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The Old Battered Tent
It arrived on my porch one day a decade ago, delivered by the folks with the brown trucks. I opened the long box and inside was a bright new tent. A camping tent. I ordered it from one of those catalogs that show pictures of tents with happy families standing and sitting around the tent just being happy. Maybe far back in the recesses of my mind (my mind has lots of recesses) there was a flash of Lurey and me lounging near the tent door, sipping hot coffee and stirring the stew on the campfire. Never mind that Lurey had not tented with me since that one and only time when we were newlyweds. My aging friends already had motor homes and camper trailers. The things are really nice, what with running water, showers, cook stoves, air conditioning and of course central heat. They even have recliner chairs and color television.
Gotta get the gear to the gig
By Michael CorcoranAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Wednesday, March 14, 2007 The big trucks, 44 of them in a fleet fattened over last year's, started lining up outside the Music Lab's equipment warehouse on St. Elmo Road in the pouring rain Tuesday night. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, nearly half of them were loaded and dispatched to South by Southwest venues and tent-covered parking lots for the music festival's first day. Much of the increase in business is due to the rising number of international acts. This year, 414 acts are arriving from other countries, with more than 150 coming from the United Kingdom alone. .
Gaming the stats, endangering the soldiers
It happens everywhere. A perfectly useful measurement gradually becomes more important that it has any right to be and soon everyone's life is shaped by the slightest variations in that measurement. People quickly figure out how to improve their "score" in dozens of ways that do not improve the performance or outcome that score was originally designed to measure and the institution eventually takes on the character of those whose power and influence rises because they are particularly skilled at gaming the stats.And so we get the Army deploying seriously injured troops: After arriving at Fort Irwin, many of the injured soldiers did not train. "They had all of us living in a big tent," confirmed Spc. Lincoln Smith, who spent the month there along with Hernandez and others. Smith is an Army truck driver, but because of his health issues, which include sleep apnea (a breathing ailment) and narcolepsy, Smith is currently barred from driving military vehicles.
2008 vehicles are driven by innovation
What started as a glorious tent sale at the Galleria Mall garage 16 years ago has evolved into an exhibit of more than 500 of the newest cars, trucks and motorcycles for South Floridians to peruse without pressure. The Fort Lauderdale International Auto & Motorcycle Show opened Thursday at the Broward County Convention Center and continues until Sunday night. Although the showcase is half the size of its sister show in Miami, it's still able to give visitors a taste of 2008, including the newest vehicles with alternative-fuel sources. GM has the largest display of green cars, which include models that run on either E85 ethanol or gasoline, such as the 2007 Chevy Silverado and the 2007 Chevy Tahoe. GM also is displaying its model for a hydrogen-run Chevrolet Equinox, an SUV with a 3.6-liter DOHC V-6 engine.
Running Away With The Circus
Back in 1977 my husband Glen and I ran away with a circus and met the most wholesome, generous and mentally healthy people of our lives. No wonder we all want to run away with the circus. It isn't just a kid thing. It is a freedom of life, choice, imagination, magic and love thing. Big John Strong and Son International Traveling Circus arrived in the middle of the night, set up their tents and were busy with their hard-working set-up by the time Glen and I arrived, just before dawn, to photograph them setting up the tents, obviously, too late to capture on film. The night before we read of their coming to town (Santa Barbara, CA a family visit stop off) our imaginations went wild. As photographers, who traveled cross country in an old Cortez motor home (a former IBM instrument truck we built ourselves at parking meters outside our apartment on 34th Street in NYC) which had been fashioned from a cold stark and empty inside up to a tiny but cozy living space with full darkroom, this was an opportunity of a lifetime.
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