The case for Haydn

September 25, 2026
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Those of us who pay attention to the various arts usually have certain works or artists that appeal to us more than others, that grok on the particular wavelength we resonate to. 

For me, when it comes to music, it is the work of Franz Josef Haydn. I enjoy pretty much all of classical music, from Josquin to Golijov, depending on my mood. But I know I can always sit back and enjoy a Haydn quartet or symphony. His music is endlessly surprising and inventive, always seems to have a point, and is both witty and playful, but can also be deeply expressive and emotional. 

When I worked in Phoenix, my commute to the office was about 20 minutes long, which was just about the perfect length to take on one of his symphonies. One on the way to work, and another on the way home. And when I got through all 104 of them, I started again back with the first. I reckon I tore through all of them at least five times on that drive. Haydn wrote tons of music, and I’ve listened to tons, starting with an anonymous 78 rpm recording of his Symphony No. 99 when I was in high school. 

Haydn’s music isn’t just tunes. It is a narrative. The music of the Classical era has a clear musical“story” laid out in each composition, that I find compelling. And Haydn does this better than anyone. 

Haydn and Mozart

We usually say that Haydn and Mozart wrote music in the Classical style. But that’s not really quite right. It wasn’t a style they adopted, but one they invented. Mozart and Haydn created the Classical style. 

What we call, in the larger term classical music is habitually divided up into historical periods: Baroque; Classical; Romantic; Post-Romantic; Modern; etc. It’s all classical music, of course, but within the time frame from roughly 1750 to about 1825, is the subset we give the Capital “C” Classical name. And the most prominent names from that subset are Haydn and Mozart. (And later, Beethoven and Schubert, but they were both already heading toward the new age of Romanticism). 

Baroque music reached its peak of Baroque-osity with Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music is contrapuntally so elaborate that it takes spreadsheet to parse it. By the time he died in 1750, his music was out of date and tastes had begun to look for something simpler, more homophonic, and with tunes you might hum or whistle. Bach’s sons, famous composers in their own time, all wrote in this newer, lighter popular style. Other famous composers of the mid- and late 18th century also adopted this simplified orchestral style, including the Mannheim School, and the whole Stamitz family. (I am simplifying, myself, here, but overall, this is the direction). 

In Germany, this style was called Empfindsamkeit, or the “sentimental style,” and sought to express “true and natural feelings.” And early in their careers, both Mozart and Haydn composed in this style. But each left it behind soon enough. Their minds vibrated to more complex textures. 

Each built increasingly complex and sophisticated edifices on the simple tune-and-accompaniment idea, with richer harmonies, fugal writing, longer works of interconnected ideas. When Emperor Joseph II  complained to Mozart that his music had “zu viele Noten”— “too many notes” — this is what he was referring to. Haydn got there first, as he was the elder, found new ways to expand the structure of the music, indeed to make the very structure part of its expressivity. You don’t just listen to tunes, but follow how they change over the course of a movement, and those developments are what the music is “about.” 

The joy of listening to Haydn’s music is following his telling of the “story.” I don’t mean story in the sense of fiction, but rather how a group of musical ideas transform through the course of a movement: They start in one place and go somewhere else. If you are used to letting music wash over you like a warm bath, you won’t gather the primary gifts Franz Josef is offering. 

This kind of storytelling can be spotted easily in something like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which begins in an angry, agitated C-minor and ends, three movements later, in a triumphant C-major, all trumpets and glory. Classical music isn’t a static bath of pretty sounds, but is always going somewhere. Listening to it requires attentiveness. You need to follow the story.

This directionality is the heart of sonata form, that armature upon which so much of classical music, both small “c” and capital “C,” is built. For Haydn, and for Mozart, the basic metaphor is one of establishing order (the exposition of the basic tunes), the interruption by chaos (the development section, where the tunes go through key changes, breaking in to pieces, and loss of identity), and finally, the re-establishment of order (the recapitulation, which retells the original tunes in the original key). Order, whether artistic, philosophical, political, religious, cultural, is the key question dominating the 18th century. You find it everywhere. 

The sonata form has many parents, but the main one I want to mention here is the two-part song form, simply speaking, a first part with the tunes, which is repeated, then the second part which complicates what we’ve heard in the first part. The second part is usually repeated, also. The 555 keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti all follow this pattern. He liked to wander off into strange dissonances and foreign keys, eventually to hit hard at some point on the original key. Musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick named this point the “crux.” It could come anywhere in the piece, but when it hit, you knew you were back in comfortable territory. I could happen as late as the final chords, or halfway through the second half. 

Haydn took this common two-part form and turned it into a three-part form, regularized it, and then, through the rest of his career, played with the form, always surprising his attentive listener by messing with expectations. 

In later music, sonata form became a pat formula, but for Haydn, it was something to play with, to alter and surprise with. Sometimes he started a “false recap” only to dive back into the chaos; sometimes he used only one theme instead of the usual two or three; sometimes he played them back in the wrong order. Constantly pulling the rug out. If you know the outline, you enjoy being pleasantly fooled. 

But it wasn’t only sonata form. Haydn’s century was obsessed with order. This need to return to the status quo ante underlies most Classical music forms. Second movements are often in theme and variations, in which a tune is varied several times, usually with a climax in a minor key, followed by something like a return to the original, usually amplified by bigger orchestration. Third movements are minuets and trios, where a dance tune is followed by a contrasting trio section and then a return to the minuet. Finales are often in sonata form, but often in rondo form, where a tune is played, a second tune follows and then the first tune returns, a third tune follows and the original tune is repeated. It’s a whole lot of returning tunes, a whole lot of re-establishing the order. 

Mozart picked up the form from Haydn, and used it rather more as a mold for filling with memorable tunes. He was less concerned with surprising his listeners and more with pleasing them. The grammar is similar, the semantics quite different. 

It used to be a joke: How can you tell Haydn from Mozart, since their music appeared to use the same style. One of my professors had an answer: “If you can remember the tunes when it is over, it was Mozart.” But really, that is calumny, because Haydn could write memorable themes, when it suited his purposes, and Mozart could disassemble his expositions with the best of them. 

There are other differences. Mozart was the greatest ever at blending woodwinds into a beautiful harmonious whole, while Haydn tended to keep is winds distinct and separate. Mozart wrote longer-lined, almost vocal, singable melodies while Haydn often chose shorter, punchier rhythmic or pitch patterns that lent themselves to constant transformation. 

Another difference between the two: Haydn is his most characteristic writing for groups of instruments or voices; Mozart his most characteristic writing for one voice against an accompaniment. Hence Mozart’s concertos were revolutionary and his operas the best, while Haydn’s best are his symphonies and string quartets. His concertos — outside of a famous trumpet concerto and a couple for cello — are mostly forgotten. Haydn’s operas are full of good arias, but he lacked the theatrical genius of the younger man. His libretti were never as good as his music. 

Haydn became a musical revolutionary by unusual means. His boss provided an orchestra and moved him out of the city into the boondocks and then asked him to provide almost nightly entertainment. Left to his own devices in the provincial estate of Esterhazy, Haydn wrote symphonies, divertimenti, trios, ballets and operas. He also devised puppet shows, and served as impresario to various traveling theater groups putting on plays. 

Esterhazy Palace, Fertöd, Hungary

The estate was the summer home of Count Nikolaus Esterhazy, 65 miles from Vienna and in what is now Hungary. Vienna was where art and society were; Esterhazy is where Haydn was. During those years, he had an audience in the Count’s court well practiced in following his music, and the particular ways he used structural surprises to keep that audience amused. All his symphonies had jokes in them, or at least wit — those left turns to expectation that kept his listeners attentive. 

He later wrote, “I was set apart from the world … and so I had to become original.” He was lucky his boss was not only a music lover, but knowledgable and receptive. Over the nearly 40 seasons he spent with the Esterhazy family, he had an appreciative audience, who the composer trained to follow his music and be able to recognize the surprises Haydn was building in to his musical structures. 

Haydnsaal, Esterhazy

When Nikolaus died, his successor kept Haydn on salary, but was less interested in the arts and music, which freed the composer up to travel, publish his works, and become, essentially, the most famous musician in Europe. He wrote at least 106 symphonies (104 of them numbered); close to 80 string quartets (exact count is squishy since publishers would sometimes sell scores under Haydn’s name written by lesser composers); some 40 piano trios; about 60 piano sonatas (the numbering varies); two of the most popular oratorios in the repertoire (The Creation and The Seasons); a dozen masses; 13 operas; close to a thousand songs and lieder; and even 32 pieces for mechanical clock. The boy was kept busy. 

When he died, in 1809 at the age of 77, he was the most famous composer in Europe (Beethoven was just getting started and considered perhaps a touch too wild and hairy; his Fifth Symphony premiered just month’s before Haydn’s death). Haydn’s reputation since then has had its ups and downs. The 19th century generally put him in powdered wigs and knee britches and saw him as old fashioned and tame. They called him “Papa” Haydn and admitted he was father of the symphony, but never seemed to notice how revolutionary his music had been. 

That dusty and toothless version continued into the 20th century, but by halfway through those years, some conductors took especially to Haydn’s symphonies. There are mid-century recordings that are vigorous and beautifully performed, but Haydn remained a concert opener, leaving the bulk of the concert to more serious concertos by Rachmaninov and roof-raising symphonies by Brahms. 

Haydn with and without his wig

More recently, the historical performance mafia have reshaped the attitude toward Papa Haydn, with smaller orchestras, faster tempos, scratchier fiddle tones, and dogmatic ideas. Haydn, himself, is largely left out of the equation. He always asked for larger orchestras and better string playing. His Creation was first performed with an orchestra of over 100 musicians. In England, his symphonies usually had between 80 and 100 players. The tiny orchestra was a constraint he suffered with at Esterhazy, not his ideal performance style. So, when you hear some trendy conductor claim he is hewing closer to Haydn’s intentions with eight fiddles and a single cello, know that he is blowing smoke. 

Because I love Haydn’s music so much, I have listened to recordings of it made as far back as the 1930 and continuing to the newest releases, and have a wider background in it than most classical music fans. And so, I feel qualified to make certain recommendations. 

The first complete set of Haydn symphonies was made in the 1970s by conductor Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica, an emigre band of musicians fleeing Communist oppression. I have recently relistened to them, and while they were good for their time — and the only option for years — they are a little run-of-the-mill nowadays, and sound to me like they were rehearsed and recorded quickly to fill out a project. They are not bad, but they certainly don’t capture the wit and effervescence of the scores. And the sound engineering isn’t up to today’s best standard. Still, if you have only this set, you would be fine. 

The best current choice is Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, recorded individually in the 1990s, and released as a complete set in 2002. It sounds better than the Dorati version, and Fischer has a surer grasp of the wit. There is a craft to telling jokes. Too flat and they aren’t jokes, but turn them into slapstick, and they are just embarrassing. Fischer lets you know he knows, and trusts his listeners that they know, too. There are better performances of some of these works individually, but as a set, it hasn’t been beat. 

A more recent set by Dennis Russell Davies with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester is a non-starter. Flat, dull, and seemingly unaware that there are any jokes to be had, it came and went in 2010. Just the notes, ma’am. Worse, he uses harpsichord accompaniment with all of them, which is ugly and intrusive. I gave away my set. I already had a doorstop. 

