A bright idea for my fridge

I recently had to have the control board (aka self-destruct device*) replaced in my refrigerator. While the technician had the ceiling console, which also houses the light fixture, apart, we noticed something startling. The 40 watt incandescent light bulbs that had been in the fridge since new had begun melting the ceiling! Even though the console completely hid the damage, the technician was concerned enough to leave the light bulbs out and advised me to look into something would put off less heat.

Having recently acquired some LED bulbs to try out in lamps and light fixtures, I immediately thought they would be a good solution since they stay quite cool to the touch, even when they've been on for an extended period of time. The ones I had were physically too large so I went shopping and found a 3-pack of LED bulbs the same diameter as the original incandescents for $10 and change, which was a perfect solution since my refrigerator has two bulbs plus one in the freezer below.

I had not realized just how hot the incandescent bulbs got. In the 45 seconds or so it took to change one bulb, the other one got hot enough to blister my finger when I tried to remove it. I had to close the refrigerator and let it cool off for a few minutes before I could safely handle it. I have to wonder if that heat from those bulbs damaged not only the ceiling of the fridge but the control board as well.

These new bulbs not only put out less heat, they consume considerably less power, pulling only pull seven watts of power (the equivalent of an old fashioned Christmas tree bulb) to put out light equivalent to a 60 watt bulb. Also, the light is more of a stark white color, quite appropriate for inside a refrigerator. Being brighter and whiter, the bulbs do a better job of illuminating the formerly dark corners. Given the small amount of time those bulbs are ever on, I'm not expecting to see any savings on my power bill and I have no illusions that they will come anywhere near paying for themselves as they would in some other application where they were on more. They will instead pay for themselves by extending the life of my refrigerator. They'll also earn their keep by giving the inside of the fridge a more up to date look. All in all, it's not a bad return on a minimal investment.

*I refer to the electronic circuit boards in modern appliances, both small and large, as 'self-destruct devices' because they seem to serve as an intentional weak link designed to shorten the life of an otherwise dependable and durable device. By redesigning and discontinuing circuit boards on a regular basis, manufacturers make repairs less feasible--if they're even possible--thus pushing consumers into an endless cycle of replacing their appliances, which have been re-positioned as consumable items instead of the durable goods they once were. Remember when a vacuum cleaner lasted for decades? One thing you wouldn't find in such a machine was a circuit board. 

Meet the New Linux; the Same (but maybe a little better than) the Old Linux

For the past two or three years, I've been happily using Xubuntu Linux but like all good things, this too eventually came to an end.

About a year ago, I had attempted to upgrade to the next long term support version of Xubuntu and it wouldn't install. It seems my hardware was a little outdated. Since the version I was using still had a couple of years left before it reached its scheduled end of life—the point at which all development, including maintenance and security updates, ceases—I had decided to just ride it out and make a decision about what to do with the computer in a couple of years.

For better or worse, things just didn't last that long. Updates kept failing and the system was becoming more more outdated and thus more and more vulnerable. Finally, I decided I'd had enough and decided to see what else was out there. I finally settled on Linux Mint 17.1 and decided to keep the xfce interface I had grown accustomed to.

One of the things I have truly come to love about most popular Linux distributions over the years is the ability to boot from a live CD or DVD and take the operating system for a test drive without affecting anything on the computer.  One of the first things I discovered in the release notes was a built-in workaround for the problem that had kept me from upgrading to the newest stable release of Xubuntu. It took a couple of tries to get the workaround to work, since you have to be pretty quick to access the Linux Mint boot menu to apply it, but once I did, it worked flawlessly and even remembered that setting when I installed the operating system on my hard drive.

The installation went flawlessly and configuration was a breeze since I was already quite familiar with the xfce interface. One of the nicest things was that almost all the software applications I needed were already included on the installation disk image. The only thing I had to add were the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and Radio Tray, an Internet radio player I had been using.

After I ran all the updates, I found the version of the LibreOffice productivity suite included on the disk image was not only outdated but had actually reached its scheduled end of life several months ago. I've encountered this issue before as Linux distributions often don't keep the most current versions of third party software in their repositories. It's not a big deal, but in my previous experience, it has always required mucking about on the command line to set up access to an alternate repository in order to install the current version. It's a one-time thing, after which updated versions are installed automatically.

