Meet A Stranger

Meet Monroe and Eddie

2008-06-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

Eddie and Monroe, native Bahamian fishermen, live on a 20 ft. fishing boat anchored in the creek between Chub Cay and a neighboring island in the Bahamas. Their boat is as basic as they come, and does not include a sleeping cabin or galley. Eddie and Monroe sleep outside in the covered cockpit and live off the seafood that they catch. Eddie, having grown up on the water, loves his life as a fisherman. He has a strong trust in God, and makes sure to live for the day. Because he does not have a wife or children to support, he never stresses over how much money he makes. Eddie and Monroe do not wander far from their fishing grounds. Last week for Mother's Day, Eddie traveled 90 miles to Bimini to visit his mother for the first time in eighteen years. She was so excited to see him that she couldn't stop staring at him and giving him hugs.

Eddie and Monroe catch conch, fish, lobster, and turtles, to sell to the Chub Cay Resort. Chub Cay, once an unpopulated island, was sold by the Bahamian government to the British over 40 years ago, and more recently sold to a group of wealthy American real estate investors. The group privatized the island and turned Chub Cay into one large marina and resort. Although Eddie and Monroe provide the Chub Cay Marina Resturaunt with seafood, they are not allowed to step foot on the island after dusk. Monroe says that it is typical for the Bahamian government to sell uninhabited land to Americans. The land is not in use, and the government needs the funds. Monroe obeys the rules without feeling resentment. "They purchased the land with money and have the right to make their own rules," he says. Eddie, on the other hand, does not pay attention to the rules, nor does he make a fuss about them. As a Bahamian, Eddie feels it is his natural right to move about freely on the land.

Both Eddie and Monroe agree that they like having the presence of the American Coast Guard throughout the Bahamas. The Coast Guard is able to keep a good watch on Cuba from the Bahamas. Eddie and Monroe say that Bahamians are scared of the Cubans, who like Americans, want their land desperately. However, they say that with Americans, they don't fear the threat of genocide, which they would have if a Cuban government were to take over their land. Eddie says that his people are peaceful, and do not like to fight. They have a tremendous trust that everything happens in accordance to God's overall plan. Eddie laughed at me when I asked him if he thought all Americans were as rich as the ones who visit Chub Cay. He said no, because he visited Florida once, and was able to see America firsthand. Eddie and Monroe invited me back over to their boat later on in the day for conch salad, a favorite Bahamian dish. However, we had a good weather window and decided to make the crossing to Fresh Creek, Andros, Before leaving we gave Eddie and Monroe a few potatoes, which are hard to come by in Chub Cay, and two, warm, Coors beer. In exchange, they gave us advice on fishing and jury-rigging our broken prop.

NEW WEBSITE!!!

2008-06-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

www.artbylauraparker.net

Meet Penelope

2008-04-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

Penelope moved to Key West at the age of two. The year was 1981. Her father landed a job diving for gold and hidden treasures with Mel Fisher, the famous treasure-seeker who had just found the Atocia, the Spanish gallion that had sunk off the Florida straights in the early 1800s. Penelope's parents fell in love with Key West, decided to stay, but divorced shortly after the move.

When Penelope was five, she moved onto a boat with her mother, stepfather, two older sisters and two younger brothers. Her father lived on his own boat, but still played an active father role in their lives and would often bring over lobster and crab. The boats they lived on were cheap, had no engines or sails, and didn't even move. They were anchored off the shore of Christmas Tree Island, a manmade island visible from the shores of Key West. She remembers being nine years old, playing on the beach, and her father would all of a sudden appear out of no where wearing his diving gear. He would let her breath of his diving tank. Penelope saw her father as Heman, the most handsome and strongest guy in the world who dove for gold and treasures.

Penelope remembers boat-life being a new and completely different way of life. "We were so young we just got used to it," she says. There was no notion of privacy on the boat. They peed in a bucket attached to a rope and showered with a shower bag. Her mother, stepfather and youngest brother slept in the V-birth and the other children slept in the main cabin. They did not have many toys and entertained themselves by swimming, playing cards, and taking care of their dog Bootsies' puppies. They had a couple of televisions throughout the years that didn't get much reception. "I remember spending hours trying to fix the antennas just to get Scoopy-Doo or the Smurfs," laughs Penelope. Summers were long and often her parents would go to shore and leave them alone on the boat for hours. They would find creative ways to entertain themselves with other neighborhood boat kids. The community of boater and boat children would often have camp-outs on Christmas Tree Island, where they would barbeque and wash the dishes along the shore.

During the school year, Penelope and her siblings were dropped off at the closest beach. After school they would return and hang out on the beach until their parents were ready to pick them up. Other children at school lived on boats, however, Penelope was aware that it wasn't as normal of a life as most children. It was harder for the girls to adapt to the boat life. Penelope secretly wished sometimes that she could have clean clothes and live in a house like normal children. She would get scared during storms and remembers one night in particular waking up to the boat being completely tilted on one side. She found her mother naked, hammering a screw driver into one of the water tanks to balance the boat back out.

Penelope's family celebrated holidays on the boat. Some Christmas years were more plentiful than others. In her eyes, figures such as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were a fable. But for her younger brothers sake she would play the role and make up funny stories about how the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus rode jet skis or took small skiffs to bring presents to the boat.

Now, 28, Penelope says she would still consider raising a family on a boat, but has a bigger dream of living on a farm with tons of animals. She has kindred feelings when she meets other people who grew up on a boats. "I don't know a lot of kids who at the age of eight were sitting on skiffs, wearing raincoats, trying to get back out to there homes, having to turn around three times because the rain was too hard and waves too big to make it home without toppling out into the ocean." Penelope believes that we choose the lives and parents that we are born into for whatever reason that maybe. Growing up on the boat was hard in many ways, but at the same time she feels lucky that she was not raised in the suburbs or a trailer park. "We were surrounded by so much beauty that made our struggles that much easier."

Meet Becca the Sailor

2008-04-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

Becca loves the act of sailing more than the destination. She describes her passion as an addiction. For the past six years, she has lived aboard her Bayfield 29 cutter-rigged sailboat named Angel. Becca writes a monthly sailing column for Southwinds Magazine about her journeys cruising in the Caribbean. Her column tells positive stories, full of little adventures, that make people excited about sailing.

Becca grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and spent much of her youth boating on the Great Lakes. Her mother's family are Salmi native, Laplander people who fished the Arctic Circle for hundreds of years until they were kicked of there lands and sought refuge in the Great Lakes area. Becca carries on the tradition of her native people. Recounting her youth, "I was just a tiny little baby bopping around on the boat and my parents said it would keep me quiet and calm. I knew how to row a boat, before I even learned how to ride a bike".

Growing up and even into her early twenties, Becca did not foresee her lifestyle today. " I just thought I would do what everybody in society does, get a house and career, and live the happy, happy American Dream", she explains. Becca loved college. She studied industrial and graphic design and received degrees in both communications and mechanical design. After college she worked as a product designer and purchased her first home and recreational sailboat that she took out on weekends. Soon, however, she began to notice a feeling of disappointment with her home. " I thought, Jeez, I'm American, I should be happy to have a house. I worked my butt off for that house and saved, but it just wasn't for me. It was the boat." In order to spend more time on the water, Becca dropped her job down to part-time. She started crewing for friends boats, and then found Angel, fell in love and sold the house.

Becca has met many cruising couples, but not many women who single-hand their own boat. Most male sailors are not shocked when they encounter Becca on the water. "Some sailors are curious and think, WOW, a girl, lets go out and play because there are hardly any girls out here", Becca explains. She says people on land, who don't know much about sailing, sometimes think she is a freak of nature. A woman who chooses to be alone on the unpredictable seas? But for Becca, it is about confidence and preparation. "It's not like I'm this fearless, macho person. I am not superwoman. I am an ordinary, very plain, 5-ft tall, little cheek-boned, Salmi native." Her confidence comes from being prepared, having the right safety gear, back-ups, and knowing that she has a strong, seaworthy boat.

Sooner or later Becca admits that it is inevitable that you will run into a storm. "You can prepare for the hurricanes, but you have to watch out for the nasty storms that appear out of nowhere. All of the sudden you think its a little rain cloud and then you are getting hit by winds that gust about 80 knots", says Becca. Last summer she withstood 40 minutes of hurricane force winds, hanging on one anchor . Boats around her were capsizing left and right, but she just got lucky with Angel. You can read about her storm experience in the online March issue of Southwinds Magazine.

Becca does not see herself ever getting rid of Angel. "We are pretty bonded. I love her and I will be with her for as long as I can." Her goal is to stay healthy, make as much money as she can to keep sailing, take good care of Angel, and meet other fun people out there sailing. "At first it sounds kind of selfish, but really, you find what brings you joy, the lifestyle that is true to yourself, and you will become more happy and productive in life and that joy will spread to others. Although it is not always that easy, takes courage and little steps at a time, if you find what is true to you everything will fall into place."

Free Advice

2008-03-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been giving free advice on the street here in Key West. Below are a few clips to take a listen too. More to come about this new project!

Ben, a stranger who sat down with me on the street helped me give out advice one night.

Meet Todd

2008-02-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

Its February and I have been living in Key West on a sailboat now for about four months. Its been an adjustment from Kentucky, but I am really enjoying the challenges of a new lifestyle and home base. I live simply, even pee in a bucket and shower in a cold shack! Yep, but it's great.

I am glad to finally start focusing more on the Meet A Stranger Project, which I have been neglecting! I purchased a new recorder, replacing my old dictaphone, with grants funds from Damali Ali. Damali also hooked me up with a mentor, April Baer, who is helping me learn more about audio podcasting. These are my very amateur attempts, but I hope to see them improve to be pretty cool as time goes by!

Below is an interview I did this week, with a fellow named Todd, who lives on the street. I was parked outside the library using WiFi, when I heard Todd singing Total Eclipse of the Heart. I couldn't help but ask him to sing it into my microphone....

Meet Michael

2008-01-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

I meet Michael while riding my bicycle. Michael stands outside Home Depot most days looking for work. He calls this practice, "pick up construction", and prides himself on his good sign which reads, "Will work hard, for cash today". Michael says he has learned more about home improvement by watching television shows such as Flip this House, Sell This House, and Curb Appeal.

Meet Frank

2007-10-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

In 1992, Frank lived in a van in San Francisco, where he scoured dumpsters for food, and was attempting to build his own sailboat out of old wooden skids he collected from the back of grocery stores. Frank was poor, yet happy and relaxed with life. He didn't work for someone else, giving him the flexibility to move about at his own pace. He ate well too, even if it was the waste of strangers food. "It's amazing what people throw out, especially outside of good restaurants", he says.

As luck would have it, Frank didn't have to wait long for his sailboat. One day a man who owned a sailboat died, and his wife wanting nothing to do with the boat or sailing, gave Frank the boat. Frank lived on the boat for three years in the San Francisco Bay and then, in 1997, moved to Florida, where he spent a couple years sailing up and down the east coast.

In 2000, Frank enrolled in trucker's school. As a truck driver, Frank spent five weeks at a time, often working eleven hour days,
driving coast to coast. "They ran me pretty hard into the ground by sending me to Los Angeles then San Francisco, San Francisco to Florida, Florida back to California...", he explains. And he quickly realized that the American highway system, was nothing like its coasts. Across the country, even in the desert, Frank discovered monotony. Corporate chain stores and restaurants, exit to exit. "Its amazing how somehow, they make THIS WHOLE country look exactly the SAME!"

Although truck driving was not what Frank had expected, he was able to save because he lived in a truck and had limited expenses.
With his savings, Frank purchased another sailboat. This time a 25-ft Pacific Sea Craft he named Senshi after a Japanese mystic poet. Frank plans to single-handedly sail Senshi across the Atlantic, and he equates the voyage to succeeding in life. It explains why Frank currently spends almost all day, even in the summer heat, grinding the fiberglass hull of his boat, preparing it for the journey.

Frank has had a couple of serious girlfriends, but in the past years has spent most of his time alone. He doesn't let himself get lonely though. He's not sure how he does it so well, but contributes it to self-reliance and faith. "I have faith in the Universe. I know I am an eternal being and when I die my energy will go on. Not sure how or where, but I know it will continue and everything that I seek will happen in time." He spends his free time playing chess, guitar, and just simply thinking. He is spiritual and non-materialistic.

Frank was not always this positive. It has taken him many years to become who he is today. He used to be fairly angry, a heavy drinker (he no longer drinks), and carried his past on his shoulders. When Frank was twelve, his father suddenly passed away, and his mother decided it would be better if he moved in with his grandparents. His grandparents were strict, however, and he was depressed by these new living conditions. One day, about a year after his father passed away, Frank's frustration reached a peak and he blurted out to his grandmother in the car, " I hope you die!". The very next day Frank's grandmother dropped dead of a heart attract, and Frank was left with guilt.

Frank contributes his current peace and universal understanding to motorcycling and sailing. He has loved the ocean since the first time he saw it at age seven with his father in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Frank says that all his life he has been looking for a feeling, but he is not sure how to describe it, and has not reached it yet. He believes that he will reach this unidentifiable feeling while crossing the Atlantic.

Meet Marco Lopez Polo

2007-07-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

Marco Lopez Polo works as a crewmember on an old 1944 tugboat that is docked on the island of North Bimini, Bahamas. Everyday since December, Marco has spent hours diving under the rusty tugboat in search of a small hole. He cannot leave North Bimini and return home to his wife and three children in Honduras until he finds this hole. But even if he found the hole, he still would need a welder, and on a small island of 1600 people that's hard to find. To make things worse, the owner of the tugboat, Marco's boss, ran himself into the ground financially and went bankrupt. Originally the crew was promised to make money off the barge full of goods it was carrying. But the barge sank outside Bimini and the tugboat sprung the leak. As a result Marco does not have enough money to return home from the Bahamas.

The tugboat crew spends their days working on what they can do -- small maintenance repairs such as painting and patching the steel boat. They all sleep and eat on the tugboat, eating a diet that mostly consists of rice and beans. Marco is proud of his recipe. He prefers to cook his rice and beans separate and then once cooked he adds his special ingredients: onion, garlic, salt, pepper, but not too much, and the occasional green pepper.

Marco has been to America, were he met his best friend Rex, who is dying on lung cancer from smoking too many cigarettes. He says that I remind him of a girl he once saw while visiting Rex in Ocean Beach, Florida. Growing up Marco did not spend time on the water in Honduras. He is from a small inland village. It was not until he started working in shipping, which paid well, that Marco became familiar with the deep sea. He likes the ocean though, and has many stories of swimming with sharks. Marco says the secret to swimming with sharks is to not let them know you are afraid. People often make the mistake of trying to swim away, and that is when the shark will attack because it thinks you are food.

I met Marco when the 26 ft Columbia sailboat I was traveling on collided with the tugboat after loosing control in strong harbor currents. I drew a picture for Marco of the sailboat and tugboat together to thank him letting us dock there while we went on land for food and water. He then helped us push our boat successfully back into the harbor where we waited out the currents. Three weeks later we traveled back to North Bimini to buy a new anchor and ran into Marco on the street. He was happy to see familiar faces, looked bored, and told us that not much had changed, but that he was growing more and more unsatisfied and impatient with his job. But for Marco all he can do is continue to dive and hope one day he finds the hole that will fix the boat and take him back to Honduras.

GONE SAILING

2007-04-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Incase you have been wondering, "Why no post lately?".....well I have been working overtime in order to take a month-long sailing adventure to the Bahamas. I leave in a week and hope to meet some new strangers along the way! In the meanwhile I encourage you to do the same!

