The following post serves to provide easy access to a few of my writing samples. Some samples were originally accompanied by photographs or even video, and have been published in a variety of venues.
Family Circus
A Small, Family-Owned Sign Shop
Banacom Signs colorfully epitomizes the terms “small” and “family-owned” business. The small, cramped, yet ever busy, sign and graphics shop typically consists of owner Susan Curtis, 46, her daughter Jill, 19, and sole employee Chris Schulz, 27. Curtis’s husband, Rick, 52, a construction contractor, son, Ricky, 16 and daughter, Heather, 22, make their appearances felt on a daily basis, not through typical business operations, but through family obligations and crises.
Located in Warminster, a south-central Bucks County suburb of Philadelphia, Banacom Signs has awkwardly sat along York Road for nearly two decades. The past five years Curtis has owned and operated the business, with a little help and arguably equally as much hindrance from her always animated family. Her enthusiastic attitude and far-reaching involvement in the community has boosted the business far beyond what it has ever achieved, yet constant family obligations, between township sports and the frequent typical suburban child’s crisis, keep Curtis from keeping up with the workload. Her hands wade through a pool of papers to find her mouse and keyboard. Customers return two and three times, only to leave empty handed, with the promise their signs will be done in the near future. Somehow she maintains a friendly and mutually respectful relationship with most of them. Schulz and Jill jokingly wonder why anyone comes back.
The atmosphere in the shop is rarely calm. Although the business has clearly outgrown the small shop, Curtis refuses to relinquish the location of high visibility, cramping the space the trio has to work in. Screaming matches between Curtis and petite but fiery Jill are almost daily occurrences. Boisterous laughter, dancing and trivia contests are certain daily occurrences. Occasionally it appears as though some real work is being performed.
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Two people and their things.
Maria Magdelena “Helen” Moser, a spry centurion, crochets like it’s her job — literally. The suburban Philadelphia resident dedicates more than six hours a day, every day, to crocheting. Some variation of a blanket, hat, slipper or other item may be dangling from her perpetually tapping crocheting needles, depending on what’s in demand from family and friends. Impending weddings and births keep her busy with white afghans and blue or pink baby blankets.
But most of the time she’s crocheting tiny hats for infants in the neo-natal intensive care unit of St. Christopher’s and Temple children’s hospitals in Philadelphia. She even crochets blankets for infants, not fortunate enough to overcome their initial challenges, to be laid to rest in.
Moser has been wielding a pair of crocheting needles for more than 90 years, since she was a second grader in Ludwigshafen, Germany. She learned the skill from the nuns.
“I was always hanging around the nuns,” she says. “My mother was afraid I was going to become a nun.” Moser gently laughs and takes a few seconds gaze into her childhood.
It wasn’t simply a recreational activity then, though. The First World War was being fought cacophonously overhead. Her father, a medic, had been killed on a battlefield in France. Moser and her sister, two years her junior, were forced to crochet black stockings to supplement to their sparse wardrobe. “My sister and I hated them!” She said with vehemence, before offering a warm smile.
About six years later, shortly after her mother remarried, Moser and her family emigrated from Germany and arrived at Ellis Island, her crocheting needles securely packed in her steamer trunk. Although she’s gone through countless pair since then, Moser rarely goes anywhere without her small tote bag containing, in the least, a skein of yarn and a pair of crocheting needles.
Once a week at the retirement community in which she now resides in the Philadelphia suburb of Hatboro, Penn., Moser leads a crocheting club of “about 14″ women. Next week they will meet with a woman to make arrangements for the club to crochet hats for cancer patients.
When asked why crocheting is such an integral part of her life now, she immediately fires off, “It kills time!”
After a few seconds of thought she admits that it also relaxes her. “And I like to do for sick people,” she adds, her German accent obvious for the first time since we began talking, “especially the babies.”
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Tens of thousands have gotten a charge out of music that, in one way or another, originated from Matt Hanemann’s guitar.
Through bands like Krhissy, The Deadly and Metroplex, Hanemann has been filling ears in a wide variety of venues — from dank, crowded basements to decadent ballrooms – with his crunching distorted chords and screaming notes all over the US for nearly two decades. And they can all thank the early 1980s hardcore punk band Minor Threat; but not because of their high level of influence (which they have) or their innovative and complex song writing (which they did not have). Yet they were the reason Hanemann initially picked up a guitar when he was in 8th grade.
“There was always a classical guitar of my dad’s kicking around the house, and one day I was inspired to try to figure out a tune stuck in my head. I was listening to Minor Threat at the time, and thankfully, those songs weren’t all that hard to figure out.”
The ease of cracking the tune gave Hanemann a sense of accomplishment, yet the vast capabilities of the instrument presented the level of challenge he thrived on.
Like a biologically predisposed addict, Hanemann was hooked from that very moment. The next 18 years would be a path of exploration and self-discovery, never taking a guitar lesson. “I think because I was self-taught it made it easy for me to innovate within the boundaries of my scope of knowledge, rather than be limited by what was being taught, or what had been previously written.”
To many a musical instrument is simply a hobby, or pastime. To others, like Hanemann, the instrument is a bodily organ, communicating with the brain in both chemical and electrical impulse.
“It does many things for me. It’s simultaneously my therapy, comfort in solitude, as well as a tool in social and creative situations, and it represents a simple little breakdown of how to learn or teach myself anything in life.”
When asked what he gets out of performing on stage, the mild-mannered Hanemann simply points to what I had just scribbled in my notebook and with a crooked, shy smile and says, “See above.”
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Another CES Hype: Superzooms
Another Consumer Electronics Show has passed, and spread out before us are all the hyped product and feature announcements that we will likely have to wait months to indulge in. As much as innovation is the focus, so is upping the technological ante. One of those antes this year was lens zoom, once again redefining the term “superzoom.” I see your 18x, and raise you (at least) 6x.
