Farmers' Market

bought some "maters," spinach, peach-cot jam which is really peaches and apricots, muenster cheese. 

nothing from the flower factory, unfortunately. maybe that's why he's glaring at me.

Long Island, Bahamas

Finally, a successful attempt to embed a slideshow without swivel zoom crossfade neon filmgrain sparkles.

Long Island, Bahamas is about 80 miles long and 4 miles wide. It's about an hour plane ride--more like a flying 15-passenger bus--southeast of Nassau. The island is a sliver of white sand and mangroves, crisscrossed by a handful of dirt roads without names. The north end is only about a mile wide; if you stand high enough you can see the turquoise shades of the Caribbean and the coral-lined Atlantic at the same time.

It's quiet. It's not the glitzy, mimosa-and-margarita-making, yacht-fishing, five-star island resort. It's completely black at night and the longer you stare at the sky the more stars you'll see. You wake up to the sun in your eyes, the sound of waves crashing into tide pools and maybe the smell of rain and salt.

It hadn't rained in months. The second day of our trip, it did. By the end of the week, the whole island had turned from brown to green.

It's easy to forget how to turn things off, inhale deeply and really see what's around you. It's been a while since I had done that. And a while for me to realize what I actually care about.

Very much alive

Maybe you will be glad to know that, though I haven't posted in a while, I'm still around. Been in the Bahamas for the last week. Photo slideshow to come soon.

Also, will be in Madison on Thursday. Spending the summer interning in the digital media department at the Isthmus, reading about America since 1945, ballroom dancing with A and taking lots of bike rides. And photographs.

Keep checkin' back if you like shipwrecks, dirt roads and clothesline laundry.

Triangles

I guess there are rectangles, too. And squares. Doesn't it compromise my photographic objectivity that I'm biased towards triangles?

But everyone's doing it. 

mother's day

grandma's name is bernice which is bunny and she's always worn red lipstick

dad

note to self

faith in narrative + people picking up where you left off = genuine influence.

Sally

Sally sat on sidewalk and took about a 45-minute smoke break from her job at Laurenzo's Farmers' Market, where she's been a cashier for eight years. Eighteen months ago, her husband committed suicide while her daughter and she were also in the house. Sally said he had a gun underneath his pillow; she said he had always been crazy. They were married for 25 years. She told me to never get married.

She started to cry and I sat down next to her. She told me I needed a tan. I asked why she wore so much dolphin jewelry. She had on gold, dolphin earrings, a dolphin charm on her necklace, a silver bracelet of two dolphins wrapped around her wrist and another, smaller dolphin wrapped around her right index finger.

She didn't say anything about the dolphin jewelry. But she did say she just had to sell a gold watch that her husband gave her a few years ago. It was "to makes ends meet," she said, and apologized for still crying and wiped the bottom lids of her eyes with the knuckle of her right thumb.

Sally is 52 years old and has attempted suicide twice. She said she is only "half-glad" she didn't die-- she still has two younger kids to take care of.

"There's no closure for anything," she told me. She got up, so I got up, and she gave me a hug and told me she had to go back to work. And then I walked to my car, teary-eyed, wondering how these kinds of things happen.

chandler