Meet Scott

2007-03-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

A month ago, twenty-five-year-old Scott left Bardstown, Kentucky for the first time in his life and traveled to Texas to work as a freelance construction worker. Scott's girlfriend, who is pregnant with twins, lives in Texas. The two met several months ago when she visited Kentucky. "She is something else, now. She has blonde hair, blue eyes and is good natured and kindhearted like myself", says Scott of his girlfriend. He is really excited to be a father, but is fearful of getting married. He certainly did not enjoy his experience in Texas and has no desire to return. The trip confirmed that he is a true Kentuckian, in love with the culture and people of the region. After all, Scott has spent his whole life in Bardstown where he was raised by his grandparents after both his parents died of cancer when he was five. He loves his grandmother and says he wouldn't take a million dollars for her or the spicy spaghetti she makes.

Wishing to return to Kentucky from Texas, Scott purchased a one-way greyhound ticket home. However while leaving a store on his way out of town, a guy robbed Scott at knife-point and took all the money he had made in Texas. By the time he arrived at the greyhound bus station in Kentucky, Scott had no other option but to walk the rest of the way home.

This is where my friend Jill and I first spotted Scott, on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon walking down the side of a quiet highway, lugging his suitcase with a sideways tilt. We pulled up to him in our car, with the windows rolled down, and I ask Scott what was in his suitcase. "Clothes", he answered. Jill and I offered Scott a ride back to Bardstown in exchange that he would allow Jill to photograph him along the way. Scott was not expecting a photo shoot with two random girls to finish his journey home. However, he did say that this was the most adventurous thing he has ever done and that we were the weirdest people he had ever met. We dropped him off at a gas station across the street from his home and I waved and took one last picture of him as he walked away.

Meet Colonel Don Decker

2007-03-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

This is Colonel Don Decker, a Kentucky Colonel, who for the past three years has been the host at T.G.I. Fridays restaurant on Fourth Street Live in downtown Louisville. Don owns and wears a variety of different color traditional colonel tuxedos and ruffled shirts that he adorns with honorary medallions. He admits that his outfits are out of style for today, but comfortably says, "I am out of style too". Don's attire is, and at the same time, isn’t a costume. He would not wear his tuxedo into a business meeting, but would and does wear it around town. In fact, he owned all of his colonel tuxedos before he even started hosting at T.G.I. Fridays on Fourth Street Live.

Don, whose mother was a dancer, was raised in the entertainment business and began in Vaudeville dance at the age of three. He can act, dance and sing, and has worked in various phases of the entertainment industry throughout his life. He is most proud of his nightclub and movie performances, which include appearances in the 1960’s hits Can Can and Li’l Abner. As a child, Don dreamed of being on Broadway. "I went through New York, but quickly. I never did what was necessary to get on Broadway.... that's a real struggle”, he explains.

For many years, Don was also a bails bondsman in Florida. When he retired he moved to Louisville and found the job at T.G.I. Fridays a perfect way to supplement his social security. “I enjoy meeting people, plus I am getting old and if I don't do something, I would just sit in my chair and think, what, am I, waiting to die?"

Ten years ago, Don completed his first novel, Forfeiture, a story about a man named Danny Duncan, who shares many similar experiences as Don, and winds up robbing a bank. “A lot of people think I am Danny Duncan, or we are one in the same. And they might be right, I am not going to say one way or the other,” Don says with a smile.

Don enjoys his job at T.G.I. Fridays. On an average day between ten and twenty people ask to have their photograph taken with him. Don just happens to look a lot like Kentucky Fried Chicken's founder, Colonel Sanders. But he says it is not intentional and he does not sell chicken! Don believes that he is doing something unique on Forth Street Live, by attempting to create a greater since of hospitality.

www.dondecker.com

Meet Skaters in Cumberland, KY

2007-02-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

Local Skaters
Bank Drive Thru
Cumberland, Kentucky

Jonathan, Corey, Eric and a few other skater friends are showing off skateboard tricks at a closed bank drive-thru in Cumberland, Kentucky. The skaters are a mixture of middle school and high school students who all grew up together in Cumberland, a town with a population of under 3000. Eric, who wears a loosely tied sideways bandana, says that the police are always hassling them when they skate on public places. In fact, today, they have already been kicked off the bank property four times.

Jonathan, Corey and Eric started skateboarding because they were bored and tired of sitting on their couches. Corey explains, “I said, man, we don’t want to get fat, we got to get ourselves something to do.” After discovering skating on satellite television during the X Games and thinking it was cool, the boys rented the skate movie, The Lords of Dogtown, and were hooked. Their parents don’t mind that they skate, but they do mind that the boys won't get haircuts. The skaters consider themselves "top dogs", and like listening to rap, especially Fifty Cent and Snoop Dog. Most of them have never left Cumberland but their hopes are to be in a large city one day to enjoy a real skate park.

Meet Haley

2007-02-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

Haley
Four-wheeler
Benham, Kentucky

Haley, an eighth grader, is enjoying a Sunday afternoon four-wheel ride alongside an old railroad track in Benham, Kentucky, originally a coal mining camp. According to Haley everyone in Benham owns and rides a four-wheeler. Today she is riding her fathers. Four-wheel trails exist throughout the mountains of Eastern Kentucky in areas abandoned by coal mining. Many towns have started promoting their trails to tourist as a form of economic recovery. Haley says that there is not much to do in Benham. Besides four-wheeling, she spends time playing softball. Haley dreams of becoming a Meteorologist one day in a city much larger than Benham, Kentucky.

Meet Men at a Shooting Competition

2007-01-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

Sunday Shooting Competition
Bell County, Eastern Kentucky

Ben Barney, Bill Wilder, Charles Ranghard and Dale Snowden along with a couple of other friends hold shooting competitions every Sunday in their hometown of Bell County, which is located in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. The men say that there are few job opportunities in their county that primarily produces coal. Their local elementary school even closed down last year, due to lack of funds, and their children, as young as four years old travel on a bus for an hour to attend school. The men, who are all hunters, say that guns have been apart of their lives and culture since they were children. There is not much to do in their dry town so this provides a good source of entertainment. Ben explains, “Some weekends this place is packed and we often bring our kids out. The fellow with the closest shot to the x wins his wife a turkey or a ham.”

After the first round. Seeing who shot closest to the center of the X.

Closed Elementary School.

My friend Jill shoots a gun for the first time.

Meet Strangers and Places Full of Holiday Cheer

2006-12-24T07:12:00.000-08:00

Sharon Old Louisville, Kentucky
Sharon is getting into the Christmas spirit by decorating the outside of her home. She enjoys going way out with decorations and usually picks a new theme each year . This year's theme is snowman and white lights. Christmas is Sharon's favorite holiday of the year, " I love the decorations and it's a pretty time, happy and joyful". Christmas also happens to be her mother's birthday, a time for family celebration. Sharon works at Dillards, a department store in the mall, and really loves her job because it is in full swing during the Holiday season. People often stop their cars, or holler out their windows to compliment Sharon on her decorations. As I was leaving a car pulled up and two men and a young boy asked if I would take their picture in front of Sharon's candy canes.

Bruce New Albany, IN
Bruce lives in New Albany, Indiana, a place where people are not afraid to be unique and elaborate with their Christmas decorations. Dark on a Friday evening, I found Bruce outside tending to his burnt-out Christmas lights as a gardner might tend to a cherished garden. Bruce has a giant snow globe in his yard, homemade globe lights in his trees, reindeer and Santa on his roof and he even has turned his front window into a Christmas display for passerby's to come view.

Random House New Albany, Indiana
Looks like Rudolf took a wrong turn?

The Doll House New Albany, IN
I love this house. These people brought out the a variety of Santa's, stuffed animals, and even their doll collection to decorate for the holidays!

Meet Jaquauncupepé

2006-12-19T21:47:00.000-08:00

Jaquauncupepé works at a Wendy's in Key West, Florida. He goes by the name of Justin, because most people have difficulty pronouncing his real name.

Meet Wayne

2006-12-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

On a rainy December evening at a strip mall, Wayne stands outside a Toys 'R' Us playing Christmas carols with a tenor saxophone. Wayne makes his living as a street performer and has been playing at this location during the holiday season for the past seven years. He enjoys playing his sax outside the toy store, although quite often he is harassed by the police and property owners who think he is sleazy. He says, "Like everything else, when you have something good going, something bad always steps in." Wayne has found that the store management and customers who shop there don't mind because he helps bring about the season. "When I started playing on the street, I looked for areas with a lot of foot traffic, and as it got colder, I had to find somewhere people often went, so I thought it’s Christmas time, toys, you know and put the two together." Wayne says that Louisville is a pretty bad place for street performers. He planned on moving to San Francisco, where his profession is more welcomed, but says he is stuck here because he takes care of his mother, who is ill and has no legs. "On the one hand, I am glad to be with her, but on the other hand I miss out on a lot of opportunities." Wayne has met street performers from all over including New Orleans, New York, Europe, and says that they make a lot more money and are better received than in Louisville.

Wayne did not grow up thinking that he would ever become a street performer or musician. In fact, he did not start playing music until his late twenties. When he was in high school, his dreams were set on becoming a professional football player, but things just did not work out in his favor. Back in 1998, when Wayne was unemployed and down on his luck, he was arrested for a DUI. It was summertime and he needed to make some fast cash in order to pay for alcohol classes and lawyer fees. He picked up his trombone, and started playing outside a coffee shop, hoping to make at least twenty dollars that day. He ended up making fifty and was amazed. Winn Dixie, a local grocery store at the time, became his "hot spot" until a jewelry store in the same strip mall kick him off the property. Now, years later Wayne says that he is a little disenchanted by street performing and would rather play on the inside with a band. He loves Jazz, Big Band, Broadway music and Tony Bennett -- all music that is not native or commonly played in Louisville or Kentucky. Although he is not looking forward to the day his mother passes, he does look forward to moving on elsewhere.

Meet Haley and Bill

2006-11-30T10:44:00.001-08:00

Seven-year-old Haley and her grandfather, Bill, are walking through Central Park in Old Louisville on an unusually warm, sunny winter day with a metal detector and small shovel. Bill and Haley are treasure hunting, hoping to find a little piece of history. "We are looking for old coins and bits of metal that might tell us a little bit about what people did a hundred years ago", he explains. Bill loves history and has owned a metal detector for the past twenty years. He likes walking with the detector because it motivates him to get outside, while at the same time participate in something interesting.

Bill says he and Haley have found old silver coins, Indian head pins, quarters, not very many nickels, and a lot of pennies. Their biggest find so far was a quarter from 1900 that was buried eight inches underground. Bill says he has yet to find a silver or half dollar, but will keep looking until he does. Haley once found a little diamond earring on the ground and Bill proudly adds, “She didn’t even have a machine!”

Bill likes to visit old homesteads, farms and houses that have been torn down or abandoned with his metal detector. Any place he adds where he might find a Civil War battle relic or something similar. Although Haley likes history, her biggest interest is in nature. She came along with Bill today hoping to see two big owls in an Oak Tree that were spotted the other day. "I’m in first grade, and my teacher told me that if you see the owls in two days and then not again they have to have babies", Haley explains. "In other words they are going to have babies if you haven’t seen them", further explains Bill. Bill says Haley is excellent in school and can read, write and count up too three hundred. When asked what she wants to be when she grows up Haley says, " I want to be a veterinarian and cheerleader, but I’m not sure which one". Bill chuckles. Bill, himself, has been a musician for the past forty years and started playing the drums, initially with sticks on boxes after hearing the Beatles for the first time. For several years he played drums in a group around town called Dr. Don and the Love Dogs.

Haley is proud of her grandfather and has seen many of his metal treasures and even saw him perform live with his band once. Their mutual love of history, nature and treasure seeking make the duo a perfect match on this warm winter day.

Meet People at the Mall

2006-10-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

The Mall of St. Matthews
Louisville, Kentucky

Nick, who works at a children's portrait studio in the mall, is standing in line at the Chinese Gourmet Express in the food court dressed up as a caveman. People are turning their heads, pointing and staring at him as he waits his turn. Nick is dressed-up today to entertain children and be a little different by getting out of his standard work outfit. As a full-time theology student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Nick wants to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to various parts of the world by becoming a missionary. He is especially interested in traveling to Asia and Africa, but is willing to go wherever God leads him. When asked what the good news was Nick answered, "The good word is the news that Jesus Christ came down to the earth, lived the perfect life and saved us from our sins." Nick believes that many people have lost hope in today’s "fallen world". But he says that as long as you believe and trust in your heart that Jesus is Lord, one can truly proceed knowing that there is hope. However, Nick does believe that it is inevitable the world will end. He explains, "In Revelations it states that God is going to destroy the earth with fire and those who are not saved aren't going to get caught up with him. So for those who are saved, we are in the clearing. I am not for sure when the end will happen, but my own personal belief is that we are getting closer every day just by how the world is turning out." Despite believing the world will soon end, Nick still actively makes an effort to better the world while he is still here on earth. For example, he recycles and is concerned about the environment. After all he is from Sassafras, Kentucky -- a place where the water is so clean, you can drink it straight from the pond. Nick enjoys making people laugh, so he doesn’t mind that people are laughing at him as he walks through the mall back to his job. When asked if the caveman outfit made him feel stronger, he replied, "Well, I am caring three drinks and I never really do that...so sure."

This is Chase, and today he is greeting people as they enter the Abercrombie and Fitch store dressed in a nice, warm winter jacket, which is open to display his bare, muscular, shiny chest. Behind him hangs a gigantic framed photograph of an Abercrombie model who is dressed and posed in a similar way as Chase. About a year ago, Chase moved to Louisville to attend college and started working at the Abercrombie store. One day his coworkers saw him with his shirt off, took a picture, and sent it to the Abercrombie Headquarters who approved for him to do this particular promotion. Last year around Christmas time, Chase went bare-chested for the first time as people paid money for charity to have their pictures taken with him. Chase usually tries to train before a bare-chest-promotion, but was recently sick and has not made it to the gym much lately. Today he feels confident, but then again he says he feels confident all the time. "People stare at me, some people give me dirty looks, some people smile," he says. So far no one has approached him for a date, but last year on Valentines Day, a little girl asked if he would be her valentine. Sometimes old women like to come up to him and give him a pinch too. Chase has become somewhat of a local celebrity and people often recognize him outside of the mall. When he's not at work, Chase never wears his jacket without lots of layers, but he does not mind the look in the store. When asked how he felt standing next to the photograph of the Abercrombie Model, Chase shrugged, titled his head, smirked and exhaled, "Ahhhh, he's nothing".

Meet Tim

2006-10-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is Tim, and he has been a Tow-Truck Operator in Louisville, Kentucky for the past ten years. Before driving a tow truck, Tim worked in a factory -- a job he despised due to its routine nature and indoor confinement. As a Tow-Truck driver, Tim rarely gets bored because the job is mobile and always unpredictable. "You never know what your next run is going to be. You might go down the street hooking a guy up or you might be a mile back in the woods." Tim’s company offers both roadside assistance and vehicle impoundment. His favorite parts of the job are meeting new people daily and helping them out when their vehicle has broken down.

Tim admits that the main drawback of his job is the irregular hours. He is on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and only receives every other weekend off. Each day he works 8am to 6pm from the office and then goes home to have dinner with his wife and kids. But, as soon as the phones rings, Tim gets right back in his truck and heads to work. "Most of the time whenever you got something planned, it never fails that the phone will ring." When asked about the most awkward time he has been interrupted by a work call, Tim laughs and says, “ You don’t want to know what I was doing..."

Typically, most wives would get upset with Tim’s unpredictable work schedule. However, Tim's wife understands because she too works for the Tow Truck Company as a Dispatcher. He likes working with his wife, but sometimes gets frustrated because if she doesn’t work, he usually has to. The few days that Tim does get off, he enjoys driving racecars and spending as much time as possible with his children. He also reads "Tow Times", a magazine that keeps him informed on the latest happenings in the industry.

