Celebrations & Holidays Archives

December 2, 2011December 3, 2011

Hutson’s Christmas Display

I was whining to Brother Mark this evening that I was sleepy and didn’t have any idea what I was going to post in the morning. He suggested I go looking for Christmas lights and decorations. Mother and I needed to make a quick run to the grocery store, so we headed out. I figured Hutson’s traditional display would be a sure bet. We pulled up just as Town Crier Darryl Morgan and his escort, Betty Morgan, made an appearance in front of the store. Bingo! Early bedtime.

Sky cooperates

When I made my first frame, it was yellow like the world had been eating carrots. Recognizing that most the light was coming from incandescent light bulbs, I went into the Nikon D40’s menu and switched Color Balance from Automatic to Incandescent and dialed in the maximum amount of color correction. I could have done the same thing in PhotoShop, but it’s better if the quality is at least close before you start playing around.

The sky had a natural blue cast at sunset, but the menu correction I did boosted the blues even more. (That’s the last of the photo geek-speak.)

One of those Cape coincidences

Here are some of the folks I ran into (you can see them in the gallery):

Abby Meyers, 5, and her grandmother, Melody Hutson;
Simon, 7, and Ben, 5, Edmunds along with their dad and grandmother.
Montgomery Bank bell ringer Becka Hollis

I was ready to call it a night. I looked around one last time and saw a toddler in a stroller who looked just a little older than my 8-month-old Grandson Graham. I grabbed a couple of frames under some miserable light at a super low shutter speed. He was grooving to the music, so I was afraid they’d be blurry. Since I had gone to that much trouble, I asked his mother his name and gave her a business card.

Terra Hendrickson looked at the card, then she looked at me, said, “You sat next to us on an airplane.” Indeed, she was right. Tarra and Roscoe – now a year old – were seatmates on Cape Air at the end of July. They were on the way to see hubby Karl’s parents in Alaska. I was en route to St. Louis, West Palm Beach and Seattle. She had lost the card I had given her on the plane, so she had never seen the photo of her and Roscoe that ran then.

Old Town Cape Christmas ornament

Old Town Cape chose Hutson’s Christmas Window as the 2011 ornament. The ornament looks pretty much like my photo (but my sky’s prettier).

Hutson’s Christmas Display photo gallery

Click any photo to maker it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

November 24, 2011May 9, 2016

Thanksgiving 2011

Family was my Number One Thing to be Thankful for in 2010, and it tops the list again in 2011.

The Steinhoff Family from Florida, Missouri, Colorado and Oklahoma managed to make it back to Cape to celebrate Mother’s 90s Birthday Season. Son Matt shot this group photo. (Click on any image to make it larger.)

He had everything set up earlier in the morning to do the photo in the back yard, but the sun moved and the shadows were bad. He shuffled us over to the side yard where the light was better, but still spotty. He worked fast, mainly because so many of his subjects were young and prone to crankiness and because so many of his subjects were old and he didn’t know how many takes he’d have left.

Matt’s last perfect family portrait

He took much longer to shoot this one of the Florida branch on Easter Sunday 2009. In fact the video I recorded of him arranging everyone, running to get into the photo before the self-timer tripped, checking the camera display, yelling at various of us for minor infractions, then redoing it time and time again, runs 7:46, something that a couple of commenters have complained about. They didn’t get it: it was SUPPOSED to be long. That’s why it’s titled How to Shoot a Family Portrait (In the Real World).

Here’s where you go to see still photos of the extravaganza and / or subject yourself to a 7:46 min video.

They’re both iPad proficient

I’m thankful that my grandsons have had a change to meet and get to know their Great-Grandmother. Malcolm gets to see his great-grandmother only once or twice a year, but they’re close enough that she can kibitz his computer game. There’s not that big a gap between 90 and seven, I suppose, when you both know how to use iPads. Malcolm is Matt and Sarah’s son.

Graham – the newest addition

Mother journeyed to Florida shortly after Graham was born in February (remember our Road Trip back). Graham doesn’t know a stranger. I have a snippet of video right after this still shot was taken that shows him breaking out in a huge grin and reaching for her.

Both of my sons keep in regular contact with their grandmother by phone calls and email. Even though they didn’t grow up in Cape, they feel the same attraction to the area that I do. Graham belongs to Adam and Carly.

Missing from the photo, but not forgotten

Even though Matt wasn’t much older than this when Dad died in 1977 – and Adam hadn’t even been born yet – both boys have heard so many stories and memories that it’s almost like they grew up with him.

Dad may not be in the photograph at the top of the page, but he’s still in the picture for us.