Superzoom defines any camera or lens with a focal length range exceeding convention. As one would imagine, what may be considered superzoom one year can easily fall into the category of convention the next, with the introduction of a more impressive range. While SLR-toting pros have been left out of the zoom range race — due to the sacrifice in optic quality – consumers have been treated to a progressive increase in focal length range over the years. Five years ago focal range topped out at about 10x (12x if you count the seldom seen Konica Minolta Dimage Z5). In October of 2007 Olympus released the SP-560 UZ (Ultra Zoom) with an industry-leading 18x range. March of the following year Olympus released the SP-570 with a formidable 20x zoom. Of comparable cameras only the Nikon Coolpix P80 came close with a range of 18x.
The 4x “superzoom” of the early 2000s seems laughable compared to the 18x-20x of today’s standards.
Today’s standards, however, are about to change significantly. At CES, Kodak announced the April 2009 release of its 12MP EasyShare Z980, armed with a 24x Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon Image Stabilized Optical Zoom Lens (26mm-624mm).
Unfortunately for Kodak, the Z980 won’t have the opportunity to bask in the shine of superiority. Olympus announced that one year after the release of the 20x Olympus SP-570 – and one month before the release Kodak’s 24x – it will continue its focal length range dominance in March of 2008 and let loose the 12MP SP-590, armed with a 26x superzoom (26mm-676mm).
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House Swapping
Congratulations! By choosing to live or own a home in Lake Tahoe you have gained membership into an exclusive club that provides you with free accommodations in such coveted travel destinations as Australia and Hawaii. No catch – unless you consider letting strangers stay in your home free of charge a catch.
“House swapping,” a term that is believed to have entered the U.S. vernacular in the 1950s, is a phenomenon in which two sets of vacationers from separate locales will arrange to stay in each other’s homes in lieu of hotels. The obvious appeal is the economic advantages, but many cite the experience of living in someone else’s home is of equal appeal. It gives one the perspective of an inhabitant of that area and an immersion into the area’s culture, something a hotel cannot afford. A swapper often finds a refridgerator full of food, a car to utilize, and occassionally even the friends with which their counterparts keep company.
House swapping reached mainstream appeal in the 1970s. Interested vacationers payed a fee to be included on a mailing list which listed all potential swappers, specifications of their home and desired locations they’d like to travel. Members were all over the globe. In the late 1990s house swapping spiked in popularity again. With the networking capabilities of the Internet nearly ubiquitous, house swapping was easier and more accessible than ever before. Multiple online services cropped up. HomeExchange.com, one of the most popular services today, was started in 1992 by four experienced swappers and has steadily grown ever since. Today HomeExhange.com boasts more than 24,000 listings in 124 countries and territories.
Despite the abundance of potential swappers, the ease of finding a suitable swap ranges significantly, depending on where one lives.
Incline Village residents Grace and Bill Deters are quite familiar with this reality. The Deters first attempted house swapping while living in Wayzata, Minnesota. As seasoned travelers they were excited by the concept as soon as they heard about it, and jumped right in. But no one wanted to come to Wayzata.
Six years ago, after the Deters relocated Incline, Grace received a promotional email from HomeExchange.com. Their change in setting led Grace to believe they might have more success with house swapping this time around. “I thought Tahoe would be different and it certainly was. We had more requests for exchanges than we used.”
Not surprisingly, Lake Tahoe appeals to travelers from all over the world. More than 70 members of HomeExchange.com list Lake Tahoe as one of their four most desired destinations. As a HomeExchange.com member living or owning a home in Lake Tahoe one would have a choice of destinations ranging from Australia to Austria, Hawaii to Southern California. And there’s no telling how many of the 23,925 remaining members would jump at the chance to stay in Lake Tahoe.
At this point you may be sold on the appeals of house swapping, but it is not hard to imagine you might be thinking about, “one of the big fears people have in exchanging. What about my stuff?” As Grace puts it.
But Grace will assure you, your stuff should be the least of your worries. The Deters erred on the side of human decency and were not disappointed. In both of their swaps “people took wonderful care of my house … I didn’t lock up anything. I had china, sterling, everything out, and my house was very well taken care of … nothing missing. It was clean when I returned.”
What you should be worried about are the details that may have been strategically left out of the listing. On the Deters’ Christmas swap to the Hawaiian island of O’ahu two years ago, the home owners left out a few details some would deem important. “The people failed to mention that they had three dogs, three birds and about 10 fish and turtles in an aviary. And when the sun went up, the birds started squealing. When there was any noise outside one of the dogs started barking and then they all barked,” Grace lamented.
To make matters worse, one of the dogs was not house broken, doing “her stuff all over the house” and ruining the Deters’ plans to island hop.
The Deters were not deterred, however, and decided to make a second swap to the Southern California beach town of Coronado. Once again, a small detail some, like Grace, may consider to be quite important, was omitted. “They didn’t tell us they had a cat, and I’m allergic to cats.”
That and the fact that every inch of storage space, including the garage, closets and drawers were “jam packed” has led Grace to the decision to allow her HomeExchange.com annual membership to expire. “I’m not going to do swaps again.” The Deters do, however, still very much prefer to stay in other’s homes versus hotels, and have had much success with VRBO.com (Vacation Rental By Owner).
While Grace does not condemn house swapping, she does have a few words of advice for potential swappers like the Duggans. The Duggans, a retired couple from Truckee, decided to give house swapping a try when the global devaluation of the U.S. dollar put a strain on their European and Canadian RV trips.
To the Duggans, Grace warns, “Ask a lot of questions before you do it. Because when you look on the Internet … you think you really know, but when you get there, [it can be] quite shocking.”
