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The Falling Man

New York, September 11, 2001.

It was journalistic instinct that pulled Richard Drew to the Twin Towers when everyone else was running away. The veteran photographer did what he always did – take pictures. And from the scores of photographs he took that day came the iconic image that would become known as The Falling Man.

It’s a disturbing image that is seldom published. I know of it because of an article I came across in Esquire Magazine by Tom Junod. Journalism at its best, even when capturing the most horrific scene you would never want to imagine.

The photograph is an anomaly, one frame of many in a sequence that shows the true horror suffered by dozens of victims forced to choose how they were to die on that sunny September morning. The person in this particular photograph appears calm, accepting his fate. An anomaly of a single click of the shutter.

The photograph is also an accident in symmetry. The Falling Man is vertical, in line with the architectural lines of the Towers. To his left, the North Tower, to his right, the South Tower.

It’s a controversial image, the discussion of which can quickly devolve into a bitter geopolitical debate. Some think the photograph should never be published. I understand that. Some will say that Tom Junod’s article doesn’t tell the whole story. Of course it doesn’t. How you feel about the photograph, how you feel about the story, is your business.

But you will feel something. You will feel something very strongly.

It’s the power of photographs. It’s the power of words.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/

November 12, 2018 0

Kimo

In my novel Heather Girl, there is a photographer, Avery Graham, who specializes in capturing the true essence of a person through real-life, gritty portraits.

Meet Kimo Williams, an accomplished musician, photographer, and Vietnam vet. We like to say everyone has a story to tell, but in the case of Kimo Williams, I’m sure it’s true. Probably many stories to tell.

Though his background is different than Avery Graham’s, their photography work is similar. (Yes, I know Avery Graham’s photographs exist only in my imagination, but they’re very vivid to me.)

Despite being part of a brutal and horrific war, Kimo Williams was able to find beauty in Vietnam. It’s what drew him back many years after the war had ended. His photographs of the people of Vietnam, from his original tour of duty and his return trips, are featured in an exhibit he calls Faces of Vietnam at his studio in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. There are lots of smiling people – kids and adults – but I’m drawn to those who aren’t smiling, those who seem to have something on their minds. Like they know something. Like they have a story to tell.

See for yourself.

Here’s the link to an article in the Sunday Gazette-Mail.

Here’s the link to his website, KimoPics.

November 11, 2018 0

Ronceverte uncovered.

church 01 An unusual church, perched high on a hill overlooking the small town Ronceverte, West Virginia.

The potential: Ronceverte’s version of New York’s High Line Park.

A hundred steps to nowhere.

November 2, 2018 2

can you summarize your story in a single, compelling sentence?

I was at a conference last week and ran into a friend who knew I was a writer and he asked what I was working on. I told him I was putting the final touches on my novel Heather Girl.

“What’s it about?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s about a middle-aged woman who is fighting Huntington’s disease and she just learned that her father has been paroled for the murder of her mother.” As I was saying those words, I realized that it was not a very compelling summary of my novel. Yes, that’s what it’s about, but why would anybody want to read such an obvious bummer ?

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s a real feel-good story.”

I failed my elevator speech. I realized I needed a better way to summarize the story. How about this?

As her family disintegrates and her health begins to fail, Heather Roth searches for answers, but instead finds hope and compassion that give her life meaning.

Ok, so it’s still not going to fly off the shelves like a James Patterson novel, but at least it’s not so ridiculously bleak.

Then, if they want to know more, there’s the cover blurb:

Heather Roth has little to look forward to. Her two sons, who have occupied most of her adult life, have grown and left her alone in the house in which she grew up. Her ex-husband, for whom she still has feelings despite his abusive nature, lives hundreds of miles away. And she’s being treated for Huntington’s, a disease that ravaged her mother, and for which she knows there is no cure.

Then the news she wasn’t expecting. Her father is being paroled from prison in Texas where he has been serving a sentence for the murder of his wife, Heather’s mother.

She’ll do anything to keep him out of her life, but when she is forced to take him into her home, she learns that the lives of her family weren’t what they seemed to be. A story of tragedy and heartbreak, Heather Girl, delivers a whisper of hope and an abundance of compassion, even in the darkest hours.

October 20, 2018 7

a birthday

sids birthday for web

“For through wisdom your days will be many,
and years will be added to your life.”

The photo is of A. S. “Sid” Morgan, maybe taken in 1973, maybe his 90th birthday. I suppose I could try to count the candles. If it was 1973, he would die less than a month later.

This is the kind of photograph that inspires stories, spurs the imagination of a writer. But Sid lived the adventures. He built boats and floated down the Mississippi on hunting expeditions back in the early 1900s. In 1926, he opened a museum that over the years became legendary.

You’d never guess he lived that kind of life from the picture. He looks tired. The house he’s in, once a proud mansion on the bottom land near the Kanawha River, looks tired. I was in the house many times as a child and the memories are still strong. Unusual memories. The smell of the soft, slowly decaying wood of the front porch, patches of tin covering the holes. The feel of the air in the house. Cool, until you walked into the kitchen and the gas heaters overwhelmed with stuffy warmth and lingering fumes. And the quiet. Sometimes the house was full of people, full of kids, but I remember the times where it was only Mom and Sid, our family visiting quietly, the stillness of it all unsettling.

It’s gone now. The house demolished shortly after Sid’s death. Across from where the house sat is the massive John Amos Power Plant. No hint of what happened there years ago.

But the stories are still there, just waiting to be written.

October 12, 2018 4