anthony's briefcase used to be my mom's work briefcase. in one of the trips to my parents house, he laid claim to the item destined for good will. since he acquired it, he has taken it on every family vacation we've had, loading it with all his favorite possessions and distractions, that will fit into its rectangular space.

when the family is not traveling he stores his money in it (when ...

aleo, minutes into his summer break.

this time next year i will have one child (bella) moving to highschool, one child (alex) moving to junior high and one child (anthony) never attending school with a sibling again. while i'd like to celebrate the maturation of my children, there are certain things about our current life i like a lot and will forever miss, like seeing my boys walking in ...

on the kids birthdays marty hides slips of paper around the house that (1) number and (2) read the number they are turning (e.g. reference). the night before bella's birthday this year she said not only did her mother not need to do it but she shouldn't do it because she, bella, had outgrown that. marty sagely ignored this commandment and ...

before marty went back to work, she took care of getting the kids to school. the one battle i heard more than any other took place over shoes, namely, where are they? i could describe to you the variety of places missing shoes had been found but (a) the internet does not have enough space for the inventory and (b) you wouldn't believe me anyway (e.g. one time the left and right shoe weren't even i ...

i've said before if i could solve one of life's mysteries, i would research the law of attraction, namely where each of us get our wiring to like who/what we like.

if i could research another topic it would be what happens to the natural joy and enthusiasm for life that our babies seem to be born with. when i drop my boys off at school, i stick around before the final bell rings and the k...

LIFE magazine recently asked the question "is this the happiest photo ever made?" (link). the suggesting winning image was taken by one Alfred Eisenstaedt, picture below.



given a daily ritual i have of looking at another photo, my answer of no came quick as my preference quickly turns to the below photo, Burst of Joy taken by Slava "Sal" Veder, on March 17, 1973 and is captioned, "Lt. Col. Robert Stirm, is greeted by his family, returning home after more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam." (fuller back story).



upon digging further i was glad (and affirmed) to see time's more exhaustive list included my Burst of Joy choice as part of their fuller list of 20 timeless, joyful photos.

biking one or more of the kids to art-hill in the bike carrier or a beautiful day for some lazing in the grass and kite flying will stand, for me, as one of the more picturesque and quintessential moments of having young kids. few memories warm me like the safe and warm times these days brought and this image takes me back, right back to that hill at that moment. ...

anthony's first few years in school, pre-school that is, were a bit tumultuous, mostly for his teachers. there was the time in the first week of school he switched classes because he saw something more interesting happening in the room they walked by than the one he was part of. since it was the first week of school it took the teachers awhile to (a) figure out he wasn't part of this class and the ...

the above picture shows bella and alex reading in the neighbor's jungle gym, probably on a weekend we were house or dog sitting. this custom-made but simple play structure was in place when we moved in and still stands today, fifteen years later (and soon to be four families) later.

a few houses down the way a family built an extravagant play structure for their two girls that included s ...

aleo turning the photographic tables around. he is ever thoughtful like that. ...

before having children i never got all the fuss around newborns, whether it was ladies gathered around a co-worker who brought their new baby in to show off or a gaggle of folks hovering over a stroller. now that i've had my own and experienced the miracle that is the reproduction, birth and development of a human i'm right there with them cooing and complimenting with the lot of them. in fact, i ...

as of today, 3/6/2014, i am the father of a teen-aged daughter.

a lot of people have been giving us warning glances and telling us to brace for the next bit of road. thus far, while we do see the occasional dustup, it has not been all that bad. i believe a contributing factor is marty and i have never subscribed to the 'it's gotta be this way' mentality regarding any facet of parenting. w ...

i don't know how it is but this photo seems, already, like something that happened a lifetime ago. the room itself has seen three renovations. the girl in the booster seat turns thirteen this week. and the boy eating rice-mush in the baby seat now reads books to his little brother and is a star defenseman on his school's soccer team. and better than seven years ago, that cute little greenhouse on ...

when marty chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids it was, like for many in that position, a most hard decision to make. would you be fulfilled? could you handle the isolation? could you shoulder giving your life so completely to your children (people who will most likely not recognize or acknowledge your sacrifice for about thirty years)? could you manage to maintain your own identity ...

this recent post by dan martin stands as one of my favorite-ever facebook posts. granted, i've only ever read seventeen facebook post. still, it's one of the best i've seen. beautiful and thoughtful work dan. kudos.

this is from, i believe, anthony's first year of dad lunches, which means his first year of pre-school. he looks so small it's hard to imagine him going to school any sooner. i can't recall exactly what these lunches sounded like but would pay top-dollar for a recording of one of our conversations. i imagine it would have dealt with what happened at his school earlier in the day and week and me pr ...

lots of young boys get their full heads of hair and thick eyelashes complimented. alex was additionally and routinely told how good he looked in dresses. heck, he looked so good he could even affix rubber wristbands around his biceps and still make it seem sensible and stylish. ...

i heard of the greatest christmas tradition this week. the husband of a woman i work with, since the year they got married, has saved a section of the stump from their family christmas tree. he dates the wooden discs, adding significant detail(s) from the year in his custom scrawl. the end result is a rich and personal presentation on their family mantle. this discovery snuck in just before year's end as the idea i most wish was my own. the man to credit for this excellent bit of creativity and foresight is one joe erker. in case it is not apparent, i couldn't be more envious of the thoughtful gift he has made for his family and the future generations it will surely touch.

and, if that large centerpiece stump with the single word POP on it doesn't elicit emotion from you, wether you personally know who pop was or not, you are not properly wired (or you haven't yet lost one of the most important people in your life). powerful stuff. as the movie says, life is beautiful.

