Want to see more?  Well the lovely folks over at have offered up a home for this labor of love.  Street Roots is a non-profit newspaper that deals with issues of poverty and social justice.  You know those homeless folks outside of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods who are trying to sell you a paper for a buck?  That’s the one.  The project is basically running from Thanksgiving until Christmas, with three print editions showing up on November 25, December 9th, and December 23rd.  In between, two photo slideshows with some amazing first-person audio accounts of life with Asperger’s will be on the , look for them December 2nd and 16th.

I also have to give a high-five to , the Regional Arts and Council Culture.  They are the money men behind this project and it’s a pretty amazing thing to have an organization in Portland dedicated solely to the funding and advocacy of the arts.  It’s like we’re in Europe or something.

Photo Editor and Graphic Designer round out my list of Thanks Yous in this Oscar speech.

Last month I photographed Stephen Malkmus and his band the Jicks (that would be Joanna Bolme, Mike Clark, and drummer/bartender extraordinaire, Jake Morris) for . My job was to photograph the band practice as quickly and as non-obtrusively as possible. Yeah, right.

I have to be honest and say I didn’t know who the band (Malkamus’ cult rise to fame) was. I don’t think I was cool enough in the 90′s to have them on my radar. However, the mere name of this band garnered swoons from several of my friends, making me realize I was dealing with Indie royalty.  I guess I managed to fit in, or at least not piss anybody off, because a few weeks later I got a call from their label, , asking me to do their promo pictures.

Negotiating creativity with bands is not easy.  They have a vision, I have a vision, and the label has a vision, and never the twain shall meet.  I was dying to have them all draw mustaches on their fingers and hold them to their faces, a little hipster irony to my way of thinking. Nothing doing. Twenty years later and I’m still not cool enough. Oh, well. We did end the day drinking beer and shooting at a bowling alley, a compromise that made everyone happy, or at the very least, tipsy.

I was there to photograph the fat monkeys, the ones spending their days on the couch, eating chips and drinking soda.  Ok, not really.  But for the last several years researchers there have been doing tests to mimic the average American diet and lifestyle and the results aren’t (though they did end up on the front page of the Sunday paper).  This colony of monkeys have been fattened up to help scientists study the human epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

I left the assignment feeling all sorts of things, like:

“Wow, that was amazing and fascinating and I love my job.”

“I am never drinking soda again.”

“Do we really need to be caging a bunch of cute monkeys to study how messed up humans are?”

But mostly I felt kind of sad.  Being obese is not an easy thing, , but it is also not something easy to fix, no matter how many monkeys we fatten up.

And so I was sad.  For the fat monkeys, for the number of times a week I weigh myself, and for America.

I have to say, this has become one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I always go in there thinking, ok, here I am, doing my volunteer work, giving back, aren’t I so virtuous, blah, blah, blah. But man if I don’t feel like I got the gift at the end of it. I get to connect, make people laugh and hopefully give them a few minutes to feel seen and heard.

Cuz’ everybody likes a little attention.

Especially around the holidays.

Our introduction went something like this.

Me (trying to be a kiss ass): “Hi Rich, nice to meet you, can I get you a seat?”
Rich: “I’m not that old, yet.”
Me (now trying to be a smart ass): “Well, then you want to come and help me set up the lights?”
Rich: “I’m not that young either.”
Me: “Uhhhh.”

Turns out what he was perfect for was acting as a stand in as we got the lights set up. Here is a picture of him and I filling in for Phil Knight.

Hilarious.

But why does he look so cool and I look like I’m posing for my senior portrait? Thanks much to the photog Jamie Schwaberow who made this kodak moment happen.

I work for the paper probably once a week, as they seem to have a love affair with Portland, OR. And while I enjoy shocking people with how low their day rate is (don’t ask) they do give me amazing assignments that take me all over the Northwest. Last week I spent a couple of days with some folks in danger of losing their home aid service. As states are trying to balance their budgets anyway they can, it has come down to slashing care givers for the disabled and elderly. Unfortunately, the result is that many of the folks who could get by with 20 to 40 hours of help a month are going to end up in nursing homes once that help is gone. It’s a pretty sad and ironic tale of dealing with budget cuts in a no-win situation.

Enter Ken Poe, a former pilot who suffered from Polio as a child and as a result has trouble walking and standing. His house reminded me of a episode of the TV show . Boxes, papers, and books formed a maze while a 25 foot oxygen tube snaked throughout the room. Ken agreed that while it looked like a tornado had touched down, in reality everything had its place and it was his way of “wall surfing,” using the stacks to help him navigate around his house.

Throughout the day Ken told me bits and pieces of his life, how he got sick, what he studied in school, his escapades flying around Mount St. Helens right before it blew. Everything was told in a matter of fact manner, and Ken remained upbeat while I clicked away as meals on wheels delivered his lunch and old Perry Mason episodes played in the background.

At one point Ken wanted to move to his bedroom to lie down and needed my help. He could rise to a standing position but because he can’t raise his arms more than waist high he needed me to take his hand so he could stand up right. It was almost like a dance, with both of us bowing and then rising at the same time.

I think Ken had fun that day. He had someone to listen to him, someone to pay attention to him. It makes me feel like I’ve given something then, something to Ken who allowed me into his fragile life where being able stand is reliant upon a pile of papers being placed just so. I love the work I do, I just hope that it makes some small difference and that I leave things a bit better than I found them.

After our time together I thanked Ken and went to my car to smoke cigarettes, cry and remind myself to always be grateful.