After a quick post to the Linux Mint users' forum, a helpful administrator gave me my answer and the news was better than I was hoping for. Not only was it possible to gain access to a more up to date repository, but there was a pre-installed app that let me do it without venturing onto the command line. It took me less than five minutes to access the repository and install the current version of the software. Configuring my printer was equally as easy. It took all of about four mouse clicks. That's a far cry from the first time I installed OpenSUSE Linux on an old laptop some six years ago.

I've only had Linux Mint installed on my nine-year-old HP laptop for about 24 hours, but I'm happy with it and it seems to hold the promise of keeping this particular piece of old hardware running and up to date for the foreseeable future.

Mac OS X may still be my operating system of choice, but my appreciation for desktop Linux in all of its forms continues unabated.

The Last Time I Saw Rowe

After he got married in the summer of 2008—on oh-six, oh-seven, oh-eight, as he liked to say—I didn't see much of Rowe Coley, my close friend of almost three decades. To borrow a line from the end of Jack Kerouac's seminal Beat novel On the Road, “we [had] moved on to different phases of our lives'.

He had settled into a routine of commuting between his own house in Winston-Salem and his wife's in Scaly Mountain—alternately spending a week or two in each location, working at the bank in Winston with his colleagues or telecommuting remotely from what was, and yet would never entirely be, his new home in the mountains. While he loved his wife and loved being married to her, the grind of that commute eventually got the best of him.

Meanwhile, I was knee-deep in my own struggles—scratching out a living teaching part time at the community college and supplementing it with another part-time retail job and a little freelance magazine writing, all the while looking for that elusive thing called full time employment. Although I was somehow making it financially, it left little time for travel or enjoying life as I once had. Also, while he was making the adjustment to married life, I was coming to grips with the loss of Natalie, a woman I had been dating, who had died tragically in a house fire.

Ironically, a year or two later, his struggles had come to reflect my own. The bank where he worked had been bought out during the Crash of '08 and although he had survived the first few rounds of layoffs, his number inevitably came up in late 2010. Though they gave him a generous severance package, he ultimately didn't survive the layoff.

Although we talked regularly on the phone during that time, often commiserating over our respective employment situations, we would see each other only twice in 2011—once in the spring when he was in Greensboro for a job interview and we went out for a Mexican dinner, and then the final time when I visited his house in Winston in early December. He had landed a job at Western Carolina University and was there to begin the process of winding up his affairs in Winston before reporting to work in Cullowhee a week or so later.

It was a rainy late fall night when I made the half-hour drive to see him. In his typical fashion, he had called me up out of the blue and asked me to come over for dinner. And as was common, his cabinets, containing mostly condiments and canned goods, were ill-equipped to prepare us a meal, so we went out to grab a bite at one of his favorite 'greasy spoons,' a Greek restaurant—more a diner, really—near his house.

On the way there, he insisted on showing me the site of a fatal car crash that had occurred in the neighborhood earlier in the day. A vehicle, traveling at high speed, had run out of road when it failed to stop at the end of a dead-end street and had gone airborne on its way down an embankment and ended up in a city park. There wasn't much to see as all but the tiniest bits of debris had already been removed, just a few flattened saplings and marks on the ground to illustrate where it had been. Nonetheless, in his typical fashion, he ignored a perfectly good paved walkway, which he later claimed not to have noticed, and instead led me on the exact path the car had taken, down a steep, wet embankment, slippery with fallen leaves. Holding onto sapling trees for balance, he made it to the bottom without losing his footing, but I didn't.

How often had we been down that path before? Usually in such circumstances, I would get upset with him for choosing the “dog trails” instead of a more established and well-lit path. But this time, I just laughed it off, noting how emblematic it was of our friendship, and washed up as best I could in a nearby drinking fountain. There was a feeling of peace between us that evening, as though all the petty struggles and squabbles of the past had been put to rest and need not be disturbed from their slumber.

