I’m overextended exhausted and worn out. I’ve been spinning my wheels and trying to succeed in many directions or endeavors. They are all interrelated and connected together. I’m attempting to pull together all my resources and research and presenting it in final form. My goal would be formidable in itself, but I’m attempting it while living an average middle class life, while raising a large family. It’s hard and I often think that I’m fantasizing when I think that I’ll have success. I’ve been living on begged, borrowed and inherited money for five years now. No matter how hard I’ve worked it never has been enough.
Larry Norman called me and told me that the CD’s came in that used my photos on the cover and the inner booklet. We went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant that he likes to frequent. His son Michael and Carey came as well and he gave me a half dozen copies of the Larry Norman Live at Cornerstone 2001. We got into a discussion about Greek culture and when I mentioned the battle of Thermopylae pass and the 300 Spartans none of them were familiar with it. There was a 1962 film of the event and in 2007 a popular contemporary version if “300 Spartans” would be made. I read the account in Herodotus’s “Histories” that I purchased in graduate school.
You would expect it to be an innocuous subject but for some reason it upset both Michael and Larry. Larry asked me to explain the story so I did and before I finish Larry interrupted and concluded with “I suppose that they succeeded in holding them off?” When I responded with a negative and said that they all died Larry was shocked. Then Michael tried to contradict me and when I repeated that they all died he angrily responded that he was talking about another story, so I just dropped the subject.
I vacillate between believing that everything will work out and knowing that it will all come crashing down on me. I’ve built a fantasy out of my dreams. I decided that I would rather be dead than to live the rest of my life without pursuing 100% wholeheartedly the dreams within me. When I was younger these dreams didn’t exist with the clarity and tangibility that they do now and I have done so. I am financially in debt up to my ears. At one of the most potentially fruitful periods of all these years my computer crashes and burns. I got the hard drive replaced but lost everything including important email. I’m four classes behind on the on line web site building class I’m enrolled in and handcoloring.com needs my scanned images.
Bonnie Raitt came to the Elsinore theater the Friday after 9/11 and I had two tickets and a photo pass to cover it. Kathy went with me and we had pretty good seats in the mezzanine along with my photo pass allowing me to go up to the stage to get some closer shots. The lighting was dim and reddish which don’t create the most desirable lighting but I had good shots at a daylight concert from four years earlier anyway. The photos were acceptable but not as sharp and evenly lit as the ones at the “Riverboat Show Queen.”
While I was looking through the Oregonian’s A&E section that came out every Friday I saw that the artist Peter Max was coming to the Portland Lawrence art gallery for a special appearance. He was going to unveil a painting of environmental senator Mark Hatfield who was also the governor of Oregon. I was doing interviews for the Wittenburg Door magazine at the time and already had a few published so I was feeling confident. I contacted the gallery and told them that I was a journalist and wanted to cover the opening night with Peter Max and interview him. They gave me the phone number of the local publicist that was handling everything.
When I told the publicist who I was and the article interview that I wanted to do she was positive and told me to come to the gallery and tell Peter Max who would be there that she would inform Max. I decided to call Larry Norman and tell him that I was going to interview Peter Max and cover his opening night. I was hoping that I could ride with him and not have to drive but he was going with his friend with the PT Cruiser whose name was Doug. Doug was sold sunglasses to convenience stores across the Northwest and made a good living doing it. Larry was leaving from Doug’s house and it was near Portland so I drove by myself and met him there.
I found a parking space a block away from the gallery and when I walked in with my camera bag I saw Peter Max talking to some people and found the gallery director. I explained who I was and even had my printed email from the publicist that he gave me the number for. He took me to Peter Max and introduced me to him. Max gave me his attention and when I began to tell him who I was with and the interview he seemed skeptical. I had all my interview questions on a sheet of paper that I printed out that I showed him. He took it and when he read it his attitude changed and he became excited to do the interview. I had done my research and was asking questions that directly related to his religious beliefs in an objective interested way.
At first he wanted to do the interview at his hotel room after the gallery closed but his girlfriend didn’t approve so we decided to do it in the backroom after the unveiling of Senator Hatfield’s painting. Larry and Doug arrived a little after me and I took photos of them looking at paintings. Both Larry and Doug purchased small paintings that measured around 11×14 for nearly three-thousand dollars each. Larry said that his was to give his mother for Christmas. I later found out that the Norman’s had a family tradition of giving each other items that were used rather than brand new so this violated that standard. At the same time Larry’s website was asking for donations to help with his medical expenses.
