A First Book and Baby

In a San Marcos coffee shop Michelle's fingers fly over her keyboard, tapping in triple time. She takes a break after working all morning and tells me she's writing her first book. She started in January (took 3 months off for morning sickness) and has 100 pages done now. She proudly tells me about the agent she already has.

Her husband totally supports her writing - she writes everyday now having quit her job. Together they built a beautiful writing center for her in their new home but trying as hard as she can, she totally can't write there. "There's just too many distractions", she offers.

She's on schedule to finish her first draft by the end of the year because after that she's planning for another first - a February baby.

Floating for Bass

Mike (foreground) found his fishing raft mismarked in a sporting goods store. They rang it up for $27.00 so he gave his old one (in the background) to his friend. Mike (from N.J.) likes to fish every chance he can get. He just got out of the Marine Corps - he and his wife can't believe California weather. They've decided to make San Diego their permanent home now.

Mike's dad worked in a fish market in N.J. and hated to fish. He was always begging his dad to take him fishing. He fishes for bass today - catches them, likes to look at them, sometimes even takes photos and then throws them back in. He uses live bait that swim in a yellow bag floating by his right side.

The full body neoprene waders he wears keeps him dry in the water. He says you really have to clean them out well though or they smell like dirty sneakers in no time at all. He paddles and steers with large bright blue scuba flippers on his feet.

He said in the spring the carp get so big and territorial that they constantly bump into your legs. He said if he caught some trout, he might keep those to eat though.

Squeaky Clean

Bike riders casually roll by and patrons relax outside with their afternoon coffee on tables by the sidewalk.

Inside, an energized man climbs up on the window seats, soaps down the huge glass windows and then reaches for his giant size squeegie. With headphones firmly in place he bops, gyrates, dances and sings to music only he can hear.

The glass becomes crystal clear. He works amazingly fast.

A laptop, an iPod & a newspaper

As I sat quietly reading and writing in my favorite coffee shop, I was surprised to look up and see a Channel8 newsman filming a woman working on her laptop. After he filmed her from several angles, he gave her an iPod and told her to pretend to use it. Lastly he gave her a newspaper and covering the small table with it, he asked her to pretend to read the articles.

He explained to those of us who were curious - that within the next year, Channel8 will be completely high definition and all his stock footage will unusable. As he and his model were leaving, he told us he had enough similar projects to last for months.

Fallen Tombstones

I stopped to take photos of their Halloween decorations. A little red headed boy raced outside when he heard my jeep by his curb. He was too shy to look at me, he busied himself by propping up some cardboard tombstones that had fallen down, keeping his back to me.

He raced back to his front door when I was about to leave. He got up his courage, turned around to face me and posed briefly for a quick photo before I shouted, "Good-bye and Happy Halloween!".

Painting the Outdoors Outdoor

William paints outdoors with house paints (donated). The trees rustle behind him and late afternoon light plays on the ground where he's scattered lumber from the scaffolding he built. His canvas is a 10' x 30' free standing wall.

Neighbors have requested he add certain animals and plants (a deer, a bunny, woodpeckers, mushrooms) and he'll add those details with more expensive acrylic paints later.

He's far from San Diego, in the hills - at the end of a short dirt road with cabins for rent on both sides. He's hoping the property owners will pay him something for his time and effort. He's hoping this project will get him back into his art that he abandonded 30 years ago.

William walks with a limp and a twist. He's on disability and very depressed about it. Four years ago doctors did exploratory brain surgery looking for a tumor (that didn't exist) and the scar tissue caused him to have multiple sclerosis.

Every few minutes William would walk away from sketching in rocks by the side of the stream, to see how things looked from afar.

He's worried how he'll be able to paint when the weather in the hills gets cold. He had to stop working for 3 months during the summer due to heat.

William told me about collecting images. He cuts them out from books, magazines, posters - everywhere and has an extensive filing system to keep them. He uses them for ideas and references.

Someone's Lunch

Today I watched a man behind the oyster bar use a small narrow sharp knife to pry open rough lumpy ugly oyster shells. The meat was wet, gooey and puddled in the half shell, being readied for a lunch order.

What I didn't realize is that oysters sitting whole in that pile on ice, are still alive! He explained with a heavy Mexican accent that - "they die when I split the shells apart".

He worked fast, opening one quickly after another. He placed them artistically on a large dinner plate decorated with lettuce and small bowls of sauce.

I asked if they ever wiggle with a little life when the plate is being served. I had no idea raw oysters were that fresh. He said, "Yes, sometimes they wiggle when you sprinkle lemon juice on them!"

Riding the Bomb

An older couple walked in and sat at a table in the small rustic cafe (Aspendell, CA near Bishop) where I was the only occupant for lunch.

We got to talking and I learned he was 84, they had been married 61 years. Since she came from a family of 21 (2 mothers, the first one died) and he from a family of 10, they never felt the need to have children. Both were sharp, quick and fun to talk with.

He told me they lived in Las Vegas for 35 years, where he travelled 108 miles ONE WAY to work everyday!