At the restaurant, we enjoyed our gyro platters and after we'd mopped up the last of our tzatziki sauce with pieces of pita bread, we returned to his house and talked about the past and the future while we watched part of an old movie on TV—Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Arthur Kennedy, and James Coburn. We remarked at how much James Coburn resembled our mutual friend Terry, a point I reinforced by pulling up a YouTube video of one of Coburn's old Schlitz Light commercials on my new smart phone that I'd gotten a few days earlier. It was a comfortable evening, two people who had known each other for most of our lives and between whom no secrets were hid, just enjoying each other's company for what would turn out to be the final time.

In the midst of all that familiarity, there were a couple of things that set the evening apart. One was that we spent the evening sober—no booze, no weed. We had been longtime drinking and toking buddies, but the appeal of that had begun to wear off for both of us. At that point, he had been to a handful of AA meetings and was taking the first tentative steps toward a life of sobriety that ultimately eluded him. As a grateful member of Al-Anon for the previous few years, I was more than willing to be supportive. And on that particular evening, we truly didn't miss the intoxicants that had been so much a part of our adventures together over most of the previous three decades.

The other thing that was unusual was that he gave me a “Christmas present” consisting of several mementos from our past—more specifically, my past. There was a tee shirt from the college we had attended together, but from which he had transferred, an old business card from my time as a newspaper reporter in his home town, and a couple of similar odds and ends—the types of things you might expect to be returned to you after someone close to you has passed away—things that might only have meaning to you.

When we parted company a little before midnight that final evening—somewhat early by our normal standards—it was with a feeling of peace and comfort, perhaps even a bit of closure. Over almost 30 years, we had become more like brothers than friends. We'd had high adventures together, been there for each other during various low points, and on more than one occasion had totally pissed each other off and later just as totally forgiven each other. There was no denying we loved each other as only brothers can. I was aware of all of those feelings as we parted, and that's why can't ever shake the feeling that when he said goodbye to me as he walked me to his front door and watched me pull out of his yard and into the night, he was really saying farewell.

Although things were looking up for him on that December evening, as he anticipating a new job, albeit at a lower salary than the one he had recently lost, I can't help but wonder if he wasn't also contemplating and maybe even making preparations for the end he would arrive at some ten weeks later. His passing occurred exactly three months to the day later—almost two weeks after he had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Ironically, he died on what would have been Natalie's birthday.

Between the last time I saw him in December and when I attended his memorial the following March, I spoke with him on the phone a few times and it was clear things were falling apart at the seams. His relationship with his wife had become strained when he'd abruptly quit his new job after just a few weeks—the physical stress of the daily hourlong commute on winding mountain roads, he said, was more than he could take. That, along with a few other demons, led him to his final and tragic solution.

In one conversation, he'd admitted to me that he had seriously contemplated suicide a couple of weeks earlier. He said he'd wanted to hang himself with an electrical cord but couldn't remember how to tie a noose. I told him I was glad he had given up on that attempt and pleaded with him to seek professional help. I heard later that he had tried at least once more before getting hold of his grandfather's pistol.

While know the survivor's guilt I have experienced—and occasionally do to this day—is quite natural, I have also known with certainty from the moment I heard the news that there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. As we say in Al-Anon, I didn't cause his problems, I couldn't control them and I couldn't cure them. Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. That loss has affected me deeply and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of him and pray for those he left behind who loved him.

I also can't help but wonder what the difference was between us. There aren't any good or easy answers there. We had experienced many of the same travails in life, but, to date at least, I've been able to survive mine and move on where he could not. Maybe it's faith, maybe I was able to find something in twelve-step recovery that he didn't; there's no way to tell for sure.

They say that when you hit rock bottom, there's no place to go but up; but that's not entirely true. A lot of people bounce back and keep on keeping on but there are those unfortunate, fragile few who hit bottom and simply go 'splat'. Somehow, when I've bottomed out in life, I've found it within myself to minimize the impact, like the guy I heard about one time who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, changed his mind on the way down, tucked into a 'cannonball' position and survived the impact with only some bruising on his buttocks and the bottoms of his feet. But when Rowe hit his bottom, there was nothing left. Call it bad timing, bad circumstance or bad character, he just couldn't find it within himself to go on. And there, but for the grace of God, go I—and perhaps all of us.