Earlier this year, a compilation of all the releases by Thomas Fey and the Heidelberger Sinphoniker was released. This was a stunner. Unfortunately, Fey died before he could finish the set, and the remainder of the symphonies were conducted by Johannes Klumpp in the same spirit as Fey. Most of the major symphonies are with Fey, so the loss is minimal. These have all the vigor and energy one expects from the historical practice people, but with modern instruments, and a sense of musicality often missing from that benighted group. Yes, Fey understands the jokes. 

What too many recent recordings of Haydn and Mozart lack is a sense of phrasing, the long line. In their quest for just the notes ma’am, they are like actors who play Shakespeare with no expression, no emphases, no pausing for breath, or speeding up for excitement, as if the words on the page need no interpretation. All pump-pump-pump, hit the barlines heavy and meaning be damned. Which is why so many older recordings seem so much more humane, warm, real. 

Certainly the most humane, warmest, most musical and spirit-enlivening Haydn came with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic in the 1950s. He only recorded the final 12 symphonies, but they are utter and complete delight. This is what Haydn should be. He doesn’t take first-movement repeats, but that is the only complaint that could be lodged. If you only have one set of Haydn symphonies, it should be Beecham’s London Symphonies. 

The Londons have been recorded more than any others. There’s the Surprise Symphony, the Clock Symphony, the Drumroll Symphony, but even those without familiar nicknames are brilliant. The first, Symphony No. 93, has the greatest fart joke. No. 98 has a surprise piano solo just before the final chords. If you want something in more modern sound and in stereo, you can always get the set with Eugen Jochum and the London Philharmonic. They are the “reference set” for most critics. George Szell also recorded the first six London Symphonies. I don’t know why he never got to finish the rest, but the precision and flair he brought to them is exceptional; and the absolute best fart in No. 93. And prize for the most bonkers recording of the “Military” symphony goes to Hermann Scherchen and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. Scherchen was just nuts, but fun. 

The other set of Haydn symphonies are those he wrote for Paris, Nos. 82-87, including The Bear and The Hen. They were the first group written for performance outside his Esterhazy audience, and were a big hit when first performed in 1786. When the historical practice people talk about playing Haydn with 20 musicians, it should be recalled that the Paris symphonies had 40 violins alone, and 10 double basses. 

There is general consensus that the Paris Symphonies to hear are those recorded by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. They buzz with wit and excitement. A surprising second place goes to Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien. Harnoncourt was known for doing weird things, but not so here. Just brilliant playing, almost as much fun as Bernstein, and that’s saying something. 

But Haydn isn’t only symphonies. He, for all practical purposes, invented the string quartet. When he started, the quartet was a violin soloist accompanied by three “helpers.” Not really what the quartet became. Haydn turned them into four equals (or mostly equals — first violin is prima inter pares) having a music conversation. Everyone gets his moments. But finding recordings of the whole corpus is difficult. There are a number of recent sets, but mostly by historical practice ensembles, who love scratchy fiddle tones, hyperbolic tempos, and the same attitude toward vibrato that some people have for gluten. There are those who prefer such desiccated things. Older complete recordings are spotty. A number of quartet groups started to record complete sets, but never finished. Usually money ran out. 

Among the complete sets, I used to own the Kodaly Quartet cycle on Naxos. They were good, but sometimes less than fully inspired. I packed them away. My current cycle is the ancient set by the Dekany Quartet, originally recorded in Vox Boxes in the 1960s. 

But my two incomplete sets that are truly my go-to are the even older box on Warner of the Pro Arte Quartet, recorded in surprising good sound, in the 1930s. This is how a Haydn quartet is supposed to sound. More modern, by a whisker, is the set recorded by the Alexander Schneider Quartet. I love these, and wish they could have finished all of them. Schneider was the musician I cut my teeth on in the 1960s at his concerts at the New School and Carnegie Hall in New York. Intensity and musicianship out the wazoo. 

Then, there are the piano sonatas, largely ignored until quite recently. My set is by Rudolf Buchbinder. There are sets on fortepiano, but I have never come to terms with the clangy sound of the old instruments. Just a few years ago, super-virtuoso Marc-Andre Hamelin put out a set. I enjoy them, too, but Haydn doesn’t really require a show-off technique. I guess Hamelin was slumming. But he is good, if sometimes faster than the music supports. And who knew? That after Glenn Gould did his best to prove that Mozart was an incompetent composer, that he would do such a wonderful job with Haydn’s late sonatas? But he does. 

But there is so much more with Haydn’s name on it. Piano Trios, for instance (listen to the Beaux Arts Trio), every one a delight. He even wrote some 200 works for the obsolete instrument called the baryton, which his boss had learned to play. And there are various divertimenti, and songs. 

And his major works for chorus and voice, which are among his best. The Creation has been in the repertoire since it was first performed in 1798. There are many recordings, including two by Leonard Bernstein. The earlier, with the New York Phil, can be had in a box with all the Paris and London symphonies, and four of the final six great Masses. The second was from 1986 on Deutsche Grammophon with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and five great soloists. The Masses are among Haydn’s greatest works, so don’t overlook them. Haydn’s other great oratorio, The Seasons, is sung in English with Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, which, like his London Symphonies, just cannot be beat. 

Finally, I want to mention The Last Seven Words Spoken by Our Savior on the Cross, which comprises eight consecutive slow movements followed by an earthquake. He wrote it in 1786 for a Good Friday service in Cadiz, Spain, with a sermon between each movement. It was performed several times during Haydn’s life, was adapted for string quartet in 1787, and for solo piano the same year, and finally in 1796 in a version for orchestra and chorus. The quartet version has been recorded most often. It’s astonishing how the composer can link eight adagios together and each still feels distinct and riveting. 

Haydn has been called the Mahler of the 18th century for the inventive ways he has with his orchestra, making new sounds with combinations, and with the always fresh ways of dealing with form. He gets dismissed too often as just another periwig in a dull century, but he was never that. Pay attention to what he does and you will discover an entire cosmos of music. 

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Face times

September 8, 2026
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Deep in your brain, at the back of your skull, lie two small bits of matter, each about the size of a pencil eraser, buried roughly equally in each of the two hemispheres of your brain. Their job is to recognize faces. Called the fusiform face area, it is such a hard-working little department, it will sometimes see faces where there are none. 

Faces are so important for the survival of the species, that as soon as a newborn can focus — not even focus, but begin to do so — it can make out faces from other shapes, and by three days old, it can recognize its mother’s face. 

And through life, the human face remains one of the most engaging visual forms we know. And it is why it is the most frequent subject for art. It covers everything from family snapshots to emojis to political cartoons to the formal portrait. And the portrait has settled in to be one of the conventional genres of art, along with landscape, still life, nude, and abstraction. 

But not all images are the same, or made with the same intent. There are, by my calculation, four overarching categories of pictures of people. The family snaps are the most common. Most of us have a shoebox filled with old pictures, some going back as far as the late 19th century. 

Rowan Steele and family, Sandy Ridge, N.C. ca. 1890

Nowadays, most family pictures exchange the shoebox for the cellphone and cloud. But still, a ton of pictures, most of little significance to anyone but family. 

The second group are the more formal photos, like school pictures, wedding photos, or those grinning Olan Mills family shots, as stiff as plywood and just as expressive. Those, usually in Sunday best, with billboard smiles, is how you would prefer people to see you. 

Jennifer Lopez by Annie Leibovitz

Then, there are the celebrity portraits, by the likes of Annie Leibovitz or Harry Borden. These are made when an actor or author has some new project to sell, and they need a clever image for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine or Vanity Fair. Or the cover of a band’s new CD. In a sense, these are not pictures of people but rather portraits of brands. They are selling us something. 

I don’t want to demean these pictures. The photographers who make such images can be tremendously talented, and their work is often memorable. But they are not usually true portraits, but rather, a form of marketing. 

Carole Steele

Finally, there are the portraits I am writing about, images that attempt to capture something genuine about the sitter. To tell you something about the actual person. It is in their eyes; their ancient glittering eyes. 

I have been making such pictures for more than 50 years, beginning back in the 1970s, when I worked at a camera store in Greensboro, N.C. I photographed like a demon, making records of friends, family and colleagues. At our home, I had one wall of the dining room covered with something like 30 or 40 photographs, held to the wall with small bits of masking tape on their backs. Some of these may have simply been snapshots of friends, but most were attempts at capturing something real or genuine about those subjects. 

Judy Crawford; Ron Pierce; Carole Steele

What most of the images shared were their eyes. I usually tried to get my subjects to look directly into the camera, forcing the viewer to make eye contact and creating a psychological bond with the sitter. Judy Crawford had eyes that were pools of infinite sadness. As Cicero wrote, “The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” There is intelligence shining from some, caring and feeling in some, suspicion or cynicism in others. The eyes have it. 

I am now too long in the tooth to mount any more gallery shows, or attempt to publish a book, but I thought I might use this blog to present a sampling of the portraits I have made over the years. Indulge me. 

Aimee Groulx

One of the first portraits I still show is of artist Aimee Groulx, who ran the Groulx School of Art in Greensboro, N.C. Actually, his wife, Adele, ran it. Aimee was the kind of free spirit who could not likely run a bath, let alone a business. I taught at the school briefly. Aimee always dotted the “X” at the end of his name when signing anything. “To prevent forgeries,” he said. 

Hank Hackett

Henry Parrish Lippincott Hackett was born to a mainline Philadelphia Quaker family and was great grandnephew to artist Maxfield Parrish. He was one of my closest friends from college. He was a frequent toker, and once I worried he might be doing too much weed. He assured me he had cut way down. “Only four or five joints a day,” he said. Once, he came to our home, a little bleary, and sat on the floor and said with complete earnestness, “Y’know, I feel more like I do now than I did when I came in.” 

Kacey Lamb

Kacey Lamb always refused to be photographed. By anyone. Maybe she was shy, or maybe she just thought it made her seem more mysterious. One day, when her husband, Larry, was out of town, she took revenge for being left alone by letting me take her picture. “Only one,” she insisted. One click of the shutter, one negative. 

Judy Crawford; Judy with her friend, Minnie

Judy Bryson Crawford was one of the most beautiful beings ever, both outside and inside, and spoke with an engaging drawl from the Blue Ridge Mountains. I first met her in the early 1970s when she lived on Cedar Street in Greensboro, N.C. with Junie Norfleet and Dara Llewellyn. Together they were known as “The Girls,” and their house was a meeting place for many of the more creative-minded young people of the city. She later moved back to her home near Balsam, N.C., just under the shadow of Waterrock Knob.

In 2003, in Phoenix, working at my newspaper, I scrolled the Associated Press wires and accidentally came across her obituary. It was one of the saddest days of my life. She was 56. 

Alexander and Mary Lou Barker

When I was a freshman in college, a rangy young man knocked on my dorm door, hearing that I was listening to a Beethoven quartet on my portable phonograph. We shared a passion for classical music and became lifelong best friends. About once a year Sandro and I drove to the Outer Banks to camp, usually in the winter, when the beaches weren’t crowded. He later married another Guilford alum, Mary Lou Hinton, and eventually moved to the Maine coast. There, always athletically inclined, he took up crosscountry skiing and especially loved skiing uphill.