Tim says that, often, Tow-Truck drivers get a bad reputation because they are under contract to tow illegally parked cars. People constantly yell and take their frustration out on him, when their vehicle has been towed. Tim's approach is to not argue back and always explain that he is simply doing his job. “I know that people get pissed off every time we take their car, but they just parked in the wrong spot.” Tim says that even right now, two of his buddy’s cars are sitting in his impoundment lot. “I have to uphold my contract”, says Tim, "there is nothing that I an do."

One of his funniest Tow-Truck experiences happened a couple years ago while impounding vehicles at Phoenix Hill, a local bar in Louisville. Tim was in the process of towing a van when he found the owner drunk and asleep in the back. Tim and his partner had to remove him from the van and leave him in the parking lot. While picking up his van, the man told Tim that he woke up the next day confused and laying in the parking lot.

When asked whether Tim foresaw himself working as a Tow-Truck Operator for the rest of his life he said, "Well I am thirty six years old now, so I don't really think I'll be getting a new job anytime soon."

Meet Laurel

2006-09-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

Laurel Fleury is a twenty-seven-year-old Fire Poi performance artist in Louisville, Kentucky. Fire Poi is a traditional form of juggling involving Kevlar balls that are connected to a chain, dipped into lamp oil or gasoline and set on fire. Laurel performs mostly at art happenings, birthdays and special events. Each performance last between three to five minutes and is accompanied by a song of her choice. Although it is typical for fire artists to dance to hard-core music or soft Celtic music, Laurel prefers Arabic, African or Latino music. She admits to also having a weakness for Joan Jett. Laurel's boyfriend Pete, who recently had his second open-heart surgery, is also a Fire Poi artist. They often spend time together practicing their performances in the park. A fire extinguisher is always at hand.

Laurel was immediately attracted to the craft of Fire Poi after watching a performance at a gallery hop in North Carolina a few years ago. “It was like the moment that you light a match. That’s how I felt. That little match inside of me lit up.” Laurel wanted that feeling everyday, so she moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and began to surround herself with fire artists. At first she became their safety person, which allowed her to watch and study different fire art techniques. As soon as she felt comfortable, Laurel lit up and began to practice Fire Poi on her own.

Fire has been a part of Laurel's life since she was a child. Raised by hippies, she spent the first three years of her life living in a tent in South Carolina, while her father, a carpenter, built the family home. She remembers sitting around the campfire, as her mother, also an artist, skinned and cooked the food her father had hunted in the woods. After her father finished one room of their house, they moved in and used a small camping stove in which to cook. When Laurel was four, she walked too close to the stove and her polyester nightgown lit on fire, badly burning her thigh. Although the incident caused a permanent scar, Laurel never became afraid of fire.

Pete says that Fire Poi fits Laurel's personality because she is extremely unique and different from everyone else. Laurel, like the fire, does not want to be controlled. “The flame and I have something in common. We like to just live, wiggle and breath and when we're done, we're done”, she explains. Laurel also practices telekinesis, the movement of fire with the mind. “I try to make the flames get bigger or to move a certain way, “ she explains. Because she performs Fire Poi in the dark, Laurel has to rely on her sense of balance while performing. She tries to relax, concentrate and let the music guide her movement.

Aside from performing and teaching Fire Poi, Laurel supplements her income by teaching art, designing websites, and selling her paintings, jewelry, clothing and photography. Laurel's parents, who are now divorced, have changed a considerable amount since the days of her youth. They worry and flat out disdain that Laurel is attempting to be a full-time artist. Her father, who used to fish with a bamboo stick and string in canoe, is now remarried and owns an expensive boat with fancy fishing rods. “He is just totally different, and keeps telling me that I should get a government job, because then I would be completely financially secure. And I am like, who are you dad?” says Laurel. Her mother, who used to run around in a swimming suit covered in dirt, is now what Laurel considers, "high maintenance". She gets her nails done every week, is a bit obsessive about anti-aging creams, and perhaps jokingly or not, says she wants to find a rich man that will support her in old age.

Once Laurel’s father watched her perform Fire Poi. Although he found it interesting, he does not believe that she can, nor should try, to make it her career. Laurel, on the other hand, is willing to be poor and go through rough times in order to pursue her true passion, -- art. As an artist of this nature she states, " You have to be able to work even harder than you would if you worked for someone else. You have to push and promote yourself, because no one else will".

To view more of Laurel's art visit her website at http://www.laurelfleury.com/

(Sorry the Video is Sideways Folks! Still working on that one......)

Meet Carl

2006-08-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

In 2003, Carl left South Dakota on a bicycle with all of his possessions packed in a small, attached wagon. Today he continues to travel on his bike throughout the United States, working mostly as a drywall finisher and painter, when he can find it. Carl has no telephone, mailing address, nor does he ever stay in one place for too long. The only way to find him is if you happen to run across him on the side of any given American road. Today, Carl is on his way to Bardstown, Kentucky to visit his only child, a 19-year-old son.

For years, Carl hitchhiked to get around, but as the late 1980's and 90's approached, hitchhiking became almost impossible to do. "I used to think people were scared, but now I think it's that they just don't care," says Carl. "They probably look at me on the side of the road, with my thumb sticking out, and think that I am a bum. They don't realize that I am just trying to get from one place to the next, just like everyone else."  In 2001, Carl hitchhiked for the last time, as it took him over six months to get from Arizona to South Dakota. Given that the same trip in the late 1970's would have taken only three or four weeks, Carl decided that he needed an alternative means of transportation. With rising gas costs and global warming looming, he chose a bicycle. In a way, Carl says that riding a bike is his way of telling the government, "Hey, I don't need your oil".

Throughout his life, Carl has lived as a vagabond. He was born in Walla, Walla Washington and moved to Texas when he was fourteen with his mother, stepfather, two younger brothers and sister. Not long after the move, his mother abandoned the family, leaving the children behind with their stepfather. Carl can only speculate why she left,  "Maybe it was because of the crap I was getting into, skipping school, not caring, and the way that my step dad was treating her".  A year later his mother died and his stepfather, wanting nothing to do with the children, placed the entire family into foster care. Being that Carl was fifteen, he felt old enough to take control of his own destiny. So he did the proverbial, run away and joined the carnival.  "I was the smart one and was like, 'I am not going to live somewhere where somebody cares nothing more for me than the food stamps and extra checks,'" he explains. At first, Carl was the gopher for carnival workers; running errands, grabbing tools, etc. Eventually as he got older, he began operating his own booth. The carnival lifestyle was conducive to Carl's disposition, and he enjoyed constantly traveling while meeting new and interesting people. It allowed him to finally start living life the way he thought it should be lived.

As Carl entered his twenties, he truly believed that he was taking a stand with his unique lifestyle. "I thought, hey, I am a free person, I can do what I want, when I want, as long as I am not hurting anyone else, as America was supposed to be," he exclaimed. But the day he turned thirty, Carl's attitude suddenly changed. He started believing that no matter what he did with his life, somebody else was always going to have a different opinion of him, and then someone else would have different opinion from that one as well. And because of this pattern, he started to feel that all people could only do what they wanted to do, within the boundaries of what society and the government wants us to do. He felt persecuted for his freedom.

Today, in general, most people look at Carl, who is now forty-four, as if he were a homeless bum. But to Carl, his bike is home. He decorates it the same way that a person would decorate their house. His most important possessions, which are his CD's, clothes, blankets, a sleeping bag, tent, radio, and fishing pole are carefully stowed away in the wagon. While his bicycle baskets act as a garage, - holding tools, ropes and various other hardware devices. On the back of his wagon hangs a large hand-painted sign that reads,  "Trust Jesus", in addition to the three American flags he rescued from the ground that now fly from a tall pole. His elongated handlebars are covered with sentimental jewelry, key chains, and knickknacks that people have given him along the way. He even has a blue bicycle horn. The bike keeps Carl in good shape; his legs are strong, as well as his hands.

Carl says that he is like most people and is just looking for a way to get from one day to the next. "I'm not out to get rich because when you die, you can't take it with you. There is no sense in it."  Carl thinks that some folks would consider him an extremely strong person for the way he lives, but others would call him lazy because he doesn't hold down a job very long, own a car, or live in a big house. The truth is that Carl is a 'live-for-the-moment' type person. When he sees something he wants to do, he simply does it. "I have been to the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, to the Smokey Mountains and all three oceans, and have seen a lot of things in this country that a lot of Americans have never seen. "  With limited funds, Carl has come to realize that in order to get from one place to the next, nobody is going to help him, unless he does it himself.

Carl admits that he often gets sad. "I am a people person and sometimes when I get around people, they shun me, turn their nose up at me because of the way I look or live my life, and it hurts my feelings." He doesn't understand why people cannot just get along and accept the differences in each other. "Just because I have a funny beard, no hair, tattoos, and painted finger nails doesn't' mean that I am any different from you. We all come from the same place, Mother Earth," he adds.  He knows people all over the United States too. And though he wouldn't exactly call them his best friends due to the infrequency of his seeing them, when he does come into town, most are more than willing to help him out, knowing he won't be staying long. Carl sees himself as a very kind and generous person who enjoys giving. "I have been without and therefore have a lot of compassion for people," he affirms. After Hurricane Katrina last year, he even traveled down to Louisiana on his bike to aid in the rebuilding.

Oftentimes, Carl encounters young people who are impressed and want to mimic his lifestyle. But he is quick to tell them,  "No, you don't want to live like me. Stay in school. Get a strong education. That way when you want to say, 'the hell with society, I'm living my life the way I want too', you'll have something to fall on when you get into a situation where you just can't do no more."  Carl, who has little formal education, says that education is an essential resource in today's society. He believes that kids need to get smart before they get adventurous. "Living out here, like I do, it's hard, people don't care about you." He often can't even afford to eat and has learned to eat like the Indians did, hunting and gathering his own food, amidst a modern day landscape.

Carl doesn't believe himself wise, because, as he would postulate, a man who calls himself wise is actually a fool.  But like most people, he admits he has his own opinions about the way we should live life, and how our government has gone wrong. On the average though, he typically just keeps his thoughts to himself, as he feels that no one really cares to listen.

One of Carl's favorite key chains is engraved with his favorite acronym, WWJD, or "What Would Jesus Do." Carl often thinks about that; what would Jesus think or say if he saw him riding down the road on his bicycle next to all these Americans driving SUV's, starring at him like he is insane? He thinks that Jesus would polish his outlook and give him a different way of reacting to the situation, and turn the other cheek when those people scold or look down on him. After all, he realizes most people just don't know any better, and that people are conditioned based on the way they are raised.

After talking, Carl began to realize that just maybe he was still that free-spirited twenty-year-old, taking a stand, living freely and giving the average American something to think about. He'd like to think so, anyway.

WHAT DOES CARL THINK?

Riding his bike around the country has given Carl the opportunity to observe our land closely. He believes that as intelligent inhabitants of this earth, we should be able to do something more about protecting it. "We were created from Earth and when we die, we go back to it. And when I die I don't want to be buried in a big pile of garbage somewhere. I want to be made into dust, not cockroach food, mixed with the garbage of humanity." Carl sees more and more constructions of highways, clustered cookie-cutter homes, landfills and deforestation. "The way humanity is treating this world is like cancer. It chips away at the a spot, until there's nothing in it, and then spreads to another place." He's not amused by the idea that only a handful of people own the majority of the land in this country. When he finds a nice place to set up a tent, or a pear tree to pick from, the owner of that land usually comes out and yells at him, or calls the police. "God gave us this earth to live on, and to coexist with, not to own it," explains Carl.

Carl has looked deeply at the state of our country and sees that Americans desperately need help. He gets frustrated when he reads about people like Angelina Jolie helping children in other countries, because he sees the same atrocities happening here. Carl has met tons of people who are homeless, and who grew up that way, never really knowing what it was to have a home. "They go to school and when they come home they go to a shelter. And they live their life in that shelter, because the economy is so bad that each parent has to work two or three jobs just to make enough money for the gas and electricity."  Plainly, Carl does not think that America is as great as it once was.

Carl believes that this country could use a new barter system. For example, if you cut my trees, then I will do your electrical work. Americans have become so reliant on the green dollar that money has almost replaced God. He would like to see people learn how to quit hating; for countries to demolish all guns and weapons of mass-destruction; and for people to start caring. When they see someone who is down on their luck, instead of yelling at them to get a job, help them GET a job. "Even though I have a lot of animosity towards our government, the way they run things and the way people treat this land, it is a great land," he says. But in order for it to remain great, he concedes we must take a stand and start caring.

Alonzo's Story, Part I

2006-07-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

In 1958, Alonzo was born on Roosevelt Island, a narrow two-mile long island situated between Manhattan and Queens. Shortly, thereafter, he moved with his family to Harlem where they found residence in New York City subsidized housing. At the time Harlem was predominately African American and Puerto Rican. The only white people Alonzo encountered were his teachers at school, who failed to teach him about the civil rights movement, racism, slavery or anything related to the dark history between whites and blacks in America. People just didn't talk about race. “There was a running joke in Harlem that said, don’t talk about the white man in Harlem because you let him in the house through TV everyday”, he explains.

When Alonzo was fifteen, his father found a higher paying job and the family was required to move to a different housing unit in the Bronx called Marble Hill, which had a large population of white residents from various European backgrounds. At first, Alonzo naturally gravitated to the black teenagers in his new neighborhood, but soon met his first white friend, Irwin, a Jew. “I had no idea that Irwin was Jewish, but then I noticed that he was hanging out with all these white teenagers, so I shifted away from my black group of friends towards his friends who I found very interesting and different.” The white teenagers loved Alonzo, especially his wild personality and most treated him like he was famous. He was the only black person in their group, and Alonzo found the extra attention they gave him flattering.

After one year of living in the Bronx, Alonzo faced the harsh reality of becoming an adult. At the age of sixteen he had never known the real meaning behind the "N" word. His parents had always tried to protect him from racism and socially the word was not mentioned. "As a child it was not like it is today. People where not saying “Yo nigga' this and that”, explains Alonzo. Television shows at that time were highly censored too, and it never occurred to him that there were so few African Americans on the air. “Occasionally on Ed Sullivan, Smokey Robinson or someone black would be on and I can remember thinking it was really special, but I did not understand why at the time”, says Alonzo.

Then one summer day while Alonzo was hanging out with a group of white teenage girls in Marble Hill, listening to funk on the radio, and teaching them dance moves, a pale, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy nicknamed Pee-wee walked up to him and said, “No, we’re not going to put that 'nigger' music on”. “Pee-wee was a real asshole”, says Alonzo, “and it never dawned on me that I was the Negro kid showing these white teenagers, who were demanding my attention, Negro moves. But I guess if you were on the outside looking in, that’s what was going on there.” When Pee Wee uttered the expletive that day, the meaning and power of the word suddenly hit Alonzo like a ton of bricks. “Oh I get this...this is what they have been hiding me from, and this is what that word means. It means a black person and nobody told me; my mother never told me; my father never told me.” The realization made Alonzo so distraught that he began to cry and his white girlfriends came rushing to his side, grabbing and embracing him. The girls scorned Pee Wee by shouting that he was disgusting while demanding that he leave. But it was too late, the experience had left a lasting impression, and while walking home that day Alonzo remembers looking at people differently. “ I would walk past people and began to classify them saying I am black, he’s white, and he’s Puerto Rican, because I was struck with this new awful awareness and for about two days I couldn’t shake it”, says Alonzo. In hindsight, it was one of those earth-shattering realizations Alonzo needed to deal with, but he was so surprised that no one had taught him this crucial lesson at home or in school. “I finally understood what Martin Luther King was about,” explains Alonzo. He was different. Black.