One thing I've learned in this life—and of which I have absolutely no doubt—is that struggles of all shapes and sizes are part and parcel of life. And it is in grappling with them that our true character is shaped, much like molten steel under a blacksmith's hammer. The stresses of life—especially the act of learning and growing from them—strengthen us and make us who we are—perhaps they even make us whole.

As I look back, the struggles I was facing when I last saw my friend Rowe are now largely behind me. As new and different ones inevitably take their place, face them with the strength and wisdom gained from what once was and is now in the past, especially the knowledge that all things do eventually pass. Does this make me perfect? Does it make me superhuman? Absolutely not. I'm still the same flawed and fragile person I've always been and always will be, but I've got a few new tools in my toolbox and I can use them to face such situations in the future in a more effective and healthy manner.

No matter how bad things get in my life, I refuse to let go of the faith and knowledge that I will survive. Before going to sleep on the nights following some of my darkest days, I've said to myself as an affirmation and perhaps as a prayer: “I've made it through today and that's good. Chances are—and with God's help—I'll also make it through tomorrow and that's enough.” That's called taking it one day at a time. When it comes down to it, that's all we've got and it's all we need. The rest of life, as John Lennon observed, 'is what happens while we're making other plans'. The only thing we can do is keep making those other plans—and keep on living, one day at a time.

The Net(flix) Effect

With all the media hoopla around net neutrality and what a bandwidth hog Netflix apparently is, I can't help but reflect on how the streaming video service has changed my life in the past eight months.

I've had a DVD player for about 10 years and during that time I've amassed a pretty sizable disc library. It's the repeat of a pattern that happened with CDs, starting in the early '90s. Okay, so the same thing happened with vinyl and cassettes in the '80s, as well as with VHS tapes. Let's face it—I'm a media junkie and arguably in need of a 12-step program for my addiction.

So back to DVD's and Netflix. It didn't take too long after I acquired a DVD player to begin feeding my addiction by acquiring a DVD burner for my computer. This, coupled with a subscription to Netflix's original DVD by mail service, led to a “mainline” addiction in which I burned copies of almost every Netflix DVD that hit my mailbox.

I eventually canceled my Netflix subscription when my personal fortunes began took a tumble and I set about cutting non-essentials, including cable TV. For several years, I learned to live with an antenna and let the public library feed my DVD addiction for free. Now, that's what I call putting my tax dollars to work!

Eventually, I began to occasionally indulge in the occasional $5 DVD from the big bins at Wal-Mart and even cheaper $3 discs from Big Lot's, supplemented by the occasional visit to Redbox. My rationalization was that I was spending far less on this habit than I would have on a monthly cable bill.

Over the past couple of years, my personal economy has seen a vast improvement and last summer, I decided to reward myself with a flat screen TV and a Blu-Ray player. While I did pick up a few Blu-Ray discs, I came to the conclusion they didn't live up to the hype. But I became increasingly curious about the little “Netflix” button on the remote.

I resisted pushing it for about five months, but over the holidays, my resolve weakened and my viewing habits instantly changed. I've almost entirely quit watching broadcast TV (no great loss there) and the disc tray on my Blu-Ray player has remained mostly empty. I've even put streaming media boxes on my other two TV sets.

The biggest and most profound effect Netflix has had on me is that it instantly and single-handedly broke me of my DVD addiction. I haven't bought a single disc—nor have I wanted to—since I got Netflix eight months ago. The funny thing is I'm not even tempted by them the way I used to be.

Has Netflix truly broken me of that addiction or is it more like Methadone—a more benign version of the same old addiction? It's hard to tell. I still binge watch movies and TV shows on Netflix much the way I did on DVD—and VHS, for that matter. But I'm not filling my shelves with the physical artifacts of my addiction. Also, I'm spending less to do it. Before Netflix, I was spending much more than $8 a month on DVDs.

So in the end, maybe I'm still a media addict, but so far I've managed to avoid expanding into other similar vices like Hulu Plus.  