Sharon Vernon

Sharon Vernon was my unofficial wife for seven years in the 1970s. She had red hair that shone the sun like copper. We saved money for a year so that we could take the next year off work to hike the Appalachian Trail to Maine. We got as far as northern Virginia when she sat down beside the trail and announced, “I’m not taking another step.” We were worn out, and destination hiking can be more tedious than it promises, always looking for the next trail marker and the next lean-to to spend the night. Little time to soak in the glories of nature. So, instead, we spent the rest of the year traveling around the Northeast by car. 

I intended to spend the rest of my life with her, but she decided otherwise, and we split in 1978. I took the train across the country to Seattle. 

Doug Nufer; Linda Olson; Ken Baker

In Seattle, I moved into a house with “The World’s Most Obscene Man,” Doug Nufer, and two lesbian doctors known as Cam and Clink. The house sat across the street from the Woodland Park Zoo, where I wound up working. 

He was a Bucky, which meant he was a bicycle delivery guy, taking mostly legal papers from law firm to law firm, pedaling roughly 50 miles a day up and down the hills of the Emerald City. His Bucky handle was Banana. 

He had previously been writing porno novels (Sixty-Nine In-Laws was his magnum opus), but now writes avant-garde novels, including one that never uses any word more than once. Unreadable, but that never seemed the point. It is often that way with the avant-garde. 

Linda Olson was my girlfriend’s roommate and a deltiologist, or collector of vintage post cards. For years after I left Seattle, we would mail each other tacky post cards we found. Ken Baker was a zookeeper, one of many I got to know there. When zoo management sent out a memo requiring keepers to wash their hands after visiting the bathroom, he got miffed. “Do they even know what zookeepers do? I wash my hands before going.” 

Alice Gilliam; Bill Marshak; Colin Murray

Before I had a straight girlfriend in Seattle, I dated gay Alice, a Bucky like Doug, and we went out together often, and to symphony concerts. She had once been a violinist in a touring Christian orchestra. Marshak was a grad student in Chinese studies, and it was always fun to go to a Chinese restaurant with him and order off-menu, while he chatted with the waiter. Colin (pronounced like Colin Powell) was briefly a housemate and wanted to be a male model, asking me to make some audition shots for him. He never seemed to grasp the irony that his boyfriend’s name was Dick.

Robin Reid

Robin Reid was a zookeeper in the Childrens’ Zoo at Woodland Park. Her hair was blonder than the sun. I fell wildly crazy about her. She was bright and lively, and had been a professional swing dancer at a local hotel. I was hooked, but I found out months later that she was not. “It’s all just hormones,” she said. When she dumped me, I was heartsick and decided to move back East. 

Carole Steele

After a few years of sulking, I was invited by the ex-wife of an old friend to visit her in the North Carolina mountains. We soon married and lived together for 35 years, until her death nine years ago. There has been a hole in the universe since then. Carole was the warmest person I ever knew, and also the smartest. She did not think outside the box; for Carole, there was no box. Widely known to friends as “Queen of the Universe,” she prompted me to everything that made me better. 

Craig and Carole

Eventually, I found some work as adjunct faculty at the same school where my brother, Craig, taught, in Virginia Beach, Va. Carole became an art teacher with the Norfolk school system. I have boxes of 5X7 prints of demonstration prints I made during my six years teaching, many of them from portrait class. 

Craig Nilsen and his wife, Terry

Craig is my brother, and the human being I am closest to. He is an artist, painter and printmaker, and taught full-time at the same school. He got me my job. He is now retired in the Virginia mountains with his wife, Terry. Brothers, like sisters, can have an almost mystical bond that can’t be explained. Perhaps it is shared DNA, or shared experience. 

Anne Iott; Pam Lassiter; Eva Dixon; Steve Wolf

Anne Iott was department head at the school, and bent rules to hire me, and allowed me to teach more hours of class than was technically legal. Her support was enormous, and she arranged for me to begin writing art criticism of the local Norfolk daily newspaper. She and the art staff, including Craig, and painting teacher Steve Wolf, would often have potluck dinners together. Those gatherings could get boisterous. Steve was a body builder and could consume huge amounts of food at a sitting, and once got thrown out of an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant. Pam Lassiter was ceramics teacher. Eva Dixon was briefly Craig’s amour. She told him she had always wanted to ride an elephant, and so he entered and won a contest when the Barnum and Bailey circus came to town, and gave her his seat on the beast for the parade. 

Charles Williams; and his sketch of Carole and me

Carole’s boss in the Norfolk school system was dating artist Charles Williams, and we became friends. I photographed him, trying to get as close as I could, framing just his face and eyes. He, in turn, made a quick sketch of Carole and me. 

Richard Avedon; Lee Friedlander; Bob Haozous; James Turrell

Carole’s boss moved to Arizona and offered Carole a job there, and so in 1987, we moved to Phoenix, where I got a job writing for The Arizona Republic, mostly as art critic. I have made fewer photographs since then, but I did make my own photos for most of my interviews. I talked to a lot of artists, famous and not. Lee Friedlander was as matter of fact as his pictures. Bob Haozous, son of famous Apache artist Allan Houser, seemed suspicious of whitey critic; James Turrell took me up to the top of the volcano he was modifying outside Flagstaff. I once spent 24 hours in one of his skyspaces to watch it change with the light. There were many others I met and interviewed. 

When I reviewed Richard Avedon’s retrospective at the Whitney in New York, he sent me a note of thanks.  “Not all the New York critics were so kind,” he wrote. And when he came to Phoenix in 1994 to photograph boxer Oscar de la Hoya for The New Yorker, we went out to lunch. Sitting across the table, enjoying the Salvadoran food, he said, “In a sense, I am writing my autobiography through other people’s faces.” 

I suppose that is my excuse for this blog entry. 

Mel Steele

Over the years, my style has changed. Less formal, more relaxed. I photographed my brother-in-law Mel Steele in the 1980s, when he was a motorcyle-racing, gun-shooting, goat-raising artist, whose work sold in the thousands as prints. He grew older; I grew older. His country-nostalgia rural scenes became serious abstract paintings — among my favorite in the world — and my goal of being the next Avedon or Penn dwindled down to trying just to be honest and real. Mel turns 87 in October. He has slowed down, no longer rides motorbikes, and I have slowed down, writing less and making fewer images. 

And the effect on my being part of an inseparable bond with Carole, led me to pay way more attention to the interactions between people, and the number of dual portraits increased. 

Carole and Julie Ross 

The interaction between people is the essential valence of existence. It breaks the dam of isolation and opens the world up. Carole broke me open. 

Carole and Ruth Haggerty

When Carole was a little girl, Ruth was her best friend, living across the street. They lost touch for most of their lives, but became reacquainted something like 60 years later. But you can see in their eyes the connection had never fully been lost. 

Curtis Beckman and Isabel Fierros

I saw that warmth and connection in our friends Curtis and Isabel. I believe, but can’t prove, that my own age, my own intense partnership with Carole, softened me, made me more open, aware of others and their richness and complexity. 

Rob Lehman and Hank Hackett; Ursula McLaughlin and her daughter, Mia

As I look back through this sampling of portraits over 50 years, I see that those pairs have always been there. Hank and Rob from the ’70s; Ursula and her daughter from the ’80s. 

John and Alice Nilsen

And when I revisited a photograph I made many decades ago of my parents, John and Alice, I recognized something I didn’t see when I first took the photo. It’s in their eyes.

Click on any image to enlarge

Designing eye

August 26, 2026
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Garry Winogrand once said, “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” What? It looks like reality, surely. Isn’t that the whole point of taking pictures — to capture reality? 

But most photographs, historically, and including Winogrand’s are in black and white. The world is not. And even if you used Kodachrome or a digital camera, the colors are exaggerated, more saturated than the colors your eyes see. And then, a photo of your house, for instance, is maybe 8 inches by 10 inches, while the house is immense. The photo is two-dimensional and the world is 3-D. And most of all, your photo has an edge, a frame around a portion of what you see in front of you. It is not reality at all, but a convention of how we picture the world. 

This is one of the hardest lessons for the beginner, or the ordinary person to learn. Seeing photographically is imagining how an image will perform shrunk and separated from context. To see photographically is to see shapes, lines, colors, textures and not to see houses or people. Yes, they may be in there, but you have first to recognize the shapes, lines colors and all that. And be aware of them. 

If you just see a subject, say, Aunt Trish, you may ignore the tree behind her looking like it’s growing out of her head, or you may take a picture of your car and not notice that half of it is blacked in shadow. You’re seeing a car, and not the patches of lights and darks that make the actual shapes your camera records. 

Most people think in words, and so, they name what they see. That’s a horse; that’s a tree; that’s my Grandma Edna. The camera doesn’t understand words or names. It sees shapes, lines, patterns, textures. As artist Robert Irwin put it, “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.” 

It takes some practice, some eye exercises, to train yourself to see. One online videomaker has suggested that whenever you have a spare moment, say, just sitting in your living room, to look around and see what may make a pattern, to spot contrasts of shape or color, to see abstract designs. You needn’t actually make a picture, but imagine things around you as if they were photographs. Make an imaginary frame. 

I do this regularly. I take my point-and-shoot Canon and take as many photos as I can in a period of time, say an hour, and see how many of them, simple details rather than nameable items, and turn them into visual offerings. 

Another photographer, Lee Friedlander, calls this “pecking,” and uses his camera to find possible images. Out of a roll of film (in the pre-digital days), he might wind up with only a few pictures worth showing the public, but the exercise keeps his eyes awake and noting the possibilities. 

When I was teaching photography in the 1980s, I had an assignment I gave my students. I asked them to photograph something so that I couldn’t tell what it was. I warned them, I was really good at deciphering bits and pieces. They were not to simply make bad photos, out-of-focus or blurred images, but to see the shapes and lines extracted from context to hide their identities. (I can brag that only once in six years of teaching was I stumped. Usually, I spotted immediately the bits of clothesline, or the bottom of a teacup, or the stitching of a sole onto a shoe. To quote Captain Reynaud, “It is a game we play.”)

The world is made up of details. We assemble them into an experience we recognize — the neighborhood street, our children, the Grand Tetons, flowers in a vase — but each of these is constructed of details. Seeing the details vivifies the whole. 

I have played with this exercise before, and even posted some of the images on this blog, when I spent an afternoon photographing all the circles I found. (link here)

I posted another on the patterns I found visiting my brother-in-law and “pecked” at the things in his house and yard. (link here). 

And I did it again yesterday in the back yard and in the house. I’m sure you can guess the identity of the things in the pictures, but it is the abstract patterns I was seeing, ways to use shapes, lines, textures, colors to form an esthetic whole out of parts. I made 50 photographs in the space of about 40 minutes. 

I don’t usually call these images art, although I don’t know what else to call them. They are ocular calisthenics, eye exercises, to help me focus on the seeing behind the naming. 

Back when I was a teacher, and therefore knew nothing, so was able to pass on my knowledge to unsuspecting students, I had to teach a word I now only mention with contempt: composition. We all taught things like the “rule of thirds” and “focal point,” and where to place horizons or how much of a person to include in a portrait. We taught awareness of negative space, and keeping it interesting. 

