Blondes on his mind

This is an old story -- heck, I shot it back in November -- but I've been a little rushed on things lately, as ...

a) I'm moving back to Georgia on Wednesday.
b) Wednesday also happens to be my last day at the internship.
c) It's friggin' Christmas.

... so I'm going to post this and then That'll Be It For A While. As in, I probably won't be post for a week or two (or three) as I make the move back to Athens, college, and actually having a social life. Looking forward to all three of those. And not so much the same about leaving Birmingham.

... on second thought, I'll be posting something kinda a reminisce-y about the internship and Birmingham on the whole. Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, but just something pretentiously nostalgic and maudlin.

So, the story: there's a group that makes bikes for kids with disabilities. It's a cool idea, since what little kid doesn't love the idea of finally getting mobile? I think the excitement of a bike for a four-year-old is motivated by the same feelings a sixteen-year-old has for his first car. Anyway. It's a cool story, and the writer, Rakhia Nance, found a pretty cool angle to suit it.

This little guy has an unidentified mitochondrial disease that affects all the muscles in his body. He has practically no muscle control, none at all. He can't hold himself up, he can't lift his arms and legs, he can't even swallow on his own volition. I'm in awe of his parents. And these guys decided to build him a bike. It turned out more like a tricycle, but it'll allow him to sit up in the bike and be helped along by someone behind him.

Biggest thing I remember about this assignment: the kid was unabashedly attracted to blondes. A couple of the girls helping out at the foundation where they presented him with the bike were young attractive blondes, and every time one would walk by, he'd loll his head to the side to watch them, then give them this little grin. Mitochondrial disease or not, guy knows what he likes.

With grandma.

Just hangin' out, waitin' for my bike ...

Blonde alert.

With his mom.

The trike needed some adjustment when they first got him into it, but it wasn't bad for a first time.

I hope things work out with the little guy.

Okay, more later.

Rain on mine -- it'll make it interesting

Parade, that is. Tis the season for town parades, obviously.

Bunch of photos here, so be wary of viewer fatigue. Make sure to rest often, stretch when necessary, and take a buddy.

Catholics confuse me.
There are no book depositories or true grassy knolls in Homewood -- had there been, I would not have wanted to be this guy.

Then, of course, there are night parades.

Fun fun.

When things that are supposed to happen don't.

Akin to "when pets attack," and along the same lines of panic. For example, the Friday after Thanksgiving is supposed to be a busy travel day, right? I mean, folks are coming back from Grandma's house with cheeks that ache from being pinched, or catching a plane to escape one's father-in-law repeatedly trying to get you to pull his finger, or something familially obnoxious like that, so everything should be comfortably packed.

But nooooo, the day that I need traffic jams and jam-packed airport terminals is the day when people seem to cooperate and get along with one another. It'd be heartwarming any other day, but that Friday, it was just annoying.

So I hung around until I could get a good blur going on, sneaked onto the top of a parking garage on the north side of 20/59, and got some sunset photos. With blurry cars. 'Cause that way there's ... eh, never mind ...

I might kinda like the darker one a little better, but I couldn't completely decide, so I figured I'd post both.

More soon.

Trebuchets and nativity scenes

How, you might ask, would two such things go together?

Well, my sister made a ten-foot trebuchet for a physics class that never really worked right, and I always wanted to go back and fix the somewhat impressive device (that is now up on cinderblocks in my parents' front yard -- we are that kind of redneck, apparently) so I could hurl masses of water balloons at live nativity scenes come Christmas time.

I am so going to Hell.

What brought up that memory was an assignment from a few weeks ago: one of the Mormon churches was putting up a display of more than 500 nativities from all around the world. "Hey, cool," I thought, even though I don't really understand the attraction of erecting small barns that in reality might or might not have been carpeted with afterbirth and hay; "I'll get to meet some Mormons." Because, truth be told, I've run into a couple before, but they were brief encounters of the "here's your frapuccino" variety, and I felt like I've never met a Mormon being, well, Mormon-ly.

To sum up, I'll say this: they were some of the most absurdly nice and polite folks I've met, second only to the Sikh couple I met a month ago.

And they had nativities! Lots of 'em ...

Until someone makes some kind of Harley Davidson-themed nativity scene, the above, a cast-iron piece from one of the local furnaces, Sloss, is perhaps the most badass nativity out there. Even if baby Jesus in his cradle sorta resembles a mortar and pestle.

Anyway, more later.

Bum-de-bum-bum-Buuuum

... which is what I've been about posting in the past week or so. Posting is, as always, backlogged, but here's something from the UAB commencement this afternoon.And I know this is fuzzy, but isn't this just the most badass symbol of knowledge a school could have? I mean, it's a mace, for crying out loud!Okay, off to Tuscaloosa for a basketball game this evening.

Ciao, y'all.

A Day Early

I'll post these a day early, in case I forget to do it tomorrow. On Monday and Friday evenings, the Catholic church across the street starts ringing in this really kinda enchanting fashion ... Mondays and Fridays are their practice nights.

Ahhhh ... got nothing more to say, really.

Oh, congratulations, Samantha, on getting into UAB. Not that I had any doubt.

Thanksgiving

My assignment from Thanksgiving was to shoot the New Pilgrim Baptist Church serving to "the least, the last, and the lost" for a few hours. There was a motorcycle club who showed up to help, too.

They had a bus up and running (driven by a guy from Atlanta, actually) to pick up and drop off the folks who couldn't, for one reason or another, cross town to get to the dinner. Didn't have too many folks when I went, but they were pretty open about everything.

Black Friday shopping

Needs no explanation, which is good because I'm doped up to the eyeballs on Dayquil and such right now, so I can't feel my fingertips, can't type too precisely, and can't think too straight. So, here's what Black Friday looked like to me, in a nutshell. You know, I hate malls. I hate crowds. And I really hate crowded malls.

But right now, I just don't care. Wheeee for drugs that make you apathetic. It's so much easier than having to not care on your own.

Surgeons on call, and another Infocus teaser

These photos went along with an article about communication in the VA hospital at UAB. Tom Gordon, the writer, and I spent the morning [ed's note: this was actually a couple weeks ago; I've been lazy with the posting] in the staging area of the surgery ward. I was totally willing to get scrubbed up and head back, but it apparently wasn't an option.

_____

And here's a little teaser of my Infocus for this month. Which I guess would be my final Infocus with the Birmingham News. For any who don't know, I'll actually be heading back to Georgia come Christmas Eve, permanently [ed's note: well, as permanently as anything is these days, which is to say, for the time being]. I might do some kind of retrospective-thing-a-ma-job post later, but don't hold your breath. I only get truly nostalgic when I drink.

Anywho ...

Five points to anyone who can guess what it is.

Ciao!

PS: I hate Joey L because he's 18, and goddamned good.

Other portraits

The article ran a week ago, and I've been busy and out of town, so I'm just now posting the rest of the portraits. These aren't the ones that ran, by the way, but the ones I took, cropped even tighter, monotoned, and did some little tweaks.

The article was about various religions that have been moving in the Birmingham area. The article (which is unfortunately not online) ran A1 and jumped inside which is where the photos ran. None of these were revolutionary, but there are a few that I really like.