Old Mac Gets a New Lease on Life

So I've been using this MacBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.7 (Mountain Lion) for the past year and a half or so, and it's generally been a good machine, despite a few quirks. Being slightly outdated hardware, I had resigned myself to the idea that I would be stuck in the past as new versions of the OS passed it by. What I had was working reasonably well and I'm also a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to paid upgrades. There has to be a compelling reason for me to shell out the cash and I darned well better be getting a good discount.

I've been relatively content with 10.7 since it allows most current software to run on my six-year-old laptop, but when I read that the latest Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) had been released earlier this week with an unbeatable price tag of zero, as in free, and that it was (just barely) compatible with my machine, I couldn't resist. And as it turns out, I'm glad I didn't.

The biggest challenge I had installing the new OS was clearing off enough space to download the sucker. I'm bad for letting things accumulate on my hard drive, so I didn't have the requisite 5 GB of space available. Fortunately, I did have an empty 32GB flash drive handy, so transferring and deleting files was easily accomplished. Of course, the next challenge to my patience was actually downloading a file that large. Good thing I have other computers I can use.

I don't know exactly how long the download took, because I just started it and put the MacBook aside for the night and let the download proceed unsupervised. When I got back to it the next afternoon, the upgrade was ready to install, which still took a couple of hours.

My previous experience with upgrading to the latest version of a software title on an older piece of hardware has usually been disappointing in that performance slows to a crawl, and being that my MacBook Pro is one of the oldest machines for which this upgrade is available, I had a fear that the same would prove true in this case. Fortunately, my fears proved unfounded. Not only did it not slow the computer down, it actually sped it up!

Among the numerous improvements under the proverbial hood, Mavericks makes more efficient use of RAM and processor cycles, which improves performance and extends battery life on a laptop. Because it uses RAM more efficiently, it requires less virtual memory, which presses hard drive space into use to supplement physical RAM. This translates into more available hard drive space! I call that a win, win, win scenario. All that efficiency is also allowing the cooling fan to work a little less.

Applications that traditionally struggled a bit under 10.7 are now purring along nicely. It even cleared up an annoying bug in the free LibreOffice office suite. Ever since version 4.1 came out earlier this year, text has appeared jumbled on the screen when I'm typing, but resolves itself in a second or two after I stop. That simply doesn't happen under 10.9

When you throw in the various interface enhancements and new applications like iBooks and Maps, that originated on the iPhone and iPad, there is really no reason not to upgrade if your Mac is less than six years old (check Apple's Web site for a complete list of compatible models), has at least 4GB of RAM, and is already running OS X 10.6 or newer. It really is a no-brainer.

Words of My Namesake

Henry Edwin Tremain (1840-1910)

 The past few days, when I should have been engaged in more productive tasks, I have been connecting with my namesake. He's not an ancestor, but a friend of my great grandmother for whom my grandfather, and subsequently my father and I were named. The irony of this is that being a good Southern boy, born and raised in the Carolinas, four generations of my family (including my nephew, who bears the middle name) have been named for a 'Yankee' general.

I have known since I was a small child that I bear two thirds of the name of General Henry Edwin Tremain (1840-1910) who served with distinction in the Civil War (he referred to it in his writings as the 'War of Rebellion'), and earned the Medal of Honor for riding his horse between two columns of Union troops who were mistakenly firing on each other*. I have also long been aware that Tremain wrote several books on the war and subsequent reconstruction, which have become somewhat obscure more than a century after his death—until now.

It seems that while time was not on the books' side for a long time, the fact that they have all passed into the public domain will ultimately ensure their survival. Many of his book- and pamphlet-length writings, including: In Memoriam, Major-General Joseph Hooker (1881); Sailor's Creek to Appamattox Court House, 7th, 8th, and 9th April, 1865, or, Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry (1885); The Closing Days About Richmond, or, The Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry (1900); Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry—A Reprint of War Memoranda (1904); Two days of War: A Gettysburg Narrative and Other Excursions (1905); Sectionalism Unmasked (1906); and A Family Genealogy (1908) are now preserved electronically by the Archive.org, OpenLibrary, and GoogleBooks Web sites.