But long ago, it hit me that all these precepts had nothing to do with taking good photos. The word, “composition” implies a kind of blueprint or set of construction instructions. But I instead used the term “design.” And the secret to good design was never rules. It was awareness. “Design is your awareness of everything in the frame.” Want to chop someone’s head off at the top of the frame? Do it on purpose and it will work. Want to cut your landscape in half with a horizon? If you are aware of what you are doing, go ahead. Make that point. 

Most people, making photographs, or drawings or paintings, focus on their subject, and don’t pay much attention to the backgrounds, or the framing, or the patterns of light and dark. They focus on what is named. 

But if you look at all the great art of the past, and the famous photographs in your books, you see that the upper left corner, or the bit halfway in from the side, still has interest. It has not been ignored. Even a 17th century painting of a Dutch burger with a blank background has the precise color of that emptiness calculated and thought about. What a delicious blue-gray it is. Block out the rest of the picture and you will still get pleasure from the background. 

Awareness is the secret to any art. Paying attention. The more you are aware of, the better your result will be. 

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YouTube — MyTube

August 24, 2026
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In Genesis 18, when Jehovah was still on speaking terms with humans, He negotiated with Abraham over the fate of the city of Sodom. Jehovah had decided to destroy the place, and all its wicked inhabitants, but Abraham said, “Whoa, there,” and asked, but what if there are 50 righteous men in the city (women apparently didn’t count), will you destroy the righteous along with the wicked? Jehovah paused, perhaps stroking His whiskers. “OK, then, if there are 50 righteous men…” 

“But what if there are only 45?” asked Abe. Jehovah pondered. “What if only 30? Or only 10?” The Almighty allowed, most likely in a voice of pique, since He was not accustomed to pushback: “I will not destroy it for the sake of 10.” 

(Let the record show that in Genesis 19, Jehovah rained down His fire and brimstone anyway and flattened the cities of the plain, saving only Abraham’s brother, Lot, and Lot’s family. Not quite 10 of them.)

I thought about this haggling between the patriarch and his boss, and I realized that whole thing might apply to YouTube as well. What a sewer of AI slop, ignorant ranting, political bloviating, fanboy nonsense and religious sophistry. 

Should we destroy the whole shebang? But what if there are 50 sites that have value? What if only 45? Or 30, or 10? 

I have enjoyed YouTube for years, but I have to avoid almost everything offered by my new Almighty Deity: the Algorithm. Most of what It thinks I might find interesting is pointless, useless, misleading, stupid and downright wrong. 

But there are a few sites that I go to frequently, either because I learn things from them, or I like the presenter, or they are genuinely entertaining. I thought I’d discuss a few of them and recommend them to likeminded individuals, pace the Algorithm. 

THE GREEN BOYS

The brothers Green, elder John and younger Hank, can be said to have justified the existence of YouTube all by their lonesomes. They have contributed to the “reduction in world suck” more than most can have dreamed of. 

In 2007, they began posting videos on YouTube as “letters” back and forth, from one brother to the other, mostly twice a week, one from John, in Indiana, to Hank, in Montana, and another from Hank to John. That took off as the Vlog Brothers, and became not just a family news catch-up, but each brother talking about whatever interesting thing had caught their fancy. And they were a very thoughtful pair. 

John was an enormously successful author of Young Adult Fiction, and Hank was a budding science explainer. More than that, Hank shot out ideas like a Roman candle, and soon, they started up a host of other YouTube sites. They developed a devoted online following for their endeavors, informally called “nerdfighters.” 

Hank and John with the Nerdfighter hand gesture

Nerdfighteria was largely made up of young idealistic people, wanting to make and inhabit a better world. In the Brothers Green, they found two young men who could be non-ironic and sincere without ever becoming sentimental or mawkish (the concomitant sins of earnestness). 

They have since become an industry, pumping out scads of entertaining and educational content, and managing to do practical good in the world. 

Together, in 2012, they developed Crash Course, a series of educational videos, meant primarily for high school students, that explained episodes of world history, and concepts of biology. Crash Course was eventually picked up by PBS and expanded to series on English literature, U.S. history, chemistry, psychology, anatomy, physiology, astronomy, government and politics, economics, and philosophy. Each series used animation and cleverly written explanations and video to make the major points of the discipline clear and entertaining. Eventually, there were some 50 Crash Course series made. They are commonly used in classrooms across the world. 

Parallel to Crash Course came SciShow, a group of series more specifically aimed at science education. There was also The Brain Scoop, with Emily Graslie, which looked at the practical side of science and research; Sexplanations, with Lindsey Doe, about human sexuality; Crash Course Kids, for younger viewers; PBS Eons, a history of life on earth; The Art Assignment, with Sarah Urist Green (John’s museum curator wife); and my favorite, Journey to the Microcosmos, in which Hank Green narrates microphotographic video footage of protozoan life, one of the most hauntingly beautiful and hypnotic series on YouTube. 

(It should be mentioned that Hank Green has also performed and recorded five albums of his own music, written two science fiction novels, performed a stand-up comedy show, and created Focus Friend, an app designed to temporarily block other apps, to allow easily distracted people to focus on the task at hand — an app named “App of the Year” in 2025. He has also devised a series of fund-raising not-for-profit businesses, selling everything from designer socks to artisanal coffees. The man is a dynamo.)

Hank Green’s “Hanklerfish” logo — “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome”

The brothers set up a not-for-profit company, called Complexly, to oversee all their projects, including over 10,000 videos and has built a substantial audience on YouTube, with more than 32 million subscribers and 55 million views per month. It collaborates with institutions and organizations such as PBS, Arizona State University, the National Science Foundation, and The Poetry Foundation to expand its reach and, according to industry sources, as of July, 2026, Complexly employs 134 people. 

Meanwhile, directed by the brothers, Nerdfighteria has raised millions for philanthropic causes, including some $50 million toward the construction of the first maternity hospital in Sierra Leone, which opened earlier this year. That country had the highest infant mortality rate in the world, but that rate has now been halved. 

There are other fundraising and charitable organizations the Green boys have created, including the annual Project for Awesome event, that has, since 2010, raised more than $30 million for various charities, under its parent organization, The Foundation to Decrease World Suck. 

And there’s Pizzamas, a two week event each September when Nerdfighter merch is sold and the receipts given to various charities. (The insignia for Pizzamas is a shirt with the image of John with his ill-advised — and temporary — mustache.)

John also led a Nerdfighter campaign to persuade pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to allow generic versions of the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline to be produced, for sale in countries with high TB rates, making it cheaper for poor countries. (He also wrote a best-selling book, Everything is Tuberculosis, about the history and epidemiology of the disease. A best-seller — did I mention that?)

When they started online, their target viewership was ages 13 to 30, but both brothers are now in their 40s, and perhaps their fans have aged along with them, but younger audiences have continued to sign on. Their attitude and vocabulary skews young, but I’m 78, and I’m hooked. 

I’ve only skirted the bounds of Nerdfighteria. There are also the podcasts, and the books (and the films made from John’s books). When I say they are an industry, I am not exaggerating. 

Journey to the Microcosmos

BUT WAIT — THERE’S MORE

There is no end to YouTube videos. Most are of limited interest, at least to me. But there are a bunch I regularly check out when they post new entries. These are not all of them, but a recommended sample.

DAVID HURWITZ

The Green brothers are frighteningly prolific, but David Hurwitz is no slouch, producing an average of three new videos every day. He is a classical music critic and editor of the online magazine Classics Today. 

His videos are uniformly produced, as he sits at his desk in front of shelves and shelves of CDs, occasionally interrupted by his cats, and he talks about classical music recordings, both historical and current. He is lively and engaged. I have thousands of CDs on my shelves, but his must number in the hundreds of thousands, and he seems to have instant recall for all of them. 

I find myself simpatico with most of his taste, although he has a few blind spots and undeserving enthusiasms. He can’t mention Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole without making a retching noise, and it seems anything conductor Charles Mackerras records is perfection personified. And he will tell you, for every performance, whether the tam-tam has been featured properly. At times his uninflected enthusiasms remind me of the old radio host DeKoven. (How many are old enough to remember him?) 

Classical music may be a niche subject for most Americans, but for those of us who have been listening to our Beethoven and Bartok for 60 years, Hurwitz is a joy. I watch him daily on the iPad while eating my breakfast. 

MAP MEN

The Map Men is a British video channel and is either an educational channel that is comic, or a pair of comedians talking about geography. And it is very funny. I mean laugh-out-loud funny. 

In it Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones dress up in costumes, add animations, write songs, and generally act out their themes with one-liners, sight gags, puns, and the ear-worm theme song: “Map Men Map Men Map Map Map Men Men.” 

They take on such subjects as how many countries are there in the world (it is not an easy answer); why is north at the top of the maps; why the Netherlands is 17 percent fake; what makes a city versus a town in England. 

Many YouTube sites are sponsored, and their makers interrupt their bits to sell you Incogni or Skillshare, but Jay and Mark make their ads just as entertaining as their regular content, so you never are tempted to fast forward through them. 

Their most recent video is from March this year and talks about the first geological map of England and the madman who created it and published it in 1799. 

ROB WATTS

There are a host of language channels on YouTube. I tend to watch them all, but Robwords is probably my favorite. Rob Watts is described by his book publisher, Penguin, as creator of “the world’s most-followed channel for the dissemination on intriguing if vaguely pointless facts about the English language.” 

Born English, he now lives in Germany and is a newsreader for Deutsche Welle, but he makes this YouTube channel about etymology, alphabets, language culture, and the odd bits of speech and print. Watts is personable, good humored without entering into stand-up territory, and well researched. 

He also takes part in a second YT channel, Words Unravelled, with an American counterpart Jess Zafarris, but I can’t bear watching it, as they are both too awfully bubbly and giddy, and Jess has an annoying vocal fry. 

I also frequently watch Taylor Jones, whose Language Jones site sometimes gets too polemical for my bland taste, and Geoff Lindsey, at drgeofflindsey, which is more academic and often quite technical. But I learn a lot. 

J.J. McCULLOUGH

McCullough was originally a political columnist, a Canadian conservative, but way too outlandish for any stateside version of that. With his towering hair and his weaving and bouncy body language, his primary concern on his videos is popular culture, of which he is a voracious consumer and thoughtful analyst. 

His videos are fast, energetically edited, with lots of quick cuts to referenced material. Occasionally, he talks about Canadian politics, which are opaque to his southern neighbors, but mostly it is American pop culture — not just movies and TV, but toys, comics, advertising, packaging, fashion, architecture and design. He has wide interests and has insightful things to say. 

Some may find his vocal delivery annoying, as he pauses and speeds up in a kind of herky-jerky speech rhythm as his head bobs to and fro. But, he is just fun to watch. 

BEKAH HARDING

A Brush with Bekah is a YouTube channel where (usually) purple-haired Bekah explores rare, historically forgotten, often toxic, sometimes radioactive pigments, and finds sources for them, and makes her own paints from them. She also discusses art history, and sometimes just has a political rant she needs to get off her chest. 

One such is titled “I Hate Picasso and You Should Too.” But most run toward “Making paint from Bugs,” “The dark history of mummy brown,” and “Science is changing the color of dinosaurs.” 