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for all the great culture and recreation and cuisine and entertainment within walking distance of our home, my children's most beloved community amenity is our local fro-yo. i will never be able to verbalize how dour this makes me.

of course in my day, our monthly trips to baskin robbins on College Ave were a for sure highlight of my summer-time youth. and my behavior was just as consiste ...

we are getting ready to re-do our backyard. we began this operation a few years ago, initially by pulling up a fifty year old brick patio whose bricks had drifted apart as much as the alleged super-continent pangea. after preparing to move onto phase two of the project—the grading, tilling, and sodding of the former plot—the children protested loudly. during the work they had found som ...

another semi-related story to the everyman deals in the buildup to the contest. in discussing the early motivation to get art, i mentioned going to an art fair and buying some photos for my newly purchased (and bare) home. during the transaction i struck up a conversation with the photog's wife who also served as his manager. she mentioned the newly forming web and their need to get her husband's work online but confessed they were having problems with it. having recently gotten into the game i gave her my sympathy admitting there was a lot of mystery to in using this new medium well, especially in the arts. but i waved my arm towards their wall of photography and said their task was simpler than most as the biggest thing they had to do was stay out of the way of her husband's amazing photography and let the art wash over the user. she conceded to the sense of the approach but gave the oft-used 'easier said than done' in reply. looking over the man's stunning work hanging on the temporary panels of his booth, various treatments for porting the images to the web came to mind. i asked her if she would be interested in an exchange—a web design for some prints (the prints were quite pricey for a fellow who just bought his first home). i added if they didn't like my suggestions they wouldn't owe anything in return. if they did, i would let them determine the quantity and size of prints they felt fair in exchange. she smilingly agreed.

as is the way with true inspiration in a matter of days i had produced a site design i thought would suit them well. i packaged up several screen shots and emailed them to the woman. as is the case whenever you share your artistic creations i sat back and awaited their reaction. none came. not after a day. not after three days. not after two weeks. i obviously took the silence as a solid rejection of my work and will say it injured my confidence in the craft and vigor for the trade more than i'd like to admit. i tried to push the failure out of my mind but the taunting notion routinely skipped through the forefront of my awareness like a teasing classmate.

then on a bored weekend night months later—i said it maimed me to embarrassing degrees—i pulled up the photog's site to try to see what they could like in their present design that my work did not improve upon. after the page loaded i stared at not the faltering design i had looked to replace, but the design i had sent them, albeit a clumsy implementation of it. i stared at the page using my design for several minutes trying to make sense of what i was seeing. i scrolled to the footer and about pages looking for a mention of credit. i found none.

Anger took the Rejection that had been moping around my brain by the collar and threw her out the front door with a flailing kick in the ass. the few times Recognition's bright face dared to knock on the door to celebrate the acceptance of our design Anger turned her away with a rough push in the shoulder.

i talked to marty about what happened. she told me to call them and say that its a sad world when one creative steals the work of another creative and especially after one supported the other by buying their work. i silently listened to marty's prudent advice but instead said things like, "nah, it doesn't really matter" or "if you have to say those words to an adult they won't matter". so i did nothing. well, that's not entirely true. every month or two i'd pull the website up and look at my design and feel the anxiety of emotions that sputtered and flared.

then the email campaign began. every few months i'd receive an email from this photographer announcing his latest prints and inviting me to see them on his newly designed website. to add to it, they even modeled the email campaign using my design. after the third email, i sent a polite request to be removed from their list and the following email exchanges took place. the two things i learned from this ordeal are:

1. every time i get myself worked up over something, it is almost always for naught in the end.
2. when marty is kind enough to offer advice, i should be sensible enough to use it because it is, also, almost always spot-on counsel.

in honor of the everyman release, i'm devoting the week to everyman related matters (that add to details missed in the everyman story told a few months back). today i'm sharing two of the most noteworthy bits of history:

1. the original photograph
i can put hands on every single image ever entered into the photo contest, but miserably, i have lost the image that began it all—the image from chris mcgrath's coffee table taken of his brother in law taking a giant bite from a plum. the only remnant i have from what i sometimes call "the original entry" that sparked it all is from the 1st everyman where i used the image in the masthead.



2. the kottke explosion
then there was the post heard around the web. every time i the tell the story i obviously mention how simple and unadorned the mention that brought the everyman to the world was. jason kottke's wonderful brevity allows me to repeat it, verbatim, in each re-telling. what that pithy three-word link did for the everyman speaks to the power and potential of the world wide web which can still surprise when we see it flex its muscles in ways we weren't expecting.

after we returned from our family ski trip to utah last march i announced at dinner i wanted each person in the family to write up a list of ten thankfuls they had about the trip that we could send to the family who opened their home to us. all three children groaned saying that was too hard. my knee-jerk response was to say that was non-sense given the amazing week we just experienced and that i ...

anthony and i were walking home from picking up take-out dinner. anthony always walks on any walls or ledges along any route he travels. this particular walk host a variety of such obstacles. on one of the less perilous balancing acts, he came upon this unusual show of artistry. he stopped, taking it in. he commented on how good the 'drawer' did and the beauty of the woman. i agreed. he asked if i ...

for me, one of the hardest adjustments of parenthood was having people touching me and my stuff all the time. and when i say this you're probably imagining clean, healthy and groomed humans but that's not always the case. it turns out children prove as slippery as the weather and one day might gift you a beautiful gerber baby day while the next deals you a mucus-plugged nose or diarrhea filled foo ...