These electronic versions are available in a number of file formats Some are physical page-by-page image scans of the original volumes, usually library copies, which are interesting to me as much for their content as for the unaltered glimpse they offer of the original, including library stamps pencil marks, and at least some illustrations. Versions compatible with e-readers like the Nook or Kindle are based on OCR (optical character recognition) scans, which transfer the type on the page into an editable text file. While these files are considerably smaller than their image scanned counterparts, they seem to include an inordinate number of electronically-induced errors that seldom get edited out before the document goes live online.

Sadly, these flawed scans sometimes also serve as the basis for some of the overpriced print-on-demand editions presently published by the likes of Nabu Press and Kessenger Publishing and sold through a variety of online sources including Amazon, Alibris and AbeBooks. Some these are even so shabbily done as to include a Google Books digital watermark on their pages. Even so, some versions like Kessenger's hardback editions, can command prices that approach those of the hardback first editions.

I recently purchased a soft cover reprint of Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry from Nabu Press and was favorably impressed with it, for what it is. Made from the PDF image files available online for free, the type is quite readable, except for one page that I finally figured out was a page of translucent tissue paper that separated the title page from a portrait of General Sheridan. and although a pull-out map located between pages 82 and 83 is replaced with a blank page, it gives a reasonable approximation of the experience of reading the original first edition.  For a scholar intent on closely studying these texts with highlighter in hand, these reprints are an invaluable resource; however, collectors will likely find them somewhat lackluster.

Until the digital revolution, the only one of Tremain's books to enjoy any sort of revival is Sectionalism Unmasked, a treatise on the (mis)treatment of blacks in the South in the years following the Civil War, which was re-published in 1969 by the Negro Universities Press (NUP). It seems that Tremain, a lifelong Republican, had a very progressive mindset for his time, although the Republican Party of a century ago was far more progressive than today's GOP. Today, the NUP edition is the most affordable of his books, selling for between $6 and $9. 

More desirable to collectors are his volumes on the Civil War, which he called 'war memoranda'. They are largely based on his first-person experiences and observations. As a Southerner, it's interesting to read his Northern perspective, related in a fairly objective, highly detailed, and reporterly fashion without excessive edtorializing or propagandizing. The mind of an officer who later became a lawyer comes through in these accounts.

Tremain appears to have published three different accounts of the closing days of the war, Sailor's Creek to Appamattox Court House, 7th, 8th, and 9th April, 1865, or, Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry (1885); The Closing Days About Richmond, or, The Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry (1900); Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry—A Reprint of War Memoranda (1904), each incorporating and expanding upon the previous one.

Besides reading over the online versions of his books, I have added a few physical volumes to my library. My father gave me a first edition of Sectionalism Unmasked for Christmas. He said he had bought it a few years ago, but the subject matter didn't interest him. What I found at least as interesting as the book itself were the promotional leaflets for Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry and Two Days of War that were tucked inside the cover. In addition to the print-on-demand copy of Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry, I have also bought a first edition of Two Days of War. As I am not a Civil War scholar, I'm not sure these books would have interested me as much had I not had a family connection to the author, but I am none the less pleased to have his work represented on my bookshelves.


Update 3/19/13:
After spending a little time with the various copies of Tremain's work that I have recently acquired, I find it interesting that I relate to them quite differently. When handling the first editions of Two Days of War and Sectionalism Unmasked, I feel a direct connection to the past. These books are more than 100 years old and are historical artifacts in their own right. Almost as nice is my hardcover reprint of Sailors Creek to Appamattox Court House from Repressed Books. The publisher's stated intention is to approximate as closely as possible the antiquarian reading experience and this effort is largely successful. Printed on good quality paper, it appears to be a physical scan of the original, but the scanned image has been substantially cleaned up as very few stray marks appear, unlike the softcover reprint of Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry.  Printed on comparatively cheap paper, this volume is functional, but it has all the charm of a college course pack. The pages are readable but it is obvious they are printed directly from the page scans available online for free. No effort has been made to clean them up in any way.  In the long run, I think I would have been happier with a hardbound reprint or to have held out for an affordable first edition.