After a week of contemplating the situation, Alonzo decided to return to the park in Marble Hill where all his white friends gathered, night after night, doing drugs and consuming large amounts of alcohol. His friends, unaware of the questions going through his mind, asked him to roll a joint because they could not do it as well as he. “All of the sudden I saw these white teenagers as Martians, and said to myself 'You’re the only black one'. They didn’t know that I was head tripping”, says Alonzo. He remembers also taking the subway down to midtown Manhattan, stepping outside, and feeling awestruck by the dissimilarity of environments--as if he were on the moon--and would then promptly return to the Bronx and compare the differences. For example, the white ladies on the subway in midtown would sit cross-legged reading the New York Times, as opposed to minorities in Harlem and the Bronx reading The Daily News, consisting of mostly pictures and the winning numbers for horses and lotto.

At one point Alonzo attempted to return to hanging out with his black friends, but quickly gravitated back to his white ones who had cars, and would take him to exciting places on the weekends, such as the Hamptons. “My parents were very concerned that I was hanging out with so many white people, but there was no stopping me”, says Alonzo. Every time he ran out of the house his mother would say to him, “Alonzo!, don’t let those white boys go push you up a tree.” Alonzo says he was fortunate and had very few racially charged experiences after old Pee Wee. He was well liked among the African Americas, Caucasians and Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood, who all nicknamed him 'Knox'. “I would take it upon myself to infiltrated each group because I new exactly what I was doing. For this aspect, I really liked myself because, I was really a dynamite liaison, and was able to keep the harmony of this whole block; and I was just so popular.” At that time, Alonzo was beginning to acknowledge and take pride in being a black man, because he inevitably knew that society would always view him as a such, regardless of the peers whose company he chose.

Everything was going great for Alonzo and when he turned eighteen the beautiful, fair-skinned, blond-haired bombshell named Colleen Bray walked into his life, asked him out, and they instantly became boyfriend and girlfriend. "Colleen was Irish and the funkiest female in the neighborhood especially for her age.... and she was my baby!", says Alonzo. This was Alonzo's first experience dating a white woman and he fell in love quickly. "The racial difference was really a trip, and when we walked down the street we would get all sorts of car horns" he says. One afternoon, while walking down the street together, Colleen's mother pulled up to them unexpectedly, rolled down the window, and demanded that she get into the car. Alonzo, struck with terror, thought for sure that this would be the last time he saw his beloved Colleen. But to his surprise, Colleen stood up to her mother and said "No!", refusing to get in the car, and angrily her mother drove away. Alonzo had never quite seen a person be so powerful and resolute as Colleen. But then again, that's why he liked her...

To be continued.....

"I was born an Aquarius, therefore I am a natural brotherhood promoter and the more different you are from me the more I am probably going to like you, that’s why I am so into interracial dating” Quote by Alonzo "Knox" who has been dating white women for over thirty years.

Alonzo at the Futon Warehouse in Manhattan, where he lives and works.

Me and Alonzo.

Alonzo's Office

Alonzo as we talk.

Alonzo's Story Continued.....

2006-07-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

After meeting Colleen's mother for the first time, Alonzo planned on backing off the relationship. Colleen, however, kept calling him, and being that she was his baby, they continued to date. Every night they would hang out, drink and smoke Kool Cigarettes as they watched the sun rise. They lost their virginity to each other. "I just didn't know what I was doing; I was young, dumb and full of cum", says Alonzo.

Alonzo started spending a lot of time with Colleen's friends, who were all into getting high. They introduced him to speed; he tried it, and liked it right away. "Good thing crack wasn't around! I have never tried crack--I never will--but this speed I really liked." For three years, Alonzo continued to shoot amphetamines, which led to numerous acts of immature behavior. He did, however, manage to get a job at the United States Post Office, where he worked for nine months. "Boy, it drove me crazy! It was such a boring job, and wasn't for me. But it was a civil service job, and in the neighborhood it was like, 'Oh, you work the post office? You must be a rock star!" he explains.

Soon thereafter, he became a taxi driver and the money was good, but then both his drivers' and taxis' licenses were taken away for unpaid speeding tickets. As a result, he started stealing cars. Alonzo would go to taxi garages, especially on Saturday nights, and steal a cab from the lot. "I was a nice car crook, because if I stole a car, I would always return it." He drove it all night long, sometimes with Colleen, down to Manhattan or over to Harlem. "It was just so much fun," says Alonzo. Around 5 am, he would park the cab, maybe a half-mile from where he lived, and then call the cab company and say "Yo, a cab was taken and this is where you'll find it!" Click.

Alonzo did this for a year until finally he and Colleen got caught. Colleen's father was a New York City Detective in Manhattan. Quite naturally, with Colleen being brought up on grand theft auto charges, her father finagled a pardon, which indirectly absolved Alonzo, as if it had never happened. Alonzo had met him a month before the arrest and things were good between them. After the arrest, however, Colleens' father made it very clear for Alonzo to stay away from his daughter. He had really screwed up, but they were in love, so they snuck around him.

In October of 1981, Alonzo's older brother, whom he had not seen in thirteen years, and lived in Vancouver, sent him a one-way ticket to Seattle. He decided to go, promising Colleen that he would be back by his birthday in February. As he got off the plane in Seattle, he was greeted by a fine, white blond, who approached him and said,  "Lonnie" (that's what his brother called him), "I am Susan". "I was like, 'Oh my God!,' I didn't know this about my brother, he likes Caucasian women too!"  Susan directed Alonzo to his brothers' car, a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a diamond on the back. His brother, lighting a joint, proceeded to take him to a tavern in Seattle's Capital Hill. Alonzo was shocked when he walked in and saw there were all of these black men hanging out with all these gorgeous white women.  "I was like 'Holy Toledo!' Here I was coming out of the Bronx, thinking I was the only black guy with this Caucasian love. I mean, I thought I was the one who invented this damn interracial dating!," explained Alonzo. But in Seattle, this seemed to be the norm, or so it appeared. It turns out these Caucasian women were really all prostitutes. "This wasn't the drug, alley, crack-smoking, I'll-do-anything-so-I-can-get-me-another-hit-of-drugs kind; these were beautiful women! Women that could very well be in Vogue Magazine; and I am not kidding."

Alonzo's brother, along with some friends from the Air Force, were pimping white Canadian prostitutes in British Columbia. Alonzo was dumfounded that these women wanted to be with these pimps. "I mean they knew that these men had more than one woman!," he says. Looking back he assumes they where attracted to the "pimp character". "I have met some monster pimps, who were making money and doing it right. These women would come up to the pimp and say, "Hey I want to be with you". These more successful pimps had luxurious apartments and lifestyles in Vancouver, with maybe a second house somewhere else. Their girls only worked at night. "It was just like the movies," Alonzo says. "The women would sit around the pimps' house, painting their finger and toenails, getting ready to go out at night to pick up tricks".

Alonzo witnessed this all firsthand but had no aspirations for becoming a pimp himself.  Instead, his role was official "baby-sitter".  Susan, his brother's girlfriend, had two small children. "I loved those little kids and they called me Uncle Lonnie.... I miss them even today," he says.  On Monday nights Alonzo's brother would have his buddies over to play Penuckle, as they snorted cocaine, smoked weed and drank Johnny Walker Black. "Once they got a little intoxicated, they would start talking a lot of shit about their women. I felt really dumb, listening to these guys -- I mean, I didn't even know how to spell 'fuck'!"  Alonzo and his brother, who wanted him to stay home and baby-sit on the weekends, began to argue and disagree on issues related to his role as sitter.  "I was like, 'Yo! I have been here all week baby-sitting, and I am getting out of here, because I got to go dance; get women!" Sometimes, his brother would bring him along to go "catching", which means 'to pick up'. On Friday and Saturday nights, Alonzo would get all dressed up—his brother never let him leave the house unless he looked sharp--and he would learn how to pick up women. "I was clean, from New York City, and you couldn't tell me anything! Because I could dance and dance well -- always have. I was raised on James Brown...!"

Alonzo began dating various white women in the scene, if you will, but he still loved Colleen, even though they had only spoken on the phone from time to time. He had suggested she come out west, but it never did materialize. It was not until 1989, though, when Alonzo came back to visit New York, that he saw Colleen again. She was with a white guy at the time, who was a 'joke,' apparently. "This guy would go all the way to Harlem to get his dope and then come back the Bronx. I was like, Oh my God, Alonzo, what did you expect, you have been away for years, and she wasn't going to wait for you, but anybody but this guy!," he lamented.

One of the last times Alonzo saw Colleen, she had been supposedly going 'down hill'. Her boyfriend had been beating her, and Alonzo tried calming her by saying,  "Colleen, sweetheart, baby, I got to go back to Seattle, and then I will come back for you. You're my baby."  Unfortunately, at that moment her boyfriend, who had been buying cigarettes, came out of the corner store. Alonzo felt completely powerless to do anything. A year or so later Colleen died. Alonzo heard a couple stories; that she had caught the "monster'--what they called 'AIDS' back then--or that her liver went out due to excessive drinking. "I don't know if I kind of messed her up or not? I don't know if the interracial dating got to be too much for her, especially since I left? I kind of will never know until I die. She came to me and I went to her and I thank God right now for the experience."

Eventually, Alonzo left British Columbia. Susan, suddenly finding herself unhappy with the idea of being involved in the sex business, packed up the kids and left. Alonzo and his brother made haste back to the border for Seattle just before the whole prostitution ring was uncovered. Alonzo himself, feeling lost, decided to stay in Seattle. While there, he earned his high school diploma and started working in the telemarketing department at Sears and Roebuck, while simultaneously getting involved with one woman to another. Not going anywhere, he eventually moved back home to New York.

Today, Alonzo, who has never been married, lives in Manhattan above the Futon Warehouse, where he also works and manages. Alonzo says that white women have been his biggest motivation in life and the reason he desires success. He recently started a Judgment Recovery business that he hopes will finally bring him the money and the connections he needs. "I went around the back way instead of going the front way, but I am qualified and it's on", he says. He is very proud of the fact that he has been dating interracially for years, long before it was socially accepted.  "I learned this interracial dating thing on my own and no one is more qualified to talk about it, well maybe Richard Pryor, than me," he believes. When he was five years old his mother would sit him in front of the TV, while she cooked dinner for his father, and everyday around five-thirty, the cartoon 'Popeye, The Sailor Man' would come on. He loved Popeye, his muscles and how he was always protecting his girlfriend, Olive Oyl, from Pluto. It has only been the last eight years that he finally put it all together. He thought to himself, "How come you are so fascinated with these long-legged Caucasian women? Where is this coming from?" And then it dawned on him. "'You fool, you got programmed at five years old!' I swear to God, I really know that to be the truth," he reasons.

Alonzo often refers to himself as Alonzoman, which comes from a combination of Superman, Zorro, the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger and especially Popeye.  His motto is, "I'm Alonzoman and I am always doing the best I can, sometimes I do better, because I have always wanted to make the impossible, possible." With Alonzo, anything is possible.

Meet Jack

2006-07-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

Seventy-seven year old Jack Owen sells boiled peanuts, cold drinks, live fishing bait, raccoon tail hats, rustic furniture, hand-made gourd birdhouses, walking sticks and old-fashioned toys among other things at the Toxaway Falls Stand, a small roadside shack in the mountains of Lake Toxaway, North Carolina. Lake Toxaway was the first artificial lake to be built in the Appalachian Mountains in 1902. Jack's father Victor, who was partially blind and could not work a conventional job, built the stand next to the falls in 1947 as a way of supporting himself. "Back then in this area there wasn't much going on and my daddy placed a stand on the other side of the bridge over the falls selling birdhouse, drinks and not much of nothing to tell you the truth," explains Jack. In the 1960's a real estate development team arrived in Toxaway, set up a sales office and moved his fathers stand using a logging truck down the street to its current location along U.S 64. Over the years the stand has become a reoccurring stop for visitors who when asked can remember exactly what they bought the first time when they came as a kid.

Jack took over the family business when his father passed away twelve years ago. "I enjoy doing it- I am too old to do anything, but I still enjoy it, it gives me a chance to shoot a lot of bull," Jack says. People often stop by just to talk and he is always willing to tell anybody what they want to hear. Today his daughter and granddaughter are helping him work. His wife, who is into real estate, also stops by most mornings to help set up. They live four miles away from the stand. The Owen family was among the first pioneers to reach North Carolina, or what was then the Hogback Valley, in the 1800’s. Attempting to pull my leg, his daughter nodding her head, Jack tells me, "See this mountain behind me, I remember when that thing wasn't bigger than a potato."

Nowadays Jack tells me that it is hard to say what his favorite thing is about North Carolina because it's become too expensive to live there. Taxes and real estate prices have exceedingly increased as outsiders have come in and built huge summer homes. "If you want to buy something you can't find it or afford it," Jack explains. He considers himself lucky because the stand has no overhead and he can afford to sell his merchandise cheaper than anybody in town. Most of the items he sells come from local artisans and farmers. He also purchases his furniture from Amish families in Pennsylvania and sells a lot of Cyprus from Georgia. I asked Jack if he made anything in the store and he answered, "Sugar, it keeps me busy just being here." Jack says people really love his boiled peanuts and just last weekend a lady came by and bought six bags that she shipped back to California. Financially the stand does pretty well. Jack thought this year would be slow with the heat, "But you know I've done better this year than I have ever done!" The Toxaway Falls Stand is open during the spring, summer, and fall. Little has change about it's appearance. Once Jack thought about putting a little paint on it to make it look fancier, but people kept telling him not to, so he left it alone.

"I guess you would consider me an old timer, but I didn't used to be," says Jack who will turn 78 in November.

Jack with his daughter and granddaughter

Meet Kamila and Sylvia

2006-07-06T20:57:00.001-07:00

Kamila and Sylvia, 25 year-old identical twin foreign exchange students from Poland, are enjoying pint size beers together as they wait for friends at The Smokey Mountain Brewery in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The twins, who are computer science majors, have come to Tennessee for the second summer in a row to improve their English skills. This summer they have rented a cabin in the mountains and are working as hostesses at two different restaurants, as well as serving ice cream at a soda shop. Although they work most of the time, Kamila and Sylvia love the Smokey Mountains and have many Polish and American friends. So far they have not met any cute guys, but it has only been two weeks, and perhaps jokingly, Kamila tells me they are looking for male American twins. Both agree that they find American men more friendly and handsome than Polish men, however unlike Polish men they have found that American men often cheat. They are modest when asked if they get hit on a lot, saying “Oh, no not really” as they look at each other and giggle.

As twins, people always ask Kamila and Sylvia how they differ from each other. They both have a hard time answering that question and think their friends always have better answers. Kamila does mention that she is five minutes older than Sylvia, while Sylvia adds that she is a little bit taller than Kamila. They do not always hang out together and often have different friends and hobbies. However, both really enjoy the outdoors and sports, having both played soccer in Poland for six years.

Kamila and Sylvia say that the biggest difference between Poland and Tennessee are the people and food. They have found that Tennesseans are friendlier, always smiling and saying, “Hello, how are you?” In Poland Kamila says, "The people are always poor, so they are always upset”. The twins find food in America gross, especially the bread, and they don’t understand why people eat so much fast food. “I know that it is because it is really cheap, but it’s not good for your health”, says Kamila. She says that most people in Poland would not consider eating at a fast food restaurant. She has noticed that fresh healthy foods in America are very expensive. Both consider the music in America very different then that in Poland. Techno music is huge in Poland while country music is the most popular in Tennessee. In Poland country music is non-existent, but Kamila and Sylvia have grown to like many of the country music songs they listen too in Tennessee. Although Kamila and Sylvia like spending time in America, they admit that they would much rather prefer to keep their permanent home in Poland.

Kamila on the left and Sylvia on the right

Scott and Blake would both like to meet Kamila and Sylvia

The bar area

Cheers.