Sometimes she shows up as blond, sometimes a redhead, most often when not purple, her hair is black. And she wears punk or emo eye makeup. But she is clearly very smart, her research is thorough, and she has taught me a lot, not just about color, but more importantly, about pigment. 

MYSTERY

Whoever is behind the Moviewise site wants to remain anonymous. I can’t find him anywhere. But he produces some of the best, most insightful videos about the technical side of movies that I’ve come across. His narrative accent sounds very like that of Ernie Kovacs, but he has been cagey about where his roots are. Perhaps his family was also Hungarian? I dunno. Perhaps they just share the same adenoids. 

But if you want to see clips explaining the secrets of cinematic blocking, or expressive lighting or camera movement, he will have them to show, and take you through them almost frame by frame. 

He says, “I defend that, regardless of artistic intent or personal interpretation or cultural influence, there are objective aspects in stories and visuals that make movies succeed or fail, and by examining shots and screenplays we can find out what they are.”

I wait, champing at the bit, for each new installment. This is not a site about the great humanistic side of film history, but about how those films were constructed. 

Geoff Lindsey videos

WHAT ELSE

What any one person watches is a microscopic mote of dust in the forgotten corner of the room, compared with what is proffered. According to Wikipedia, even in 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at an inconceivable rate — 500 hours every minute, and estimates of the total number on the platform range from 15 billion to 40 billion. 

And so much of that is unwatchable — I don’t mean you can’t find them if you look, but such bad quality you can’t bring yourself to do it. Bad sound, bad editing, bad camerawork. And add into that all the political huff and chuff, and all the misinformation, all the conspiracy theories, all the fanboy rot, and cat videos, you could be excused for giving up. 

So, we rely on the newest deity, the Algorithm, to choose for us. And there are some worthy spots that leak through. These have been some for me. 

Captain Steeeve

Dan McClellan deals with biblical matters in a scholarly way, and debunks quite a bit of blather. Retired commercial pilot Steve Scheibner talks about aviation on the Captain Steeeve site (somehow, although he is 15 years younger than me, he still sounds more like my father than anyone — including the dad jokes). 

Rick Beato

Rick Beato is mainly about pop music, but has genuinely intelligent things to say about the notes and their structure, and not just, as most pop music critics do, the lyrics. Simon Whistler hosts a variety of videos on various channels. He’s more script-reader than writer, and some people are put off by what seems like a streak of careerism in him, but there is a lot to learn from the videos he hosts. 

Tom Scott

And one of the oldest continuous contributors has to be Tom Scott, who has been posting informative videos on odd topics since 2004, and on YouTube since 2014. He has a ranging curiosity, and his videos look to find answers to questions of geography, history, science, language, technology. 

He has created more than 900 videos and has 6.5 million subscribers with over 1.7 views. In 2024, he decided he was exhausted and stopped making videos, but now, he’s back again and at it once more. His genial way and genuine engagement always make him worth watching. 

I’ve mentioned a few sites that I have enjoyed. They cover things I am interested in. But there are worthy sites for other interests, whether astronomy, railroads, antiques, literature, insects, pick-a-subject. But you have to plod through the weeds to find them. 

So, perhaps we won’t rain down fire and brimstone upon YouTube, but we are still better off avoiding the dreck. 

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Eye am a camera

August 16, 2026
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I made my living as a writer, spending my career primarily as an art critic and travel writer with The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. But it didn’t start out that way. Originally, I planned to be a photographer. I spent years working with my cameras and hoping to become the next Ansel Adams. 

Yosemite Falls

I got my first camera when I was about 12, a Brownie Hawkeye, which I took on family vacations. I got my first SLR in 1965 — a rather primitive Praktica, which I took to Europe with me. Only a few pictures remain from those early efforts, including this image of Kristiansand in Norway. I was 17. 

Kristiansand, Norway

College came next and I took very few photographs, but after graduation, I began a very serious addiction to acquiring ever newer and greater cameras, marching up through Nikons and Leicas, hoping for a Hasselblad, and eventually getting a 4X5 field camera with a Super Angulon lens (don’t worry if these names are Greek to you; they don’t mean anything anyway. They are hardly more than shibboleths for photo geeks.)

I got job in a camera store, and for the next several years, acquired a full darkroom setup, used my employee discounts to experiment with various films, chemicals and printing papers, until I became an accomplished darkroom technician. I got deep blacks and whites that never blanked out. 

Then, in the ’70s, I was hired as a photographer for the Carolina Peacemaker, a Black weekly newspaper in Greensboro, N.C. But when the editor quit, I got his job, and became factotum, writing editorials, a food column and I became “Dear Carol,” the advice columnist, along with taking photos. It did seem, at the time, a bit peculiar for a white guy to be the editor, but then, the other reporter was also white. (At the time, talented Black writers were being head-hunted for the previously all-white daily paper, bypassing the usual route to the African-American press). 

The writing came by default, but I still considered myself a photographer. And not a jobbing photojournalist, but one with my aim being art galleries and photo books. And all my personal work tended to be in traditional genres: portraits, landscapes, still lifes, nudes, architecture. For some reason, street photography never much interested me. 

In the mid-1980s, my wife and I moved to Virginia, where I spent six years teaching photography at a two-year college. Back then, we taught black-and-white photography. Color was left to jobbing professionals, and digital photography was unheard of. (It’s odd to remember, but back then color photography was not widely accepted as art. It was looked down on as fit only for glossy magazines, advertising, and Sunday lifestyle sections in newspapers. The medium was thought to lack permanence — dyes faded — and most museums didn’t collect color). The school built a darkroom with a dozen enlargers and all the sinks and equipment needed, and I had all the students I could handle. 

I loved teaching — or perhaps I just loved having an audience. But I continued with my own work, again, in all the usual genres. 

Because we were both teachers, we had summers free to travel, which gave me a chance to visit all 48 contiguous states, and most many times. I vacuumed up landscapes and have a collection of what must number into the tens of thousands of landscape photos. 

Judy Crawford; Hank Hackett; Pam Henry

I had always photographed friends and colleagues, and taught a yearly course in portrait photography. My models were formal rather than candid. I loved the work of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, and it shows, I’m afraid. 

My method went against the trend. Most photographers preferred a longer lens for portraits, like and 85mm or 105mm lens. I felt that such a lens kept the photographer too far away from his subject. I wanted to insist on a kind of intimacy, that the subject should be kept a bit on edge and alert. So I taught using a wide-angle lens for portraits, and getting up close. 

Carole Steele

I also insisted that the subject look directly into the lens, giving the pictures both a confrontational aspect, and also a peek into the “window of the soul.” 

I have made a trove of nudes, too, both studio and outdoors. Over the years I have had a series of models. Only one person I asked declined the request. I believe I have avoided anything too exploitive and always, I hope, looked for the human being wearing the skin. 

Still lifes are often pictures of flowers in vases, and I confess to having taken a barge-load of such pictures. But the percentage of blossoms has dwindled over the years, and other things have taken the focus. 

And I tried many experiments, with chemicals and printing papers, seeing ways to make something like abstract art. 

Yet, even while teaching photography, I wrote out instructional sheets for my students, and tried to be at least a bit amusing in them. My four main rules for better photography were: “Get close; make sure your lens cap is off; hold the camera steady; get closer.” Just these rules will improve the beginner’s pictures by a proven 800 percent. 

All this takes me to the late 1980s, and a major change. My department head at the school saw the handouts I had written for my students, and decided I had some talent for putting words together. She knew the Norfolk newspaper was looking for a freelance art critic, and suggested I write some sample art reviews of local shows. I wrote one about a new Edward Hopper painting bought by the Chrysler Museum and The Virginian-Pilot printed it and signed me up. For a year or so, I wrote a review for each Sunday edition. The extra income helped. 

Truck stop in Texas

In the mid-’80s, my wife got a job offer in Arizona and we piled everything we owned into a Ryder truck and crossed the country, towing our car and keeping a cat in the cab the whole way. I applied for a job at The Arizona Republic, based on my experience with the Norfolk paper. To my great surprise, they hired me. I became a writer.

For the next 25 years, I functioned as an art critic, a travel writer, an editor, and, eventually a critic writing about classical music, ballet, architecture, theater, and movies. For many of the pieces I wrote, especially interviewing artists, I took my own pictures.

Artist Fritz Scholder and novelist Diana Gabaldon

The Republic was generous in sending me off on travel for stories, including a trip to South Africa, and I used my vacations as source for many of my other travel pieces. 

Paris

Such photographs were journalism (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But I never stopped making my own work. But there was a growing difference. The formality of my past work had loosened up. I was no longer concerned with the silly strictures that had been so important to the art photography movement from the ’50s through the ’80s, when cropping was thought a sin, the Zone System was the magic elixir, and documentary fidelity was a jealous god. It all began to seem quite beside the point. 

Curtis Beckman and Isabel Fierros; Mel Steele

My portraits became warmer, more human. 

Landscapes tended to shrink down into details. In fact, the whole change in my approach was less a concern with art and all its concern with composition and metaphor, and more a means of focusing my attention. Paying attention to the world became the aim. The image was merely the by-product. I mean, how many greens are there? Pointing a camera can make you notice such things. They are important. 

And so, I found myself “pecking,” in the word that Lee Friedlander uses. I would see some detail and try to make it work as a design. They were often random things in the house or car. 

The natural world was infinitely various, and seeing the bits that made up the whole drew my attention. 

There was texture, rhythm and physical presence in these minor, normally unnoticed micro-worlds. 

I also found the images worked better in groups, and so I began making sequences, mean to be seen almost as a visual story. Individual images became less the point, and relationships from one to the next took over. 

Jardin des Plantes, Paris; Judy’s garden, New Orleans

With my interest in natural details and vegetative profusion, I started a series of garden sequences, each group containing from 10 to 20 related images. I made series in friends’ back yards, public gardens, anywhere plants defined space. 

Doug’s garden, Seattle

I love gardens, but I love weeds, too, and trees. There just seems such a rich variety in nature. But, again, I wasn’t no longer thinking of the work as art, although I don’t know what else you could call it.

Title sign and opening at Tidewater Community College, Portsmouth, Va. 

At one point, I gathered about a hundred images, organized in 12 “books” and was invited to mount a show at my old Virginia school. 

To make these series more palpable, I began making a series of bound books, using the Blurb app, and have now assembled 14 volumes. They look good on my bookshelf, and I’ve given away many copies, but they are, after all, just vanity projects. But, boy, they do look good. 

When I was younger, I tried to make art; now, I don’t care about that: I concern myself with looking, paying attention, becoming immersed in the world I inhabit. Photography is just the means I have to focus my awareness. Being more aware is being more human. 

This freeing up of my intention also let me play around more. I bought a $1.98 Diana camera and took it to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. 

I made a series of flower prints by scanning them on a flatbed scanner instead of using a camera.

Anne Iott

Playing with the options of Photoshop, I made a faux watercolor from a photo of my college department head. 

I woke up one day and noticed that sunlit trees outside my windows looked rather like images on a Japanese shoji screen. 

I used multiple images of crossed tree branches, overprinted them to make an abstract image, looking rather like a Jackson Pollock.

I found abstractions everywhere, including these micro-scratches in the silver paint of our old Buick, and looking rather like something from a Wilson cloud chamber, or perhaps a Cy Twombly. 

Snow melt on front stoop

The more I looked, the more I found, turned into patterns rather than things you might name. 

When I was a young man, I desired an audience. Having gallery shows or publishing books seemed to have a point. Now, I find I make images simply for myself. It has turned out true for my writing, as well. 

For a quarter of a century, I wrote for my reading audience. If no one read what I wrote, I wouldn’t have been paid for it. And it was gratifying, I admit, to be recognized in the supermarket, or to have Richard Avedon write to me after having read one of my reviews. But it has now been 14 years since I retired, and have written almost as much on this blog as I did then, and for no pay. I just cannot stop writing. And it is still pleasant to get comments from readers, but I write for myself, to clarify my thoughts, to express my feelings. Anything beyond is gravy. 

Rest stop on I-40, east of Asheville, N.C.

And it is the same with my camera. It is my response to the world. I make these images to interact with that world, to force my gaze, to pay attention. 

The most important lesson I ever got from college was from the professor who forced me to “engage with the text.” That simply re-uttering what he had said in class was not enough. I had to find my own way in the subject, bring something to it, rather than just memorize. Engage. Pay attention. It’s real, not just some hoop to jump through to get a degree. There is genuine reward, intellectually and emotionally, for involving your best self with what the cosmos has to offer. You will be more alive. 

Click on any image to enlarge

Becoming Southern

July 31, 2026
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Am I Southern? I have lived in the American South for most of my life. I am comfortable with most of the culture and folkways of the region. Both my marriages have been to Southern women and this is the place I choose to live. But I was not born here. Worse, I came from New Jersey. 

If there is anything more un-Southern than Bergen County, just off the George Washington Bridge, I would be hard pressed to name it. Even the wilds of Afghanistan has more in common with life in the South than I had growing up. That sense of tribal identity — of living in the hardscrabble land, of having kinship with the soil, the bona fides of regional identity — that is more Southern than life along the Turnpike. I don’t remember anyone I grew up with pounding their chests with pride saying “I’m from New Jersey.” No one cared. My family didn’t go back five generations there.  

It is true that the South has changed, become more cosmopolitan. Not everyone’s a farmer growing tobacco or sorghum. Interstate migration has diluted the percentage of homegrown folk, and cities such as Atlanta or Houston have radically altered the demographics. Even the accent and vocabulary have begun evening out. 

Yet, there is still that sense of Southernness. It may be less clannish than it used to be, but it is still layered in to the psyche of anyone who grew up here. 

I first arrived in 1966, entering college in central North Carolina. There was then still a strong backlash — even a mainstream backlash — against the Civil Rights movement. Jesse Helms spewed his racist venom on the radio waves, and was soon elected to the U.S. Senate. His campaign, against Democrat Nick Galifianakis, preyed on bigotry and that suspicious foreign-sounding name: “Vote for Jesse; he’s one of us.” The Klan was still in business. If schools were legally desegregated, most communities still had a Black side of town. 

No one now takes a second notice of a Black family sitting at the Red Lobster. I’m not claiming racism is over; it is not. But the norms have shifted. Black newscasters on TV or a Black state trooper are hardly noted. 

One thing I noticed as soon as I got here: There is and was a countervailing sense of manners that didn’t play out in the same way back in New Jersey. Some of it struck me as odd, initially, and even worse, some seemed absolutely hypocritical. I didn’t understand. 

I remember a perfect example of how this works in the South, and why I have come to understand the brilliance of it. Many years ago, my wife’s teenage cousins (“cousin” is a loosely-defined concept in the South) had bought some new tires for their car. When one of the tires had a blow-out, their father, a Yankee transplant from Massachusetts, drove to the tire-store and screamed at the man there, “You goddamn kid killer! Someone coulda died! — why’d you sell those rotten tires?” He demanded an apology and satisfaction. All he accomplished was to raise the hackles of the tire salesman. Ineffective strategy. Made sense in Boston, but not in North Carolina. Luckily, cooler heads intervened. 

Their Southern-born mom intervened and had a long conversation with the salesman, after first apologizing for her husband. “You have some really nice tires here.” “Thank you ma’am. We try.” “I know. But sometimes something slips through, and I know you would never, ever want to let that happen.” “Well, no, ma’am.” “I’m afraid, I don’t know why, but one of the new tires my daughter bought had a little blow-out. Brand-new, you understand.” “I’m very sorry to hear that.” “Well, I’d hate to inconvenience you, but I know you would want to make things right.” “Of course, ma’am.” I believe there was also a bit of discussion about the salesman’s son, who went to the same high school as the girls, and probably a bit, too, about whose aunt had known whose aunt and a recipe for a good coconut cake. Things resolved amicably and no one was further accused of anything nefarious. 

This is a culture, after all, where the gravest insult comes in the form of “Bless your heart.” 

  I know full well that since I wasn’t born here, I can never truly be Southern. And I also have been reminded constantly by my wives that I’m a Yankee. Even if they haven’t held it against me, the fact is always there. I grew up with bagels and saurkraut, not with biscuits and slaw. 

My ex-wife asks if it even matters if I’m Southern or not. Why should I care? “There’s no court you have to prove it to,” she says. “Yes there is,” I say. “There’s in-laws.”

As the years slid by, I have become increasingly acculturated, so that I now lift four fingers off the steering wheel in salute of drivers headed the other way. I talk slower than I used to (part of that, I admit, is age). I am no longer surprised by ham hocks in my beans (which, of course, I now call “pintos”), and I find myself saying “sir” and “ma’am” in a way that would have made my New Jersey relatives look at me like I was an alien. Up there, it was closer to “Hey, Mack…” 

I would say the transformation is roughly 80 percent complete. I still love pickled herring in sour cream, bagels with a schmear, and cannot yet bring myself to accept the local pizza. I have been ruined by the New Jersey version, perfection in every aspect. 

And when I open a tin of King Oscar kippers for a sandwich, Anne will call from the other room, “What is that stink?” And I cannot get used to sweet tea. Curls my tongue. I take mine unsweetened. 

I love Eastern North Carolina barbecue and hushpuppies. And I now understand that the dried-out Shake’n’Bake chicken I had growing up (more wood plank than comestible) has absolutely nothing to do with fried chicken. I grant your fried chicken balances my pizza. 

It has taken me longer to accept boiled greens, but I have gotten there. I had spinach growing up, but collards stewed with sidemeat until it turned to something akin to road tar — well, that took a little longer. And, to be fair, even most Southerners now let their turnip greens keep a resemblance to its original form as plant life. I now am able to add them to my plate sprinkled with some vinegar. 

One one side of the ledger, I’ve now fired rifles and pistols recreationally; I wait for pedestrians crossing the road in front of me (that was a hard one for me: where I came from efficiency was the rule — who could get out of the way faster, and it was usually the car); I automatically walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk when with my wife; I make small talk with the checkout staff at the grocery store (and I now call it a grocery store instead of a supermarket). 

On the other side of the ledger, I’m told I talk too fast; I have no interest in college football; I don’t listen to country music, and Anne tells me “you’re still unsound on black-eyed peas.” On my first trip to the barber, making small talk, he asked which church I attend. “I’m not a believer,” was the nicest way I could answer, and the subject changed. 

If there is something that draws a line I cannot cross, it is probably Robert E. Lee. My late wife, Carole, kept a portrait of Bobby Lee in the china cupboard. I was never allowed to say nary a  word ’gainst his sainthood, and in converse, she would bring the hammer of heaven down upon my head if I ever said anything temperate about Wm. Tecumseh Sherman. “Villain!!!” 

My vocabulary has shifted, too. Southern expressions fall out of my mouth without my even being aware of them. I say “Y’all” unconsciously, and even “all y’all.” I am fixin’ to do something. “Cattywampus” and “plumb” — as in “plumb outa Crisco” — I hardly note as I say them. “Reckon” is now in my regular speech, as is “poke,” as in where I lodge my vittles when I haul’em from the grocery store. I have been known to call my jeans “britches,” and my suspenders “galluses.” But that is more mountain talk than just Southern.

I asked Anne how I’ve changed over the years. “You’re not as obnoxious as you used to be,” she says. 

I have been well trained by a series of serious-minded women, among them wives, girlfriends and mothers-in-law. With an emphasis for the last on “law.” I know my place.

Having second thoughts

July 25, 2026
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I heard Allen Ginsberg say one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. He had come to town to talk about a work he had collaborated on with Philip Glass, Hydrogen Jukebox. It was a powerful piece, which I first heard live, performed in Tucson. 

I have always loved Ginsberg’s poetry, from the first, when I read Howl in that tiny, squarish paperback published by City Lights Books. It is one of the great poems of the 20th century. I eventually collected his later books, including Kaddish, Planet News, Reality Sandwiches, although it was clear that not all his writing was up to the level of Howl. He was a very spotty writer, and the older he got, the less interesting the spots. 

He sat on the stage that evening, in Scottsdale, talking about his work and making a case for his then-motto: “First thought, best thought.” How the version an idea comes to you spontaneously will always be better than it will be if you fuss over it and refashion it. Revision always dilutes the inspiration, he said. “First thought, best thought.

As a writer myself, my first best thought was: “Bullshit.” The man has deluded himself with his own bunkum. Most writers will tell you, honestly, that the first draft is always improved by reshaping, clarifying, expansion or excision. Writing is rewriting. 

That doesn’t mean that the initial idea is worthless, but it needs refining, and especially, it needs to have the really dumb parts taken out. 

The proof of this comes from Ginsberg himself, to be seen in Harper Perennial’s 50th anniversary edition of Howl, the original draft facsimile. His best poem, considered such by almost anyone’s account, was heavily reworked and refined, honed to a sparkle. 

First thought: “I saw the best mind angel-headed hipsters damned./ What consciousness in oblivion, Joan?” Written in August, 1955. A week later, in the original draft of Howl, it became: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving mystical naked,/ who dragged themselves through the angry streets at dawn looking for a negro fix,/who poverty and tatters and fantastic minds sat up all night in lofts contemplating jazz”

Doesn’t have quite the inevitable ring and resonance of the published version: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,/ Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection/ to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” 

That’s quite an upgrade, from “poverty and tatters” and “fantastic minds” to “starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” Prose to poetry. 

Do I think Ginsberg was a hypocrite for his espoused faith of “first thought, best thought”? I think less hypocrite and more that he was drinking his own Kool-Aid. He and his fellow writers — the Beat writers — became fascinated with Buddhism and stories of Zen spontaneity, of Haiku masters whipping up an instant 17 syllables of enigmatic profundity. Most likely, these tales of Basho and Buson are legends and myths, conjured years later. I rather imagine them counting syllables on their fingertips and honing the verse in their minds before committing them to their mouths. Careful craftsmanship. 

The Beat version of Buddhism, and the accouterments of Chinese and Japanese culture are a fantasy. In a way, it might be hinted, this was the Beat version of what Edward Said called “orientalism,” and the hypnotic attraction of exoticism. 

I remember visiting the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo., to visit an old college buddy, who had joined the group. As we wandered through the campus, we passed a classroom, where Ginsberg was teaching. The students were chanting, along with the poet, a monotonous phrase in Tibetan — “Om mani padme hung” — over and over, so the noise coming through the open door sounded more like the insect buzz of a summer evening. 

This was part of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which Ginsberg had co-founded. And I have no doubt that chanting the mantra may have helped some students focus their minds. I practice a form of meditation, myself, although I don’t call it that — mostly I call it sitting on the back patio looking at the trees and clouds and trying to think no thoughts at all. So, I am not making fun of them. I don’t doubt their sincerity. But I do worry that importing portions of an exotic culture, without having grown up immersed in it, may be charged with being a version of cultural tourism. Yellow robes do not a Buddhist make. 

But Ginsberg has enriched our trove of poetry. In addition to Howl, there is Kaddish (especially moving in the audio version with the poet reciting his own words), and shorter poems such as Kral Majales. You learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

I reread Howl periodically. It gives me great pleasure, the way certain poems do, for me, such as Wordsworth’s “Intimations Ode,” Whitman’s Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, Arnold’s Dover Beach, Conrad Aiken’s Tetélestai, or Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill. Poems that dig deep and remain buried in the psyche. They refresh my sense of language and of being alive. 

It is also true, as with Ginsberg, that a good portion of Wordsworth is banal and prosaic, a boatload of Whitman is blather, most of Arnold’s poetry is forgettable, and, let’s face it, Aiken doesn’t make most anthologies of the best American verse. But each has been capable of magic, and I read these poems over and over, the way you listen to favorite tunes.

In his best work, Ginsberg fussed and reworked and licked the bear-whelp into something infinitely quotable and meaningful. If he had stuck to his first thought, no one would still be reading it. 

Naming names

July 15, 2026
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When Wolfgang Mozart was three, he was already picking out notes on a keyboard. His father recognized the potential earnings potential and trotted young Wolfie around as a prodigy, showing off to wealthy patrons for their gratuities. I’m no Mozart, and my talent was of an infinitely smaller order, but I remember when I was three and my father showed me off, too. 

At that tender age, I had learned to recognize all the cars that passed on the street in front of our house in Teaneck, N.J. I would sit on the front stoop and call out names as they drove by. That would have been in 1951, and the cars were quite distinct. There were Packards and DeSotos; there were Mercuries and Studebakers — each with their characteristic shapes, grills, ornaments and sizes. 

DeSoto

It was only a few years since the war ended, and many older cars remained on the road, like the LaSalles or the pre-war Fords. Our next door neighbor even had a car with a rumble seat. (They were comically called “mother-in-law seats,” although I can’t believe many could had clambered up to get in.)

1939 Plymouth with rumble seat

At three, I knew the Pontiac had three chrome stripes on its hood; the Buick had its portholes; the Ford had its bullet-grill; the Hudson seemed as broad as the river I thought it was named for. Many station wagons had wood paneling. I had them all down pat. 

1950 Ford station wagon

And on July 4 that year, when I was three-and-a-half years old, the family drove down the hill to watch the fireworks over the Hackensack River. There was a crowd gathered. The gravel parking lot was full, with people lining the banks of the river to catch the display. I sat on the hood of Dad’s black 1950 Chevrolet and not much liking the noise. Two of my uncles were there, too, with their families. And Dad decided to show me off. And so, with uncles in tow, and a few of their friends, too, we trooped up and down the lot with me announcing the names of every car we passed, all to the astonishment of the grown-ups. Hudsons, Studebakers, Packards, to say nothing of the Fords, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, and Nashes. I felt so proud showing off. I don’t know if Dad actually took wagers or not, but he clearly enjoyed bragging on his son. 

1950 Frazer

Through the 1960s, cars designs remained distinct, especially with the absurdly growing tail fins — or the Edsel, described as “a Ford sucking a lemon.” The also grew to be great barges of the road, rolling with wobbly suspensions (which you can’t help notice on old TV reruns when those leviathans turn corners). But cars have since been growing more generic. 

1950 Buick Special Deluxe Jumbo

Oddly, as I became a teenager, when most of my buddies were swooning over 400 horsepower behemoths and zero-to-sixty ratings, I had no real interest in car culture. I have always loved driving, but never much cared which car I was driving in. But something of that original car-naming from my preschool days survived. 

1950 Nash Airflyte

As I grew up and went to school, the habit of learning and naming classes of things continued. In the third grade, it was dinosaurs; in fourth grade, it was whales; fifth grade brought ships. On it went. Later, with birdwatching, or the naming of wildflowers. Most recently, I compiled a list of the names of British comedians I recognized on sight; it had 127 names on it. I guess you never get over it. It’s a form of acquisition, and all adds to the trove of knowledge and experience. A hunger for knowing. 

1950 Pontiac Chieftan

There is a streak that mainly boys seem have: learning and naming. I don’t remember schoolgirls having anything like the habit. Maybe they did and I just didn’t notice. To boys at that age, between the ages of maybe five and the advent of puberty, girls are, if not the enemy, at least utterly foreign. 

1949 Packard 23 Series club sedan

Many boys never outgrow this naming quirk. Often a concern with regalia properly sorted. When I was an art critic in Phoenix, the museum had an annual show of Cowboy Art, with lots of paintings of shoot-em-ups, horse wrangling; cow-punching and war parties. All kinds of Western movie tropes, but with the serious, almost solemn belief in “historical accuracy.” No one would picture a Montana cowboy riding the kind of saddle popular in Texas, or show a sheriff holding a gun in 1882 that wasn’t manufactured until 1893. They could be quite persnickety about such things. Women’s hair-dos, though, not so much care in that, but then, women didn’t much figure in their mythologies. When I wrote a review that made fun of such things, I wound up being hanged in effigy in a cartoon in Western Horseman magazine. 

1950 Ford Custom Club coupe

All this came back to me the other day as I sat at a red light and noticed the flood of cross traffic. I could see vehicle after vehicle pour across the intersection with monotonous sameness. There is no way I could tell anymore a Honda from a Kia.  

Three seemed to be only three kinds of vehicles, each sharing a sameness with others in its class: First, the SUVs, bigger than they need to be — the bullies of the highway; second, the small sedans — they used to be derided as “European jogging shoes” — that are faceless as store mannequins; and finally, the pickup trucks. This last may be more prominent in the South, where I live, but the cars crossing in front of me seemed about equally divided into these three. The only punctuation in this repetitive tune was the public transit bus. 

The only way to discover the difference was if you could see the logo on the trunk. What was once the personalities of their manufacturers have become mere brand names, no more different than yogurt brands or actual jogging shoes. 

1957 Nash Rambler Metropolitan

How different from when I was three or four and naming the cars (with a certain amount of joy in their esthetics, and pride in my ability to name them). They were very distinct designs. “We had faces then,” as Gloria Swanson says in Sunset Boulevard. (actually, I looked it up and misremembered. She actually said, “We didn’t need dialog; we had faces.” But same thing, right?) Car manufacturers used their special designs to sell the cars and create identity. Hence the broad Packard and the Studebaker, with its pooched “mouth.”  

1950 Studebaker Commander

I don’t know why there is such a paucity of interesting design among cars. When I was little, they really did have faces.

Around the block a few times

July 11, 2026
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I’m now 78 and I’ve done a few things in my life. Probably most people have. Things they can list that few others have managed. Places visited; people who have impacted their lives; adventures to recount to grandchildren. 

And so I think back to recount my own experiences, those particular to my own past. Maybe others have similar lists. This is mine. 

I’ve been charged by a bear, for instance. How many people can say that? I was hiking the Appalachian Trail in Smoky Mountain National Park with a few friends. By late afternoon, we reached a lean-to shelter and I walked out onto the path with my camera, when a black bear — maybe two or three years old — crossed the trail about 30 feet from me, spotted me, didn’t like what he saw and turned and charged at me. He was no more than five feet away when he veered off to my right and chugged off into the woods. I was stupid enough that while he came at me, instead of running back to the shelter, I took photos, so at least now, I have the evidence. If it’s a tad fuzzy, I’m sure you can understand. 

Certainly the bear makes my list. But I tried remembering other things that would make the list of things peculiar to my life, that few people are unlikely to have shared.

Almost no one now crosses the Atlantic on an ocean liner. I did, in 1966 aboard the MS Oslofjord from New York to Norway, when I accompanied my grandmother to the Old Country where she was born. I was a high-school student at the time, and I remember standing on the ship’s deck watching the Orkney Island lights at midnight, bright points on the black horizon as we sailed past. 

There’s a lot of travel in my past. I’ve crossed the U.S. twice by train. Once when I moved from North Carolina to Seattle, taking the Southern Crescent from Greensboro to New York, the Twentieth Century Limited from NY to Chicago and the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle. 

The Southern Crescent

I recall the dreamlike lights of Toledo factories as we passed after midnight; the 10-below zero air when I stretched my legs at the station in Minneapolis; the vast empty spaces between farmhouses in South Dakota; and the track-side elk watching the train pass by near Yakima, Wash. 

The second time was more luxurious: Working for the Phoenix newspaper, I was assigned to write a story about the then newly-launched Sunset Limited route from LA to Miami that passed through Phoenix, bringing the first rail service to the city in decades. 

The paper flew me to Los Angeles where I boarded, and flew me back from Miami when finished. In between, I had a sleeper compartment and ate my meals in the dining car, which Amtrak had fitted out initially with a first-class galley and real chefs. That didn’t last long after my trip, before cost-cutting turned steak into saran-wrapped bologna sandwiches. 

Mississippi at Cairo, Ill. 

One of my beats at the newspaper was as a travel writer and I got to choose many of my subjects. I have driven the length of the Mississippi River from its source at Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its end in the Gulf of Mexico. So, I’m one of the few people who have ever visited Cairo, Ill., which is a largely deserted town, at the tip of the state where the Ohio River pairs with the grandfather of all American waters. 

I have also driven the Pacific Coast Highway from Tijuana, Mexico to Vancouver, British Columbia. And as part of that trip, I got to stop off at Point Roberts, that tiny exclave of the U.S. that can only be reached overland by driving through parts of Canada. Virtually nobody visits there, because there is nothing to be seen or done, and the only reason to go there is to be able to say you had done so. 

Back before the wilder parts of the road were closed to traffic, I drove the length of Mulholland Drive and Highway, across the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, from its beginning at the Hollywood Freeway over Cahuenga Pass, past all the film stars’ extravagant homes into the brushland wilderness, with its dirt roads, and finally down to the Pacific Coast Highway at Leo Carillo State Beach, some 55 miles later. 

I pitched a story to my editor about the Hundredth Meridian that traditionally divided the East of the country from the West — the line that separated the land that got more than 20 inches of rain per year, from that which got under that amount. I drove from Laredo, Texas to the Canadian border, writing stories the whole way. And when I got back, I conspired with a page designer to take over an entire Sunday travel section with my pieces — all without telling my editor. “If you had told me, I would never have permitted it,” she said. “But I’m glad you did it. I looks great.” Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Clearing storm, Mont St. Michel

I have been many places in my life. I’ve been to Mont Saint-Michel in France, that island abbey on the coast of Normandy, where the tides come in at such a speed that anyone walking on the mud flats at low tide is in danger of drowning. I’ve been to see the Bayeux Tapestry in its current home. I’ve listened to the organist at Notre Dame de Paris play a recital of Messiaen. 

Two views of gargoyle rainspout at Chartres Cathedral

I’ve climbed to the top of Chartres Cathedral, where I could look down at the gargoyle rainwater drains and see their channels and spouts. For that matter, I’ve visited most of the major gothic churches of northern France. 

I stood at night on the banks of the Rhine River in Dusseldorf, German, where the composer Robert Schumann had lived and written his deeply romantic Rhenish Symphony. The rushing current of the mile-wide river, catching moonlight in its waves, seemed the essence and power of  nature. 

Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

I had always had an interest in the remote and isolated places in the world, and I got to visit the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, which is as remote and isolated as you can pretty much get. While in that country, I also got to taste grilled mopane worms. Few Americans have managed that, or would care to. 

I’ve been to Hudson Bay in Canada, to Percé Rock on the Gaspe Peninsula, to Glacier Bay in Alaska, to the Yukon, and to the Cape Verde Islands (although that one hardly counts, since it was a layover on the flight to Africa; I didn’t get to see much; bragging rights only). 

I have been to all 48 contiguous states many times. I used to say “I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve been everywhere.” And indeed, I can bore my wife when watching some film on TV and I recognize locations I’ve been. “I’ve been there,” I say. She gives me the side-eye. 

I’ve canoed with alligators in the Okefenokee Swamp. Driven through Death Valley in July in a car with no air-conditioning — nearly collapsed from dehydration and had to drink a full gallon of water to revive.  

Zabriskie Point, Death Valley, Calif. 

I have driven the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway I don’t know how many times, and the continuing Skyline Drive, also. There are notable roads, often over mountain peaks, such as the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana’s Glacier National Park, the Beartooth Highway from Montana into Wyoming (we drove in the summer, but it still snowed in flurries), the Tioga Road over the Sierra Nevada. Or the roads in the East like the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire, the Natchez Trace from Mississippi to Tennessee, and the Colonial Parkway that runs from Jamestown to Yorktown in Virginia. Many more with no special names.

Richard Avedon

I took photographer Richard Avedon out to lunch at my favorite  Salvadoran restaurant in Phoenix. I interviewed Duke Ellington’s son, Mercer, when he brought the band to play in Phoenix. I talked to him only about his own music (sure that he was tired of repeating all the chestnuts about his old man), and at the concert, he dedicated a performance of his  Blue Serge to me, saying the band hadn’t played it in 20 years, but they brought it out and spiffied it up just for me. I knew Frederick Sommer, the reclusive Surrealist photographer who lived in Prescott, Ariz., and visited his home several times, where we talked about things that would have made no sense to anyone listening in. 

I’ve fired guns a few times over the years, once when I was training to be a security guard (a low point in my career), and several times at black-powder gatherings. My wife had a flintlock carbine that I had the pleasure of firing. A lot of smoke and a loud, brusque “whoosh” rather than a cracking “bang,” and a .50 caliber ball blew out the barrel at the target. 

Yes, that’s me, ca. 1981

I worked at the zoo in Seattle, and most days, when the place closed for the public, I would accompany the bear keeper to the back alleys behind the exhibits and feed leftover food-stand hot dogs to the grizzly bears. We were behind the enclosure, about 20 feet above the bears. They would stand up, open their maws and we would toss the franks down their gullets. No swallowing, just straight down the chute to the stomach. 

Behind them was the back entrance to the tiger cage, with a small barred door to get in when the keeper needed to clean up. When a tiger came to the door, I saw what felt like the most enormous thing I had ever seen, its giant head, bigger than my imagination could hold, and when he “purred” the ground shook. I would rank that the single most impressive thing I’ve ever encountered. 

That zookeeper was my friend, and he once commented to me about the crowds, “You see all those kids, don’tcha just want to run them all over?” 

There were many more zoo stories, but most are not suitable for family reading. But more animals: I once had a six-foot boa constrictor wrapped around my neck. I visited the grave of Hopalong Cassidy’s horse, Topper, at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, where you can also find Rudolph Valentino’s dog, Kaber, Petey, the ring-eyed dog from the “Our Gang” comedies, and Tarzan’s chimp Cheetah (real name Jiggs). 

I might also mention driving to Maine in 1963 to see the total eclipse of the sun, or having crossed the equator twice, and in Africa, seeing the Southern Cross and the constellation Orion in the night sky standing on his head, with his sword pointing straight up. 

Which reminds me of the night camping in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with my friend Sandro, and discovering that someone had forgotten to close and lock the door to the Hatteras lighthouse, and so we snuck in, climbed to the top, heard the roar, and watched the black surf below us catch the light. 

Or the time I climbed Roden Crater in Arizona with artist James Turrell, who was reshaping the extinct volcano to make an earthwork piece of art from the mountain. We were standing at the top as the sun set. “People talk of nightfall,” he said to me. “But they should call it nightrise, like sunrise.” Because, he pointed out, the night doesn’t descend, but rises, as a mass of dark sky climbs from the horizon in the east up into the sky, eating away the dusk. You can actually see the borderline as it rises, until all is dissolved in the general night. It is a startling effect that we don’t notice, because our horizons are generally blocked by trees or buildings. The phenomenon is a stunning revelation. I have looked for it — and seen it — many times since then. We walked down the mountain in the gathering dark. 

Janus-faced document

July 3, 2026
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I am reposting an earlier piece, about the Declaration of Independence, on this Fourth of July. It seems appropriate in this age when Enlightenment values are under siege. 

Perhaps the most peculiar thing about the Declaration of Independence is that the portion of it that seemed commonplace when it was written now seems revolutionary, and the part that seemed to its framers as most central, to us seems trivial, even whiny.

As a piece of rhetoric, it begins in generalities, narrows to specifics, and ends in a course of action. It couldn’t be more concisely structured. The committee charged with drafting it in the summer of 1776 chose wisely when it asked Thomas Jefferson to write the first version. Jefferson’s prose is a model of late 18th-century style: precise, lucid and syllogistic.

But the only part of the Declaration that most people can recall, outside the opening, “When in the course of human events,” is the second paragraph. That second stanza contains the seed of every revolution that followed, from the bloody French to the bloody Russian. It is a statement of belief that is the foundation of American society, and almost every government created since 1776.

It states baldly and without argument or support, that all men are born equal, have certain rights by virtue solely of being born, and that when a government fails egregiously to effect the safety and happiness of the people, it is their right to replace it.

But Jefferson didn’t invent its ideas whole cloth. In fact, as Jefferson wrote years later, the purpose of his stirring words was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”

Much of the remainder of the Declaration is given over to a litany of complaints the colonies had about British governance. Some of these complaints still seem legitimate; many seem trivial, even trumped up. “The King did this” and “The King did that.”

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people,” it says. Pure hyperbole.

These complaints were the part of the Declaration that was “news” in 1776. They constituted what made the document inflammatory.

Few can read through the whole of the Declaration of Independence now without a sense of fatigue: Those complaints were the issues of 1776, not of today.

It is the second paragraph that seems told to all people at all times, and remains news to us in the 21st century.

Bridge between ages

But to follow those ideas from the century before the Declaration into the ink on its page shows just how important its year of birth was. It was born in the cusp between two great ages, two overriding sensibilities, and partakes of both.

The period from about 1750 to about 1825 is one of the richest in humankind’s history, fertile, even febrile. It is in many ways, the hinge between the past and the modern, between the classically minded 18th century and the Romantic 19th. From an age of Reason to one of Sentiment — as it was called at the time. In Europe, it was the age of Goethe and Rousseau.

And no figure in the American experiment better demonstrates that shift of sensibilities than Jefferson.

On one hand, he epitomized the faith in science and logic of the Enlightenment; on the other, he shared with the revolutionary Rousseau the belief in the nobility of humanity and its drive to social improvement.

You can hardly fail to notice this point when you visit Jefferson’s home in Virginia.

Monticello is a mirror of its maker. Jefferson built a model of Palladian proportion and filled it with moose antlers. The outside lines of the house are clean and mathematically rational. The inside is a warren of peculiar and unnerving spaces.

Jefferson never fully reconciled these two aspects of his personality. He was a slave owner who sings of the dignity of the free man. How much more conflicted than that can you be?

The Declaration of Independence speaks to us now, in large part, because of this clash of sensibilities in Jefferson.

On the one hand, you have the ideas of the Enlightenment, that brilliant flame of philosophy and science that sprang up in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

On the other hand, you have the growth of the individual as a thinking and feeling person.

The Enlightenment preached rationality and temperance, tolerance and universal principals. One of its most influential writers was John Locke, who, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, from 1690, wrote that all human beings have natural rights and that these included “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.”

It was an idea that took hold and flourished.

By the time of the American Revolution, the idea was commonplace. It shows up in George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights in June 1776, in slightly altered form:

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

When you compare that with what Jefferson first wrote, you can see how much better a writer Jefferson was. He only needed 31 words to say what Mason required 57 for, and say it more forcefully and memorably.

An economy of words

Jefferson’s first take on this was considerably more sonorous, but still not quite there:

“We hold these truths to be sacred, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of property.”

It was a committee of five, delegated by the Second Continental Congress, that were given the responsibility to draw up the Declaration. Jefferson wrote that first draft, but Benjamin Franklin, also on the committee, struck out “sacred” and replaced it with “self-evident.”

By 18th-century reasoning, self-evidence was universal, while sacredness could be construed as sectarian. Franklin wanted to emphasize the universal truth of the proposition.

And Jefferson himself changed “property” to “happiness,” and with that stroke made the Declaration jump from the past into the future.

The past was Thomas Hobbes, with his sense of the nastiness, brutishness and shortness of life, and a belief that the natural order of mankind was greed, rapine and thievery. Only strong central government, he wrote, could possibly control the natural impulses of humankind.

The future was Rousseau’s perfectibility of man, his belief in the nobility of those uncorrupted by society and government, the “natural man.”

The middle was Jefferson, perfectly if perilously balanced between.

The right of life remained pretty much the same looking forward and back, but the other two rights changed meaning over the cusp of 1800.

Locke believed that all humans coveted was property; Jefferson realized that there were many routes besides ownership to humanity’s true goal, individual happiness. Hence, the change in language.

Liberty is the word that has changed the most. In the 18th century, it meant being left alone, basically. Your government let you be: Taxes shouldn’t be too onerous and armies shouldn’t be quartered in your home at the whim of the commandant.

But by the 19th century, liberty took on a more revolutionary turn: Romantic writers saw liberty as the antidote to repressive regimes around the world and one read poems to Count Egmont, the Prisoner of Chillon and Nat Turner. It fueled popular movements all across Europe and led to a crisis year in 1848. Liberty meant revolt — a very different thing from what John Locke had in mind.

(And it makes almost comic the confusion of the two versions of liberty conflated by contemporary anti-tax factions and the paranoid fringe looking for the black helicopters that we can get all belligerent and militant about “tyranny” in Washington, when compared to what is happening in Syria, Turkey, Russia or North Korea, we remain among the most liberty-ridden people on earth. Admittedly, the Declaration of Independence itself is full of the same sort of inflated rhetoric.)

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This meant that the Declaration could speak, Janus-like, forward and backward. The fulcrum of modern history. The Enlightenment is emerging from its chrysalis into the age of Romanticism.