Update 4/15/21:
A few of years before he passed away, Dad acquired first editions of Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry and Two Days of War, which I now have in my possession. The former is in nice condition and I'm happy to have it as an upgrade to the print-on-demand copy but the latter is a battered ex-library copy for which he paid nearly twice what I paid for my copy. He said he'd had a line on what he thought was a better one but someone beat him to it. I never had the heart to tell him that the "someone" in question was very likely me.


____________________
*If this scenario sounds slightly familiar, it's because you probably saw it in a movie. Kevin Costner's character did a similar thing at the beginning of Dances with Wolves (1990). Of course, fact and fiction quickly diverge. Unlike Costner's character, Tremain was not wounded, nor was he attempting to commit suicide when he rode his horse between the troops. He also was never sent to a deserted outpost in 'Indian Territory'. I have long wondered if screenwriter and novelist Michael Blake based this scene in his fictional story on Tremain's real life exploit.

Re-opening the Mind's Eye

As far back as my high school and college days, I was always an avid photographer. I discovered and leaned to use single lens reflex (SLR) cameras in high school and started accumulating an assortment of manual focus Minolta gear while I was in college and for several years thereafter. Through most of the '80s and early '90s, I used it on an almost daily basis, especially when I worked for a community newspaper. I was hired as a reporter, but when they found out I had a camera and knew my way around a darkroom, I was suddenly pulling double duty, creating both words and images. Not only was it fun, it was job security.

I left the paper in the summer of 1991 to start graduate school and began using my cameras less and less, especially as I developed an interest in computers. There just wasn't time for everything. By the end of the decade, my interest in photography eventually had all but died along with the medium of film in the face of digital photography. A big part of it was that I never could afford the kind of digital camera equipment I really wanted.

Even going back to the film days, I never really warmed to auto-focus, point-n-shoot cameras. I always over-thought their capabilities and was usually frustrated with the results. When it comes to photography, I'm a bona fide control freak. You see, I really like twiddling knobs, adjusting focus, f-stops and shutter speeds and screwing on filters to make the final image match what's in my mind's eye

On several occasions over the years, I borrowed digital SLR cameras from others and quickly realized that was the type of hardware I needed if I wanted to get back into photography. Unfortunately, they commanded prices comparable to a monthly house payment and thus far above my comfort level. One of the nice things about 35mm SLR camera equipment back in the day was the technology had been around for a long time and there was a wealth of excellent second hand equipment available at affordable prices, enabling one to afford the good stuff without making a sacrificial outlay of funds. Fortunately, digital photography has finally matured to the level that the same is beginning to be true for it.

I was recently re-bitten by the digital camera bug when my dad showed me a Nikon D50 DSLR camera he'd gotten on the cheap. I found the the controls of the camera to be a little too fussy--and sometimes just plain counter-intuitive--for my taste, but it planted the idea in my mind that maybe the time had come to re-examine the notion of finding one for myself. After some investigation online, I discovered there is indeed a lively market for used DSLR hardware and some nice bargains to be had.

Eventually, I lucked up on a Samsung GX-1L camera kit that included a nice 18-55mm zoom lens for about the price of a mid-range point-n-shoot. The camera and lens are re-branded Pentax hardware, despite the fact that the lens carries the venerable Schneider-Kreutznach name, which Samsung licensed for the occasion. I rounded the kit out with a nice, used Sigma 70-210mm zoom lens for about the cost of a movie ticket and popcorn, and a dedicated flash module for my Quantaray flash that allows it to be fully compatible with this camera.

What really amazes me about this camera is not its ease of use or the fantastic photos it takes, although both statements are true, but the way it has unlocked a part of my brain--or maybe my soul--that has lain dormant far too long. I'm seeing the world with a photographer's eye again. Even when the camera isn't in my hands, I find myself framing things up as though in a viewfinder and observing the fine details I would want to capture on film, or rather, pixels. For the first time in a good 15 years or so, I find myself wanting to just go out with my camera and see what I can find to shoot.

In short, my mind's eye has been re-opened and it's good to be back in the viewfinder again!

Below are a few of my favorite shots so far: