chancellery office in Berlin, and that's his hat casually dropped on the side table there.

The scary thing about this particular image (and really several of the others -- Jaeger saved some 2,000 transparencies after the war, many of which Life.com is publishing for the first time) is I could see this being something I would have shot, casually working in a government office with the officials around. Was Jaeger a Nazi? I don't know; the Life description of him makes him seem just a guy with a job. But it does cause one to think...

In one of the other captions, Life tells how taken Hitler was with the new color film (I'm assuming Agfachrome, though I suppose it could also have been Kodachrome). "The future belongs to color photography," Jaeger said Hitler told him. Hmmm....