The brewery

Famous American Twins

Meet Sarah

2006-06-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

Sarah, a 27 year-old artist, photographer and motorcycle mechanic in Louisville, Kentucky, is about to leave town on a month and a half cross-country motorcycle adventure where she will meet and photograph the lives of other female mechanics. Mentally she is in preparation mode, mapping routes, deciding what cameras to bring and making sure her bike, a 1978 Yamaha, runs well. Sarah plans to make stops in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, and potentially South Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Staying in hostels, hotels, on friend’s couches and occasionally camping along the way she will pack the bare essentials in a saddlebag including a few pairs of socks and underwear, a couple t-shirts, maps, a notebook, cameras and all of the tools needed to fix her bike, just in case.

Sarah has not met many women who are interested in mechanics and by taking this trip she hopes to connect with a few. With the purpose of creating a 12-month calendar she will document these women in their natural work environments. The Female Mechanics Calendar Project began a few years ago when Sarah noticed that typical shop calendars mostly depict barely clothed women spread out on a cars and motorcycles, sometimes holding a tool. Her calendar will be offered to shops as an authentic alternative to the typical 'tool-girl' calendar. Through word of mouth and the help of a grant she received through The Kentucky Foundation for Women, who published a 'call for female mechanics' in their newsletter, Sarah was able to locate other female mechanics across the country. She was also featured in a local woman's magazine and had a well-received art exhibition with photos from a preliminary 2003 cross-country trip documenting the lives of friends who had moved to other states.

Included in the list of women Sarah will soon meet are a jet plane mechanic who has worked for UPS in Reno, Nevada for thirteen years, a German mechanic and motorcycle racer in San Francisco and a student attending MMI, a mechanic school in Phoenix. While in Reno she will also connect with a mechanic named Celeste, who owns an auto shop, and together they will travel on their motorcycles to San Francisco. Sarah also plans to attend the Moto GP races in Monterey, CA.

Sarah has been riding motorcycles since she was eighteen. As a little girl she liked riding bicycles, building Lego’s and has always been a bit of tomboy. “I like to get dirty, I like fixing things and being creative.” She is a self-taught mechanic and started learning eight years ago when she bought her first bike. For the past two years she has worked part-time at Magnum Cycles, a unique motorcycle and repair shop on Dixie Highway in Louisville. Her coworkers at Magnum, who are all men, have been very supportive of her project. “The last trip I sent them postcards and then they mailed me parts when I needed them in Chicago.”

While on the open road Sarah often goes days without music, distractions or communication with others. "All I hear is wind, but that makes me appreciate music so much more when I get to listen to it." She enjoys the time by herself but really enjoys reaching a destination where she can hang out with new and old friends. Sarah, who admits to being shy, is not scared of being on the road alone saying, "You just can’t look at it like everyone is out to get you, because they’re not.” She does however have to be extremely aware of other cars and drivers. During her last trip one of her favorite places to ride was South Dakota because the roads were straight and she could zone out a little and sing songs in her head. Sarah says that it is pretty spectacular to ride through the rain and when it storms she sometimes pulls over and just sits it out. In case of an emergency she can always use her BMW Riders Anonymous Book that list contact information of bikers throughout the country willing to lend a helping hand. The hardest part of the trip is to know that she makes her mother back home very scared.

Sarah says this trip will be a great learning experience and is excited to meet other women who have found a vocation that makes them happy. She plans on publishing her calendar in 2007 and will also create a traveling art exhibition that documents her journey and lives of the women she meets.

To check learn more about Sarah and her project go to www.sarahlyon.com.

Sarah is also currently looking for places to stay along the way, so if you have a free couch add a comment below with contact information.

Sarah and Leonard working in the shop

Sarah standing next to her 1978 Yamaha

Last minute tuning

Man plays harmonica for me on 1-64

2006-06-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

I was driving in my truck on the 1-64 this evening listening to music, windows rolled down and all the sudden I look over and see this older man playing the harmonica to me . We drive side by side for a minute or so, I smile, he smiles as we try to keep too the same speed..... wow, what a feelin'

Meet Kim and Her Family

2006-06-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

In the yard of a house located off a small highway I notice a large group of people playing croquet, throwing baseballs and having, what appeared to me to be a really great time.

Kim Vittitow and her husband Bernie are hosting a birthday party at their home in Trimble County, Kentucky for family members born in February, March, April and May. Inside the house is a large birthday cake with over thirty-two names on it. Kim purchased the cake at Sam's Club and decorated it herself. She says it wasn’t much fun, yet smiles and laughs while showing it to me.

The guest are all outside playing croquet and enjoying the yard, which has an above ground pool, covered deck, and small quarry stoned pond filled with lotuses. Bernie and Kim are proud of their yard and have been working on it together little by little since 1999. They have two grown children, a daughter who is in the house getting ready for a friend's wedding and a son who is outside with his wife and newborn son. Bernie and Kim have lived in this house for ten years but raised their children mostly at her parents house in another part of the county. Kim says she loves her entire family and is expecting over fifty people to show up throughout the day. “There were six in mom’s family, three of them are here right know and three of them that are expecting. They all live in this two county area, Pendleton and Trimble." Kim says she can't help but think how lucky she is to have such a close family and today’s celebration is only her mother's side.

In addition to celebrating birthdays, today also marks the beginning of Kim's weeklong summer vacation from her job at the Trimble County Prosecutor’s Office. She is the Child Support Coordinator for the entire county. For vacation Kim is going camping with her brother and mother, a family tradition since they were kids. Now that their mother, who is sixty eight, is less mobile they stay close to home, pitching a tent in Kim's backyard. “I want her close to the house, so if she get’s hot, she can go cool off in the house”. Bernie says he won't be joining them, "I like camping, like at the Holiday Inn", he laughs.

Kim has seen many changes throughout the years in Trimble and Pendleton County. When Interstate 71 was built in the late 60's and the Pendleton Drive-In shutdown the town completely died. "We had a skating ring at one time, several big restaurants, stores and it just died", Kim explains. She says however that in the past four years the area has started coming back to life, which is good for the community. In her opinion it is because property in the area has become the new and only cash crop now that the Tobacco buy out has started. "There is not enough money to pay taxes on big farms so our farmers have no choice but to sell." She says Trimble County is a very beautiful and friendly place to live and new subdivisions go up every month. Personally Kim is enjoying taking classes at new art studio that a retired schoolteacher opened down the street. She has become a natural painter and is currently working on a portrait of her son when he was a kid.

I let Kim get back to her game of croquet and we exchange emails.

The Cake

Bernie with his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson

The tent

Kim's mothers dog, who will also be camping with them this week.

Kim shows me the painting she is currently working on.

Bernie playing Croquet

The pond

View from accross the street

The family

Meet Aleyda

2006-06-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

Aleyda is a seventeen-year-old recent high school graduate who works at a Mexico Lindo, a restaurant/grocery store in historic downtown Carrollton, Kentucky. Although she works six days a week she admits the job is pretty easy. This week there have been few customers but she expects to be busy tomorrow for the soccer game. Mexico is playing in the World Cup and they have a television.

Aleyda is from Veracruz, Mexico and moved to Kentucky with her mother and younger brother five years ago. Her father had been living in the United States since she was six and when they came to visit for summer vacation, they stayed. Aleyda says it is great to have her whole family together again. As typical for siblings, she says her younger brother can be a big pain in the butt, but she still loves him. America has been an adjustment, but one that she has done gracefully. She recently received a scholarship to attend the local two-year community college and plans to become a Chemical Engineer, finishing her studies at Northern State University in Covington, Kentucky. Aleyda took a strong interest in chemistry and science her freshman year of high school but would not consider herself a chemistry geek. “Everybody says it’s pretty hard but I think when you like something it’s not hard to do.”

Aleyda has a boyfriend of nine months named Brendan. She says at first a few people looked at them strangely because he is white but then they just got used it. She is mature about the relationship."We get along great and talk about our differences and what we can do to make it better. If something is bothering him or vice versus we always touch base with each other.” Aleyda enjoys the differences in people and has friends from many races and backgrounds. Her Hispanic friends in Kentucky often look at her strange because she has been in America longer than them and has integrated more into the culture. “The Hispanic people here are always together in a corner at school. My brother and I talk to everyone pretty much. That is why they look at us weird. They are not racist and I am still friends with them but they just like to stick together. I ask them, ‘How come you don’t talk to everyone?’ and they are like, ‘I don’t know.’”

When Aleyda first moved to Carrollton the Hispanics were a small segment of the population but in the past five years, the number has grown tremendously. She says Hispanics are moving to the United States because there are more opportunities. Despite their differences she says the town is somewhat close-knit. “It’s a small town and everyone knows everyone. You can’t really do anything without everyone knowing about it the next day.” Aleyda comments that Carrollton can be boring at times. She likes to spend her time at the movies, hanging out with friends and going swimming at state parks. Today her friend is in a beauty pageant at the county fair behind Wal-Mart and she wants to go when she gets off work. Aleyda spends a lot of time on the computer at work and particularly likes Myspace, on online social network. We agreed to become Myspace friends and I was honored when she has added me to her top 8.

Meet Jose

2006-06-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

JOSE is a tree deliveryman in Miami, Florida and drives a custom-detailed sparkling blue Chevrolet Kodiak 5500 commercial mini semi-truck. Tonight Jose’s work truck has become his ride. It is Hip Hop Weekend in South Miami and Jose along with friends is cruising the main drag. Traffic is barely moving with one pimped-out car behind the other and by far Jose has the largest ride on the road. He says that driving around has been fun and that his truck is receiving many stares. So far he tells me I am the first girl they’ve picked up. Jose purchased his Chevrolet because it was large with a DVD player and extra engine designed into the frame. Just to fill up the tank it cost him two hundred dollars. It is all worth it too Jose and the light turns green.

Jose's Truck

South Beach, Miami

Meet Nardia and Jantzen

2006-06-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

JANTZEN and NARDIA are also in South Beach tonight on a neon green Kawasaki Motorcycle. Both are visiting Miami for the Memorial Day Weekend. Nardia is originally from Jamaica but lives in Tampa, Florida and works as a receptionist at a Medical Center. Jantzen is a Senior Operation Analyst for Bank of America in Dallas, Texas. Jantzen and Nardia have just met tonight. She says she choose him because her green dress matched his green ride. “She is walking and socializing, I’m riding and socializing”, says Jantzen. Jantzen used to race Kawasaki’s and was sponsored by the company but says now he just rides, “it is my hobby”. Referring to the neon color of his bike, “If you ever race for Kawasaki this is the color you are going to be racing in. It is called Kawasaki green and they have a patent on the color.” Jantzen is dressed in green from head to toe and even has neon green riding gloves. “Whenever I ride my motorcycle I have the responsibility to match my motorcycle. That is just my choice and some may say that’s my signature.” Jantzen attends motorcycle events with the fellows because they are the guy trips. But other than that he does like to take in social events with the woman in his life. “But a lot of them I try to do with the fellows, because that is the fellows bonding time.”

Nardia on the sidewalk later in the evening.

Meet Victor

2006-05-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

This is Victor and he has worked at the As Seen On TV Outlet™ off I-75, exit 141 in Campbell County, Tennessee ever since it opened four years ago. The outlet store, which is connected to a Stuckey’s gas station, is a popular stop for highway motorist on their way to and from Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Victor says the most unique thing about working at As Seen On TV™ is the people that come through the door. “You see them one time and then you never see them again”, Victor smiles. Once Dave Hunter, author of the guidebook ‘Along Interstate 75’ that is sold in the store, came in and autographed a copy of his book for Victor.

(Autographed Copy of the book 'Along Interstate 75')

Victor has seen the infomercials for all of the products sold in the store. “Most customers already know what they are looking for when they walk through the doorway”, he says. Mimicking a customer, “I saw the Magic Bullet™… or I saw Showtime Rotisserie™.... can I get it here?” The most popular items at the store are George Foreman Products™, Miracle Blade Knives™, Quick Chops™, Showtime Rotisseries™, and The Original Chocolate Factory™. In addition the Marshmallow Blow Gun™, which simply allows you to blow and shoot marshmallows, was the number one college kid toy in 2004. He says the most ridiculous inventions in the store are the new improved remote control Fart Machines™ and Tee Time™ on a toilet that allows participants to 'play golf while they go'.

(My friend Peter holding a Marshmallow Blow Gun™)

Victor owns more than his fair share of the products he sells. His favorite items for using at home are the Miracle Blade Knives™ and the flexible cutting mats that lay on your kitchen counter for protection.

If you ever drive along interstate I-75 in Tennessee stop and say hello to Victor. He is there almost everyday. As an exit marker look for the gigantic 100 ft white cross that stands directly in front of Adult World, a huge adult video and arcade store off the highway.

Victor was excited to meet a new stranger

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Victor's favorite cutting mats

Standing outside the store

Meet Luis

2006-05-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

This is Luis and like myself he interviews random people. Luis approached my friend Aileen and I inside the Anglo Mania British Fashion Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Handing Aileen a notebook he asked her to write an anonymous short story about a dating experience in New York City. Luis, who is publishing a book, has conducted over 2,028 interviews with women in Manhattan over the past ten months. He intends to reach his goal of 2,500 stories in 365 days. The Kiss and Tell Project © is sponsored by Moleskine®, Kodak® and Starbucks®, pending a grant from the National Endowment For the Arts and has raised the interest of three book publishers. The book will consist of women's intimate stories about lust, love, and relationships accompanied by Luis's photography. Luis revisits the locations where he has interviewed when no one is around and takes photographs. “I have pictures from all over the city but you don’t see a single soul in any of the photographs. For example you will see a club and it will be completely empty. The point is that everybody has a story and the story that you may share is private but the location where you do it is very public because we all share common space in New York City.” Luis only conducts interviews in New York because he enjoys the perspective of the city and feels that the stories would be more traditional elsewhere.

Luis makes his living as a casting director and fashion photographer, a world he finds very superficial. As a result he felt the need to conquer the reality of the human experience. He choose relationships, dating and sexuality, topics he says that by in large people have in common whether it be a heartbreak or a successful romance. He also confesses that he was a total womanizer when he first started the book. "I dated a lot. I was not quite shy about sex. Love was different though, even though I always dreamt of being in love. Sex was much more accessible, especially in Manhattan. Love was not there. Or maybe I was not finding it because I would look for it in strip clubs, in casting rooms, in clubs, in modeling agencies--anywhere where I could feel exclusive. Also, I must add that I have always been intrigued by it. It did not seem weird but rather, intriguing."

Luis is now in a full-time relationship with his girlfriend Kimberly. "Doing this project when I was single was much easier because I did not feel emotionally drawn to being with Kimberly," says Luis of his relationship. "I would just be a city nomad. But having Kimberly is the best thing that has happened to me since the woman in Miami told me, "hey, I can't find the man I was with. Want to go to my hotel?"

Some days Luis spends the whole night wondering around Manhattan collecting interviews and other days he will just spend ten minutes on his way home from work. “The point is that everyday I get a different story.” Luis has no inhibitions when it comes to interviewing people regardless if his subject is in a club or standing next to a huge boyfriend. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll go after the story.” When he was in college he wrote a successful column that often included stories about dating and sexuality. He chose not to give me the name of the college he attended because he does not want to give them credit.

Luis does not believe in destiny or soul mates. "Different people serve a different purpose in peoples lives at certain times." He says that essentially his project is among other things about being able to let go, one page at a time.

To learn more about Luis's project visit his blog at
<Naked In Manhattan

Outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met)

View from the top of the Met

Aileen and I at the Met

Meet Andy George, Window Washer

2006-05-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

This is Andy George and his official job title is window washer. Andy has been washing high-rise building windows for over twenty years. He says it takes a lot out of you to wash each window carefully with a squeegee while rappelling in mid-air. Andy learned how to rappel when he decided to become a window washer in Indianapolis. Although never afraid of heights, he admits that it was both scary and exhilarating in the beginning but now it's just become a job.