November 11, 2011November 24, 2011

Veterans Day Flag Display

Mother suggested we swing by North County Park to see the flag display on the way to run some errands. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that crazy about doing it because I shot it Veterans Day 2010.

Here’s something I learned at my third newspaper: Things are going to keep coming around like clockwork. When you shoot an event the first time, it’s exciting. Well, maybe not exciting, but interesting. When the anniversary of that event comes around the next year, you have to scratch to drum up some enthusiasm for it. Just before the third iteration of it came around, I found myself gathering up my portfolio and sending out resumes. There was always a little cog in my head that would click when I recognized it was time to head out to a new newspaper.

Finally, by the time I got to The Palm Beach Post, I figured out that all newspapers were screwed up and, when you find one that’s a little less screwed up than most, you should stay. When I was coming up on my magic three-year anniversary at The Post, they made me department head, so I could send other photographers out to shoot that recurring assignment.

Headed off to active duty

So, anyway, we ended up at the park. Even though I had been there, done that, it’s such a moving spectacle, particularly on a windy day, that I had to get the camera out. There was a photographer and a young couple dressed in Navy duds blocking traffic while she was taking their photo. When I say “young,” I mean young enough that they looked like they should be playing with plastic boats in the bathtub, not going off to active duty, which is where they were headed.

It’s considered bad form to horn in on another photographer’s shoot, so I took this from a discrete distance and then left them alone.

Just back from Afghanistan

When I got out of the car, a young guy wearing a black Airborne T-shirt had just taken some photos and was walking back to his car.

“Sure is purty, ain’t it,” I said in passing.

“It is to me,” he said. “I just got back from Afghanistan.”

All I had time to say before he disappeared was, “Thank you for your service.”

Missourian blogger James Baughn beat me to the story this morning, but I can’t improve on his headline, “Blog without words: Veterans Day flag display at Cape County Park North.”

More flag photos

Be warned: if I’m in Cape next year at this time, I’m either going to have to get my portfolio ready to mail or I’m going to have to skip going to North County Park. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the picture to move through the gallery.

November 10, 2011November 11, 2011

Perry County Servicemen

I was spending some more time up at the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum this week interviewing some folks for an exhibit and book I’m working on. The museum volunteers were scurrying around getting ready for their annual Christmas Tree display, so I prowled around looking at other exhibits. My eye was drawn to a set of uniforms worn by servicemen from the Altenburg and Frohna region. It looked perfect for a Veterans Day post.

I thought one of the men looked familiar. It turned out he was Robert Fiehler, who died Nov. 10, 2009, not long after I had spent some time talking with him in the museum. A nice guy. I photographed Mrs. Fiehler setting up the Christmas tree exhibit last year. (She’s in the first photo on the page.) His son, Gerard, has been my guide to area landmarks and people.

“Hell, SOMEBODY’S got to go”

Gerard has a lot of Bob’s mannerisms and gestures. It’s easy to see the father in the son. Gerard said, “I remember when Dad found out he wasn’t going to make it much longer, he said, ‘Us World War II guys are going at 1,500 a day. Hell, SOMEBODY’S got to go.'”

Gerard said his dad was the last of the World War II vets from the area to have served in Germany; the other survivors – and he thought there might only be three – had been in the Pacific.

Good German names

The East Perry County boys who went off to serve had good German names like Fiehler, Schlichting, Gerler, Schmidt and and Petzoldt.

The Cape Girardeau and Perry County German-Americans went off to defend a country that didn’t take kindly to their heritage. During World War I, many of the churches stopped having services in German and families spoke the language only at home because of anti-German sentiments.

The Deutscher Volkfreund, a German-language newspaper in Jackson, which eventually became The Jackson Pioneer, was forced to switch to English when a mob gathered at the office and threatened to destroy all the German type. (The Pioneer hired me as a reporter / photographer /engraver / all-around flunky when I was a junior in high school. I wasn’t hired for my German surname; I was hired because I’d work cheap and was a Barry Goldwater Republican.)

Altenburg Militia: “Better bring your lunch”

The men of Altenburg, hearing of mobs burning German books in churches and schools in the area, formed the Altenburg Militia. When the word came that the community was going to be attacked, they responded, “You better bring a lunch, because it’s going to take all day.” The attack never came.

Photo Gallery of Service Uniforms

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery. This exhibit moved me much more than a lot of similar displays. Maybe because I actually knew one of the men whose uniform I was looking at or it might have been the pairing of the actual uniform with a photo of the man who wore it. Take a few minutes to thank a veteran for his or her service.

Here’s a link to my post from last Veterans Day.