I shot some photos of Larry posing with Peter Max and his purchased painting along with Senator Mark Hatfield and his painting after the unveiling. Peter invited me to go into the backroom which was a storage area to do the interview. When we were still in the gallery Larry made sure that Peter knew that I was friends with him and invited himself with Doug into the backroom. At first I was irritated because it was distracting and I wanted to be alone with Max but ignored it and went on with the interview with Larry and Doug hovering over us.
Larry Norman was finally getting some recognition from the GMA (Gospel Music Association) since they were inducting him along with Elvis Presley and Keith Green into the “Gospel Music Hall of Fame.” Unfortunately it was at the same time that he was going into the hospital to have a heart defibrillator implanted in his chest so his son Michael accepted the award for him. After that Larry was out of commission for a couple of years. I got my interview with Peter Max published in the “Wittenburg Door” in the same issue that they published my interview with Ian Anderson from “Jethro Tull.”
I got the interview with Ian Anderson through one of the publicists that I know named Ann Leighton. Ann lives in the Bronx district of New York City and is one of the nicest persons to work with. She handles some of the older music artists as well as new and upcoming people. I photographed Jethro Tull two different times at L B Day amphitheater in Salem, Oregon and used my photos for the Door interview.
The post office is front page news again for the wrong reason. This time it’s because of Anthrax and the Washington DC Brentwood post office where postal workers were infected and two died from exposure. Letters were sent through the mail to senators Daschle and Leahy as well as most major media outlets. A total of 5 people died from exposure to the anthrax and it cost multi-millions of dollars to clean up all the contaminated buildings. In the end the culprit responsible for the attack wasn’t Al-Qaeda but one of our own scientists with mental problems.
One day when I came to work when I was working on Tour II (the day shift) and started at 6:00 AM I went on my first break at 8:00 AM. I sat down in the TV room to watch the news and learned that the entire capitol building was closed down yesterday because of an anthrax scare. It seems that a letter in the capitol bldg. mail room contained a suspicious white powder so people in hazmat suits were the only ones investigating. It was concluded that the suspicious powder was harmless and it was a false alarm.
Nobody in the room said a word as we all sat there until I spoke. Where do they think that the letter came from before it got to the capitol building mail room? Nobody ever told us about what was going on. Why did we have to see it on the news to learn about it? That’s why the Brentwood postal workers died, because they didn’t know that they were exposed to anthrax until it was too late. Were the statehouse workers all notified and sent to the hospital?
The next day plant manager Cliff Koch called everyone together for a meeting in the break room. He explained that postal upper management and the postal inspection service commended him for handling the anthrax incident properly. In the old days I would have pointed out the fact that I was never notified along with many others but what’s the difference anymore. Fuck it, who cares, so what, big deal.
My 35mm “Successful Photos” class was going well along with the “Hand Coloring class. After doing paid demonstrations at all the Michael’s art supply stores in north western Oregon I decided to take a chance on teaching it. The main problem was having the right photographic paper that was absorbent. Glossy, luster and most other paper surfaces won’t accept the oils and it just sits on the surface. Since I have my own dark room if the student gives me their negative I’ll print an 8×10 or 11×14 for them at half the price of “Photovision.”
The war with Afghanistan began in October and they annihilated Al-Qaeda’s training camp and after a month completely defeated the Taliban and the Northern Alliance was starting to take control. The most infamous incident that took place in Afghanistan was when football player Pat Tillman was killed after he enlisted in the army and served in multiple combat tours. We mopped up the Taliban just like it was predicted but that wasn’t the end of the conflict. We set up a puppet government just like the Russians did and have to stay to protect it while failing to get the main target, Osama Bin Laden.
This burning rage which seethes within my soul both motivates and deviates my progress on this journey called life. The pain of my agony, an agony not uncommon to man, but nevertheless an agony results in the continual crucifixion of my goals. The way and the course has been long with twists and turns, plunges and ascensions. Along the way I have accumulated skills and progeny herewith manifesting itself as who I am.
Sometimes I think that I am totally full of shit and other times I completely understand where I’m coming from. Right now I want to explain how I could conclude a delusional mystical episode with reality. I was in debt up to my eyeballs, at least as a common average everyday postal worker who moonlighted as a rock & roll journalist. I believed that proof of God’s direction would be in complete financial success. I believed this in spite of what I saw, experienced and was told about what the financial success is of rock & roll journalists unless they somehow become part of the momentary zeitgeist of some particular era.