Andy receives a lot of stares and has seen some bizarre things while washing windows. Sometimes he ends up scaring the people who are inside the building because he does not have to knock or tell them he is coming. It is up to the building management to let people know when he will be there to clean. Once Andy was cleaning the windows at a hospital when he witnessed a woman having a baby, "she was spread out and it was kind of strange". He has also come across many weird scenes including naked people while cleaning apartment buildings and hotels.

Today Andy was cleaning the north side of the fifteen story Starks Building in downtown Louisville. He and his partner have been working on the building for three days. Andy works year-round and says it gets pretty cold in the winter. Although most would consider his job an extreme profession after twenty years Andy finds it pretty simple. "It can be pretty relaxing on a nice day but it gets a little scary when its windy". Yesterday he had to use a suction cup to stay on the window. The wind can blow him fifteen to twenty feet and that freaks him out when it happens. The rappel rope also becomes very heavy as he gets higher and can weigh up to 100 pounds.

Andy has had a couple of close calls while working. Back in 1997, on Carburetion Day (Indy 500), Andy and his partner got stuck on the thirty-fourth floor of the Bank One building in Indianapolis. The construction stage they where on broke and there was no way down. It took twelve members of the Indianapolis Fire Department Rescue Team to save them and they were all over the news. "I couldn’t believe how they did it because they lowered twelve fireman down from the top to get me and my partner in a harness. First they lowered me down from the building and then my partner. Afterwards I went and thanked each one of them."

Andy is a full-time window washer and does not like to do much outside of work but spend time with his daughter.

WATCH ANDY CLEAN WINDOWS!!

Meet "Cuzin" Ray and "Butter Bean" Gene

2006-05-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

"Cuzin" Ray E. Rutherford and Gene “Butter Bean” Brewer, local musicians and entertainers at The Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, spend their time on a porch playing music, sharing stories and cracking constant jokes. “I play somethin' between country and rap and call it crap,” laughs Ray. Gene and Ray are part of the museum's band of nine members that play for tour groups, company events, weddings, dogfights, and anything else that comes up. Ray says out on the porch you have to have a hillbilly nickname, hence the names “Cuzin” and “Butter Bean.” Every Saturday Ray also goes by “Rawhide Ray” on the western television show 'Riders of the Silver Screen.' “Ray, if you put a saddle on that horse you wouldn’t be so raw!” Gene advises. Gene and Ray are from opposite sides of the bridge in Norris and have been playing music since they were kids. Both retired, they play in the Appalachia Band part-time and on the weekends work at local beer joints. Ray's wife works in the museum gift shop.

Ray and Gene have held too many jobs over the years to count. Gene was a race-car driver and mechanic in California for several years. He came back to Tennessee to run a liquor store, worked at a Chevrolet garage and then for the last ten years of his life went back to “his roots” working on heavy equipment, specifically Caterpillars. Gene has been in a few movies, “I was a preacher in one of Barbara Mandrells’ movie. She only made one movie where she was the star in it and I was in that movie. It’s about a guy coming home from the war and finding another pig roosting in his pin. It's called Johnny Bull.” Gene was recently in a made-for-TV movie produced by Mormons.

Ray moved to Cleveland, Ohio in the 1950's to work at a foundry with some friends and would come out of there looking like a coal miner. It wasn't for him. Soon after he attended broadcasting school in Nashville. Once he graduated he became the voice of WGSV, an AM radio station in Gunnersville, Alabama. Ray worked at WGSV for nine months until the draft called him and he enlisted in the army. He never did go back Alabama. He did keep playing music, however, and while stationed in the army formed a little band who performed at a bar called Cactus in Carrizozo, New Mexico on Saturday nights. Released from the army, Ray moved to California briefly and worked at a plant were they made airplane parts, then moved back to Norris where he has lived for the past seventeen years.

Ray and Gene have known each other ever since Gene left California and came back to his Tennessee. They are often featured together on the "Heartland Series" television show in Knoxville, TN.

A quote from Ray, talking about his mother-in-law:

"I wanted to put my mother-in-law in that frame, but I couldn't find a good picture," pointing at a picture frame made from an old toilet seat. "While on her death bed she looked up at me and said, 'When I die and you bury me, I'm a gonna dig out of my grave and come back and haunt yew,' I told her I'd a bury her face down and let her dig. She's about almost to China by now."

Ray's Business Card

Ray's Ex

Ray's Pride and Joy

Promotional Material

Gene's Tape

Click below to listen to Ray, Gene and Judy play music on the porch:

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Newspaper Article From Saluda, South Carolina

2006-05-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

The following two articles appeared in the Saluda Sentinel. They were written by Ralph Shealy who performs in the talent show video.

APRIL 27, 2006
IT HAPPENS...

Remember the movies from the 40's when Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland put on a variety show in a barn, and a big producer just happened to drop by, and he's so impressed, he put the kids on Broadway and they became stars?

Well, that didn't happen at the Emory Variety Show Saturday night at the Shrine Club, but we did have a young lady "drop by." She was driving down Hwy. 121 and saw the sign in front of the Shrine Club advertising the variety show, and decided to attend. The young lady was from Louisville, Ky., and was on her way home. "You've got the Kentucky Derby coming in a couple of weeks, and you stop by the Saluda Shrine Club to see a church variety show?," I asked her. She said she enjoyed things like this. Of course, she said that before we started.

Actually, we did pretty well, I thought.

I couldn't figure out, however, why the visitor from Louisville took pictures throughout the show. I hope we are not going to end up on some "Churches Gone Wild" website. I've known about this variety show for a couple of months, so I decided what I was going to sing Saturday afternoon at about 3 p.m. I don't know if the cruise-in was held Saturday. It was raining early in the morning, and none of my old cars handle moisture. I couldn't go anyway, because I was on a mission to find some tapes.

I had not planned on singing "church music." Instead I wanted to sing a song from the 40's a la Mickey and Judy, like "I'll Be Seeing You," or "You'll Never Know." I have accompaniment tapes for these and knew exactly where they were. They weren't. I tore my bedroom up looking for those tapes. I still haven't found them. So, I sang a "church song."

We had a good time at the show. There was a lot going on around our little burg Saturday night. "Elvis" was at Saluda Presbyterian, "Peter Pan" was at the Saluda Theater, and Saluda High had its prom.

Who says there is nothing to do here?

MAY 11, 2006
ON THE NET

A few weeks ago I wrote about the young lady from Louisville, Ky., who saw the sign at the Saluda Shrine Club for our Emory Talent Show and stopped in to take in the event.

I said she took pictures through the show and I hoped we weren't going to be included on some "Church's Gone Wild" video.

Well, we're not on that type of video, but we are on the internet!

Laura Parker has an internet site, www.meet-a-stranger.blogspot.com, and has included commentary, photos, and, yes, a video of the Emory Talent Show. She even has a clip of me singing on the video. I may be discovered yet - "American Older Than An Egyptian Idol."

She also has a photo of herself sporting the Bush-n-a-Bag "purse" Wayne Fulmer gave her.

This is a great internet site. Not many people want to "meet a stranger," but Laura meets them and writes good things about them.

Meet Kim and Emory United Methodist Church

2006-05-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

This is Kim Porter and she is a loving wife, proud mother of two and active member of Emory United Methodist - a small one hundred-member church located in rural Saluda, South Carolina. I met Kim while driving around the quiet back roads of Georgia and South Carolina one Saturday evening. It was around five thirty when I noticed a sign in front of a Hejaz Shrine Club that read, "Emory Talent Show Tonight at 6pm, $3.00 Admission". The timing was perfect so I went. Kim was in charge of greeting people that evening. She explained that members of Emory United Methodist were putting on a talent show in order to raise money for new church renovations. Hotdogs, chips, cookies, drinks and raffle tickets were for sale. Several members of the church showcased their talent singing gospel and patriotic tunes. Joining in the celebration and songs was Reverend Joyce Murphy, Emory's first female preacher, who has led the church for the past two years. Kim says that Rev. Murphy is awesome and that congregation just loves her and finds her fantastic.

The congregation of Emory United Methodist is made of a wide variety of people and professions including: mechanics, school teachers, office managers, barbers and hairstylists, nurses, and plenty of retired folk who enjoy their time fishing, hunting, and staying at home relaxing. Ralph Shealy, one of the singers in the talent show, runs the local newspaper The Saluda Standard Sentential. Kim says they also have one member, Ricky McCary, who is serving in Iraq with the 122nd Engineering Department. "Ricky McCary has a lovely wife named Stephanie and two cute little boys Jacob and Jonah. They were recently really sick and had to go to the hospital for a couple of days. They are waiting for their daddy to come home in May for a two-week visit," says Kim. "There are 122 men and women over in Iraq from our town right now fighting for our freedom. "

Saluda is a small country town with only five traffic lights, acres of farmland, pine trees and many logging businesses. Kim says there used to be many dairy farms but today only two or three still exist. She also says that they have to drive at least 25 miles to reach the nearest Wal-Mart. Many residents have gardens and grow their own vegetables for food. Kim's husband Randall, a diesel mechanic, says today it's less and less common for people in town to know each other. Many people are migrating to Saluda, especially to the area near Lake Murray. They often come from and commute to the larger city of Columbia, South Carolina. Randall says however that almost everyone at Emory United Methodist knows each other.

Emory's church dates back to 1882 and has seen many changes throughout the years. In 1966 a social hall was added and two years ago they extended the back of the church, adding a large kitchen and area for Sunday school. As Mr. Frontis Hawkins, the oldest member of the church, said, "After that addition it looked so good that it made the sanctuary look rather tacky." Elaborating he said, "One cold day in January a few years ago during a funeral six rather hefty pallbearers sat down on a pew and the center support split causing a noise to bellow throughout the building. Luckily those men didn't fall in the floor, but that caused us to start looking around and we saw that many of the pews were in bad condition. So about a year ago we decided that we would start working with the sanctuary."

Emory hired Church Interiors, a company that specializes in church renovations, to do all their work. All of the pews were sent off to be stripped and re-stained, new chandeliers and carpet were put in and the whole place was painted. Emory's was the quickest renovation that Church Interiors has ever completed. Oftentimes they encounter problems with members conflicting ideas, but Emory was completely united and agreed on nearly everything. One thing Emory is especially proud of is a glass rendition of the Lord's Supper, which sits behind the pulpit. During Sunday morning mass as the sun rises and reflects off the glass, light shifts and colors move throughout the church as the service progresses. Emory invites everyone to come by and check out their beautiful new facilities.

If you would like to donate to the renovation of Emory United Methodist please contact Rev. Joyce Murphy at 3139 Spann Rd. Leesville, SC 29090

Happy Birthday to Kim's little boy, Will, who recently celebrated his eight birthday with a baseball-theme party.

Randall, Kim's Husband

Ralph Shealy

Emory Choir singing Amazing Grace

Reverend Murphy and the Miller Brothers

Short Video from Talent Show

Check out the Bush-N-a-bag. One of Emory's members, Wayne Fulmer, gave me this bag at the talent show. At first I thought it was a purse, and said suprisingly, "Wow Wayne, you make purses?". But it's actually a device used for hunting. I recommend, even if you are not a hunter like myself, to check out his site at www.bushnabag.com.

Meet John Rice Irwin

2006-04-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

This is John Rice Irwin, Founder of the Museum of Appalachia located off 1-75 in Norris, Tennessee. A true Tennessian with deep roots, John had the good fortune of knowing all four of his grandparents who were the granddaughters and grandsons of the pioneer era in Appalachia's southern region. Interested in learning their lives and histories, John began collecting relics, memorabilia and stories in the early fifities during his travels through the mountains. Soon his garage was filled and a collection started to grow. "It wasn't a situation where you go out and build something and then say we're open. In the late fifties I built a log house or two and eventually I furnished them the way I thought they should be furnished and then people started to stop by to see it and so forth. It eventually got to a point that I had to have somebody to stay here because I had another job." And just like that, by word of mouth, the Museum of Appalachia was born.

Originally situated on five acres of land in a log cabin next to his house, the museum has now expanded to over thirty log structures and cabins, including a school, church, barns, and smokehouses, all of which are furnished with artifacts from Southern Appalachia. In purchasing an additional nine acres, John has surrounded the museum with lush gardens and soft, green pastuers, home to over fifty varieties of animals, including sheep, goats, hens, chickens, peacocks, horses, mules, ducks, guineas and turkies.

John says that people from all over the world come to the museum. Just yesterday a couple from Egypt visited and told him they enjoyed his museum because it was so personal. John didn't have the money to hire a professional for the exhibition and display. He says most museums or the people who do this kind of work have background in museum studies or similar training. As a result most museums look a like. "Mine may not look better, but it’s different.” The museum seems genuine and real. You can freely walk in an around all the cabins and experience it first hand as opposed to sitting behind a rope or glass wall. “I tried to be honest, most places for example tend to put things in and overemphasize them to coincide with what they think the people expect, such as whiskey jugs. But I try to do it honestly, although often times it is not what people want or expect.” Everything in John's museum has a story behind it, the background, location, its family history. "I enjoy especially meeting the people and families who owned the artifacts, but it has gotten to the point that I am so far behind displaying the items and running the history that I don't have the time to get out and collect." Prior to the museums construction, John maintained four or five jobs at once, teaching at the University of Tennessee and school superintendent for Anderson County for several years while also starting several businesses and corporations.

With a passion and high admiration for the people of Southern Appalachia, John has reconstructed the past through way of personal dialogue. Throughout the museum are pictures of him and the people he has met, their artifacts and stories, even his own family heirlooms. John believes in the personal touch, carefully handwriting many of the museums informational cards, and signs all of them with his initials. His collection is full of innovative contrivances, tools and so forth. "So many of the artifacts are one of a kind because the ingenuity and the necessity to live twelve or fifteen miles from the nearest neighbor. If you had any blacksmith work you did that, the carpentry work, the medicine and everything. You had to be almost completely self-sufficient." John says that it is really important that you come and see the museum.You will see the beauty of living simply.

Today John's daughter Elaine has taken over as the Executive Director of the museum. He says she is quite a worker, has three children, and is the choir director at the church along with several other respectable city titles. John still lives behind the museum.

MUSEUM ENTRANCE QUOTE: "Welcome to the Museum of Appalachia. These are our people. World renowned, unknown, famous, infamous, interesting, diverse, different, but above all, they are a warm, colorful and jolly lot, in love with our land, our mountains, and our culture. May their memories ever be preserved -- Not so much in reverence to them, but as a gift to us and to generations yet to come. To appreciate where we are today, or where we are going tomorrow, we must understand where, as a culture, we've been in the past. The folks you will meet here will help provide this understanding."

Meet the Showbots

2006-04-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Meet the Showbots, a group of human robot super-heroes who travel around the south keeping kids in school, off the street and away from drugs. Showbots, also known as Cop-rots when working with the police and Swopebots, when they advertise for the Sam Swope Car Dealership in Kentucky started as a concept of Clay W., a Jehovah Witness from Chicago whose fascination with superheros became his inspiration to help the community. With his own two hands, Clay cast and molded custom plastic robot attire built with detailed electronic devices that allow the robot to light up and make noise by remote control. The end result was a flexible light weight suit that provided Clay with the superhero powers needed to get the kids attention. "When a person talks to a child, they will hear it but they won't get it. When a character or a musician says it, they will listen every time."

Showbots are musically talented and often perform with robot guitars, keyboards and drums. They visit schools and offer different programs through the police department, traveling to eleven different cities throughout the South in a vinyl wrapped promotional car and trailer. They often set up stage in the back of a pick-up truck and a stage inventor, played by Clay's cousin, gives the robots orders and takes free Polaroid's of the kids as souvenirs. "We give the kids pictures to remember us and try to get in their heads.... We do musicals to get their attention and make them stand up and repeat after the robots things such as 'stay in school, say no to drugs' and give them pamphlets of important information to take home." People have been receptive to the Showbots, who have performed in Disneyland, toured with rock groups and contributed to several other stage shows. The best experience has been working with the children who have cancer through the Ronald McDonald House. "You know that these children do not have long to live," Clay admits, "but you know the one thing we can provide is a good positive life."

In order to meet financial needs, the Showbots have been contracted through Sam Swope to serve as a promotional form of entertainment. For Clay and the Showbots, this is their full-time gig. Performing a few years ago at the Louisville Auto Show, the Showbots were a success and ever since have become regular performers for Sam Swope, providing entertainment at their festival events and on site at their dealerships around town. Recently, the Showbots have become television icons in the Sam Swope's 'good credit, bad credit' commercials.

As a Jehovah Witness, Clay feels somewhat limited as a Showbot on what he can do. For example, he cannot perform at birthday parties. But he strongly believes that he and the Showbots have to live what they preach. "You can't tell kids not do something when you're doing it. I see a lot of people doing that. They will say something and then totally do the opposite. You have to be what you say you are. That is the one of the main things that kept me going. We are living what we teach." He believes that the way to save people and gain technique is to learn more about God. True to his superhero nature, Clay does not allow anyone except his family to take pictures of him without his costume. It is very important to him that a superhero does not lose his real identity.

A word from Ron Overstreet, Sales Manager at Sam Swope Mitsubishi in the Hurstbourne Auto Center: (Ron also starts in all of the commercial with the Swopebots.)

Stop by and see the Swopebots perform Tuesdays at Sam Swope on Dixie Highway, Wednesdays at Sam Swope on Bardstown Road, the 'Just Trucks' location, and Thursdays at Sam Swope Hurstbourne. Get your picture taken with and by the Swopebots! Bring the kids! Fun for Everyone!
"Obviously, they will make your eye turn!"

Prepared for you by Laura

Meet Ed

2006-04-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

This is seventy-one year old Ed Copeland and he has been in the hand-painted sign business for over 44 years. Ed started the business in Michigan when he was twenty-six years old. "I had a business in Village Park, our one horse town in Michigan that I ran part time. It was a concession business next to the high school. You know it was one of those hotdog/popcorn stands. It was a permanent structure and had been there for many years. So the first year I didn’t do anything but take care of that business and it was seasonal. I said well, jeez I am going to just stick a sign in the front window of this concession business saying, “Signs done here, fair rates". I did pretty good with the sign business considering it was part-time. Little did I know that I would be sitting here today talking to someone about my career?"

Ed was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in a little town south of there called Jonesville. Growing up Ed was interested in art and horses. "I realized that I was very talented in art early on and most artist don’t do sign work, but I was able to do both." Although educated in the fine arts, Ed considers himself a self-taught sign painter. He tried to get involved in horse racing art but it was pretty hard to do because it’s not what you know it’s who you know. Ed attended Fort Wayne Art School for two years after high school and then in 1958 took a short course at the Art Institute in Pittsburg. He was considered a great student there, but began to push himself beyond his limits and his nerves began to act up. “The pressure was getting to me so I had to drop out. My dad suggested that I go work at Yellowstone National Park in the laundry department for a few months and I did that instead." Once back in Michigan, Ed took a two-year correspondence course through the mail at a famous art school in Westport, CT founded by Norman Rockwell. “I also did something that I didn’t think I would get an answer too. Soon after I started the course I wrote a letter to Norman Rockwell and complimented him as an artist. You know who Norman Rockwell is don’t you? Well he is my idol. To make a long story short he answered the letter and wished me luck in the art course.” The letter is one of Ed's favorite collectors items.

In 1977 Ed moved to Louisville, a larger city that would be more profitable for the sign business. "To make a long story I had been to the Kentucky Derby off and on in the fifties and sixties. My dad was a dentist, and he adopted my brother and me when I was a year old. One of his hobbies was Shetland ponies. He had ponies and of course all kids wanted a pony for their birthday and we had twenty of them! He also had a live merry-go-round business and we would travel to different carnivals and county fairs during the summer. They had harness racing at the county fair so that’s how I got interested in horse racing. When I got old enough I started learning about the KY Derby, of course little did I know that I was going to end up down here? This year will be my 35th Derby. Anyway, the program cover for 1976 KY Derby was hideous. So I sent samples of my work to Churchill Downs and I figured I would follow it up by moving down to Louisville whether they accepted it or not because I liked the town. I went to see the big shot at Churchill downs and to make a long story short I knew I was going to get the brush-off. My first job when I moved to Louisville was at Churchill Downs in the parking lots. One of the employees said, “you like to come down here so much why don’t you work here?” I ended up working on the backside too for two seasons. At that time Louisville had two other tracks including harness and quarter horse racing in the west end. I worked at all three and even put lettering on horse vans. You couldn’t get behind the scenes anymore than that I don’t believe."

Ed advertises his business by carrying two poster-boards filled with colored sample drawings, pictures and his phone number. He also carries a brief case with his rates hand-painted on the side. Ed never leaves home without the posters and briefcase. He feels strange without them, "They identify who I am." Just last week he was at the grocery store and a woman approached him for a business card. “I try to update the sign every once in a while. You can’t keep those in A-1 shape when you’re carrying them around all the time.” This form of advertisement was an accidental idea. A long time ago he was at a restaurant next to Churchill Downs when a horse exercise rider commissioned him to paint a sign for Mary Jane Champlain Racing Stable. In good faith Ed made the sign but when he delivered it, the guy had gone out and got drunk the night before and spent all his money. He expected Ed to give him the sign for free. “Well I wasn’t going to give him the sign so that gave me the idea well, hey, why not come up with some kind of a deal that you could carry around.” He used the Mary Jane Champlain sign as his first poster advertisement. Ed says that the general public often thinks that he is trying to sell the drawings on his advertising posters. It annoys him because they do not realize that those are just samples.

Today Ed says the hand-painted sign business has pretty much been replaced by computer generated stick-on letters. He doesn’t even know how they make them, but knows computer made signs are fast and cheap. He thinks they are also uncreative. “I still think, I call it the ‘old-fashioned way,’ is the best. I think that human touch is what is being lost today." Ed does not entirely support himself through the sign business. “Years ago, you wouldn’t recognize me now from then, but I had a bad nervous breakdown. I had nerve problems all my life. Usually if a person has a nervous condition they wouldn’t be able to do this kind of work so I surprised myself and that really helped my nerve condition to focus on drawing and being accurate. So anyway I was on disability and now I am on social security disability”. Ed qualified for section-8 housing and a minister friend helped him get into KY Towers Apartments downtown. He can still work and is not ashamed of his circumstances. Ed says that he is reasonably financially stable and is economical, never going off the deep-end. He does not drink or smoke. “I try to get a good night sleep so I do feel good most of the time. I don’t think I have a set routine. Each day is a new challenge and I love to talk to people and I am good on communications. Of course a lot of people would like to be left alone. They won’t even look at you to say hello in this society today. To make a long story short an average day, well I can’t really say, everyday seems to be different. I think it motivates me more. Because many jobs that you go to, it’s all routine. Once you get done you haven’t accomplished anything.” Ed can walk by his signs anytime of day and say, “hey I did that,” and that makes him feel pretty good.

Ed never married but almost did one time, " I guess it just wasn’t meant to be". He loves his art and considers it his best talent. “I think that everyone has a talent, you’ve got a talent and everyone that you see out here has a talent. Otherwise God wouldn’t have put them on this earth.” Ed grew up with church being the main activity of town. He has always been religious but his relationship with God has grown stronger over the years. He believes that God is directing him everyday and shows him how to do things. “You just can’t do it on your own.” Lately the press in Louisville has taken an interest in what Ed is doing. Bob Hill from the Courier Journal recently wrote a piece about him and the photographer Matt Stone from Velocity took his picture last week. Ed felt good about Bob’s article but was surprised that not too many people approached him afterwards. But overall the attention makes him feel pretty good about himself and his accomplishments.

Ed's thoughts on technology, society and politics:

"I like technology in a way and in a way it makes me a little, not mad, but shake my head. A lot of it is good in the way that it is being used, but a lot of it has taken over people’s ability to talk one-on-one. I think that people isolate themselves so much with TV’s and computers. I mean they're still talking to somebody but they are not doing what we are doing here. And I think that is a bad part of technology. People are lost in their own worlds walking down the street with headphones on, I don’t know what they’re listing too, or talking on the cell phone. I don’t want that. I am going to walk down a street and look at nature. And young people are actually getting overweight from sitting behind a computer so much. So in away it is detrimental, it’s not all constructive. I can see a use in some ways but I think it is being abused. Cell phones for sure. People are feeling lonelier because they are letting this technology run their lives. People were happier when I was growing up. They had less and they knew how to manage their money. Now they are going in debt head-over-heals and I don’t see any sense to it. I don’t own a credit card and I don’t want one. And I have got an answering machine on the telephone and that’s it. No cell phone and I don’t miss it. I think that people have too much to juggle today and that they make their own stress. Most people are in debt so no wonder they’re miserable. T.V. has promoted buy now, pay later and I think TV has brainwashed many people today. And then Christmas, I’m a Christian, is gone. The real meaning of Christmas is gone. I would like to hope that it gets back to what it used to be but I’m afraid we have gone over board and that the newer generation does not think like we used too growing up. And politicians today are just like kids fighting over something. They have lost their humanity and they just that don't care about us anymore.“

Meet Jaime

2006-04-06T21:07:00.001-07:00

This is Jaime and she is a mechanic at Westport Road Automotive in Louisville, KY. She is also an artist, musician, teacher and works part-time as a courier to make a little extra cash. Jaime grew up in a small town an hour south of Louisville called Bloomfield. She moved away from home car-less when she was sixteen. Every night she would hitchhike to Louisville to play in a sixties/seventies folk band. When the hitchhiking got old she decided to move to there. Jaime took a job at General Electric as a Sourcing Consultant and saved up enough money to buy a car. "One day I drove past Jim Brown Automotive and this little car was sitting in the lot and it has a sign on it that said 'pick me' and I loved it." The car was a 1972 blue Super Beetle. Jaime looked at it four different times and practically cried every time she couldn't take it home. She didn't have parents who would cosign, was young with no credit and the car was too old to get a loan. Gratefully her boss at GE agreed to cosign and she bought the car. She named it "Strudel" because it was German and cute.

The car did have some problems. The tires and valve stems were dry-rotted so it kept breaking down and getting flat tires. One day her tire literally fell off while driving. She went to Auto-Zone who couldn't help but recommended she go to a guy named Steve Parker at Westport Automotive. Steve, a thirty-year expert of Volkswagen auto repair, stayed late that night and helped Jaime find the right parts. He also recommended that she buy John Muir's Volkswagen Book, which she refers to as the "complete idiots guide, pretty much. It's a funny book because the audience that it was written for was hippies. So it's kind of like 'you're a stoner and you can't remember anything, so lets break it down and don't forget to put your long hippie hair in a stocking cap.'" From then on every time her car broke down she would use the book to troubleshoot. If she couldn't figure out the answer she would call Steve and he would have what she needed. Eventually Steve had Jaime come to the shop on Saturdays to learn more and make a little extra money. Jaime became really good at fixing up cars, particularly Volkswagens. It got to the point that she was so frustrated with her job at GE that she quit. Call her insane she says but "I hated sitting behind a desk with the florescent lights and no windows." It was then that Steve offered Jaime a full-time job at the shop and she became a mechanic. Jaime says Steve is the most honest mechanic that she has ever met in her entire life. "He is just super, super nice and giving."

Jaime really likes working on cars and doesn't mind getting greasy. Occasionally men customers will make a sly remark. Steve thinks its funny and if they say anything to him, such as they don't want a girl working on their car, he turns them loose to her. One time there was a guy who wanted a performance air filter put on his fancy Nissan. Jaime warned him that it wouldn't be good for his car because the car had no support bracket. He insisted that she put it on, she did, and it ended up being really bad for his car. He brought it back to the shop and told Steve, "Ever since you let that girl work on my car" Steve stopped him mid-sentence and said "wait a second, let me let you talk to her." So Jaime talked to him and "ripped him a big one".

At work Jaime wears blue pants, a mechanic's button down shirt with a name patch and non-slip black shoes. "It makes sense to wear black because you're going to spill oil and shit all over them. No mechanics uniform would be complete without a silicon stain or an oil stain on the shirt." Jaime is very careful with her hands when she works. After all she plays instruments and makes art. She does not like to wear gloves because she cannot feel and a big part of her job is to feel where she is at in the engine. Not that she cares anyways, but her nails are always broken and different lengths. When Jaime goes home she smells like Volkswagen and her boyfriend often says, "oh honey I am so happy to see you but can you take a shower... you smell like oil." Jaime spends more on expensive hygiene products now that she is a mechanic. Every three months she buys a nine-dollar bottle of shampoo that takes the grease out while keeping the hair soft. She's a girlie girl, but she likes cars.

Jaime prefers an old car to a new car. Her car is over thirty-four years old, it's easy to fix and she knows how it works. Some of the newer cars have computer system problems when they break down and you need codes. With an older car you have less problems, less frequently because the life is a lot longer. "Your not going to see a brand new Ford Excursion out on the road in thirty-four years for now, your just not going to see it. It is all about economics, you design something so that it will break so people will have to sink more money into it, the dealers and makers make more money off of it and eventually the car craps out and you have to go buy a brand new one anyway." New cars also have lighter bodies for performance and speed but old cars have the protection of steel. Knocking on her car, "So if I get hit in this thing I am protected. This car has been hit at least six times, I've only been in it three of those times, and I have come out with not one scratch."

In addition to being a mechanic Jaime plays, writes and teaches music. She and her boyfriend are moving in together and they plan on turning their basement into a classroom space where she will teach piano and he will teach bass. She also likes to paint and draw. Ultimately she says those are the things that make "me, me". If they do one day bring her money it will be good, but at this point they offer her something much more. Last week Jaime's boyfriend asked her what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Jaime says the things she wants to do have no bearing on any job that she has right now. None of the jobs she can have right now will get her to be playing music all of the time, or making art at home. But being a mechanic is a job that she loves and one that she will continue even if it is not always her full-time job.

Need your car fixed? Westport Road Automotive, 8715 Westport Rd, Louisville, KY 40242 (502) 426-6266
Jaime will also be taking new students from the Louisville area starting this the summer.

Meet Jeffrey

2006-04-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is Jeffrey and he is a commercial artist who specializes in airbrushing, comic books and portraitures. Jeffery was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri and discovered his artistic talent at age six while drawing from a coloring book. He is self-taught and did not have the opportunity to take art classes when he was in school. As a young adult Jeffery made his money in construction, industrial, and assemblage work. About six years ago he began to focus his career on art. Jeffrey purchased a "how-to" tape from Aztec Airbrush Company and started painting basic lettering, cartoons and portraitures on t-shirts, caps, and license plates. He began to sell the merchandise at flea markets and then at fairs. He and his, now, ex-wife traveled to fairs in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Ohio in a car that had a personalized license plate with both their names airbrushed on it. Jeffrey would airbrush the merchandise during the fair and felt comfortable as an audience of people watched him.

Jeffrey also makes comics. In 1985 he made his first violent comic book. He had never read a comic book before that point. He created the character Pandemonium Panda and obtained a copyright from Washington D.C. "Panda got locked up for drinking too much, getting into fights and then I had him steeling and breaking into stores to get alcohol and all of that stuff. " At the time Jeffrey didn't really care about the consequences of Panders actions but included them in the story so they didn't look one-sided. He also wrote a comic about a little girl who ran around killing people. He enjoyed the process of creating comics but only showed them to a few people. Occasionally he would hand them out at fairs or leave them on the tables at a library.

