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Leaving the place better than we found it
Seeing with my eyes closed
Thomas Jefferson on gun control
How to lie convincingly
Our hardy heartland
Breaking the cycle
How to catch the sun's comings and goings
Thoughts from the inside
Leveraging the internet to build our walls
Twitters from the past
And the invincibility of youth
Without ego projection
Yet another gift of the road
The charming side of obstinance
The creative part of photography
A movie critic looks in the mirror
We are not alone
As part of the system
Defecting from the rear guard
The end of Kumbaya
The wanderer's poet
Running out of dirt
Striking a balance
The Bay of Fundy, where the sea breathes
How to photograph them with anything, even your cellphone
A simple question we get every day
We may be failing to fail
And why no one should hesitate to examine them
You are on this page
A writing assignment
A new discovery of something old
Finding new eyes to see old landscapes
Hick humor
Toys for photographing wild places
Experiencing life with God
A radical thought about our radicals
Redemption with style
Hidden heroes among us
Resetting our parallel processor
A village with heart
A lesson from the road
The bullet dodged
A soul sparkles
Isolation in style
Painless ways to lose your virginity : 11/12/15
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Legacy
Becoming a hero in one's own life story
07/14/16

Mark Twain pointed out that the two most important days in our lives are the day we were born and the day we find out why. As insightful as that is, the "why" didn't happen for me on one day as much as over the many days on the road.

We can wax spiritual and introspective but for me it came down to what I do, what I'll leave behind, whether I will look back from my deathbed and smile.

Running toward me with the answer was a young girl barely out of diapers, with her mom in pursuit. Her little face spoke not only of the joy of escape, but of a declaration that she was the superhero in her yet short life story. My day job, where I spend so much of my day, lacked that hero potential.

Some of my shutterbug pals don't know that I'm on a rough schedule where I shoot after dawn and again before sunset, what we call the golden hour. In between, I'm often cranking on my laptop in the office in my RV. Bizware's clients don't know or care where I am as long as budgets and schedules are respected.

So it was that I reviewed all my projects from the perspective of that joyful little girl, looking for hero possibilities. The paths meandered and crossed, but they kept converging on Web4VI.

Web4VI is a project to use prison inmate labor to produce website versions suitable for the visually impaired. The US has far more prisoners than any other country, mostly repeat offenders, staring at their cell walls while their job skills atrophy. Upon release, Web4VI would give them a shot at jobs with a future and breaking the recidivism cycle endemic to our system. That their work product would also open the web to blind people would be better than a cape with colored panty hose.

As much as we geeks live to telework, launching Web4VI would require my intense on-site presence at a prison, dealing quickly with the surprises endemic to such innovations. The choice grew clear. My carefree life on the road would have to end, replaced by its opposite. I would have to go to prison.

My camera and I now wander with added zeal, knowing that my summer will end, and 2017 will put me among men who do not know waterfalls and chipmunks. But the legacy will be more worthwhile than my hedonistic pursuits.

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The daily grind underground

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Going up to the light

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Grand architecture everywhere

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Smithsonian Natural History Museum

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Nice touch above the walkway

For more pictures of Washington DC, click here.

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