They've retired in Bishop now, returning after 50 years, where he worked in the mines in the 1940's. He proudly told me he was "a supervisor though" in Las Vegas. He worked at the atom bomb testing site in Nevada and once headed a small crew that needed to be lowered 5,000 ft into the ground, through a 3ft diameter shaft to a live atom bomb that had been dropped into the underground chamber.

The bomb was live, but the wires got damaged in the lowering. His job was to disconnect/reconnect every thing properly. {{{{{{oh....}}}}}}

He said for many years he was unable to tell anyone what he did, or to travel out of the US. He told me the government pays for extensive medical checkups every 6 months to monitor his health from the radiation, but he feels fine and never goes in, or "bothers with that stuff". He added as I was leaving, "You know, they tested a lot more than just atom bombs in those days . . . "

A Coffee Shop Patron

A Compaq and a Dell face each other, lid to lid offering quiet tapping sounds across a wide old oak table. The low late afternoon sun creeps through the front window, finds another table and lights up an Arrowhead water bottle with bright silver sparkles.

A chocolate lab tied up outside pokes his nose hard into a woman's crotch when she moves close to greet him and the whirrr of the blender behind the shop's counter mixes something tasty for someone springing several dollars more than just $1.25 for a "Small, medium blend, please."

A stranger snores quietly in the old soft sofa.

Slovenly Sofa Sneak

Driving by this upholstery shop I saw the reward sign propped up in front. Wouldn't you have stopped too, to find out the story? A man inside working on furniture told me the customer's sofa was briefly left out in front of the shop. When they came back from working behind the building, the sofa was gone.

He pointed to a multicolored blue and brown pile of sofa cushions, looked glum and said, "That's what it looks like, those are its cushions. We haven't told the owner yet".

Mouse With a Bum Heart

I met Mouse when he saw me taking photos of his unattended shopping cart parked up against a brick wall.

He carefully navigated lanes of rushing cars when he crossed over from his 'island' in the middle of a busy traffic intersection and asked me if I thought it was: "Classy, huh?"

All his items were very neatly folded. I could see an organization of colored layers through the cart wire.

His cardboard sign said he had heart problems - he told me he has 7 stents in his heart. He added that his grandmother named him "Mouse" years ago because he used to steal cheese snacks from her house.

As he proudly posed, he grinned and told me - years ago he was an artist and took photos of the homeless in the early morning hours, while they slept on the old wooden loading docks where vegetables were unloaded from trucks.

A Blood Giving Gardener

I talked with a hard working man yesterday, sweating and toiling in a community garden. He seemed to want to talk. It was ok, I listened while I took photos of the interesting plants in his plot and others.

He was slim, wore a baggy t-shirt that said he had given blood and a floppy canvas hat. He was hammering a pine 2"X2"' into the ground to replace some rotten fence posts that held up thin rusty wire that surrounded his plot. He told me he couldn't see cutting down 3,000 year old redwoods so he could have a fence post that lasted 10 years instead of 5. I admired that.

He first showed me a passion fruit plant. It looked totally wild, unkept and the long vines grew over other plants he had somewhat staked out. He picked up a small shiny yellow passion fruit that smelled delicious and handed it to me. I carried it in the palm of my hand and kept smelling it.

Next he showed me a large cotton plant - it had huge brown/black cotton balls. Several had exploded their fluffy white interiors. He said he was out at the Salton Sea with a bird watching group some years ago and picked up the seeds from farm crops in the Imperial Valley. He spread the seeds and now he has several large cotton plants. He said the thick heavy branches grow at different angles every year. This year is pointing up.

In a corner of his plot was a broken wooded framework with half dead vines. He said it was his vineyard . . . that he got 5 bunches of grapes off it in the past several years . . . that the grapes grew so close together in the bunches that insects got inside and ruined just about all of them though. I could see no organization at all to his garden - he had plants dead, dying and alive everywhere. He proudly counted his 5 tiny kale plants. To me they looked just like the dozens and dozens of tiny weeds starting to sprout in the small haphazardly raised area.

As we talked, a yellow tail butterfly flitted close and landed on a dwarf orange bush. We were both amazed as the very large butterfly touched down, twisted her body and deposited about 6 tiny light green eggs on the tip of a leaf. He said he heard they would do that, but has never witnessed it. He said he would probably cut off the leaf and keep it in a jar to see who would hatch.

He showed me a thick long spider web that used to drape across the entrance to his garden. When it was hot and he had to visit everyday to water (and break the web), the spider finally found another part of his garden and stretched a new web. We followed one of the long strands and found the huge fuzzy brown spider crouched inside a curled leaf.

I meet strangers, let's start . . .

I meet strangers. I love to wander and enjoy a brief encounter with people I don't know. I'm curious about what others do, what they think and what they're willing to share with a total stranger.

I take lots of photos (almost daily), but this isn't necessarily a photo blog because I'm often uncomfortable taking photos of people when I speak with them. Instead I would like to create word pictures and capture these brief meetings in a way that doesn't lose their significance so quickly.