In 2001 Jeffery caught pneumonia and almost died. He was extremely ill, went two weeks without eating, couldn't talk or walk and started remembering things from his past. He knew that he was close to death before he went to the hospital to receive a diagnosis. Jeffery did not think he was going to survive until he started thinking about his ex-wife. "I hadn't heard from her so it gave me a strong will to keep going." Jeffrey recovered and as a result of the experience stopped making violent comics and began to create stories based on positive miraculous miracles.

One of his recent comics, 'Bryon's Well', was based on a true story that he read about in Readers Digest. Bryon is a young boy who learns about African children who are becoming ill and dying from polluted well water. Bryon becomes a hero taking it upon himself to solicit donations on the Internet. He raises enough money to help several communities in Africa build clean wells. Another comic is called 'The Unfortunate Family Disaster'. "This is about a baby that is in a car accident with her parents and the parents die and the baby gets out of the car and crosses the interstate. She was about five years old and didn't get hit, and I thought that was quite unique considering how big that interstate was. And somebody picked her up and they found out who the relatives was and the relatives resumed the responsibility of raising her."

Jeffery says his comics are similar to soap operas because each book is a continuation of the same story. Jeffery focuses on people that are extremely ill and who have less fortunate lives. He says those are the type of people who gravitate towards him. Panda Pandemonium is still a character and narrator in his recent work, but he does get into as much trouble. Panda is confronting HIV, which Jeffrey based on the life of his real-life friend. In one book the warden accuses Panda of trying to spread HIV within the jail. Panda objects to the claims but later in the story writes to his wife asking if she would still have sex with him. Jeffery read something at the time about the high risk of spreading HIV and how it recommended using condoms. Most people that he knows have a real problem using condoms because they find them uncomfortable. As a result there is a lot of disease that spreads in his community. Helping others and spreading awareness about these issues gives Jeffrey the motivation to make comics. He is also working on confronting his own problems day-by-day and is recovering for a drug problem. He recently attended church, something he has not done in over twenty years.

Jeffery went back to school for his GED a couple years ago which improved the grammar in his comics. He loves to write and says that he expresses himself better on paper. Jeffrey just applied to take online classes through the Art Institute of Minneapolis. They are sending him an art test for a scholarship. When he was fourteen they offered him a scholarship but he did not find out until years later. His mother had answered the phone and told them that he was not interested. She didn't want him to depart from the house. He says she did not encourage nor discourage him from making art, she just never said anything about it. At the moment he takes commissions for realistic portraitures and says that Norman Rockwell is his favorite artist. His weirdest portrait commission was drawing a nude transsexual. Jeffrey hopes to receive a grant that he recently applied for so he can start another airbrush company and move on from there.

If you are interesting in a commisioned portrait by Jeffry please let me know and I will put you in contact with him.

Meet Daniel

2006-04-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Daniel McGowan is an environmental and social justice activist, unjustly arrested and charged in federal court on multiple counts of arson, property destruction, and conspiracy, relating to two incidents that occurred in Oregon in 2001. Daniel has asserted his innocence by pleading not guilty to all charges. He is facing a minimum of life in prison if convicted.

Daniel is from New York, and has been an active member of the community, working on diverse projects such as military counter-recruitment, demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, Really Really Free Markets, and supporting political prisoners such as Jeff "Free" Luers and others. Daniel was a graduate student earning a Master's degree in acupuncture and was working at WomensLaw.org, a nonprofit group that helps women in domestic abuse situations navigate the legal system, which is where he was arrested by federal marshals on December 7, 2005.

Daniel had originally been indicted separately, but his arrest comes in the context of a well-coordinated, multi-state sweep of numerous activists by the federal government, who has charged the individuals with practically every earth and animal liberation case left unsolved in the Northwest. Many of the charges, including Daniel's, are for cases whose statute of limitations were about to expire.

In order to help Daniel, his family and friends have created a support network (Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan) to assist in raising funds for Daniel's legal representation which is expected to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Please visit Daniel's support web site to make donations, read more about his case, subscribe to an email announcement list, contact his support team, or write to him showing your support.

Check out the support site:

supportdaniel.org

Support Daniel on Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/danielmcgowan

Interesting article:

Eugene Weekly

Meet Scott

2006-04-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is Scott and every night for fifteen years he went to the White Castles* in St. Matthews. Scott enjoyed going there to socialize and says that he met a lot of interesting people who would talk politics and hang around like at a general store. Each night he ordered one of his favorites, either the fish sandwich with fries, or a hamburger and an orange drink. The St Matthew's White Castle had a fair share of regulars with the work crowd during the day and the drunks and drug addicts at night. A regular himself, Scott became friends with many of the White Castle employees. He says the employees had a pretty good deal at that time. If they stayed for forty years they would get profit sharing without having to pay taxes on it. They also provided maternity leave and after fifteen years of service, White Castles would fly their employees to the corporate headquarters in Columbus, OH for a banquet.

Scott was born in Louisville in 1946 and attended St. Gabriel Grade School in Fern Creek, then Seneca and Eastern High School. Before moving to St. Matthews in 1979, he lived in the Highlands and worked as a clerk for The Louisville Courier Journal. He has also worked at hotels, factories and for twenty years at the Blue Boar Cafeteria on Gardner Lane. Today Scott works part-time at Rainbow Blossoms, a health food store in St Matthew's, “ I got that job on my own two and a half years ago and I really like it.” He says he does a little janitor work in exchange for good free soup and a little cigarette money. Scott likes Rainbow Blossom because they do not have robberies like they did at Blue Boar. The daytime the cashier would often announce over the intercom, “ Counters, personnel, we have been hit again”.

At the moment Scott lives in a halfway house downtown. He goes to St Vincent’s Soup Kitchen often and says its cool because they still have relics from the old church. He says crowds of people go there daily for food. Scott also thinks The Cathedral of Assumption Soup Kitchen has pretty good food and they even serve White Castles sometimes. On Easter he attends a banquet there in huge gymnasium where they hand out free t-shirts.

Scott's best talent is remembering faces. In his free time he likes to write and has written many short stories. He also listens to WFPK on the radio and has cable television but does not like it. Now that the St. Matthew's White Castle has closed he hangs out at Cahoots and The Seelbach Hotel Coffee Shop. Scott has not had a drink of alcohol in thirteen years but likes the environment at Cahoots and the young people, whom he calls “hippies”, don’t give him any trouble. “I have seen guys there (at Cahoots) who remembered me from White Castles.” Scott, perhaps unknowingly is a St. Matthew's White Castle icon. If he were to offer you any advice, he'd say for you to keep persevering.

Meet Linda

2006-04-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

This is Linda and she is a self employed Art Therapist in Louisville, KY. Linda moved to Louisville from Savannah, GA in 1994 to attend the Masters in Expressive Art Therapy Program at the University of Louisville. "Expressive" meaning that it incorporates drama, music, and play therapy in addition to art. At the moment she works mostly with children. She says working with adults can be pretty intense because they are verbal, with defense mechanisms and have been programmed by society to be a certain way. Linda helps adults move past these defenses to a place where they can freely process their situation. She often uses a form of art and play therapy called sand tray therapy. In her office you will find three sand tray tables and two tall shelves she custom built full of hundreds of miniatures and figurines. The shelves are categorized accordingly: Animals and bugs, armies and teams, children, couples, houses, household objects, magical things, mothers and women, men, plants and trees, religious figures, sea creatures, shells, symbols of other cultures and superheroes. Linda has been collecting miniatures for ten years to use in play therapy and for shadowboxes that she makes as an assemblage artist.

To start a session she might ask her clients to build their world by selecting miniatures and playing in the sand. Linda says that people are open to art therapy because it applies primitive language using all senses in addition to the usually verbal approach. An individual can play out a situation rather than just speak about it. Play time during therapy is separate from the individual. Using Sully, a Disney character she explains, “We are talking about Sully, we are not talking about you, that frees Sully up to do whatever he wants to do (in the sand tray). He can smack her (referring to the Little Mermaid in her other hand) and bury her underneath the sand and there are no consequences. Instead you have had the ability to release that aggression". Art, drama and play are all language. She says looking into these visual areas taps into the subconscious through a different part of the brain.

Linda also has a long history of working with autistic children. She has a comfort level because she herself has sensory issues. “If you get out of a car, you leave the key in the car and you leave the door open and that bell is dinging, I am going out of my mind to get the key out of the car so that it stops because I can’t focus on anything else. An autistic kid would do the same thing but it may not be as obvious. It may be a tag in their shirt that is driving them crazy. I have an understanding and compassion for where they are coming from, of course there sensory issues go a whole lot deeper than mine."

Linda recently married to Rusty a fellow artist she met in Savannah. Their home, also their studio space, has art work hanging on every wall. She considers her practice a mixture of spiritual and scientific. As a therapist she believes you need to know your issues so you can keep them separate from the clients. "No one is perfect and there is never going to be a therapist without his or her own issues." Linda says that her best asset in life is that she is very flexible. She tries not to get too attached to one idea of what she thinks reality is because she is aware that it can constantly shift.

Linda would like to know your interpretation of what is happening in the scene of the sand tray below.

Meet Barton and Kate

2006-04-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

Barton and Kate both work full-time at Michaels, a nationwide corporate owned arts and craft store. Barton is 20 years old and started working at Michaels as a sale associate and three months later was promoted to retail. He likes Michaels because he uses about ninety percent of the things that he sells. When asked if he was an artist he said, “ No, I can’t really paint or draw but I do the crocheting and the calligraphy and card-making, scrap-making and macromae”. He says he is not really into sports or anything else like that. But Barton does like the physical side of the job, “You know I stock a whole lot and unload trucks and stuff like that and I kind of like the manual labor, you know what I mean? It is not extreme manual labor but I mean it’s healthy, it’s enough to get you going”. Barton says that this is the best job he has ever had. He prefers this much more than sitting behind a desk. When he was in high school his parents only let him work during the summer so he worked at a Dollar Store. He also tried working at McDonalds but quit after six days because he hated it! The smell of food all day long really got to him and made him nauseated. Barton recounts a story about his most bizarre customer experience at Michaels. “I had a guy come in and he does an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) class and he needed something that looked like a kilo of coke that he could stomp on so I gave him Celucay!” Kate laughed and added, “That’s just what he told you, he was probably trying to sell it”. Barton was born and raised in Louisville. He would like to go to college but is holding out until he knows exactly what he wants to do. That way he will have the focus and determination to actually do it. He said it would be great. “I went for radiology but there was too much math that I did not care about.” Barton would love to do clothing design even though he thinks he is really bad at it.

Kate is 23 years old and has worked at two different store locations. Her career at Michaels began in Elizabethtown, KY in the set-up department. There she was promoted to cashier, then lead sales and finally head front-end supervisor. Kate moved away for a year and a half and when she came back, the Elizabethtown store had no positions open. She loved the company so much that she found a job at a Michaels in Louisville. She now drives an hour from her home in Radcliff, KY just to get to work. In Louisville, she started in sales but now works in the retail department. Kate’s favorite part of the job is the customer service because she gets to meet so many interesting people. “ I always ask you know, what project are you doing today?” The strangest thing that a customer has asked Kate for was spray-on hair dye to paint their dog. Kate has worked in the retail industry since she was fifteen; “I had to have a work permit back in the day”. Kate has also worked at Gatzu clothing store and a laser tag place, but she considers Michaels her definite “nitch”. She is an army child and was born in Kansas but later moved to Radcliff, KY. She loves beads, has tons of them and considers that and making jewelry her thing. Kate says that if she decides to go to college she would want to be an art teacher. During this interview another Michael's employee interrupted us to tell Kate that she would be training a new employee in about twenty minutes. "Hold on, she's doing a interview about the job", Kate said. "Well it needs to be quick", her coworker said and then stood there waiting, arms crossed until we finished.

Meet Jim

2006-04-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

This is Jim and he owns a farm in Oldham County, KY where he raises and breeds miniature horses. In 1984 Jim was on a basketball trip in Auburn, Florida when his friend brought up the subject of miniature horses. Jim agreed to go look at a horse farm having not heard of them before but that’s all he agreed too! He went, was surprised and fell in love. At first it was a hobby but in 1997 Jim got serious about miniature horses. He began to show and sell them all over the world. Jim believes his horse breeds get better by the year and as proof he currently holds eleven national championships. In addition over half the people in Kentucky who started a miniature horse farm have purchased their horses from him. Up until a year and a half ago Jim was also a Chevrolet car dealer. Comparing miniature horses to cars he says, “The good ones you just can’t keep in”. “When selling a horse it’s just like anything else, if you have a ten thousand mile used car and you got a seventy thousand sitting besides it your going to sell the ten thousand one.” He says the “hot” horse right now is the Arabian with a real long looking neck and 34" height. They also come in a 28" and 30". As far as pet horses he says you can’t keep them all, but yes, they’re just like dogs, they know you. Jim has seventy miniature horses at his residential farm. He says there are no two alike and they can get jealous of each other. Jim has three grown children, two girls and one boy. Although a few miniatures are in their names none of his children have pet horses. He says they lost interest about the same time they received their driver’s license. Jim would not consider himself an expert of miniature horses but he can tell you everything about them. People call him all the time for horse advice, which he attributes to his well-kept records. Jim says he is a former everything. He would like you to know that if you need a horse he has one for sale.

Meet Karen

2006-04-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

This is Karen and she is a legal secretary and administrative assistant at a law office in downtown Louisville. Karen has worked at the same company for ten years and found her job through a current coworker. Her responsibilities have always been multitasked and as she puts it “multi-hats”. Karen has ADHD and finds it necessary to be efficient and well organized. She is always looking for ways to make things better. Karen has family photos on her desk displaying her two grown children, a daughter and son, and two beautiful grandchildren. She loves sunflowers and finds strength in their symbol. Karen is the master of hugs and loves making people feel important. However she has learned to ask before she hugs as some people are not as receptive of receiving. In her purse is a key chain that says, “ I love hugs”. Karen wants to be strong and at the same time loving. Karen is excited about her job and is excellent at helping clients involved in personal injury cases. She finds it easy to relate to other peoples sufferings. She has also learned that one does not have to do a lot of talking, a hug will do it! She believes that is the purpose behind her hugs. Karen’s desk is next to a huge window that offers the most natural light in the office.

Meet Joe

2006-04-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

This Joe and he works as bike courier in downtown Louisville. Joe was an avid biker before taking the job, but not the spandex wearing type. He has worked at Bike Courier for two years and gets to pick and choose his routes and deliveries. He really likes his job because he does not have to work in an office all day. He also gets to sit outside and do nothing in between breaks, meet all types of strange people and talk to the homeless. On any given day Joe makes between forty to fifty deliveries. The weirdest deliveries that he makes is riding blood, urine and unknown iced objects to and from hospitals. On average people treat Joe with respect. However he suspects it is because he delivers many of them their paychecks. When Joe is not riding his bike he creates cartoons and comic books. One day he hopes to publish his work. Joe was born and raised in southern California but moved to Louisville with his family when he was seventeen. He thinks Louisville is okay. He likes it because it is cheap and easy to get around. When Joe was twenty-one he had his most defining identity change. As he lifted his sleeves and showed me his tattoos he admitted that he used to be a Satanist. He was unhappy then and believes that it was a product of his upbringing. Today Joe is happy.

Meet Trevor

2006-04-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

This is Trevor and he is from England. He and his wife run Martinizing Dry Cleaning on lower Brownsboro Rd in Louisville, KY. He is not at all interested in dry cleaning but does find cars and women fascinating. He recently became a new father to a son born on September 11, 2005. The weirdest thing that anyone has ever brought into the dry cleaners to be dry cleaned was underwear. The person was a local celebrity. He cannot stand the color blue. He never wears it outside of work and would never paint a room in his house "Martinizing Blue". His favorite color is purple but he does not like to wear it. He really enjoys his job because of the customer service. Oddly he finds socializing outside of work less fun, uncomfortable and just different. One day he hopes to be able to vote in America.